An in depth look into Riven and why her popularity has been destroyed by commitment to a mechanic you probably don't understand

She is now at 3% popularity in emerald+ and negative win rate, but has no room for buffs.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/riven

She used to be at 25% popularity. She is a fun 1v9 carry champion that is seemingly perfect for a popular pick, combining high damage, mobility , button mashing, a high skill cap and being conventionally attractive with plenty of skins,

So what happened?

A large % is going to be lots of new flashy champions released since 2015, but that is still post yasuo and other similar era champions have kept much better % played stats.
People got too good at her, and riot had to start balancing around the best riven players. Not a death sentence for sure, champions like lee sin survived this just fine.

BUT

Riven is too difficult for a reasonable league of legends champion because of one mechanic, fast q.

Take a look at this riven mains post (from 7 years ago) https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3xgbrv/riven_combos_and_animation_canceling_guide/

There are 10s of different combos for every situation , I just want to say, COOL THIS IS FINE .

Whenever you try and talk about Riven and removing this mechanic, people start thinking you want to hit ANIMATION CANCELLING, which is absolutely not the case. Yes it takes some work getting into, and some champions like Nidalee and Sylas had them removed, but this is absolutely not the problem with Riven.

So what is the problem?

FAST Q

It sounds simple enough, here is a guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY0tPpw7I2Y

What it means however is a massive dps difference in using Riven’s combo intuitively - weaving autos between spells, and using this “bug” button mashing around Riven constantly to make her attack quicker. It feels like 1000s of gold worth of attack speed it’s so big the difference. You frankly cannot play Riven in a competitive game without doing it, she is balanced around it and to avoid being stat checked you have to.

You might answer, durrr just git gud, practise it. But the thing is that doing this through a game in every single situation combining with all the other combos is so hard even pro toplaners pros do not consider learning Riven to be worth it. There have been many metas were Riven has been viable and seen pro play, but only a handful of pros will bring her out.

The fix

It was actually fixed for a patch as Riot was testing out removing fast q before, Riven instantly became way more popular as people could actually access closer to her full strength without months in the practise tool.

You just make Riven like every other champion, no benefit to clicking really quickly behind her between every auto…

But I like this mechanic stop making the game too easy!

No you don’t, this mechanic is done by like 10 people in the world at a consistent level in every game. Riven would keep a high skill cap but just not an obnoxious skill gap gated by starcraft level clicking. Which leads me to…

IT ISN’T FUN

To play Riven at a level she is balanced around, you have to click hundreds of times more than a jax player. This isn’t about game knowledge, kill thresholds, combos or things that make most “difficult” champions have a high skill gap, it’s just mechanical clicking that 99.9% of riven “mains” don’t do properly anyway.

Why has Riot not changed this already

Community outcry, seriously. Mostly by Silver Riven mains who think Riot would be removing simple animation cancels like e-w.

Also the “not a bug it’s a feature” was talking about Riven’s ability to jump over walls with q3, which was kept as a cool mechanic. Fast q is an abomination of game design separate to this.

Ultimately if you like Riven at all, you should support this as removing it let’s riot actually buff her to be playable outside of grandmaster+ 1 tricks.