For context: I started playing League in season 1 and reached diamond a few times during university (s6-s11). I was a top lane main before I went to aram retirement home.

Riven introduced so much powercreep when she was released. It took forever for her to get nerfed. She had 4 mobility options, 2 aoe hard cc options, no mana and lots and lots and lots of aoe and damage. this was just not on par with what the meta had to offer back then. that’s where im also very biased against this champion as a lol boomer.

now here comes my point: the problem was that she was so op that every noob could pick her up and be successfull. this was a frustrating experience to play against. a lot of meta slaves just jumped on the op train and abused her.

i have a lot of respect for the people who pick her up nowadays when she is kinda balanced in todays powercrept meta. these people show a lot of dedication and say: hey, even if that champ is not op, the character is so appealing to me that i anyways want to put my time into her.

i think that is how every champion should be handled. there shouldnt be anything op. i know it’s hard to achieve, but then we have anyways new champions and reworked/ buffed champions who dominate the game for MONTHS. it becomes super boring, because out of all the champs there are, >80% of games you always see the same few champs. and that’s why riven is good where she is. when she is picked, it is fresh air for the game, because you don’t see her too often and players pick her out of passion.

she isnt even really unpopular. she is picked ~15x more often than zilean, singed and quinn and ~30x more often than skarner. that is not the definition of an unpopular champion to me. why not buff these champions until they become popular and 100% pick ban in pro then, but azir, sylas, oriana, k sante…?

instead of buffing riven, id prefer they nerf everything else until her kit becomes fine again, because her kit was considered giga broken in the past. and along her a lot of more champions suffer even harder, but they are never/ rarely mentioned.

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