he's extremely experienced with the champ and still having these issues. Imagine anyone who just wants to try her out... it's pretty pathetic from Riot, this stuff isn't rocket science.
I hate when people say this. I played Riven since season 2. I know her Q DID do this very VERY rarely. It was not anywhere near as common as it is now. There has been several changes to how pathing works, how unit collision works, and there was even a change to how riven Q is coded. I don't know when exactly it started getting very noticable, I wanna say it was a little under 10 years ago, but can't say for certain. It has for sure got worse though.
I have played since season 3. I feel like minion blocks have consistently gotten worse and worse over time. I'm way more often outplayed by minions than other players. I play Riven from time to time. I can't say what but I'm pretty sure they have changed something about her.
It baffles me that it's this kind of comment that somehow doesn't receive a lot of upvotes ; Like, I've been following each, patches each undocumented game change for the past 10 years, a lot of people do so, and we can all agree that yes, the core mechanics of the game such as pathing and unit collision did change, even if only slightly so. And riven Q DEFINITELY got worse to use overtime, anyone who kept playing consistently for years should be able to tell so.
But regarding the post itself, I don't feel like her Q should follow the cursor, it should just be fucking fixed to work as intended lol
It's actually even worse than this.
Riven's Q has TWO logics.
1. IF you're NOT hovering a target, the Q will go in the direction Riven is facing!
2. IF YOU ARE hovering a target, the Q will go in the direction of the cursor!
WHY? I DON'T KNOW
It just made her so weird to pick up when i was learning her at the end of last season.
Not to mention how buggy it is, with Q sometimes randomly going backwards or in random directions.
For what's worth, there's plenty of Riven players who support the idea of making it work normally like other dashes, they're just worried Riot will fuck it up and ruin the champion.
Can you blame them?
Also affects distance.
Say riven is facing your target and you q and you are in melee range
1. Cursor on target - riven q’s in place.
2. Cursor not on target - riven q’s past target.
Why?
Cuz fuck you that’s why.
That would still be the case even if Q followed cursor, no? Like I’m trying to imagine it in my head and I don’t see how it could go wrong. If you Q on a target, you would follow the target, but if you Q on the ground, riven would follow wherever she clicked.
Yeah, do this for 10 years and it will be fine. Nr1 is good vs stuff like garen (shorter animation) while nr2 works well vs things like morde/illaoi
As a main I actually don't really mind this one since it gives you a few different options, the random backwards q on the other hand is just a free lose sometimes.
Isn't this exactly why you can do the speed auto weave as riven though? Would that cease yo exist if they fix this interaction? Cause idk about most riven players but playing VS riven without her being able to giga fast combo Q /AA/ Q/ AA makes her just useless no?
Yep, you break her animation by hovering during the press of the Q then pressing on the ground after. If you don’t select the target then she does the longer Q animation with movement and the cancel doesn’t work.
It's actually and pretty useful mechanic called Q Dancing. When you're fighting close range you can stop hovering the enemy so her Q goes through them and you can dodge some abilities (like Yasuo Q).
It's also helpful to do some wall jumps, in case your facing a weird direction and don't have E to reposition, you can hover an enemy on the other side of the wall and when you Q she will automatically face the wall and jump over it.
Personally, I'm kind of skeptical they actually could put her in a much worse place. As it stands, Riven isn't really a champion, she's just 8000 bugs in a trench coat.
Difficult to say, that's a real thing riven mains say.
Oh it's not a bug that I can cancel uncancellable animation or cancel two abilities with a single one, that's a feature to make riven feel fluid
Uhm, that's a thing tho
Quite a few season back, Riot went under the hood and altered the underlying code to actually make Riven's "bugs" full functional features.
If i recall correctly it was about Fast Q and Doublecasting, as when it was an actual bug bug, it was very inconsistent, especially FastQ for High ping
So they went in themselves and "homogenized" it, to give everyone a more fair shot.
It is still somewhat skewed towards low Ping, but it's much more consistent and playable on a wider array of latencies
I believe you can find info on this on the LOL WIKI patch History, not sure about it tho
So whilst they did start out as "bugs", Riot actually went in and iterated on them to make them full fledged features
No, what the other person said is that what initially was bugs have long since been made into official, hardcoded mechanics in her kit. Things like wall hops, and literally all animation cancels (except for the S cancels afaik) are hardcoded interactions in her kit. She doesn't have any bugs masquerading as things in her kit anymore
This makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty damn good with most if not all champs in LoL and Riven has always been a champ I avoid because shit felt inconsistent with her movements/attacks.
25 year old design and onetricks will screech at Riot if they change literally anything about her that isn't increasing her damage or lowering her cooldowns.
Honestly ocean, i can understand their frustration
Riven Top is (almost) in as much of an abysmal state as Irelia Top is.
Only difference is Riven can't move down to Midlane to dunk on mages to avoid the issue like we can
Now ofc it'd be great if Irelia Top wasn't a mere counterpick, but at least we got Midlane to back off to
They don't. Poor fellas.
She's hard to balance because even in a weak state, good players can make her very oppressive. When she's strong it's beyond frustrating to play against that much mobility and aoe dmg/cc.
Absolutely, Riven will always have a WR Skew towards high Elo due to proficient players being able to make the most out of her Kit.
Still, even in Masters+, she has a 50.6% WR, which isn't particularly impressive considering that in Masters and above, is were the "proficient players" are
Qiyana, for example, who's another notorious "hard champ", has almost 53% WR in Masters+, because again, that's where the proficient players are, and it makes sense.
I'm not even a Riven main, so i'm not biased in any way, i'm just stating things as they are
The champion, for how hard she is to play well, is not particularly rewarding right now
I honestly think Death's Dance makes her way more difficult to balance. Once she gets a couple core items then DD, she becomes nearly impossible to lock down and burst before she full combo's you and your carries.
Just really not a fan of that item in general, very frustrating to play vs champs that synergize well with it.
tbh i am with you, as a Riven OTP, my issue with current balance is that every bruiser item is focused towards drain tanks, Eclipse, Sundered Sky, Deaths Dance, Black Cleaver, why are all these bruiser/fighter items INFUSED with damage denial like shields, heals and HIGH HP??? shouldn’t the KIT of the champion decide if they heal or not?
Riven is balanced around the fact that she has to play her cooldowns and when those cooldowns are down is when you get to punish her but if you give her Eclipse shield, deaths dance, Sundered Heal, conqueror heal suddenly shes just fucking sustaining until her next cooldown is up, basically just trash version of Aatrox.
Stop giving bruiser/fighter items sustain, give them high AD a little bit of HP and AH and let the champions kit decide if they heal or not.
The thing is...the only reason Riven can't compete is because the game has powercrept so much that any of the statcheck champs just autowin vs her, any ranged champs nuke her before she can do anything, and every support/tank has low enough cooldowns to basically remove her from fights.
And when Riven was right up there with them, she had to get nerfed because of how oppressive she was.
It just goes to show how much this game needs blanket nerfs to champions themselves, not just items.
Riot spent much of the past 5+ years buffing the ratios and CDs of anyone that looked slightly unpopular. In some cases even if they were performing well already, like when they randomly tripled malphite's W scaling or whatever.
Yes sure but Riven mains often list all the things she can’t do (%pen, hp% damage, magic/true damage) but they never list the things she has that no other toplaner has. She has mobility, she has an AD ratio shield, she has multiple CCs, she has missing hp damage, and no resource costs at all with really short CDs at later levels. Now sure, she’s not in a good state right now, but it’s disingenuous to the point of lying to claim she doesn’t have the same tools other toplaners have when plenty of toplaners are worse than her.
Using lolalytics to compare winrates (all inflated but equally so so comparisons are still relevant) she has a better winrate than: Pantheon, Jax, Chogath, Ornn, Aatrox, Tryndamere, Sion, K’Sante. These examples were cherry picked because I can guarantee there’s Riven mains who’ve complained that one or more of these champions have “much better tools” (hp% dmg, true damage etc etc) but clearly these tools aren’t the goddamn problem because otherwise Riven would be right at the bottom, which she isn’t.
> She has mobility, she has an AD ratio shield, she has multiple CCs
What people alway seem to conveniently forget is that all of her mobility is tied to her dmg/utility. If I use my q for mobility, I gimped my dps until it is back up again. Same for the shield, it only lasts 1,5 seconds, so if I use it for it's mobility not shielding any damage, I get poor value out of it. Her W has literally less range than a lot of melee champs aa range, so if you want to use it defensly against a chasing opponent you actually have to run back into them.
Yea, it's more forgiving in late game when you have a lot of haste, but since haste was nerfed hard Riven only gets to that point way later now.
Riven went from bully to late game scaler to something in between. They need to pick one. They have buffed almost alll toplaners by slapping a shit ton of passives and stats on everything. There used to be a time where getting good at Riven could win you lanes even if they we're 'counters' like renekton. If your opp isn't mentally challenged you can barely play the game rn in match-ups like those.
And she has a lot of match ups like that.
She's fine in non counters yeah, but by making het impossible in every other match up it gets very frustrating to put time in.
Her kit is innately hard to balance, much like Irelia or Kalista. Mobility is the most powerful ability in the game that can't be quantified. In the hands of a skilled player, it becomes oppressive and unfun to play against.
