Riven is one of the hardest champions to master. Decision making, and basic skills can lead you to around high Gold or low Plat.

To truly master her, you will need to practice what is called "Animation Canceling"

PROS: High Damage Output,Crowd Control,AOE Damage,Mobile, High Sustain, Crazy Snowball

CONS: Hard to communicate in a Team Fight, Squishy at times, Vulnerable to multi-man ganks before Level 6

Animation Cancel shortens the animation of an ability, it can be used to catch people off guard or perhaps outplay and execute kills extremely fast.


The Easiest animation cancel is probably the Q+AA combo.

The way you cancel animation in this situation is: AA -> Q -> Movement During Animation -> AA , repeat.

NOTICE: Using Q on your foe shortens the animation time.

My Favorite Animation cancels consist of:

E -> Hydra + W -> Q at beginning of W animation.

(I use this to clear waves and deal a bunch of crazy burst)

E -> Hydra + Q -> R at beginning of Q animation.

(This Move is rather harder to do, it really benefits in battle, the canceling on ult makes it easier to deal damage faster, rather than waiting for the activation time where Riven quickly stops.}

E + R -> Hydra + W -> R at beginning of W animation.

(This one usually does insane burst damage and allows for both execution snipe and close combat damage.)


E is the main source for Riven, it cancels animation and gives her the most sustain.

Hydra is also a source for animation canceling.

One last thing:

If you use Wind Slash -> Auto (as in clicking right away on target)
The auto seems to attack right away. You can use this early game if you want to do high damage output before your foe can escape.

My Runes Consist of:

1x Scaling CDR Quint

2x Attack Damage Quint

9x Attack Damage Mark

9x Health Seal (Scaling Health is much better in my opinion)

9x Scaling CDR Quint

You Mostly would want to go 18:0:12 or 18:12:0 for Masteries.

I personally like going 12:18:0.

Riven is the only champ that has an AD Scaling shield, building lots of AD makes her shield very strong.

Her Passive "Runic Blade" Works like Sheen Proc, after an ability Riven does bonus damage on her Auto Attacks, so try to auto a lot after each ability.

Riven works very well with Champions that have AOE Damage or Crowd Control.

Someone Like Yasuo can end up doing a 2v5 with Riven , Simply Because if Riven does 3rd Q (Which Counts as a Knock-UP) Yasuo's ult can then be triggered.

Orianna, Thresh, Maokai, Renekton, Lulu, Kalista, Ezreal, Draven, and others are easy to Team Fight with Riven.

Not many do Riven Jungle, but her ganks are extremely good. Lots of CC, Aoe Damage, and Mobility is good enough to secure kills and escape.

For Jungling, I always start with leash at bot lane, then go to Red.

It is not possible to solo drag level 3, so ward up drag.

Although Riven is very mobile, once she loses her e its hard to catch-up to an ally or escape. So relying on the foe(s) to over-extend is very important.

I Love maxing "W" first, since you would benefit from burst, CC, and AOE damage.

"Q" however gives a lot of damage bonus, which would make it usually maxed out first.

"E" Should only be maxed if you are against someone with high damage and low defense AKA: Assassins.