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.
Malzahar is especially dangerous when he has built up his Void Swarm.
When Malzahar hits a spell on enemies affected by Malefic Visions, the Visions are refreshed.
Avoid minion waves that have been affected by Malefic Visions. You never know when they may die and pass the Visions onto you.
The stats provided here underscore some valuable Riven against Malzahar counter statistics that can help you realize the distinctions between this set of champs. For instance, Riven’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Malzahar’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Riven may be more central to her team's team fighting capability than Malzahar..
Riven normally has a slightly larger longest killing spree than her enemy does. Typically, she takes more damage than Malzahar. This typically indicates differing health capacities, yet it can also hint that the champ with more HP has less mobility and thus is not able to kite away from additional damage when engaged or poked.
Both League champions are great champions. Both champs have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Riven usually loses when trying to fight Malzahar, with a 48.1% win rate. Therefore, Riven makes a bad counter to Malzahar.
While Riven does have a lower win rate compared to Malzahar, when on opposite teams, Riven also has a greater difficulty level that makes her a more difficult character to pick up and master. You still need to be cautious when picking Riven into Malzaharas her relative depth means you may not be able to reach her full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Riven has some amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Malzahar. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there is not one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Riven vs Malzahar matchups, Malzahar is the better champ with a lower win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during team fights.
Riven is a somewhat poor counter to Malzahar. Focus your gameplay on maximizing your CS and taking out objectives. If you can do that, you should do very well as Riven against Malzahar.
To learn all of the intricacies of Riven to counter Malzahar 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 mind the build and suggestions presented here, you will increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Riven on average picks up a similar amount of CS compared to Malzahar. Champions who on average don't earn much CS typically don't have to have much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. They are capable of scaling properly off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically require many items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values reported on this page to do well.
The top items to focus on in your Riven versus Malzahar build include Spear of Shojin, Death's Dance, and Sundered Sky. When Riven included at least these three items in her build, she did a lot better when fighting Malzahar than with many other common builds. In fact, Riven boasted an average winrate of 48.1% battling Malzahar with these items in her kit.
To have the greatest probability of beating Malzahar 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 runes we have analyed for Riven vs Malzahar fights, this combination of runes yielded the greatest win rate. Notably, these runes averaged a 48.1% win rate overall.
By default, tips, stats, and builds on how to beat Malzahar as Riven are shown for all ranked divisions combined. If you would like to narrow the statistics and builds to a particular division, you may use the selection menu at the top of this page.