Be a bird!
Think of Emperor's Divide as a defensive ability first and foremost. Use it when the enemy engages on you or your allies. Remember that your team can walk through the soldiers summoned by Emperor's Divide and use this to your advantage when enemy melee champions engage on you.
In the lane, try to position your soldiers between the enemy's minions and the enemy champion. This way you can use them both to last hit and to project threat onto your lane opponent.
Be careful about putting down both of the soldiers stored by Arise! Unless you're going all-in, always have a soldier in your back pocket if you need to escape over a wall or if you misposition your other soldier and need damage now.
Riven has a great deal of mobility but she cannot move very far with any one skill. Rooting or silencing her during her combo will greatly reduce her effectiveness.
Riven excels at dueling multiple melee attackers at once, as she will be on an almost equal footing damage-wise. If pairing up against Riven, don't go in as double melee until she has expended her full combo.
All of Riven's damage is physical, prioritize high Armor if an opposing Riven gets out of control.
The stats shown here show some strategic Azir versus Riven matchup statistics that may help you realize the differences and similarities between the two. For instance, Azir’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Riven’s KDA ratio of NaN, showing that Azir may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Riven..
Azir normally has a similar longest killing spree as his opponent does. Typically, he receives less damage than Riven. This typically indicates different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also illustrate that the champion with increased HP has less agility and thus is unable to escape additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both LoL champs are great champions. Both champs have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Azir usually fairs equally well when playing against Riven, with a 49.0% win rate. As a result, Azir makes an ok counter for Riven.
While Azir does have a lower win rate than Riven, when on opposite teams, Azir also has a greater difficulty level that makes him a more time consuming champion to learn and master. You still need to be cautious when picking Azir into Rivenas his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Azir has some amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Riven. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Azir vs Riven matchups, Riven is the better champion with a similar win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allies during team fights.
Azir is a somewhat poor counter to Riven. Focus your gameplay on keeping up your gold and cs and taking out objectives. If you are able to do that, you should hold your own as Azir against Riven.
If you would like to truly master Azir in order to counter Riven during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to gather a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you mind the build and suggestions presented above, you should grow your win rate by a lot and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Azir most often gets a similar amount of CS compared to Riven. Champs who typically don't earn many minion kills typically don't require much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically need many items to be effective. In either case, try to do better than the values displayed here to do well.
The most important items to have in your Azir versus Riven build include Luden's Tempest, Rabadon's Deathcap, and Zhonya's Hourglass. When Azir used at least these three pieces in his build, he did a lot better when facing Riven than with many other typical counter builds. In fact, Azir had an average win rate of 49.0% battling Riven with this build.
To have the highest chance of beating Riven as Azir, Azir players should equip the Conqueror, Presence of Mind, Legend: Alacrity, Coup de Grace, Manaflow Band, and Transcendence runes from the Precision and Sorcery rune sets. Of all the rune builds players picked for Azir vs Riven counter picks, this sequence of runes yielded the best win rate. Notably, these runes gave a 49.0% winrate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Riven as Azir are given for all skill levels combined. If you would like to scope the statistics and builds to an individual rank, you may use the selection menu located at the top of this page.