No matter how I try, it seems like I am never able to learn that. Even if I manage to do it once sucessfully, I am hard pressed to do it again.
What's the easiest, most efficient and fastest way to learn how to animation cancel?
Auto attack ~ Press Q the second the auto attack connects, causing you to perform the first q, thus "canceling the animation of the auto attack's wind up and follow through ~ Manually target and click on the enemy to perform an Auto Attack, causing Riven to canceling the animation of her q after it hits to perform the auto ~ Immediately press Q afterwards ~ Manually target with another auto attack.
The trick is to time your q's so that you are performing them after your auto attacks connect, as it is possible to land a q, perform an auto attack, and then cancel your attack before the wind up connects, thus causing you to not only A. Not land the auto but B. Waste time you coulda spent just rapidly pressing q q instead. Either situation is better then your q ~ waste time winding up auto attack only to cancel it with ~ q
This is my understanding of the process.
Which animation cancel? There's tons.
Ability animation cancel: You chain a bunch of abilities with animations together, followed by a single Q. For example, R (first cast) + Hydra + W + E right at the same time. All the animations get cancelled except the last one in the chain.
Q animation cancel: This is the tricky one. You Q, and while mid-Q, you click somewhere away from yourself. Then as soon as you land, you click a target to autoattack, essentially cancelling the autoattack animation. Video reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qO715z_OKk
Autoattack animation cancel: essentially Q animation cancel in reverse. You autoattack, and immediately after the damage has been dealt, you press Q, so the wind-down of the autoattack animation is canceled and instead replaced by the Q animation cancel.
Riven fast combo: This is a combination of all the animation cancels. R (first cast) + Hydra + W + E + autoattack (autoattack animation cancel) + Q (Q animation cancel) + autoattack (autoattack animation cancel) + Q (Q animation cancel) + autoattack (autoattack animation cancel) + Q (Q animation cancel) + autoattack + R(second cast)
It's one of the hardest things to do in league. And honestly, after all the riven nerfs it's hardly worth learning.
I don't main Riven nor am I the best at her, but one tip I can give you is to play her a lot and get used to (practice) Q AA Q AA Q AA.
Other than that, the best tip I can give you if you struggle is to have some attack speed masteries or runes to facilitate the combo GL :D
I ended up going into a custom game by myself and running tank runes and masteries. Bought health crystal + 2 potions and practiced on red buff. Keep practicing over and over again, you'll eventually get it. PS: Don't kill it :P Let it recover if it's near death. Keep practicing.
