If there’s one thing the League of Legends community likes to debate, it’s Riot Games’ balance team. Over the past few days, many players have pointed at Riven’s seemingly high win rate and demanded nerfs. While some Rioters have already gone into detailed explanations about Riven, Joshua “Jatt” Leesman is now the latest to add his voice to the discussion.
In a Reddit post earlier today, Jatt explained the current state of the champion and why, at the moment, Riven isn’t being nerfed. This season, Riot is looking at four different levels of play before deciding to buff or nerf a champion. According to Jatt, these categories are divided based on the skill of the majority of players, high-skilled players, elite players, and professional players.
Across each category, Jatt said the balance team looks at statistics like win rate, play rate, and ban rate. If these numbers are inflated across all four categories, the champion will most likely receive a nerf and vice versa for a buff. When this balancing technique is applied to Riven, Jatt said she doesn’t quite meet the criteria for a nerf.
While some players claim Riven has a high enough win rate to constitute a nerf, Jatt said this isn’t entirely true. According to “internal data” which Jatt said is more accurate than other resources, Riven has a 50.2 percent win rate for the majority of players and a 52 percent win rate for players ranked higher than platinum. While these numbers aren’t quite high enough for an immediate nerf, Jatt gave a reason why some players may still feel she’s overpowered.
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By breaking down Riven’s win rate on region alone, it’s apparent her win rate is much higher in North America—but not in other regions. On the North American server, Riven currently has a 53.3 percent win rate and a 35 percent ban rate. By those numbers alone, Jatt said a nerf would make sense. Riven’s ban rate in other regions is significantly lower, however. Riven’s ban rate is 28.3 percent in both the EUW and BR servers, 12.1 percent in KR, and 9.3 percent in VR.
Due to the global difference, Riven isn’t at the top of the nerf list at the moment. Jatt did say Riven is “riding extremely close to the nerf line,” however. For now, players will have to wait for future patches if they want a nerf on Riven.
