Talk:Riven/@comment-9775822-20140602053443/@comment-25015115-20140617165736

Similar to what Vsagent said about his ranges, Darius can essentially pull you back if you try to flee from a trade. Especially if he got a W off on you.

Darius is countered by 1) building health, 2) staying out of his range, or 3) out sustaining.

1) Since Riven is usually built as a glass cannon melee top-laner (with no natural sustain from her kit), this makes her life a living hell against Darius. His passive will do too much to her unless she's able to negate most of it via her E, but even then....

2) Playing defensively may work for you. Mind your own business and if he goes to pull you in, try to immediately stun and dash away. HOWEVER, I'm pretty sure Darius' Aprehend has minor CC with it when pulling you so he's able to land 1 AA while you're coming in (aka: his W). So this will make the trade undesirable regardless. Even if you stun, you'll be slowed as you flee and in range of his Q when your stun fades.

3) Yes you can try making him waste his mana and go oom, but a good Darius won't spam his spells unless he's guranteed to land them and deal damage. Neither one of you has natural sustain in your kits, but while Riven has empowered AA's and a shield to negate damage (for 1.5 seconds) Darius has a constant DoT from any AA or spell that hits you (which can be refreshed AND stacked if he times everything right. Meaning if the DoT is about to fade and THEN he lands something, the duration resets and the stack increases) making it hard to win trades unless you're just able to get in, burst, and flee....but read 2 and it'll seem hard to do.

Again, with my post I made a while ago I'm not a Riven expert and won't claim to be. As a strong top laner, as soon as I see a Riven I enjoy instalocking Darius because even a mediocre Darius can do well to shut a strong Riven player down. Now if she's pro and he's new, obviously she'll still be tough to beat. My philosophy is that while you have many champion kits that can effectively counter others, the player and his/her knowledge of their own champion and the champion they're vsing helps in their duels.