Riven vs Bard
How to Beat Bard as Riven
based on 3,827 Riven vs Bard matchupsHow We Analyze LoL Champion Counters
Riven vs Bard Matchup Summary
Best Riven vs Bard Counter Build
Items
Starter Items
Early Items
Core Riven Items
Optional Items
Summoner Spells
Skill Order
Runes
Guide to Countering Bard as Riven
Tips for Playing as Riven against Bard
Riven lacks a source of healing or strong defense and must compensate with burst combos. Lead into fights with Broken Wings and Ki Burst, while using Valor to escape and absorb counter-harass.
Riven's Broken Wings locks onto the champion your cursor is over at the time of cast. If you want to move past your opponent, make sure that your cursor is past your opponent as well.
Advice to Win Against Bard
You can crush Bard's healing shrines just by walking over them. Don't let his allies take them without a fight.
Bard's ultimate, Tempered Fate, affects allies, enemies, monsters, and turrets alike. Sometimes it can be to your advantage to jump into it!
Bard's opponents can also travel through his Magical Journey doorways. You can follow him, if you think it's safe.
Riven vs Bard Counter Stats
How to Counter Bard with Riven in LoL
The stat comparisons shown on this page feature some strategic Riven against Bard matchup stats that may help you grasp the distinctions between the pair. As an example, Riven’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Bard’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Riven may be more central to her team's team fighting capacity than Bard. This observation is largely a result of the difference in kills.
Riven often has a much larger longest killing spree than her counter does. Commonly, she receives more damage than Bard. This is usually reflective of different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also show that the one champ has less mobility and thus is unable to flee from further harm when engaged or poked.
Differences between Riven and Bard
Damage Types Compared
Champion Playstyles Compared
Who is Better, Riven or Bard?
Both League champs are great. Both have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Riven usually loses when taking on Bard, with a 48.4% win rate. Therefore, Riven makes a bad counter for Bard.
While Riven does have a lower win rate than Bard, when facing one another, Riven also has a lower learning curve that makes her a less difficult champion to learn and master. You should be careful when picking Riven into Bardas her relative depth means that you may not be able to reach her full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Additionally, Riven has some amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Bard. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when facing champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Riven vs Bard matchups, Bard is the better champion with a lower win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allies during teamfights.
Riven is a somewhat poor counter for Bard. Focus your tactics on increasing your gold income and destroying objectives. If you can do that, you should do very well as Riven against Bard.
Other Champion Matchups Against Riven
Additional Information for Riven Players
How We Calculated Our Riven vs Bard Build and Stats
Other Useful Resources
Further Insights to Win this Matchup
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Riven to counter Bard during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to gather a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and stats shown above, you should increase your win rate by a lot and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Riven most often picks up much more CS compared to Bard. Champs who on average don't acquire many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as support champions. They are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often have to have many items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values reported on this page to do well.
The best items to have in your Riven versus Bard build consist of Black Cleaver, Maw of Malmortius, and Eclipse. When Riven incorporated at least these three items in her build, she did significantly better vs. Bard than with many other commonly used counter builds. In fact, Riven had an average win rate of 48.4% when playing against Bard with these items in her kit.
To have the best chance of beating Bard as Riven, you should use the Conqueror, Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, Last Stand, Transcendence, and Nimbus Cloak runes from the Precision and Sorcery rune sets. Out of all the rune builds players chose for Riven vs Bard counters, this mixture of runes yielded the highest win rate. Moreover, these runes averaged a 48.4% winrate overall.
If you want to get Riven x Bard tips and counter stats for a a particular player tier, feel free to select one from the selection menu above. By default, the statistics and strategies shown are computed using every game run with these champs.