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.
Try to think of Sand Soldiers as fire. Don't stand in the fire.
Azir relies on his soldiers to deal damage and can only move them so often. Try to capitalize on windows of time when his soldiers are stationary.
Azir has immense damage over a prolonged amount of time but lacks the upfront burst of other mages. Try to burst him out before he can turn a confrontation around.
The stat comparisons shown here underscore some valuable Riven vs. Azir counter stats that can help you grasp the distinctions between the pair. As an example, Riven’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Azir’s ratio of NaN, highlighting that Riven may be more central to her team's team fighting potential than Azir..
Riven typically has a similar longest kill spree as her matchup does. Commonly, she takes more damage than Azir. This often reflects differing health capacities, but it can also illustrate that the one champion has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from further damage when engaged or poked.
Both League of Legends champs are great. Both have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Riven usually fairs equally well when taking on Azir, with a 49.6% win rate. Thus, Riven makes an ok counter to Azir.
While Riven does have a lower winrate compared to Azir, when they face off with one another, Riven also has a lower level of difficulty that makes her a less time consuming champ to learn. You still need to be cautious when picking Riven into Aziras her relative depth means you may not be able to reach her full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Riven also has some amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Azir. This often makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when trying to counter champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion in League of Legends, in Riven vs Azir matchups, Azir is the better champ with a similar win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allies during teamfights.
Riven is a somewhat poor counter to Azir. Make sure you focus your play on increasing your gold and cs and destroying objectives. If you do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Riven against Azir.
If you would like to truly master Riven to counter Azir during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to gather a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you mind the build and stats presented above, you will increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Riven typically picks up a similar amount of CS relative to Azir. Champions who on average don't earn many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. They are capable of scaling well off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either situation, try to surpass the values displayed here to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Riven versus Azir build include Death's Dance, Sundered Sky, and Eclipse. When Riven bought at least these three items in her build, she did a lot better when facing Azir than with many other common item sets. In fact, Riven boasted an average winrate of 49.6% when countering Azir with this counter build.
To have the greatest likelihood of defeating Azir as Riven, you should take the Conqueror, Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, Last Stand, Nimbus Cloak, and Transcendence runes from the Precision and Sorcery rune sets. Out of all the rune sets players picked for Riven vs Azir counter picks, this composite of runes resulted in the best win rate. Notably, these runes gave a 49.6% winrate overall.
If you want to view Riven vs Azir tips and counter stats for a a distinct player tier, please select one from the selection menu shown above. If viewing for the first time, the statistics and build suggestions shown are computed using every match run with these champs.