User blog comment:Emptylord/Champion reworks/Butthurt Patch Notes/@comment-28230442-20160524005210/@comment-3974211-20160524225342

While reading your comments I feel like you're arguing to convince me or to counter my argument, but we seem to agree... so perhaps it's just a poor choice of words, or a language barrier, or maybe I'm just putting the wrong inflections into how I'm reading what you're saying.

To clarify on why it feels unfair (since it has actually being fairly comprehensively researched, and Riot has also commented on it) - it's because they have all the control in lane. They only die if they fuck up or if you literally hard-counter them (like Garen's silence). Yasuo will never get hit by a spell unless he wants to; will never engage unless he wants to; and you can never engage on him unless he wants to (assuming he's not bad). I believe the term for this is agency - and Yasuo has all of it, when a lane should be 50:50 (or that should be the benchmark). Fiora is the same, near enough, due to exceptionally low cooldowns, high sustain and literal untouchability that punishes you for trying.

Riven probably offers the most agency to her opponent due to her not really being able to dodge abilities (low range dashes) - but her damage is just un-tradable unless you can stop her dealing damage, which is generally not a design feature in top lane champions (since they're already noodle-fights). Unlike Fiora and Yasuo, though, Riven doesn't take minion aggro when she does damage (minion aggro only occurs on-hit, due to the Call For Help mechanic) - and the fact minions don't respond to ability damage is in large part why I think a lot of caster top laners (like Riven, Renekton, etc) do so well because their trading doesn't draw minion aggro, whereas an autoattacker would draw aggro (and thus take extra damage).

The large part is largely down to how clunky the control-input is versus mobile champions. The amount of times I've been versus Riven and clicked the ground under her and walked toward her instead of attacking her, simply due to how much her hitbox is moving. If her Q's animation was more like her dance and just involved large sweeping strikes rather than back flips and pirouettes, maybe she'd be easier to click on and thus easier to duel. Maybe if her damage was shared among all targets hit - dueling her in your minion wave wouldn't be so obnoxious.