Talk:Riven/@comment-24385282-20160217031339/@comment-26203093-20160226005900

It's a usability and performance factor.

It's already also a mini dash, and its performance is tuned around it being both. You already get people - even at a high level - doing shit like dashing to get out of range of an enemy, but mistiming it, so an incoming projectile reaches them just before the shield disappears, killing them because they had to use it for both, but the timing was too tight.

1.5 seconds is tight for a shield. This isn't fiora's riposte that eats all damage, and is used primarily for that.

Its performance as a shield isn't just about the timing, but the shield amount. Even if you time it perfectly, people can eat through it like butter.

This is fine for when you're an assassin who's supposed to find and fight isolated people. It's not fighters who need to make fights happen via being a threat, and taking on half of a whole team. They will need the dash to get in and still need the shield to soak damage while they're doing it. but the fighter also needs to be on the frontline to stop other fighters from just charging through to reach the squishies. So they can't come from the sideline where they either only need the damage to nuke someone down, like an assassin should, or have the luxury of not being focused and can use the shield at their leasure. The assassins wait for the teamfight to create enough disruption for the assassin to have an opportunity - usually positions are messed up, or cooldowns are down.

The figher needs the shield duration because they have to get into a team that might be moving away. The assassin doesn't have to care because the enemy team is moving into them.

Further, the shield with 100 bonus AD might be benefitting the assassin a little too much since they get damage mitigation from an aggressive stat they're building anyway.