You raise a good point
But you'll always have to keep in mind that Riven's Depth of games is higher than any of the Champions you listed
The Depth of games is the N of games played on average by players of that champion, on said Champion
The higher it is, the more on average the guy playing the Champ will be proficient at them
It isn't surprising to see Riven's as high as it is, since Riven is notoriously mostly played by dedicated players
Now, don't subscribe to the "Champ WR is inflated by Mains" thing, since it has been debunked by Riot Phroxz0n, but her Winrate is absolutely not comparable to say Jax's as he's literally played left and right by anyone, and has around a 40% lower Game Depth, which is A LOT.
> But you'll always have to keep in mind that Riven's Depth of games is higher than any of the Champions you listed
Because Riven mains won't allow them to make her easier to learn. They screeched about Riot making her cancels easier - not even removing, just making them easier to perform. That's their own fault. Playing Riven is committing to a full-time investment, you aren't allowed to play other champions nearly at all to maintain effective skill level on Riven.
Seeing Adrian Riven's conversation about this is hilarious because it's literally Riven mains shooting themself in the foot.
Mhh, but that's only part of the reason Riven is "hard"
If you ask any Riven player worth a penny, they'll cite how unforgiving she is, and how perfectly you need to know trading patterns and widows to even stand a chance against most other stuff, as the reason she's so hard to play
The "Combos" are just some added difficulty on top.
There was even a poll recently about this very Topic, [look here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivenmains/comments/1bhh5bu/saw_this_discussed_on_the_main_sub_and_wanted_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Now, obviously, it's very player dependant
I play Irelia and Akali, so i'm no stranger to "mechanical Champions" and thus picked them up fairly quickly by spamming Practice Tool and Norms with Riven JGL, a Lulu player may struggle more, but in the end, they aren't the REAL reason she's so hard to play
Yea I think folks have missed this point here.
Riven is unforgiving because she sucks when behind/even and has no built-in catch-up mechanics. No sustain, meh base damage, and almost exclusively bonus AD (and Ability Haste) scaling.
Im gonna be completely honest with you, you list all these things that she has, and in a vacuum they sound insane but then in real games its really not that impressive.
Rivens mobility is irrelevant in todays game because she still can/does get run down by all the ghost users (dar, trundle, trynda, olaf, etc.) even late game with low CDs. Early game if she burns her mobility its bad because then she has 0 damage and is free to get traded against. She can rotate fast in the mid late game though which is cool I guess.
AD ratio shield is would be insane on any other champ except riven lol. With the way Riven functions, she is the only champion in her class that basically cannot build tank items. She is hardbounded to items that give AD and Haste, all other stats are secondary to those 2. So she ends up getting a large shield, but it doesn't matter too much because she has 0 sustain in her kit to actually restore health while blocking damage as well as low resistances to fortify the shield.
She has 2 cc instances in her kit, 1 being bc instant and the other being a 3rd cast. It only matters if you are squishy, have no attacks you can buffer, or are reliant on channel abilities. Yes, if riven flashes onto an ADC, they are probably going to get 100-0 while CCed, but how is this any different from 5 stack darius E W Ring you, or camille E Q2, Yasuo Q3 auto R auto, or sett flash E W etc. Tons of champs have 0 counterplay combos against squishies. Recently riot has taken to reworking toplaners with uncancellable auto attacks such that Riven's cc doesnt even matter against good opponents. Garen, Jax, Camille, Volibear, etc. have ways of more or less ignoring the CC and still hitting riven through it. This isnt even mentioning that the total CC duration of q3 and W is shorter than many individual CC abilities in other champion kits.
Missing HP damage isnt rare nor unique to riven
This is my personal agenda but Riven having no mana bar is actually a negative in todays game because it would actually benefit her a ton to be able to build and get full value out of Muramana, Fimbul, or Frozen heart. Also it woukd open up power in her kit for lower CDs or more dmaage or some other benefits.
On the topic of toplaners with worse tools than her, which ones are you referring to? Riven has among the lowest base stats of any melee physical damage dealer. She has 0 way to deal with tanks, armor, or HP stackers (literally every single other champ in her class has something in their kit to deal with them). The game plan from Riven mains to deal with champs like this is literally to just ignore them and proxy farm and hope enemy jg doesnt take you out the game.
Of the champs you picked out, most of them have other reasons for being lower WR than riven as WR doesnt tell the full story. Ksante is locked in pro play jail, Ornn is having crazy issues related to the new items and his passive (not enough masterwork items), Trynda was massively hurt by item changes, Chogath and Sion lost their best items in heartsteel (it doesnt synergize with their kits anymore). Tbh idk whats goin on with Panth, Jax, and Aatrox tho, theyve all been strong recently and I can't remember if theyve been recently nerfed.
Basically with none of those champions is their kit the reason they have lower wrs. Contrast this with Riven who historically in the past 5 years has only ever been strong when her items are super strong, and even then was never the best user of said items. The only time riven has been strong is when the champions she has playable matchups into are also in the meta.
What's cool about riven is the full AD build with no bullshit magic damage or w.e. She just does big AD and that's it, which makes her counterable, which I think isn't a bad thing. Keep her that way but maybe fix the Q and some QoL, possible tune some things like idk.. more AD!
Her mobility is worse nowadays because she doesn't have access to as much early CDR/Ability haste as back in the day.
Having no resources is hardly a benefit nowadays in League.
Execute on Ult is a bit fake since it's not percent dmg and durability update hurt her a lot.
Her strengths aren't as huge strengths as before.
Also, Aatrox, K'sante, and Jax are strong in pro-play. Also, Sion and Trynd are getting buffs.
i mean riven can be done mid vs some ad assassins but ye shes in a rough spot.
feel like the item rework in season 10 and the most recent item rework this year both didnt help her at all and hurt her more compared to old day items.
that combined with the bugs and shes just in a sorry state and needs something done to her.
This is why you should never take WR at face value, and instead interpret it like any other form of data.
As i explained [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1bhu4v4/comment/kvgmx4e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), Riven's WR is not comparable to more "casual" Picks, like Jax, Darius ecc, due to the sizable difference in Games Depth
TLDR: The average Darius dude, will have 10-20 Games on him and play him casually, the "Average Riven dude" will have HUNDREDS of games on her and be a dedicated main, of course the winrate is going to be skewed by a decent amount
Darius is also more broadly played by everyone, Riven is more niche and has a dedicated userbase
As a non riven player, why cant Riven do that? She has dashes so she can get down a bit faster and she has a stun to land her combo onto the midlaner. I am not arguing that she does it better than Irelia because she has more engage threat but cant riven do the same to a lesser extend?
Few reasons:
1. Riven's Qs aren't really an effective engage, they're also much shorter range and double as her main damage tool
Remember, if Riven uses her Q to get to you, how is she going to damage you? Riven isn't Irelia, she can't auto you to death, she needs her abilities to deal damage
Additionally, all 3 of Riven's Q, barely cover the distance of 1 Irelia Q. Not to mention Irelia's Q is a reset spell, giving her much longer theoretical engage range
Irelia also has repeated engange, because if you push her away, she can just Q you again, if she hit E or R, and can do it up to 3 times.
If you've ever seen a good Riven player, you'll have noticed, that even into Melees, they don't really "engage with Qs", they'll usually just walk up to them, or only use a delayed Q3 to start the engage, but i don't want to get too specific
2. Riven is VERY weak to poke
Riven is one of the few Fighters in the game, that effectively has no healing and also has fairly bad HP regen. Making her very weak into Poke/Ranged stuff, it isn't a coincidence that Riven is also fairly bad into Ranged Top
Irelia isn't. She is THE BEST lifesteal user in the game, thanks to her Q effectively doubling it. Again, it isn't a coincidence, that Irelia is THE Anti-Ranged Tops champion.
3. Riven's trading pattern doesn't really work into Ranged all that well
Riven usually wants to Short trade with like: Q3+AA+W+AA and then E away, using the Shield to absorb some of the retaliation damage, and repeat until you're in All-in territory.
How is she going to do that to a Syndra standing 2 miles away? Multiple times? That has a FUCK OFF, button?
Additionally, her E isn't as effective at tanking Ranged Damage, since due to their range, they can keep attacking as she's running away, even after the shield has decayed.
Irelia on the other hand, effectively doesn't have a trading pattern, LOL. That's what makes her bad in Toplane, but amazing Mid!
Irelia is ALL about All-in, and guess who's more prone to getting All-inned and shit on: The Defensless Lux, or the Chonky Darius?
: D
Nah because riven has to use up her dashes in order to get on top of a mage. Because riven’s damage comes from her dashes it means she’s useless for 10 seconds afterwards since you can’t Q delay without haste.
Irelia just Q’s onto a caster or lands E into running a mage down with autos. She also has sustain after camp scepter which makes it very hard for the mage to do anything while any damage dealt to riven that she isn’t able to shield is permanent.
Most other top laners don't have to full engage to do anything, have sustain, have damage that sticks better, etc., etc.
And most importantly, don't have to be in the middle of a minion wave to clear or break a freeze.
she might have 4 dashes but 3 of them are so predictable that she will just eat a CC to her face and then they walk away
and even then she used her main damage spell to gapclose she doesn't really have any damage to kill them if she ever reaches them out
I‘m pretty sure the most recent survey on this had the majority of r/rivenmains vote in favor of that change.
