I love playing as Riven, but its so easy to fuck her up. She can easily be countered. All you have to do is learn her counter. She can be beaten. She is not op. She is op if you let her snowball. Just play smarter and you won't hate her anymore. My suggestion, use Garen. Garen is her #1 counter, I believe. I could be wrong.
No, it's not hard to beat Garen as Riven. You can build hexdrinker to nullify his ultimate and you can easily avoid him with your mobility in fights and strike when he's low or on cooldown. Your CDs are a lot shorter than his and there's no way for him to catch you, ever.
Riven isn't overpowered but I honestly wouldn't recommend picking Garen into her. The reason Riven players lose lane to Garen is because they don't respect his damage and they go all in at stupid times. Has nothing to do with Garen being a counter and everything to do with that Riven being dumb.
I'd say your best bets against her top lane would be champions like Quinn, Ryze, Jayce, champions that can stop her from engaging and harass at range.
If a Riven engages on Quinn, Quinn can E off her on her second Q and dodge the knockup while slowing her. Jayce can knock her away with E. Ryze can just root her with W and she can't use Q or E while rooted.
I hate Riven with a passion. That being said, I know how to fuck her up. Just because you can pick a counter =/= champ isn't OP or anything lol.
What if we hate Riven for reasons that have nothing to do with mechanical gameplay?
As a Garen main I have to say Garen is NOT Riven's number one counter. He does counter her, but if the Riven is at all competent it ends up being more of a skill machup than anything. Riven will eventually start roaming and catch back up, and Garen will eventually reach a point where Riven cannot kill him (either due to tankyness or damage, since he can build multiple ways) if both are played equally well. Garen is just a classic counter from the older seasons.
That said there are plenty of much harder counters to choose from. If you just want to farm Riven I suggest AD Malz.
Whenever I see a Riven, I like to mess with them by taking Sona top.
Shes one of the best balanced champions in the game. But bronze stays bronze, people be like "im too bad to pull off counterplay, must be op champ"...
When I play Irelia agaisnt her I have the worst habit ever, She dashes into me and I E her instantly, only shaving off a bit of her shield, fuck me.
Riven is a very safe and very snowball heavy champion, both of which do not mix. She really has no part of her design which isn't to her advantage other than being melee.
She is mono-scaling (scaling with a single stat is better than scaling with multiple) She has short CDs with mobility She is AD She has survivability which increases with her damage She has great power spikes She, as you said, can snowball to become virtually unstoppable
Yes, she has counter pick options, so does every champion in league, but she has very few and far between, then even of those options, most do not have equal engagement, reliability, and stick, to off-set her mobility, burst and consistency.
BoxBox has shown (since her release more or less) that she is hands down game breaking in terms of reasonable counter play and reliability.
She is one of the champions that has perpetuated league into a more action RPG, than a strategy RPG with action mechanics. She is a champion who has a very difficult kit to take advantage of and a very easy champion to get return on knowing only her limits. (as in if learn riven well and only learn other champions second hand, you can still preform moderately well).
