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Riven is one of the oldest champions in League of Legends, having gotten released in 2011. In the last few patches, this top lane champion has had a hard time staying relative. At the time of writing this article, according to U.GG, Riven's pick rate is three percent and her win rate is stuck at 49.00%, in Platinum and higher ranks.
In fact, her pick rate has been hovering between two and three percent recently, and this has been acknowledged by Riot Games.
On 12th November, League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison talked about Riven and opened up the conversation about the champion's current state in League of Legends. On Twitter, Phroxzon listed down some of the reasons, he and other Riot Games developers think are the cause for her low play rate.
He said, "Just wanted to weigh in on the Riven conversations that have been happening recently. We've also had some conversations about this in the past and recently amongst the Dev team, so I'm representing a combination of theirs + my thoughts."
What's Wrong With Riven?
Riot Phroxzon acknowledged that Riven is certainly at one of the lower play rates that she has had in a long time. According to him and the developer team, here are some of the reasons behind her low pick rate:
In early seasons, Riven was one of the highly mechanical champions and ten years later, there are way more champions that fill that void for players. Riot Games is also not interested to simplify every champion in that game.
Riven is also a champion who has a high-skill cap.
A lot of her abilities have animation cancelling.
Talking about the future for Riven, Phroxzon said, "Riven does have some legitimate problems. Firstly she's a bit weak. Given that items are changing in Preseason, there's not too much benefit to changing her now though."
He also noted that Riven is a champion who has a lot of one-tricks and that most of her matchups are feast or famine. While Riot Games currently has a vague idea of how to treat her, it will be using the very Twitter thread to seek feedback from the playerbase.
It will be interesting to see when and what Riot Games does to tweak Riven in the future. Players may expect to see more conversations surrounding her and in the long run we may see possible changes to the top-lane champion.