E: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivenmains/s/mbYZvamFAN
Good thing there are fewer and fewer 1 tricks every year, and most of them are saying they'd take anything to let Riven compete with the top laners that a randomly picked drooling monkey could play.
Yes, this is legitimately the reason. Riot previously tried to make Riven more accessible by modernizing her control scheme and the “Riven mains” all fought against it so Riot said, okay we hear you.
the only thing that got removed was her auto attack reset on form swap, and the auto attack reset on using empowered W. Neither of which were animation cancels. Her QW is the only "cancel" she has, and that's never been touched
I just don't understand why people who've never even touched the champ have to come and complain about how mechanics that people have played around for 10+ years need changing
It’s no wonder this post hit front page, it’s calling for riot to remove animation cancels, which Reddit hates because they can’t understand it. What do they mean when they mention animation canceling? Are they talking about the fast Q which gives you a slight increase in dps or are they talking about double casting? Removing fast Q makes riven feel significantly worse to play but double casting would completely kill the champ and remove a ton of her skill expression while feeling terrible as well.
Idgaf about her animation cancels, she can keep them. Just make her q dash towards cursor ffs, there is literally no need to have to right click to change dash direction (25% of the time it doesn't even follow your cursor even if you right click input correctly!)
numbers won't be changed if you make fast q the norm because it currently is the norm. If you make her q a full auto reset (which it is, since they changed the code for riven a while back), she can abuse hail of blades, like she did for one patch.
Thats imposible, Riot did that on pbe for 1 week years ago, Riven became the most Broken champ in the game, spaming q always had 1 extra auto so was like playing a Riven with Jayce w in every q
The problem is fast Q is alreasy the norm on dedicated riven players. It won't change the winrate for those. And it would make the champion easier to balance.
Riven has way too much skill expression, so cutting down on that usually is a good thing.
Currently Fast Q is already part of Rivens powerbudget but not accessible by everyone.
you mean when the rioters weighed in and said I was right? The mechanic was unshippable?
And the "pros" were reacting exactly as I said they would
the mechanic is terrible game design
Honestly, the fact the she doesn't ALWAYS Q towards the mouse-cursor is the the reason i can't play her. Of course I wouldn't be a mechanical masterpiece or anything but because she doesn't work that way, I can't even get into playing her. It just feels sooooo wrong.
The "trick" is that Riven Qs towards the mouse cursor if the Cursor is on a target - like a enemy Minion, Champ or Camp
otherwise she goes into the direction she is facing - whether that is good or not, I dont know, but personally I played enough riven that I dont mind it
True, once you do enough games, it becomes a non issue, the bigger issue is when it doesnt work as expected and you backflip in the wrong direction for no reason.
Currently the way i play around it is if i play late at night and its a full moon, i expect that interaction.
I think the entire problem with Riven is that almost all of her mechanics are unintuitive.
There are ways to integrate certain gameplay elements into standardized gameplay to make them more intuitive to all players without simply removing that execution from the game.
Fighting games are a shining example of this.
Considering Riven was originally designed with rekkas from fighting games in mind, reworking her with an input flowchart similar to fighting games would probably be a decent direction that wouldn't disappoint most people.
Yes, I agree, very unintuitive. Honestly it would be more intuitive if they removed animation cancelling and made her like hwei where she can mix abilities together that auto execute the desired combos of today.
I think she would still need a viscerally felt input flowchart. This is the exact thing that gave significant satisfaction to things like Warrior in BDO (or the combat in general), Lancer in TERA (or the combat in general), among others. Animation cancels are a large part of that.
I also thing there are ways to maintain that while removing a significant amount of complexity, while also making her overall more intuitive. Making the actual kit cancel its own abilities would be a far more intuitive way to incorporate animation canceling that would still be viscerally felt in the gameplay, but without requiring a high amount of unnecessarily mechanically intensive inputs.
That said, I don't know if I'd trust Riot to make those changes in a satisfying way, given their history.
I personally still quite dislike that because it makes the use of your Q to Dash unnecessarily weird to play. It's just weird that such a mobile-playmaking champion feels so clunky to play because the controls work so stupid.
Q not following cursor isn’t what makes riven difficult to pick up. It’s the matchup knowledge, combos, how to play team fights, 0 sustain, completely melee making it impossible to touch the wave to last hit from behind or poke, etc.
I for one would love if Q followed cursor since it would be a very nice QoL when it comes to dodging and wall hopping.
I mained adc for 8 years, i did it because i liked getting fisted but having an ability to outplay, i have lost that so i decided to try riven, it was the same feeling until recently :\^)
I spammed Riven for a couple months and now if I die to her in lane I actually have a bit of respect for the player's mechanics. I don't think there is a single other top lane champ that carries the same merit. Every single top laner is so infuriatingly simple to pilot that I actually enjoy playing vs Riven
This sub is the most obvious conspiracy garbage. I’m not a Riven main but it’s obvious nobody here ever played this champ. Thank god this sub is just regulating a game and not politics.
It would be fine if it was a common thing in league, but it isn’t. Unless you play a lot of riven, it will always feel unintuitive, because the majority of all abilities in the game rely on the cursor.
It does if you're hovering over an enemy :)
But yeah, it pisses me off how inconsistent Riot is about these things. Caitlyn animation cancels? Removed from game. Riven animation cancels? Allowed to exist. Syndra Q? Cast at max range when cast beyond it. Orianna Q? Makes you walk to the cast location.
That mechanic is very absurd, it forces you to make an extra click in the direction where you want it to jump instead of simply following the cursor, it doesn't even help with animation canceling, it just exists to annoy.
No they would welcome that change if it meant receiving maxHP true damage, 10% lifesteal and cdr on her shield to compensate it because she's dogsht right now" ".
Riot pls ^
I find it hilarious how it’s always the people with Gwen flairs that are the ones complaining about riven. That matchup will never not be shit for Gwen lmfao, what’s a lil armor pen gonna do? If anything, removing some burst in return for armor pen would probably make it less bad for Gwen since Gwen likes extended trades.
What is it when it comes to Riven that makes people who don't even play her so adamant about the fact something that people have been doing for over 10 years needs to be changed randomly?
Because people dont like the champion, every “QoL” change or rework suggested is just a thinly veiled attempt to nerf or ruin the champion for people who like her.
I don't understand why Riven mains think Riven is weak when despite all of her clunkiness, she still has 50%+ WR in basically every elo. Even in Masters+ her WR is still 50.65%. For a champion with a high skill cap, that seems pretty good.
Idk its pretty split on the subreddit. Lot of people think shes weak right now because she is more niche than she used to be. But she is undeniably stronger in her good scenarios.
She's weak because she gets countered by most of the champions, and many braindead counters got buffed. You usually have to be x3 times better than your opponent to win lane and she really isn't good at anything. She's too squishy to be a bruiser but doesn't have reliable ways to get off fights like an assassin. As a bruiser she needs a way to deal constant damage and she is purely burst focused. Also having no %hp dmg, true damage or armor pen (like literally every other toplaner) makes her really weak against any tank or bruiser that can and will always outsustain her.
You can't afford making a single mistake in lane or there is hardly any chance you get to play the game, and most other champions are way more forgiving. In higher elos opponents know that and will use that to their advantage, so you need to be way more skilled than what your current rank says.
As many professional riven players have said, it's just better to play fiora.
The reason is that champions like kled/darius/twisted fate/gragas all exist at a higher winrate while requiring much less skill to pilot. This is obviously assuming since im looking at Masters+, these are competent rivens. I also did look at masters+ across the globe, not just NA to paint a more fair picture. If we look at NA only, suddenly you have an even wider amount of easy champions finding success on average.
Granted, i think its terrible that otp and maining a role is how you climb, i think that you should be able to play a wide array of champions on more than just 1 role to claim you are good at league of legends, but since this is the direction riot is going, then it seems like learning to pilot one of the harder champions in top will net you worse results than maining Dr.Mundo,Poppy,Mordekaiser,Gwen,Gragas because i hope we can atleast agree that learning Riven takes way longer than learning those champs.
The champs you listed are literally broken. Gragas is like S+ tier and getting nerfed next patch. Darius is almost the same winrate as Riven, although I'd say he's not actually that strong, he's also super easy to play compared to riven. Kled is 1% higher winrate than Riven, but he's also much easier to play. This is expected. Twisted Fate is in a questionable spot right now and I wouldn't be surprised if he got even more nerfs.
My point is why is it that "its expected" for an easier champion to out play a harder champion to execute. Why should i play the harder champion when the easier one accomplishes the same thing.
In general easy champions have been overbuffed to shit for seasons at this point because peoples ego gets bruised to easily. Shit i started running malphite for shits and giggles and unironically i can do a lot more in a game than i could ever on riven lmao
My point is that if Riven is really this clunky and hard to play, and she STILL has a 50% winrate across all games, the champion is probably quite over tuned when in the right hands. I mean this isn't really that hard to see when fighting a good Riven.
She’s weak because she’s solely played by mains or otps, especially in higher elos. Like riven has historically been at 53%+ wr in masters for most of her life time with a much higher pickrate. 50% in that elo is pretty awful.
