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[quinnr]

The new Arcade Riven skin is absolutely beautiful, favorite skin in the game right now. The only issue is that I'm terribad at Riven...any tips?

[frostshotgg]

Learn to animation cancel. 90% of skill with Riven is canceling all of her animations. If you ever aren't moving and attacking at the same time you're doing it wrong. There was a joke when recall broke a while back that the person who discovered the bug (and was playing Riven) was so good at canceling that he even managed to cancel ranked.

[DemonOfWrath]

And don't assume that just because you're playing Riven that you must go full aggression 100% of the time. At my level (low-mid gold) and lower Riven's are actually really easy to lane against because all they do is try to all-in whenever you're near, so you can at will goad them into bad positions/shoving the wave when they shouldn't (and can freeze it).

[Cthulhu]

I don't think I've ever beaten a Riven in lane.  She beats herself usually.  What I usually see is just kind of wild buttonmashing in an attempt to cancelcombo or just go nuts, I don't really know. 

Riven is my least favorite character in the game, not only because of her playerbase (When you sort by stuff like report frequency and leaver rate, Rivens are always on top by a ridiculous margin, almost every Riven I've seen is a complete dickler) but because of the cancelcombo's uninteractivity. 

It's like if Karthus could type "requiemrequiemrequiemrequiem" in the channel of his ult it did double damage but if he didn't type it in time it did 50%.  Riven's success or failure against a competent enemy is entirely dependent on the player's ability to cancel combo.  If you can do it, she can perma-zone you from the creepwave and kill you if you step out of position for half a second, and there's almost nothing you can do about it.  If you can't, she pretty much outplays herself.  Ther'es a reason Garen's considered one of her hardest counters.  If her combo wonks out for any reason she's bad.

[DemonOfWrath]

Yeah silence destroys her. I like Cho'Gath as my Riven counter for that reason, max e, rush armour and long as you tag her with either your q or w you simply maul her.

Main thing fighting Riven is she's like say a Renekton, you need to get her to use her stuff trying to get you and then you have a decent time to tear her apart before her cooldowns come back up. Even if she does get you if you can survive the initial burst without being too low a lot of champs can then win the extended trade. A lot of matchups are somewhat standard burst vs sustained damage (for instance Irelia or Shyvana) and she doesn't have the best disengage once she's done. It does take some practice though to get used to not just panicking when they get on you and knowing when you can fight back.

Armour runes help too. Nothing feels more smug than going into lane against a Riven with 60-70+ armour and 5 pots.

And well as a top laner there's a lot of things I hate more than Riven. Amongst all the cancer lanes you can get up there I personally hate Vlad the most, I don't see it enough to have practiced how to beat him (although I sorta know in theory). I do feel bad when I lane Nunu people though. ...Well, almost, it's just too funny to do for me to really feel bad about it.

[quinnr]

Huh, I did not even know about the whole animation cancelling, I'll have to...figure that out. I usually don't read the guides too much, maybe I should do that more. Animation cancelling is such a weird mechanic, though, it feels like it really goes against the whole "design cores" that Rito likes to point to all the time.

But on another note I love to play Sejuani but never looked at her skins before. I reallllly want this Bear Cavalry skin now.

[Putnam]

a lot of riot's design decisions go against the design cores rito likes to point out all the time

[frostshotgg]

Riven's in a weird spot. Her mechanics aren't inherently against any particular design philosophy riot spouts, besides the whole clarity thing, as evidenced by quinnr's lack of knowledge of animation canceling. It's entirely skill based, and entirely fair given that cast times aren't meant to lock the player out, just provide a reaction time/ping buffer for the opponent. The big violation is the "burden of knowledge" type thing, but that's entirely for the player, not for the opponent so it's no worse than Vel'koz's Q, just a lot harder to use.

[Flying Dice]

If you really want a look at how stupid Riven is in the hands of someone competent... Twitch is there for you. Boxbox is famous for his Riven, but if you watch him play, pretty much every match regardless of what happens he just maxes E first and screws around because it's "more fun". The dude got into Challenger and stayed there despite being a one-trick pony and not tryharding because Riven's the sort of champion that's either absurdly good if you can into mechanics, or the single biggest source of salt in the game if you can't.

