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If you take a look at: http://www.championselect.net/champions/riven

You do see advice, but non of that really seems to work well. Rather they are situation and assume Riven can not play well, but using a decent build only way to win against him seems to be LeBlanc or maybe also Morgana and Shyvana.


I assume Riven can play and cancel auto attack + smart cast + move auto attacks

If you have no idea what they are:

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    Simple, you don't. She's as broken as her sword. Seriously though, I find Garen to deal with her pretty easily.
    – Izzo
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:00
  • @Izzo Riven's not broken, wasn't sure if you were being serious or not, but given Margus's comment on Namfuak's answer, he seems to be serious about Riven being broken.
    – Waterseas
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:17
  • @Waterseas Well, to be honest I don't believe in broken champions. I've seen plenty of bad Rivens. It's just that if used to her full potential I guess Riven could be considered the "best" and possibly a "broken" champion. In general that is, of course she can be countered.
    – Izzo
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:21
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    @Izzo Is she? From what I know, Riven's not seeing any play at competitive levels. Sure, she's pretty good to pub stomp with, as are most melee characters with high levels of hard cc/gap closers.
    – Waterseas
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:25
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    She isn't broken at all. There is a reason there are very few Rivens at high ELO. If she doesn't get fed she's pretty useless late game. Riven is great at pub stomping low ELO because they don't know how to lane against her.
    – dphil
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:26

3 Answers 3

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You really have 2 options for laning against Riven and not getting torn apart. Keep in mind, that being slightly behind her in lane is actually beating her. She needs kills to get levels and snowball.

1) Play a tank who can deal with her damage and thrive. Bring TP. I run a lot of Malphite into her. As Malphite, you will get behind, but that's ok since you outscale her hard. Armor items and rushing sunfire are key. (If you didn't give her kills and aren't too far behind in CS, you can win fights vs her with Sunfire) Always try to trade her AFTER she uses E. If she uses E for whatever reason, immediately engage and do a quick trade before the CD is back. Don't fight to kill there though, just harass her down a bit. Whenever you can, wait back a bit for your passive shield to recharge. Remember, you won't likely be killing her in lane and it's ok to be 10-15 cs behind at the end of laning phase. Just don't die.

2) Play a ranged champion that has some good disengage. Jayce is pretty good for this. He can poke and cs safely. If she engages, he can quickly switch forms and knock her away. I specifically play Gnar a lot in this matchup. Never try to fight her in Mini form. Just focus on building armor and using your Q for farming. If possible try to get your Q to hit her as well as get you CS. Again, if she uses her E for whatever reason and you can harass her, do so. You should be able to get a Q + 2 autos off safely if her E is down. If she rushes you, your own E let's you bounce away and still keep autoing her. Mega form is the only time you can afford to trade her. You get really tanky and your damage output gets pretty high.

These are the 2 champions I play vs Riven that seems to work pretty well. There are others, but since I am familiar with these champions, that's who I go for. You should be able to apply the basics of what I said to champions with similar kits to face Riven. Btw, ALWAYS run TP vs her. Don't worry about going for kills. If you get too low, go back to base and buy. Don't think you can stay a little longer for that extra CS.

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  • Riven in Gnar's biggest counter?! championselect.net/champions/gnar
    – Margus
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:38
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    @Margus That's completely untrue. This is a crowdsourced website that is full of false data. Just because low ELO players get stomped by Riven doesn't mean it's correct.
    – dphil
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:39
  • @Margus Exactly what Dphil said. That site is just a congregate of data, not an analysis of the data. Just because there are a large number of losses of gnars against riven does not make riven a counter to gnar.
    – Waterseas
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:41
  • @dphil In addition to the two pools, there are some characters that don't fit into either that tend to destroy riven top. Best example I can think of off of the top of my head is Rek-Sai top.
    – Waterseas
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:44
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    @Waterseas That actually surprises me. I've never seen Rek'Sai vs Riven top. Usually people were trying to pick Rek'Sai into my Malphite or Poppy... which was pretty unfortunate for them. I've never picked Rek'Sai myself so I still have only a minor grasp on her kit.
    – dphil
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:47
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Riven's damage depends on her hitting you with her q and her auto attacks in quick succession, so don't let her do it. Ranged champions can do this easily since they can poke from a safe range, but any melee champion with an escape or stun can break up her combo by staying out of range after she's used abilities and before she can auto attack. Keep track of your positioning, she's going to want to get close to you so she can hit with her first and second q and still use her e to escape or continue the engage, but if you force her to use them purely to close the gap she will lose damage, so with all that in mind stay far enough away that she has to use abilities to get at you. In addition to all of this, she'll probably want to use her abilities to push the wave or get easier last hits, so wait a few seconds after she uses her last q hit to let the buff fall off and use that time to punish, since she'll have little damage to throw back at you (you should get used to waiting for your opponent to use their key moves this way before engaging against any champion).