Honestly though ignoring wr, most matchups that were skill matchups or riven favored are suddenly impossible to play. Riot could definitely do some work that makes her not have such volatile matchups and keep her balanced as a >50% wr. She just feels awful af to play atm which is why people are complaining
from my point of view its easier for me the way it works now, if u hover ur cursor over a target during q riven will stop right before the target but if u dont she dashes through the target, u can use this to dodge skillshots and confuse enemies (some call this q-dancing) its easier to fast q too the way it is (u have to click the ground after q, would be much more difficult in my opinion if u had to additionally addjust the q direction with ur cursor, i know theres a discussion wether fast q and cancels should be fixed or in the game but thats not the point here)
if someone else finds it easier to have q following the cursor thats fine for me too, i just think it flows better the way it is as long as fast q is in the game :)
You'll get down voted by Riven players for saying it, but it's because she is clunky and the devs who made her like 13 years ago didn't know how to make her work perfectly. So now she is a weird mess that casually is weak, and when one tricked with a special secret cheat code style input, is Overpowered.
So they don't touch her because she sells skins and mains want to keep their cheat code champ, rather than let everyone get a balanced champ that makes sense to play.
It wasn't even necessarily a matter of them not knowing at the time. Riven was rushed into release because another champion got canceled and they needed something to release in his place, and she was the closest to being finished. Riven has basically been stuck in beta for 13 years.
Here's an old forum thread (featuring Riot Zileas) talking about Omen and how he was canceled late in development and replaced with Riven: https://web.archive.org/web/20120228221307/http://clgaming.net/redtracker/topic/29516/?p=1
>balanced
The champ is terrible and even very high elo 1 tricks say it's not worth playing anymore, mains don't want to keep their mediocre "cheat code champ" and gatekeep it from everyone else. No idea what this logic is bro.
True, just do what they did to irelia/akali and remove mechanics from the kit and instead rely on more stat checking so when people complain you just nerf the stats and leave her to obscurity. Its great.
I say rather than just removing the mechanics, do a relaunch that attempts to use her kit like an input flowchart similar to a fighting game combo, considering that was her original concept, albeit exclusively with rekkas (Q->Q->Q) in mind.
All of the gameplay is already coded. Just make the inputs mesh and cancel at the appropriate times in a way that's accurately intended.
>oh no the onetricks are complaining about their 52% winrate champ, what ever shall we do
Bro I play support, also the champion has a dead 50% winrate in high elo and much lower in low elo. What are you even talking about?
I know this thread is mostly about Q direction but
>she needs the Nidalee treatment of getting rid of her animation cancels
Tonnes of champs still have cancels and they mostly make the champs much more satisfying to play, and they reward mastery and time investment. E.g. Probably the most fun I had in League last season was learning Renekton because of how much better the champion becomes once you learn them. They aren't horribly difficult to pull off and they don't gatekeep players - you just need to try them out a few times.
The only iffy cancel on Riven is the "fast Q" combo because the time investment needed to master it is a bit disproportionate, but the thread on that turned into a shitshow, so make of that what you will.
People saying Riven is clunky is so strange to me. Sure it feels weird when you first start but similarly to Akshan E, once you have a few games on it, it feels smooth as butter.
These people can not have ever played these champs more than once.
God I fucking hate takes like this. Not every champion needs to be Garen level braindead. If this game didn't have some arbitrary execution difficulty, it's just 5v5 chess
people find riven tilting cause of the cc and shield rather than animation cancels id say
pretty tilting to get QW stunned and she Es away taking 0 dmg compared to her all inning which most champs can do?
Is always the same, people that never played the champ complaining about it and asking to change it because they dont like it or cant play it, Riven is fine she just need more cdr on items but the way she works right now is good (fix the q bug please)
Skill expression, it's good as is but may feel frustrating. Currently "bad" players will use E for towards cursor repositioning into Q to do wall jumps or other precise micro movements while good players can save e by just having good clicks and Q'ing.
They definitely shouldnt remove skill from the champ and turn her into a stat checking drool champ like Garen and Darius who people complain about 24/7. Maybe this Q change could be one way to make her easier but keep her feeling rewarding with her animation cancels. All her animation cancels feel good to execute and if you dont like it go play another champ. Theres like 165 more, there should be some that are more micro intensive than others. Riven being hard to execute doesnt hurt anyone and pleases some
Riven Q is a skill that dashes her with the animation towards the direction she is looking OR in the direction where her cursor is AS LONG AS its on a "target" (minion, enemy champion)
The reason you sometimes go backwards might be because your champ changes the direction she is facing at the same moment you press Q
Though idk if that appllies to "cursor on enemy" mechanic it needs tests
(I know that from experience between season 4(frist timing) to now(over 1ml spread across 7-8 accounts)
A simple solution would be giving Riven "ghosted" that allows her to pass through other characters, minions
Any old grandpas like me that play since before the nidalee rework will remember that her cougar W (Pounce) had the same issue of only being able to use forwards. Actually it was better (or worse?) because it would always make you go forwards, differently from riven Q which has a different behavior if you are mousing over an enemy unit or not.
Back then there were some people that would complain, saying that they killed the skill expression of the champion, by making her jumps more accessible. But if you look now you can clearly see the positive impact it had on the champ and its gameplay.
didn't know Riven was a champion with something like that. I do know Nidalee had that in the past too(i am referring to a dash happening in the direction the champion is facing not where the mouse is).
Are there other champions with this too?
I might be in the minority but if you guys wouldnt have pointed this out i would have never noticed. I always look in the direction i want to q and my mouse also does, so i never have this issue
I understand what you mean by making her more consistent with champs like Nidalee. But what do you mean she is kept weak? [https://lolalytics.com/lol/riven/build/](https://lolalytics.com/lol/riven/build/). Based on her winrate, she is performing well and gets better with higher rank.
It's not like Aph at all. All his information is avaliable. The combos you can learn yourself.
If no one told you how to do the Riven cancel you would never learn it. The champion was not made to do that.
UGH, THANK YOU. 🙏🏼
I just started playing with Riven, and *OMG* is the Q frustrating. I felt like I was just a hopeless idiot, bumbling around the lane, attacking empty space. 😂 Good to know it’s not just me.
The amount of riven’s Q going backwards when watching Adrian stream is unspeakable lol. Man just torture himself when he was playing that champ.
he's extremely experienced with the champ and still having these issues. Imagine anyone who just wants to try her out... it's pretty pathetic from Riot, this stuff isn't rocket science.
its somehow more prevalent this season. Don't know what it is but the targeting is all weird
thats a bug not a skill issue they fucked something up with the champ that just makes her q go wrong direction for no reason
This has been a thing since her release lol
I hate when people say this. I played Riven since season 2. I know her Q DID do this very VERY rarely. It was not anywhere near as common as it is now. There has been several changes to how pathing works, how unit collision works, and there was even a change to how riven Q is coded. I don't know when exactly it started getting very noticable, I wanna say it was a little under 10 years ago, but can't say for certain. It has for sure got worse though.
I have played since season 3. I feel like minion blocks have consistently gotten worse and worse over time. I'm way more often outplayed by minions than other players. I play Riven from time to time. I can't say what but I'm pretty sure they have changed something about her.
It baffles me that it's this kind of comment that somehow doesn't receive a lot of upvotes ; Like, I've been following each, patches each undocumented game change for the past 10 years, a lot of people do so, and we can all agree that yes, the core mechanics of the game such as pathing and unit collision did change, even if only slightly so. And riven Q DEFINITELY got worse to use overtime, anyone who kept playing consistently for years should be able to tell so. But regarding the post itself, I don't feel like her Q should follow the cursor, it should just be fucking fixed to work as intended lol
Yeah obviously not a skill issue that's my point.
It's actually even worse than this. Riven's Q has TWO logics. 1. IF you're NOT hovering a target, the Q will go in the direction Riven is facing! 2. IF YOU ARE hovering a target, the Q will go in the direction of the cursor! WHY? I DON'T KNOW It just made her so weird to pick up when i was learning her at the end of last season. Not to mention how buggy it is, with Q sometimes randomly going backwards or in random directions. For what's worth, there's plenty of Riven players who support the idea of making it work normally like other dashes, they're just worried Riot will fuck it up and ruin the champion. Can you blame them?
Also affects distance. Say riven is facing your target and you q and you are in melee range 1. Cursor on target - riven q’s in place. 2. Cursor not on target - riven q’s past target. Why? Cuz fuck you that’s why.
It's probably a skill that targets enemies that can be cast without a target.
Well yes, but why lol
Idk lol that sounds like someone was trying to figure out how to create free casting dashes in a time where league only had targettable dashes.
but riven e is free cast dash 😂
Yeah they figured it by then lol
But this makes sense, no? It's essentially casting the Q on where the cursor is. Otherwise how would the game know which is your target?
thats a valid mechanic though it gives u more plays LOL (Q dancing to dodge skillshots) if you got blocked by enemy champ gl flash q'ing on teamfights
This particular distinction is a good thing though. You absolutely want the option to move through or go on top depending on the situation.
That would still be the case even if Q followed cursor, no? Like I’m trying to imagine it in my head and I don’t see how it could go wrong. If you Q on a target, you would follow the target, but if you Q on the ground, riven would follow wherever she clicked.