By the by, Darius is also a good counter to Riven. Your Q is long ranged enough that they have to burn a couple abilities to close the gap (and has sustain now!), you can stop a lot of the zoning game by pulling them into your wave or under turret (E also helps break combo chains), your passive helps you trade because it's damage that won't be shielded, and your level 6 is as big a power spike as hers is while also being better at turning 2v1 fights around. You have to go hard from level 1, be even more ballsy than the Riven. If she ever tries to CS, Q and walk away. Once you hit level two, Q+E+auto and walk away or all-in if she's low enough (you should have landed at least one or two Qs before this to waste pots and get her low). Keep zoning with Q and freeze as soon as you can. Call your jungler to farm free kills because 80% of Rivens are terrible and will always shove the lane regardless of the situation.

Also, EU LCS third place deciding matches. My god. Those plays. Such EU.

[Cthulhu]

Nasus remains the best choice against bronze Rivens if you're good at him and can lane freeze.  It's like the classic Dota tactic where you pick Meepo and the enemy team abandons all pretenses of synergy, balance, and sense to pick five meepo counters.

Picking Nasus in bronze almost guarantees someone will pick Riven, and Nasus is very good at dealing with hyperaggressive snowballers when you're good with him.  Freeze under turret and freefarm while you lifesteal up his harass.  If he doesn't have a huge lead by level 8 or 9 his ability to kill you starts dropping dramatically and by the time you have Gauntlet or Frozen Heart there's basically nothing he can do.

This works on other early aggro champs too.  I once forced a Fiora to back for health twice in lane without ever hitting her, just by keeping the lane on my side and withering her  in the minion wave.

[frostshotgg]

Nasus in general is pretty good at low skill brackets because of how easy he is to play and how hard he punishes a lot of the mistakes bronzies/silvers make.

[Neonivek]

Nasus in general is pretty good at low skill brackets because of how easy he is to play and how hard he punishes a lot of the mistakes bronzies/silvers make.

Yeah but there are better noob stompers then him.

[Flying Dice]

Well, sure, if you want to tryhard you can pick Akali or Yi or whoever. With Nasus you don't need to do anything except +3, not die, and occasionally +6 until you reach the point where you can two-shot towers.

[frostshotgg]

Nasus in general is pretty good at low skill brackets because of how easy he is to play and how hard he punishes a lot of the mistakes bronzies/silvers make.

Yeah but there are better noob stompers then him.

Nasus is significantly more reliable. There's always the chance you'll be matched against a player or two who knows what to do about the usual assassin pubstompers, which isn't too uncommon. Nasus generally takes a more concerted team effort to deal with which one or two people alone can't do.

[Cthulhu]

Well, sure, if you want to tryhard you can pick Akali or Yi or whoever. With Nasus you don't need to do anything except +3, not die, and occasionally +6 until you reach the point where you can two-shot towers.

Akali is a lot harder to play as a noob, (and that's me), while Yi is just mysteriously too strong even with terrible stats.
Also, to me, Nasus is the guy who walks through your entire team (if you have no hard cc) popping a wither on your adc/mid, and hit them in the face with a 500 - 700 stacked q.
That's pretty much it... if you can shrug off his q's, it's usually just him standing there 1v3'ing. It usually ends with him realizing he's too weak and he just walks away, or with him finishing off anyone low who's near him. While the rest of your team hitting him ineffectually. At least until your mid decides to help out... at which point he either dies, or ends up killing your mid...

This works on other early aggro champs too.  I once forced a Fiora to back for health twice in lane without ever hitting her, just by keeping the lane on my side and withering her  in the minion wave.

Before or after the update?

Before.

If the ADC is shrugging off your Qs you fucked up.  If you've been farming effectively you should be able to take off at least two thirds of the ADC's health in one hit.  I've one-shotted ADCs before actually.    If you run in 1v3 then yeah, you're still gonna die unless you're fed as fuck, but a Nasus in a 5v5 teamfight is devastating.  AoE health drain, massive tankiness, complete shut down the ADC's damage output, and hit him so hard if he comes out of position he's dead.  He's like Volibear.  Either you focus him while his team kills you, or you ignore him, spend all your cooldowns and health on the enemy team, and get aced cause he's too big to finish off even with three  or four guys left.