Well, i dont really think that Riki is that bad, given that i play at around 4k mmr. People often forget that just by picking him, you drain the enemy supports of a lot of gold for sentries and dust. I pick him for the offlane, normally its better if you have a dual lane. Nowadays, in most of my games there is some sort of jungler, which you can abuse pretty much all trough the laning stage. I stay at the lane and try to harass their carry or supports as much as i can without concentrating too much on cs. Once they get wards, i move to gang. Normally i dont need much more than OoV and boots to get a kill mid or at the safe lane. Ofcoarse, you need to be constantly checking their supports for wards. It pays to also write down when the sentries were placed, which gives you pretty much free gang there in 2 minutes. After threads i normally start building the defusial. Unlike most players i use the defusial mostly to purge dusts off myself or to remove some buff from the enemies (ember shield etc.), normally i dont get the time to kill some support in team fight, so i dont think its worth using charges to try and get a kill. (gangs on solo supports or junglers etc dont count ofc.) In team fights my main goal is to blink on someone in the middle of the fight, to put the dust down. Ultimate for me is the perfect skill to evade dmg, not so much to deal dmg, since positioning it good is mostly too hard. I normally try to save it for later portions of the fight, so i can tank some dmg for the team. I have been experimenting with items like vanguard into crimson guard so i can tank up and have enough time to use my ult in team fights after tanking some dmg, but its pretty situational i think. Using the ultimate late also means that the enemies have taken some dmg, so they wont be too eager to stand in the circle. Most of the kills i get with my ultimate are when the enemy is chasing or concentrating on one of my teammates. Think of it as a tower or tombstone, the enemies have to decide weather or not its worth to take the dmg. So, for me Riki is pretty good space creator, pretty good chase hero and also quite good utility in team fights.