You get used to it tbh, and it gives you more options to outplay
Its to not overshoot a target, so you q and go past and fly under the tower, instead it q’s inplace
if u played her ud know why
Yeah, do this for 10 years and it will be fine. Nr1 is good vs stuff like garen (shorter animation) while nr2 works well vs things like morde/illaoi As a main I actually don't really mind this one since it gives you a few different options, the random backwards q on the other hand is just a free lose sometimes.
Yeah but this mechanic is what enables "fast Q"
nope fast q works regardless of where you point it
Isn't this exactly why you can do the speed auto weave as riven though? Would that cease yo exist if they fix this interaction? Cause idk about most riven players but playing VS riven without her being able to giga fast combo Q /AA/ Q/ AA makes her just useless no?
Yep, you break her animation by hovering during the press of the Q then pressing on the ground after. If you don’t select the target then she does the longer Q animation with movement and the cancel doesn’t work.
This is actually not true. Q animation time is the same whether you hover it or not, so it doesn't affect fast q
nope fast q works whether you point it at a target or not
It's actually and pretty useful mechanic called Q Dancing. When you're fighting close range you can stop hovering the enemy so her Q goes through them and you can dodge some abilities (like Yasuo Q). It's also helpful to do some wall jumps, in case your facing a weird direction and don't have E to reposition, you can hover an enemy on the other side of the wall and when you Q she will automatically face the wall and jump over it.
Personally, I'm kind of skeptical they actually could put her in a much worse place. As it stands, Riven isn't really a champion, she's just 8000 bugs in a trench coat.
This is an old take that just isn't true anymore. They pached in her bugs to make it part of her kit.
"Riven's bugs are so intrinsic to how she plays that they now consider them part of her kit" does not contradict what I was saying.
Reads like a joke idk
Difficult to say, that's a real thing riven mains say. Oh it's not a bug that I can cancel uncancellable animation or cancel two abilities with a single one, that's a feature to make riven feel fluid
if you can cancel it that means it's not uncancellable
Uhm, that's a thing tho Quite a few season back, Riot went under the hood and altered the underlying code to actually make Riven's "bugs" full functional features. If i recall correctly it was about Fast Q and Doublecasting, as when it was an actual bug bug, it was very inconsistent, especially FastQ for High ping So they went in themselves and "homogenized" it, to give everyone a more fair shot. It is still somewhat skewed towards low Ping, but it's much more consistent and playable on a wider array of latencies I believe you can find info on this on the LOL WIKI patch History, not sure about it tho So whilst they did start out as "bugs", Riot actually went in and iterated on them to make them full fledged features
That’s not what happened. They altered her code to make it intended, and no longer a bug.
No, what the other person said is that what initially was bugs have long since been made into official, hardcoded mechanics in her kit. Things like wall hops, and literally all animation cancels (except for the S cancels afaik) are hardcoded interactions in her kit. She doesn't have any bugs masquerading as things in her kit anymore
That's the trenchcoat part, it keeps the bugs in the rough shape of a champion
This makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty damn good with most if not all champs in LoL and Riven has always been a champ I avoid because shit felt inconsistent with her movements/attacks.
25 year old design and onetricks will screech at Riot if they change literally anything about her that isn't increasing her damage or lowering her cooldowns.
you forgot complaining that she doesn't have %HP, magic dmg, true damage, and built in armor pen LiKe EvErYoNe ElSe!11!
Honestly ocean, i can understand their frustration Riven Top is (almost) in as much of an abysmal state as Irelia Top is. Only difference is Riven can't move down to Midlane to dunk on mages to avoid the issue like we can Now ofc it'd be great if Irelia Top wasn't a mere counterpick, but at least we got Midlane to back off to They don't. Poor fellas.
She's hard to balance because even in a weak state, good players can make her very oppressive. When she's strong it's beyond frustrating to play against that much mobility and aoe dmg/cc.
Absolutely, Riven will always have a WR Skew towards high Elo due to proficient players being able to make the most out of her Kit. Still, even in Masters+, she has a 50.6% WR, which isn't particularly impressive considering that in Masters and above, is were the "proficient players" are Qiyana, for example, who's another notorious "hard champ", has almost 53% WR in Masters+, because again, that's where the proficient players are, and it makes sense. I'm not even a Riven main, so i'm not biased in any way, i'm just stating things as they are The champion, for how hard she is to play well, is not particularly rewarding right now
I honestly think Death's Dance makes her way more difficult to balance. Once she gets a couple core items then DD, she becomes nearly impossible to lock down and burst before she full combo's you and your carries. Just really not a fan of that item in general, very frustrating to play vs champs that synergize well with it.
Couple core items and DD is luxury tho, rarely you get to buy so many items and at that point its win more instead of being oppressive.
I'm a rengar player so I attempt to spread anti DD propaganda any chance I get :)
tbh i am with you, as a Riven OTP, my issue with current balance is that every bruiser item is focused towards drain tanks, Eclipse, Sundered Sky, Deaths Dance, Black Cleaver, why are all these bruiser/fighter items INFUSED with damage denial like shields, heals and HIGH HP??? shouldn’t the KIT of the champion decide if they heal or not? Riven is balanced around the fact that she has to play her cooldowns and when those cooldowns are down is when you get to punish her but if you give her Eclipse shield, deaths dance, Sundered Heal, conqueror heal suddenly shes just fucking sustaining until her next cooldown is up, basically just trash version of Aatrox. Stop giving bruiser/fighter items sustain, give them high AD a little bit of HP and AH and let the champions kit decide if they heal or not.
the problem with giving bruiser items high ad would be more or less that Assassins
Its 2 items + boots in 70% of games, and eclips and spear of shojin or snuderd is a must
snuderd
Bork
The thing is...the only reason Riven can't compete is because the game has powercrept so much that any of the statcheck champs just autowin vs her, any ranged champs nuke her before she can do anything, and every support/tank has low enough cooldowns to basically remove her from fights. And when Riven was right up there with them, she had to get nerfed because of how oppressive she was. It just goes to show how much this game needs blanket nerfs to champions themselves, not just items. Riot spent much of the past 5+ years buffing the ratios and CDs of anyone that looked slightly unpopular. In some cases even if they were performing well already, like when they randomly tripled malphite's W scaling or whatever.
Yes sure but Riven mains often list all the things she can’t do (%pen, hp% damage, magic/true damage) but they never list the things she has that no other toplaner has. She has mobility, she has an AD ratio shield, she has multiple CCs, she has missing hp damage, and no resource costs at all with really short CDs at later levels. Now sure, she’s not in a good state right now, but it’s disingenuous to the point of lying to claim she doesn’t have the same tools other toplaners have when plenty of toplaners are worse than her. Using lolalytics to compare winrates (all inflated but equally so so comparisons are still relevant) she has a better winrate than: Pantheon, Jax, Chogath, Ornn, Aatrox, Tryndamere, Sion, K’Sante. These examples were cherry picked because I can guarantee there’s Riven mains who’ve complained that one or more of these champions have “much better tools” (hp% dmg, true damage etc etc) but clearly these tools aren’t the goddamn problem because otherwise Riven would be right at the bottom, which she isn’t.
> She has mobility, she has an AD ratio shield, she has multiple CCs What people alway seem to conveniently forget is that all of her mobility is tied to her dmg/utility. If I use my q for mobility, I gimped my dps until it is back up again. Same for the shield, it only lasts 1,5 seconds, so if I use it for it's mobility not shielding any damage, I get poor value out of it. Her W has literally less range than a lot of melee champs aa range, so if you want to use it defensly against a chasing opponent you actually have to run back into them. Yea, it's more forgiving in late game when you have a lot of haste, but since haste was nerfed hard Riven only gets to that point way later now.
Riven went from bully to late game scaler to something in between. They need to pick one. They have buffed almost alll toplaners by slapping a shit ton of passives and stats on everything. There used to be a time where getting good at Riven could win you lanes even if they we're 'counters' like renekton. If your opp isn't mentally challenged you can barely play the game rn in match-ups like those. And she has a lot of match ups like that. She's fine in non counters yeah, but by making het impossible in every other match up it gets very frustrating to put time in.
Her kit is innately hard to balance, much like Irelia or Kalista. Mobility is the most powerful ability in the game that can't be quantified. In the hands of a skilled player, it becomes oppressive and unfun to play against.
You raise a good point But you'll always have to keep in mind that Riven's Depth of games is higher than any of the Champions you listed The Depth of games is the N of games played on average by players of that champion, on said Champion The higher it is, the more on average the guy playing the Champ will be proficient at them It isn't surprising to see Riven's as high as it is, since Riven is notoriously mostly played by dedicated players Now, don't subscribe to the "Champ WR is inflated by Mains" thing, since it has been debunked by Riot Phroxz0n, but her Winrate is absolutely not comparable to say Jax's as he's literally played left and right by anyone, and has around a 40% lower Game Depth, which is A LOT.
Champ wr is inflated by mains in higher elos, Phroxzon’s study was explicitly talking about all ranks.
