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.
Xerath's range can be intimidating, but most champions who close distance with him can trade favorably.
Banshee's Veil will make it much harder for Xerath to land Shocking Orb on you.
Xerath takes a long time to engage Rite of the Arcane. Watch for his spellcast animation and start dodging.
The stats shown here underscore some important Riven versus Xerath counter stats that may help us appreciate the differences between this set of champions. For instance, Riven’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Xerath’s ratio of NaN, highlighting that Riven may be more central to her team's team fighting effectiveness than Xerath..
Riven typically has a slightly larger longest kill spree than her enemy does. Typically, she takes more damage than Xerath. This often reflects different amounts of tankyness, yet it can also indicate that the one champion has less mobility and thus is unable to kite away from additional harm when engaged or poked.
Both League of Legends champs are great. Both have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In League's current meta, Riven usually fairs equally well when playing against Xerath, with a 49.2% win rate. Thus, Riven makes an ok counter for Xerath.
While Riven does have a lower winrate compared to Xerath, when they face off with one another, Riven also has a greater level of difficulty that makes her a more difficult champion to learn. You still need to be cautious when picking Riven into Xerathas her relative depth means you may not be able to reach her full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Riven also has some amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Xerath. This often makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when facing champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't one best champion overall in League of Legends, in Riven vs Xerath matchups, Xerath is the better champ with a similar win rate, similar champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during teamfights.
Riven is a somewhat poor counter to Xerath. You will do well by focussing your strategy on maximizing your gold and cs and taking out objectives. If you are able to do that, you should do very well as Riven against Xerath.
If you would like to truly master Riven in order to counter Xerath during both the lane 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 pay attention to the build and tips presented here, you will increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Riven on average racks up more CS relative to Xerath. Champions who on average don't get much CS usualy don't have to have 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, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, often require several high cost items to be effective. In either situation, try to exceed the numbers displayed here to do well.
The most crucial items to prioritize in your Riven versus Xerath build include Spear of Shojin, Death's Dance, and Sundered Sky. When Riven used at least these three pieces in her build, she did much better against Xerath than with many other typical item sets. In fact, Riven had an average winrate of 49.2% when countering Xerath with these items in her kit.
To have the greatest likelihood of vanquishing Xerath as Riven, you should use the Conqueror, Triumph, Legend: Tenacity, Last Stand, Nimbus Cloak, and Transcendence runes from the Precision and Sorcery rune sets. Out of all the rune combinations we have analyed for Riven vs Xerath clashes, this order of runes resulted in the highest win rate. Moreover, these runes provided a 49.2% win rate overall.
By default, tips, stats, and builds on how to beat Xerath as Riven are shown for all ranked divisions combined. If you want to narrow the statistics and builds to a specific division, you should use the selection menu located at the top of this page.