User blog comment:Care Level/RE: PBE Riven Nerf/@comment-12314620-20131223192154

Sunfire and Spirit Visage nerfs hurt most top laners much more than Riven. Secondly Riven in his current state is definitely something not healthy for the game. At low level games Riven simply stomped since people don't know how to deal with him in the lane and trading with him in his current state is almost impossible because of the possibility to chain stun with your shield. Furthermore Riven isn't that snowball reliant as you say he is. For example Katarina imo is much more reliant on snowballing than Riven. Riven can go even in lane and still after reaching his core items he will win in lane 1v1 against most matchups if you simply play smart. After he starts snowballing he becomes untoppable, and at level 6 he is able to dive even tanky champions. You also aren't able to leave from under your turret since he has very low cooldown gapclosers which unlike Yasuos E aren't interrupted by movement restricting abilites (roots/stuns). More often than not he reaches a point where he can constantly drag 2 people to just stop his push and not get killed and even turn 2v1:s into double kill. He also reaches this point much more quickly than most champions and is much harder to stop. It's widely accepted by most of the community that Riven is too strong in his current state and it's not surprising that he's getting hit. The shield nerf is the direction riot is going with most of their shielding skills promoting reactive playstyle instead of providing "get out of jail for free cards" (see Sivir spell shield change which is definitely more healthy with lower duration). With shield changes they actually make it easier for Riven's opponents to punish him for mistakes (he uses shield early, now it's actually good approach to wait for shield to run out and win the trade when in her current state she will still most likely win the trade because that 1 second lets her catch her opponent, stun him, trade well and start retreat).