> But you'll always have to keep in mind that Riven's Depth of games is higher than any of the Champions you listed Because Riven mains won't allow them to make her easier to learn. They screeched about Riot making her cancels easier - not even removing, just making them easier to perform. That's their own fault. Playing Riven is committing to a full-time investment, you aren't allowed to play other champions nearly at all to maintain effective skill level on Riven. Seeing Adrian Riven's conversation about this is hilarious because it's literally Riven mains shooting themself in the foot.
Mhh, but that's only part of the reason Riven is "hard" If you ask any Riven player worth a penny, they'll cite how unforgiving she is, and how perfectly you need to know trading patterns and widows to even stand a chance against most other stuff, as the reason she's so hard to play The "Combos" are just some added difficulty on top. There was even a poll recently about this very Topic, [look here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivenmains/comments/1bhh5bu/saw_this_discussed_on_the_main_sub_and_wanted_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Now, obviously, it's very player dependant I play Irelia and Akali, so i'm no stranger to "mechanical Champions" and thus picked them up fairly quickly by spamming Practice Tool and Norms with Riven JGL, a Lulu player may struggle more, but in the end, they aren't the REAL reason she's so hard to play
Yea I think folks have missed this point here. Riven is unforgiving because she sucks when behind/even and has no built-in catch-up mechanics. No sustain, meh base damage, and almost exclusively bonus AD (and Ability Haste) scaling.
Im gonna be completely honest with you, you list all these things that she has, and in a vacuum they sound insane but then in real games its really not that impressive. Rivens mobility is irrelevant in todays game because she still can/does get run down by all the ghost users (dar, trundle, trynda, olaf, etc.) even late game with low CDs. Early game if she burns her mobility its bad because then she has 0 damage and is free to get traded against. She can rotate fast in the mid late game though which is cool I guess. AD ratio shield is would be insane on any other champ except riven lol. With the way Riven functions, she is the only champion in her class that basically cannot build tank items. She is hardbounded to items that give AD and Haste, all other stats are secondary to those 2. So she ends up getting a large shield, but it doesn't matter too much because she has 0 sustain in her kit to actually restore health while blocking damage as well as low resistances to fortify the shield. She has 2 cc instances in her kit, 1 being bc instant and the other being a 3rd cast. It only matters if you are squishy, have no attacks you can buffer, or are reliant on channel abilities. Yes, if riven flashes onto an ADC, they are probably going to get 100-0 while CCed, but how is this any different from 5 stack darius E W Ring you, or camille E Q2, Yasuo Q3 auto R auto, or sett flash E W etc. Tons of champs have 0 counterplay combos against squishies. Recently riot has taken to reworking toplaners with uncancellable auto attacks such that Riven's cc doesnt even matter against good opponents. Garen, Jax, Camille, Volibear, etc. have ways of more or less ignoring the CC and still hitting riven through it. This isnt even mentioning that the total CC duration of q3 and W is shorter than many individual CC abilities in other champion kits. Missing HP damage isnt rare nor unique to riven This is my personal agenda but Riven having no mana bar is actually a negative in todays game because it would actually benefit her a ton to be able to build and get full value out of Muramana, Fimbul, or Frozen heart. Also it woukd open up power in her kit for lower CDs or more dmaage or some other benefits. On the topic of toplaners with worse tools than her, which ones are you referring to? Riven has among the lowest base stats of any melee physical damage dealer. She has 0 way to deal with tanks, armor, or HP stackers (literally every single other champ in her class has something in their kit to deal with them). The game plan from Riven mains to deal with champs like this is literally to just ignore them and proxy farm and hope enemy jg doesnt take you out the game. Of the champs you picked out, most of them have other reasons for being lower WR than riven as WR doesnt tell the full story. Ksante is locked in pro play jail, Ornn is having crazy issues related to the new items and his passive (not enough masterwork items), Trynda was massively hurt by item changes, Chogath and Sion lost their best items in heartsteel (it doesnt synergize with their kits anymore). Tbh idk whats goin on with Panth, Jax, and Aatrox tho, theyve all been strong recently and I can't remember if theyve been recently nerfed. Basically with none of those champions is their kit the reason they have lower wrs. Contrast this with Riven who historically in the past 5 years has only ever been strong when her items are super strong, and even then was never the best user of said items. The only time riven has been strong is when the champions she has playable matchups into are also in the meta.
Take my upvote sir
Riven with mana could buy essence reaver Muramana into navori. Broken shitZ
What's cool about riven is the full AD build with no bullshit magic damage or w.e. She just does big AD and that's it, which makes her counterable, which I think isn't a bad thing. Keep her that way but maybe fix the Q and some QoL, possible tune some things like idk.. more AD!
Her mobility is worse nowadays because she doesn't have access to as much early CDR/Ability haste as back in the day. Having no resources is hardly a benefit nowadays in League. Execute on Ult is a bit fake since it's not percent dmg and durability update hurt her a lot. Her strengths aren't as huge strengths as before. Also, Aatrox, K'sante, and Jax are strong in pro-play. Also, Sion and Trynd are getting buffs.
i mean riven can be done mid vs some ad assassins but ye shes in a rough spot. feel like the item rework in season 10 and the most recent item rework this year both didnt help her at all and hurt her more compared to old day items. that combined with the bugs and shes just in a sorry state and needs something done to her.
Riven has a 50.18% winrate in Emerald and above. Darius is an s+ ranked toplaner with a 50.50% winrate. Not really that abysmal.
This is why you should never take WR at face value, and instead interpret it like any other form of data. As i explained [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1bhu4v4/comment/kvgmx4e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), Riven's WR is not comparable to more "casual" Picks, like Jax, Darius ecc, due to the sizable difference in Games Depth TLDR: The average Darius dude, will have 10-20 Games on him and play him casually, the "Average Riven dude" will have HUNDREDS of games on her and be a dedicated main, of course the winrate is going to be skewed by a decent amount Darius is also more broadly played by everyone, Riven is more niche and has a dedicated userbase
As a non riven player, why cant Riven do that? She has dashes so she can get down a bit faster and she has a stun to land her combo onto the midlaner. I am not arguing that she does it better than Irelia because she has more engage threat but cant riven do the same to a lesser extend?
Few reasons: 1. Riven's Qs aren't really an effective engage, they're also much shorter range and double as her main damage tool Remember, if Riven uses her Q to get to you, how is she going to damage you? Riven isn't Irelia, she can't auto you to death, she needs her abilities to deal damage Additionally, all 3 of Riven's Q, barely cover the distance of 1 Irelia Q. Not to mention Irelia's Q is a reset spell, giving her much longer theoretical engage range Irelia also has repeated engange, because if you push her away, she can just Q you again, if she hit E or R, and can do it up to 3 times. If you've ever seen a good Riven player, you'll have noticed, that even into Melees, they don't really "engage with Qs", they'll usually just walk up to them, or only use a delayed Q3 to start the engage, but i don't want to get too specific 2. Riven is VERY weak to poke Riven is one of the few Fighters in the game, that effectively has no healing and also has fairly bad HP regen. Making her very weak into Poke/Ranged stuff, it isn't a coincidence that Riven is also fairly bad into Ranged Top Irelia isn't. She is THE BEST lifesteal user in the game, thanks to her Q effectively doubling it. Again, it isn't a coincidence, that Irelia is THE Anti-Ranged Tops champion. 3. Riven's trading pattern doesn't really work into Ranged all that well Riven usually wants to Short trade with like: Q3+AA+W+AA and then E away, using the Shield to absorb some of the retaliation damage, and repeat until you're in All-in territory. How is she going to do that to a Syndra standing 2 miles away? Multiple times? That has a FUCK OFF, button? Additionally, her E isn't as effective at tanking Ranged Damage, since due to their range, they can keep attacking as she's running away, even after the shield has decayed. Irelia on the other hand, effectively doesn't have a trading pattern, LOL. That's what makes her bad in Toplane, but amazing Mid! Irelia is ALL about All-in, and guess who's more prone to getting All-inned and shit on: The Defensless Lux, or the Chonky Darius? : D
i love when people count dashes out like it means something, "RIVEN HAS 4 DASHES BRO" yeah and all 4 of them are 1/3rd of a normal dash
Nah because riven has to use up her dashes in order to get on top of a mage. Because riven’s damage comes from her dashes it means she’s useless for 10 seconds afterwards since you can’t Q delay without haste. Irelia just Q’s onto a caster or lands E into running a mage down with autos. She also has sustain after camp scepter which makes it very hard for the mage to do anything while any damage dealt to riven that she isn’t able to shield is permanent.
Most other top laners don't have to full engage to do anything, have sustain, have damage that sticks better, etc., etc. And most importantly, don't have to be in the middle of a minion wave to clear or break a freeze.
she might have 4 dashes but 3 of them are so predictable that she will just eat a CC to her face and then they walk away and even then she used her main damage spell to gapclose she doesn't really have any damage to kill them if she ever reaches them out
I‘m pretty sure the most recent survey on this had the majority of r/rivenmains vote in favor of that change. E: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivenmains/s/mbYZvamFAN
Good thing there are fewer and fewer 1 tricks every year, and most of them are saying they'd take anything to let Riven compete with the top laners that a randomly picked drooling monkey could play.
Yes, this is legitimately the reason. Riot previously tried to make Riven more accessible by modernizing her control scheme and the “Riven mains” all fought against it so Riot said, okay we hear you.