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    @Margus A. Why are you replying so aggressively, B. Riven is a female, C. There are a number of good ranged champions against Riven. Any ranged champion with high mobility should ruin Riven, if they're good. From your reply, it sounds like this question was entirely rhetorical, and you just think Riven is the most broken thing ever. Hint: She's only 'pretty good', not broken.
    – Waterseas
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:16
  • @Waterseas I mean this is just half decent combo, for more dps you go flash + e + Tiamat + r + auto attack(cancel animation)e + auto attack(cancel animation)q + auto attack(cancel animation)q + auto attack(cancel animation)q + r. Jax could cancel auto attacks, but they are not mayor source of damage and even he is dead before 1.5s. I do not really see how you abuse ranged champion vs him.
    – Margus
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:34
  • @Margus Extremely easily. Jayce and Gnar both have perfect kits for dealing with her. They both have good disengages. If Riven blows her flash to engage, these champions can blow it to disengage. It's the players who try to hold onto it that has problems. There is a reason you don't see Riven often at high ELO.
    – dphil
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 15:38
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    @Margus Riven won't have 40% CDR until late game. The question is specifically about laning phase. That 40% CDR argument is irrelevent.
    – dphil
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 16:02
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    @Margus Were you expecting an answer of "There's nothing you can do, Riven's just broken?" If you think she wants to flash on you to engage, stay far enough that you can react when she does before she stuns. As a ranged champion, force her off the creep wave before level 6 with poke and disengage when she jumps at you to get your allied creeps to punish her for you. After level 6 keep her kill potential in mind and if you don't think you can lane safely freeze the wave just outside your tower. Ask your jungler to gank to try to force her to flash defensively. Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 16:03
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I main Riven. Most of her power is in the utility, CC, and mobility of her kit. Like most AD casters, she builds AD/Armor Pen and some tank. Because of the strength and potential in her kit, she excels in trades. She can also spam these abilities because of her lack of a restrictive resource. Her AoE is amazing for waveclear and her dueling with engage and disengage is godly.

But. She has limits. She can be incredibly outplayed. She is kited with ranged and especially CC. But her real weakness lies in the fact that she HAS to go all in to do anything. Her kit rewards canceling (passive and Q/E-cancelling), which often leaves Riven players defenseless after a trade or even when farming. Most Riven players want to use their shield as an engage, but remember this is her only true defensive ability. Sure, Q can be used to dodge and W can be used to disengage, but utilizing proper positioning and baiting/kiting out her Q or E can leave her unable to reliably dodge or shield poke. She suffers against sustainable enemies, namely Garen or Renekton. She can chunk you while you are CCed from W and Q^3, but afterwards she must walk away.

Because of her kill-you-while-I-CC-you-with-my-QWER playstyle, if you simply don't try to fight her when she wants, you win because she needs that early lane pressure or even a kill to stomp your team into the late game.

Nasus, for instance, is often thought of as a easy matchup for Riven because he can't fight her without getting bursted. But if he just stays at tower, farms his Q or pokes with E, it becomes a very sad lane for Riven, who gets outscaled by Nasus while he sustains any poke using his passive.

TL;DR: Once she uses her abilities, which are often used in conjunction of each other, she has nothing. Also, she requires early game dominance to be able to be powerful; if you can poke/sustain/kite, you made her early game a nightmare, therefore making the rest of her game a nightmare. Play safe early if you must, and keep up in CS. You can easily win lane against a Riven, and most other AD casters, with this playstyle.

TL;DR the TL;DR: Play safe, CS, and use positioning to go in at opportune times when she's all out of juice.

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  • Most of her power is in the utility, CC, and mobility of her kit. That is completely false. Most of her power comes from her Damage output. Her CC is average at best and her mobility will only help her if your team has absolutely no hard CC. A riven that falls behind will bring close to zero utility for her team because she doesn't have any Damage.
    – Jutschge
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 9:14
  • @jutschge well, I'd argue that if a Riven is able to engage on an enemy or enemies, she supplies pretty solid CC. In order to do this, however, she needs to completely all-in her opponents, as I mentioned. That requires the Riven to have damage. I agree with you, but I don't find that what I said is false.
    – aethyr
    Commented Apr 2, 2015 at 21:10

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