The thing that is wrong about Riven is not Fast Q.
Too many people talk about Riven as if you need hours in Practice Tool only doing Fast Q and some other random combos on a Cheat Sheet.
But that’s genuinely not the issue with Riven. People think that every trade and fight needs Fast Q, but there’s so many matchup specific things that people just ignore.
There’s a lot of really bad matchups because…how does she deal with armor? If you build Ninja Tabis/Bramble Vest then it’s an automatic win because majority of her damage comes from her autos. Compared to the other AD women in Top Lane: Irelia has some magic damage autos on fully stacked passive and Fiora has True Damage on vitals, but Riven has nothing other than an AD steroid on her ult.
I never recommend Riven to friends/new people I meet because it takes too much to do the same thing that other champs can do for less. Removing Fast Q doesn’t change her popularity because she has so many bad matchups that it’s almost always better to lock in a different champ and that’s why her popularity sank so hard. It’s only fixable if they gave her Armor Penetration on her ult so she can at least have something to keep up with Irelia/Fiora.
You can remove Fast Q for all I care, as long as Riven can have armor pen stats on ult or SOMETHING to deal with Tanks.