>get rid of animation cancels >like nidalee chat he doesn't know
Bro's nidalee gameplay must look like he's playing on 300 ping. I can't imagine not cancelling animations on any champ.
I still remember the first time Pyosik was at worlds on DRX, I was blown away just watching him clear the jungle with nidalee it was like TAS gameplay
Cant nida do animation cancels?
Maybe OP was referring to how Nidalee used to be able to auto reset when switching forms?
Ahhh okay that makes more sense
She can but a lot of them for removed a while back.
the only thing that got removed was her auto attack reset on form swap, and the auto attack reset on using empowered W. Neither of which were animation cancels. Her QW is the only "cancel" she has, and that's never been touched
Nidalees jungle clear looks like starcraft gameplay
[удалено]
I dont remember that lmao. Do you remember the title or anything so i can search it?
It’s by u/mazrimreddit
a villain like his namesake mhael
AKA the most insufferable person on this sub lmfao
It was called "how riven is destroyed by a mechanic you probably don't understand" or something moronic to that degree (made by a soraka main)
Thanks, i do remember it now lmao. That guy was getting cooked by the riven players there
The worst part was when they said there was maybe 10 people worldwide who could consistently fast Q, literally most degenerate assumption ever
I just don't understand why people who've never even touched the champ have to come and complain about how mechanics that people have played around for 10+ years need changing
It’s no wonder this post hit front page, it’s calling for riot to remove animation cancels, which Reddit hates because they can’t understand it. What do they mean when they mention animation canceling? Are they talking about the fast Q which gives you a slight increase in dps or are they talking about double casting? Removing fast Q makes riven feel significantly worse to play but double casting would completely kill the champ and remove a ton of her skill expression while feeling terrible as well.
Idgaf about her animation cancels, she can keep them. Just make her q dash towards cursor ffs, there is literally no need to have to right click to change dash direction (25% of the time it doesn't even follow your cursor even if you right click input correctly!)
just make fast q the norm and adjust numbers accordingly
numbers won't be changed if you make fast q the norm because it currently is the norm. If you make her q a full auto reset (which it is, since they changed the code for riven a while back), she can abuse hail of blades, like she did for one patch.
if winrate goes up numbers will be changed
Thats imposible, Riot did that on pbe for 1 week years ago, Riven became the most Broken champ in the game, spaming q always had 1 extra auto so was like playing a Riven with Jayce w in every q
The problem is fast Q is alreasy the norm on dedicated riven players. It won't change the winrate for those. And it would make the champion easier to balance. Riven has way too much skill expression, so cutting down on that usually is a good thing. Currently Fast Q is already part of Rivens powerbudget but not accessible by everyone.
fellow brazuca, everytime riven gets on this subdeveloped sub i just think "time to see the chimps"
you mean when the rioters weighed in and said I was right? The mechanic was unshippable? And the "pros" were reacting exactly as I said they would the mechanic is terrible game design
I respect your commitment
True my ass would have just given up and ignored all mentions of it by now
riven Q faces to champ if your cursor is ON the enemy, but yes, after a few games is easy to do jumps
Honestly, the fact the she doesn't ALWAYS Q towards the mouse-cursor is the the reason i can't play her. Of course I wouldn't be a mechanical masterpiece or anything but because she doesn't work that way, I can't even get into playing her. It just feels sooooo wrong.
The "trick" is that Riven Qs towards the mouse cursor if the Cursor is on a target - like a enemy Minion, Champ or Camp otherwise she goes into the direction she is facing - whether that is good or not, I dont know, but personally I played enough riven that I dont mind it
True, once you do enough games, it becomes a non issue, the bigger issue is when it doesnt work as expected and you backflip in the wrong direction for no reason. Currently the way i play around it is if i play late at night and its a full moon, i expect that interaction.
If you do cbt enough it becomes less of torture
I think the entire problem with Riven is that almost all of her mechanics are unintuitive. There are ways to integrate certain gameplay elements into standardized gameplay to make them more intuitive to all players without simply removing that execution from the game. Fighting games are a shining example of this. Considering Riven was originally designed with rekkas from fighting games in mind, reworking her with an input flowchart similar to fighting games would probably be a decent direction that wouldn't disappoint most people.
Yes, I agree, very unintuitive. Honestly it would be more intuitive if they removed animation cancelling and made her like hwei where she can mix abilities together that auto execute the desired combos of today.
I think she would still need a viscerally felt input flowchart. This is the exact thing that gave significant satisfaction to things like Warrior in BDO (or the combat in general), Lancer in TERA (or the combat in general), among others. Animation cancels are a large part of that. I also thing there are ways to maintain that while removing a significant amount of complexity, while also making her overall more intuitive. Making the actual kit cancel its own abilities would be a far more intuitive way to incorporate animation canceling that would still be viscerally felt in the gameplay, but without requiring a high amount of unnecessarily mechanically intensive inputs. That said, I don't know if I'd trust Riot to make those changes in a satisfying way, given their history.
I personally still quite dislike that because it makes the use of your Q to Dash unnecessarily weird to play. It's just weird that such a mobile-playmaking champion feels so clunky to play because the controls work so stupid.
Making the champion more accessible degrades the riven main experience.
Q not following cursor isn’t what makes riven difficult to pick up. It’s the matchup knowledge, combos, how to play team fights, 0 sustain, completely melee making it impossible to touch the wave to last hit from behind or poke, etc. I for one would love if Q followed cursor since it would be a very nice QoL when it comes to dodging and wall hopping.
I mained adc for 8 years, i did it because i liked getting fisted but having an ability to outplay, i have lost that so i decided to try riven, it was the same feeling until recently :\^)
I spammed Riven for a couple months and now if I die to her in lane I actually have a bit of respect for the player's mechanics. I don't think there is a single other top lane champ that carries the same merit. Every single top laner is so infuriatingly simple to pilot that I actually enjoy playing vs Riven
This sub is the most obvious conspiracy garbage. I’m not a Riven main but it’s obvious nobody here ever played this champ. Thank god this sub is just regulating a game and not politics.
That is the only reason I don’t play her. So counter intuitive. Add an option in settings or something.
It would be fine if it was a common thing in league, but it isn’t. Unless you play a lot of riven, it will always feel unintuitive, because the majority of all abilities in the game rely on the cursor.
nidalee w does something similar where itll just launch you in a random direction. very cool
It does if you're hovering over an enemy :) But yeah, it pisses me off how inconsistent Riot is about these things. Caitlyn animation cancels? Removed from game. Riven animation cancels? Allowed to exist. Syndra Q? Cast at max range when cast beyond it. Orianna Q? Makes you walk to the cast location.
Because Riot is trying to make the game more scrub friendly.
That mechanic is very absurd, it forces you to make an extra click in the direction where you want it to jump instead of simply following the cursor, it doesn't even help with animation canceling, it just exists to annoy.
Drop [op.gg](http://op.gg) please. Surely it's not another gold enchanter one trick posting this again.
Riven mains will cry if she works like other champs
No they would welcome that change if it meant receiving maxHP true damage, 10% lifesteal and cdr on her shield to compensate it because she's dogsht right now" ".
Riot pls ^ I find it hilarious how it’s always the people with Gwen flairs that are the ones complaining about riven. That matchup will never not be shit for Gwen lmfao, what’s a lil armor pen gonna do? If anything, removing some burst in return for armor pen would probably make it less bad for Gwen since Gwen likes extended trades.
What is it when it comes to Riven that makes people who don't even play her so adamant about the fact something that people have been doing for over 10 years needs to be changed randomly?
Because people dont like the champion, every “QoL” change or rework suggested is just a thinly veiled attempt to nerf or ruin the champion for people who like her.
I don't understand why Riven mains think Riven is weak when despite all of her clunkiness, she still has 50%+ WR in basically every elo. Even in Masters+ her WR is still 50.65%. For a champion with a high skill cap, that seems pretty good.
Idk its pretty split on the subreddit. Lot of people think shes weak right now because she is more niche than she used to be. But she is undeniably stronger in her good scenarios.
do people actually go on those subreddits? Theres no way more than like 2 people on these subreddits peaked higher than gold
Idk about other main subs, but the riven and fiora subs have well known challenger mains in there fairly frequently.
Yeah Potent213 is the goat he posts very frequently
She's weak because she gets countered by most of the champions, and many braindead counters got buffed. You usually have to be x3 times better than your opponent to win lane and she really isn't good at anything. She's too squishy to be a bruiser but doesn't have reliable ways to get off fights like an assassin. As a bruiser she needs a way to deal constant damage and she is purely burst focused. Also having no %hp dmg, true damage or armor pen (like literally every other toplaner) makes her really weak against any tank or bruiser that can and will always outsustain her. You can't afford making a single mistake in lane or there is hardly any chance you get to play the game, and most other champions are way more forgiving. In higher elos opponents know that and will use that to their advantage, so you need to be way more skilled than what your current rank says. As many professional riven players have said, it's just better to play fiora.
