Talk:Riven/@comment-6061249-20150508000849

I think i found an idea how to apply a resource to Riven without making an extremely underwhelming or boring concept.

The whole point of my idea is - Do not take her damage or mobility away. Limit it. But not like, just limit. Literally, make it a win or lose scenario. Either you use it well enough to get the result, or fail so hard there will be nothing to watch.

There are many champions that bring a lot of powerful moves into the game, sometimes literally blowing your mind up because they nuke so hard, or have such good sustain. And it's all right as long as it's limited.

The good examples of this would be, for example, Nasus, which can't just come up and destroy everything - he has to farm a lot. Put Renekton there - he's got some heavy laning power, for the cost of much worse late game. Or Mordekaiser, who deals so much damage it's not even funny and is relatively hard to take down, but is very immobile and has range that doesn't even cover half of his vision field.

How could it be achieved in case of Riven?

I had a thought - what would happen if Riven was able to spam a lot but only when comboing the opponent? Does it make sense when she wrecks the ground with a lot of force but doesn't actually hit anything? Because that's how spamming her mobility looks like. She's attacking the air without any result other than moving forward. That must be tiring like hell!

Well, i believe this is some interesting idea, and however i tried to approach it and how would it be applied onto the game, it all ended up in same result - the most reasonable way to make it work is to give her a resource.

Lots of people say - let's just slap mana there. Which makes no sense at all as at best it would make her early game slightly worse. Unless the mana cost would be like ridiculously high, all the difference would come to having to recalling more often, like twice more per match. Let's be honest, mana is never an issue in lategame on any champion with just a little bit of help from items and the fact that mana per level scales up pretty high. Riven would just pick up Frozen Heart or whatever and we would end up in exactly same point, with Riven dealing slightly less damage, but being harder to kill. That is not something we want.

Health for abilities is something we have in game too. When you look at, you can clearly see he has a simple yet quite good mechanic of rewarding good playstyle from failing - his spammy poke cleavers cost a lot of health which is refunded if he actually hits something.

The problem is, there are two major problems with Riven using health as resource:

- ... Theme? Why would she really use health? How does it make any sense? I don't see any reason for that unless she would be something like, sacrificing a bit of her soul in exchange for those shiny green explosions every time she does something.

- Champions that use health are also given a way to restore it so they don't kill themselves in few seconds. Riven, however, has no built-in sustain (and that health regen, ouch!), and to add up - is not a tank. She would end up shredding herself harder than the opponent. We may give her the sustain needed to survive to any of her abilities, but... Holy fuck, it would turn out to be REALLY broken in the end.

Well then, any custom resources maybe? Propably yes, but that would take a lot of work (i mean, a whole lot of work!) to come up with something perfectly reasonable, and i believe it would mess her kit up.

The best solution that came up to my mind so far is Energy. But not typically placed, like the other energy champions do. Riven's abilities would cost literally A TON of energy, but the other ton would be refunded if she hits something. Like, costs so much, but restores just as high numbers upon hitting champions.

So, applying energy could be achieved in two ways:

- Restoring a lot of energy by attacking with buffed attacks. This is basically what every half-decent Riven does - attacking between ability casts, which is impossible if you aren't sitting on top of an opponent. This way, you do the same combos you used to do before and burst enemies just as good, but you can't spam your dashy dashy for hours just to chase enemies around. Or...

- ... Just like, restoring a lot of energy by having the abilities hit enemy champions. Same result, but allows more quick bursting plays.

Both of those could be also supported by restoring some energy on activating, considering it's triggered in middle of combos oftenly when animation cancelling.

TL;DR Riven could use energy as her resource, her abilities would cost a lot of energy, but she would be given a way to restore a lot of it, making her able to spam abilities as long as she is attacking someone, and denying her spam for free mobility or endless shielding.

Any thoughts?