Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Jungle Riven: Is she viable?

In short. Yes. Is she the best jungler? No, but she sure is fun.

Pros
  • Decent ganks - OK CC, OK gap closer, Tons of damage
  • 'Carry' Jungler 
  • Late game power is insane with a few items
  • Fun!

Cons
  • No reliable initiation
  • Mediocre sustain and clear speed
  • Hard to play from behind
  • Need to be greedy

Quick Tips
  • Keep in mind your passive, try to autoattack between spells to maximize damage
  • Stack your passive before starting buffs. 10 seconds before you start your first jungle camp press Q, then wait as long as you can to press Q again, and then wait and do it again. If you've done this right, by the time the buff spawns you will have 3 stacks of your passive and about 3 seconds left on your cooldown before you can Q again. This will maximize your damage as your passive is very strong.
  • You can use certain wall jumps to avoid wards. This clip (Youtube) shows the main useful spot to wall jump to gank. His video also has many other useful wall jump tips.
  • You're not a tank. You'll often need to wait for a pick or a good engage from one of your teammates to go in because if you go in first you will get melted.
  • I like hunters machete/5 pots start. I tried Doran's blade start but you lose too much health, even with lifesteal quints. 
  • I prefer AD/Armor/MR/ArmorPen runes [EDIT: As Joris suggested below - 6 ArmorPen reds, 3 AD reds, and all AD Quints is best] and 21/9/0 masteries.
  • Favorite items: Bloodthirster, Brutalizer, Last Whisper, Guardian Angel, Hexdrinker (situational). Doran's blades are decent early game but I usually prefer to rush my Bloodthirster. Her shield scales off of AD and gives her inert tankiness so don't buy typical tank items. If you want to do that you should pick a different jungler. 
  • I've been playing her every game, but she's really a better pick when your team has some kind of initiation (Blitz, Leona, etc.). It also helps to have a tanky top laner.

She is a good bruiser, but I feel she isn't as strong as some other popular damage dealing junglers such as Aatrox or Vi. I don't play those champions though because I like Riven. She can certainly carry a game if you get ahead early, and you can get first blood often. Riven snowballs very well and once you have your ultimate it makes it easy to clean up kills. The disadvantage is you have to be greedy and take gold from your lanes to really succeed. This can bite you in the ass in the long run if you can't use your gold advantage to carry your team. Her biggest problem is her lack of a strong initiation that is currently expected from a jungler. In my opinion, this is why junglers like Vi and Aatrox are considered better because of their great ability to start a fight. If you have a strong initiator on your team though, Riven can really shine and reach her potential as an incredible diver and just blow people up.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ive been looking into picking her up aswell. she's really fun to play in top or mid or jungle. But the lack of initiation brings a surtain risk.

Also about your rune setup, id recommend going 6 Armor pen red, 3AD red, armor yellow, mr blue and 3AD quints. This setup gives you the same amount f armor pen your setup has but more AD.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Really? Well that rune setup definitely sounds better I'll have to try that. I'm pretty lazy with my runes and don't look closely at them. Thanks for the tip.