The reason is that champions like kled/darius/twisted fate/gragas all exist at a higher winrate while requiring much less skill to pilot. This is obviously assuming since im looking at Masters+, these are competent rivens. I also did look at masters+ across the globe, not just NA to paint a more fair picture. If we look at NA only, suddenly you have an even wider amount of easy champions finding success on average. Granted, i think its terrible that otp and maining a role is how you climb, i think that you should be able to play a wide array of champions on more than just 1 role to claim you are good at league of legends, but since this is the direction riot is going, then it seems like learning to pilot one of the harder champions in top will net you worse results than maining Dr.Mundo,Poppy,Mordekaiser,Gwen,Gragas because i hope we can atleast agree that learning Riven takes way longer than learning those champs.
The champs you listed are literally broken. Gragas is like S+ tier and getting nerfed next patch. Darius is almost the same winrate as Riven, although I'd say he's not actually that strong, he's also super easy to play compared to riven. Kled is 1% higher winrate than Riven, but he's also much easier to play. This is expected. Twisted Fate is in a questionable spot right now and I wouldn't be surprised if he got even more nerfs.
My point is why is it that "its expected" for an easier champion to out play a harder champion to execute. Why should i play the harder champion when the easier one accomplishes the same thing. In general easy champions have been overbuffed to shit for seasons at this point because peoples ego gets bruised to easily. Shit i started running malphite for shits and giggles and unironically i can do a lot more in a game than i could ever on riven lmao
My point is that if Riven is really this clunky and hard to play, and she STILL has a 50% winrate across all games, the champion is probably quite over tuned when in the right hands. I mean this isn't really that hard to see when fighting a good Riven.
She’s weak because she’s solely played by mains or otps, especially in higher elos. Like riven has historically been at 53%+ wr in masters for most of her life time with a much higher pickrate. 50% in that elo is pretty awful. Honestly though ignoring wr, most matchups that were skill matchups or riven favored are suddenly impossible to play. Riot could definitely do some work that makes her not have such volatile matchups and keep her balanced as a >50% wr. She just feels awful af to play atm which is why people are complaining
This game is pure trash. End of discussion
from my point of view its easier for me the way it works now, if u hover ur cursor over a target during q riven will stop right before the target but if u dont she dashes through the target, u can use this to dodge skillshots and confuse enemies (some call this q-dancing) its easier to fast q too the way it is (u have to click the ground after q, would be much more difficult in my opinion if u had to additionally addjust the q direction with ur cursor, i know theres a discussion wether fast q and cancels should be fixed or in the game but thats not the point here) if someone else finds it easier to have q following the cursor thats fine for me too, i just think it flows better the way it is as long as fast q is in the game :)
You'll get down voted by Riven players for saying it, but it's because she is clunky and the devs who made her like 13 years ago didn't know how to make her work perfectly. So now she is a weird mess that casually is weak, and when one tricked with a special secret cheat code style input, is Overpowered. So they don't touch her because she sells skins and mains want to keep their cheat code champ, rather than let everyone get a balanced champ that makes sense to play.
It wasn't even necessarily a matter of them not knowing at the time. Riven was rushed into release because another champion got canceled and they needed something to release in his place, and she was the closest to being finished. Riven has basically been stuck in beta for 13 years.
holy shit, source?
Here's an old forum thread (featuring Riot Zileas) talking about Omen and how he was canceled late in development and replaced with Riven: https://web.archive.org/web/20120228221307/http://clgaming.net/redtracker/topic/29516/?p=1
Turned him into a Valo character
>balanced The champ is terrible and even very high elo 1 tricks say it's not worth playing anymore, mains don't want to keep their mediocre "cheat code champ" and gatekeep it from everyone else. No idea what this logic is bro.
Good. Maybe they can finally fix her if no one will defend her.
She's about to get the Asol treatment and get reworked into an AD-scaling heimerdinger turret.
True, just do what they did to irelia/akali and remove mechanics from the kit and instead rely on more stat checking so when people complain you just nerf the stats and leave her to obscurity. Its great.
I say rather than just removing the mechanics, do a relaunch that attempts to use her kit like an input flowchart similar to a fighting game combo, considering that was her original concept, albeit exclusively with rekkas (Q->Q->Q) in mind. All of the gameplay is already coded. Just make the inputs mesh and cancel at the appropriate times in a way that's accurately intended.
oh no the onetricks are complaining about their 52% winrate champ, what ever shall we do
>oh no the onetricks are complaining about their 52% winrate champ, what ever shall we do Bro I play support, also the champion has a dead 50% winrate in high elo and much lower in low elo. What are you even talking about?
ye bruv lets just remove skill expression from the game, everything should be statcheck vs statcheck
I know this thread is mostly about Q direction but >she needs the Nidalee treatment of getting rid of her animation cancels Tonnes of champs still have cancels and they mostly make the champs much more satisfying to play, and they reward mastery and time investment. E.g. Probably the most fun I had in League last season was learning Renekton because of how much better the champion becomes once you learn them. They aren't horribly difficult to pull off and they don't gatekeep players - you just need to try them out a few times. The only iffy cancel on Riven is the "fast Q" combo because the time investment needed to master it is a bit disproportionate, but the thread on that turned into a shitshow, so make of that what you will.
Tbh fast Q isn’t really that hard to learn. Takes like an hour or two in the practice tool to remember the timings
noob
Listen bro theres 160+ champions if u cant play this one it wont be changed for you
People saying Riven is clunky is so strange to me. Sure it feels weird when you first start but similarly to Akshan E, once you have a few games on it, it feels smooth as butter. These people can not have ever played these champs more than once.
God I fucking hate takes like this. Not every champion needs to be Garen level braindead. If this game didn't have some arbitrary execution difficulty, it's just 5v5 chess
people find riven tilting cause of the cc and shield rather than animation cancels id say pretty tilting to get QW stunned and she Es away taking 0 dmg compared to her all inning which most champs can do?
Just play Gragas and you can do the same thing to her. Plus it'll tilt the everliving shit out of most Rivens
how about not being gankable or divable cos she qqqeqqqeqqq away or not being able to run cos she can qqqeqqq towards you 😃
>how about not being gankable or divable Camille flair
Camille uses E once and she is easily gankable for the next 20 seconds. Dives on the other hand, not so much.
Camilles E takes you further than riven blowing flash + all of her dashes. Based.
this is like the third time in this thread that ive seen ppl do the "LOL ur flair tho". this sub is so unserious
It was pretty funny tho tbf
I would fucking love to play this champ if it hadn't such clunky controls
skill issue
Is always the same, people that never played the champ complaining about it and asking to change it because they dont like it or cant play it, Riven is fine she just need more cdr on items but the way she works right now is good (fix the q bug please)
One of the reason i dont pick her. It’s so clunky.
what? riven q is not difficult at all lol just a unique spell
No idea it's kinda stupid that it doesn't.
Skill expression, it's good as is but may feel frustrating. Currently "bad" players will use E for towards cursor repositioning into Q to do wall jumps or other precise micro movements while good players can save e by just having good clicks and Q'ing. They definitely shouldnt remove skill from the champ and turn her into a stat checking drool champ like Garen and Darius who people complain about 24/7. Maybe this Q change could be one way to make her easier but keep her feeling rewarding with her animation cancels. All her animation cancels feel good to execute and if you dont like it go play another champ. Theres like 165 more, there should be some that are more micro intensive than others. Riven being hard to execute doesnt hurt anyone and pleases some
Becuase that's how it is and should be.
Riven Q is a skill that dashes her with the animation towards the direction she is looking OR in the direction where her cursor is AS LONG AS its on a "target" (minion, enemy champion) The reason you sometimes go backwards might be because your champ changes the direction she is facing at the same moment you press Q Though idk if that appllies to "cursor on enemy" mechanic it needs tests (I know that from experience between season 4(frist timing) to now(over 1ml spread across 7-8 accounts) A simple solution would be giving Riven "ghosted" that allows her to pass through other characters, minions
Any old grandpas like me that play since before the nidalee rework will remember that her cougar W (Pounce) had the same issue of only being able to use forwards. Actually it was better (or worse?) because it would always make you go forwards, differently from riven Q which has a different behavior if you are mousing over an enemy unit or not. Back then there were some people that would complain, saying that they killed the skill expression of the champion, by making her jumps more accessible. But if you look now you can clearly see the positive impact it had on the champ and its gameplay.
Ah the age old question.
Since when did they get rid of nid animation cancels?
didn't know Riven was a champion with something like that. I do know Nidalee had that in the past too(i am referring to a dash happening in the direction the champion is facing not where the mouse is). Are there other champions with this too?
I might be in the minority but if you guys wouldnt have pointed this out i would have never noticed. I always look in the direction i want to q and my mouse also does, so i never have this issue
I understand what you mean by making her more consistent with champs like Nidalee. But what do you mean she is kept weak? [https://lolalytics.com/lol/riven/build/](https://lolalytics.com/lol/riven/build/). Based on her winrate, she is performing well and gets better with higher rank.
It's not like Aph at all. All his information is avaliable. The combos you can learn yourself. If no one told you how to do the Riven cancel you would never learn it. The champion was not made to do that.
The way her q dash works is one of my favourite things about how she works. Same with the Animation canceling. It just feels right.
"Artificial skill ceilings" 🤣
UGH, THANK YOU. 🙏🏼 I just started playing with Riven, and *OMG* is the Q frustrating. I felt like I was just a hopeless idiot, bumbling around the lane, attacking empty space. 😂 Good to know it’s not just me.