Taliyah vs Riven Counter Pick

Riven spends nothing to use her abilities. She runs entirely on cooldowns, so Broken Wings, Ki Burst and Valor can be thrown into a wave with no mana to keep an eye on, unlike Taliyah. The mid lane usually turns on reach: 525 against 125. Threaded Volley can be cast while moving, and Worked Ground is the only real limit on casting it again. Across 122 games on patch 16.13.1, Taliyah wins 56.6% of the time and is rated Easy difficulty.

Riven scores 8 for difficulty, three points above Taliyah’s 5, and that gap shows up in how melee players tend to fall apart. Every one of her engages is a dash, and Unraveled Earth stuns anything that dashes through it, so opening with Broken Wings into the minefield gives the fight away. Valor softens damage rather than crowd control, so it won’t save you there. On raw stats she still holds the front line: 630 base health to 550, 2,330 at level 18, 33 armour to 18, and 64 attack damage to 58. Her ultimate widens both weapon range and damage before turning into Wind Slash, so a clean engage ends fights quickly. Runic Blade charges from each ability she casts, adding bonus attack damage to the follow-up hit. Weaver’s Wall is her reset when that happens. Cooldown timings worth tracking are on the Riven champion page.