- Riot’s Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison talked about Riven’s current status in the meta
- She’s been suffering somewhat during the past few patches
- Unfortunately, Phroxzon gave no clear plan on how to fix the champion’s issues
With barely a 3% pick rate, Riven has clearly been having trouble in the last months and LoL’s Lead Gameplay Designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison finally talked about her problems.
Rior Knows About Riven
With over 160 champions currently in League of Legends’ roster, it is a constant struggle on the part of the devs to keep things well balanced. Despite their best efforts, however, Riot is not perfect in this regard and some champions simply fall off in performance over time. This is often the case with other champions, and Riven definitely fits in that category.
Having been released way back in 2011, the Exile seems to have been struggling quite a bit in the last few patches. According to League stats tracking website U.GG, Riven’s pick rate is three percent and her win rate is less than 49%, in Platinum and higher ranks at the time of writing of this article.
Of course, this has not remained unnoticed by the wider LoL community and players have been asking Riot Games to do something about their matter. It seems that their calls have been answered as League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison recently talked about the champion in a lengthy post on Twitter and acknowledged that Riven has some issues.
What Are Riven’s Problems and How to Fix Them?
According to him, the Exile used to be quite powerful in the early years, but since she was released, Riot has introduced a lot more champions that essentially take Riven’s role. “Riven was one of the few high agency champions. 10 years later, we’ve released a lot more champions that fill some of those same flashy motivations, which is overall a good thing but does result in a decline in popularity,” the post reads.
Furthermore, Riven has quite a high skill cap, which is something the devs want, as it brings gameplay diversity to the game. “We want to have a mix of simple champions and high mastery ones that are worth investing in. Simplifying every champ in the game is not something we’re interested in,” Phroxzon wrote. However, this plays a large part in players not wanting to pick her much.
Unfortunately for fans, it doesn’t seem like there will be many major changes to the champion soon. Phroxzon explained that items are changing in Preseason, so there’s not too much benefit to changing her now. He also said that Riven is missing a purpose in the current meta as there are other champions that fill her role. “She used to be a decent midgame spiking champ that could snowball and run over the game, but now there’s many Champs that do that better than her,” the post reads.
Phroxzon didn’t specify how Riot plans to tackle the problems but urged LoL fans to discuss the idea more.