This here guide is my personal build and also my first guide. Talking with friends I hear a lot that Riven is a terrible champion and not worth playing. I would like to change that. I liked her since the first time I saw her spoiled and bought her when she first came out. From what I can tell from the other guides people are unsure on how to build her still and that makes it confusing to some on what to do with her. My play style may not be to your liking but nonetheless I will explain my points and you can take from this guide what you can much like I have done from the other guides.

In reading this Guide I am assuming that you have read other more popular guides and have played Riven a bit but can't quite figure out how to build her well.

Okay so seeing as how riven is a total wuss and very squishy for someone who needs to be up close and personal it becomes a great idea to set up the runes to boost her defenses. Seals of resilience and glyph's of warding give her a better start in defense in the beginning for the close physical attacks she will be doing. Mark's of desolation will give her 15 armor pen and will give her a base of armor pen until she can get the last whisper. As for the quintessence's, I giver her 2 fortitude for health and one focus which I will explain in the masteries section. This setup here builds towards her early stage survival.

The main point of my masteries and the quintessence of focus here is to reach the 25% cooldown reduction cap fast. Riven has no mana, energy, rage, or anything else in her abilities way other than cooldown. The 3 points in Intelligence and 3 points in socerey give her a 8.25% cooldown reduction. Add on the 1.64% from the quintessence and we now have a 9.89% cooldown reduction at level one. Buy the boots of lucidity and we are a mere 0.11% away from the 25% cooldown cap.

One of the biggest problems I have with Riven when I play her is getting kited. Putting points into quickness to give her extra speed, and a point in cripple to help out my exhaust is one way I fix this. Everything else in the utility tree are all non ability non mana picks. I put 3 points into hardiness and my last point with nowhere to go into resistance. The reason being at level 1 Riven will have more magic resist and less armor. Later on as she levels it will switch and she will have more armor than magic resist.

Now I have practiced starting Riven out with several items such as a doran's blade or boots and three health pots. The best that I have found however is dorans shield. I read in another guide that Riven has the best health regen in the game and does not need dorans shield and that its somewhat of a waste. How I see it though is that she has the best health regen in the game and adding on to it gives her more health regen than any other hero unless they start with a regrowth pendant. Personally, after using all three. Doran's shields regens more efficiently then the lifesteal or health pots, but what I like most is the extra 120 health and the fact that my armor and magic resist are both now around 45 at level 1 and ready for whoever you meet in lane.

The first item you want is going to be boots of lucidity. Once you have these, other than leveling up your skills, you will be pretty much cooldown capped at 24.89%. From here I like to get Phage. It adds a little health which equals survivability and makes it more difficult for people to get away ensuring those ganks even more so while adding in a little attack damage.

By this point your gonna want to grab some lifesteal and start moving around to gank. eventually your gonna build into the bloodthirster for some much needed attack damage.

After this we can make Riven even more beefy by upgrading to the Frozen mallet ensuring now that all our attacks slow the enemy running in terror if they know whats good for them.

Now its time to get some armor pen and since Riven doesn't do a whole lot of auto attacking the best choice here is the last whisper.

The last thing I like to get is the guardian angel to be able to stick around and take down those last two towers to finally push through to their nexus as they spawn on top of you.

Riven's passive should be renamed to "truck" and the "charge" should make you think of a rhino. Your gonna want to auto attack but only to expend the charges of her passive. With all the cool-down reduction your getting with this build there isn't a whole lot of time between your skills so auto attacking without charges shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I start with broken wings to have an attack at level one. Then get valor next. At level 2 with these two abilities you are now able to harass very well. Charge in with broken wings then run and dash back with valor getting in free hits and taking little to no damage.

Ki burst is next and with this your harass just gave you the ability to get in one auto attack with Riven's charged passive before you valor out of there.

Then after that I tend to level all three abilities along with each other. To me each and every one of Riven's abilities its just as valuable as the other. Depending on how my laning is going, for instance if I'm getting kited a lot or harassed too much, I'll spend more on valor. Or if I need more of an interrupt, like fiddlesticks life-drain, I'll get more into ki burst. How ever I do level though all three abilities tend to be leveled evenly.

Riven's alt gives all her abilities more power and a damaging spell in a cone that does damage based on how much life they are missing. It has quite a bit of range and is best used on low health enemies running away from a fight.

When harassing I tend to just use broken wings, ki burst, one auto attack with a charge of runic blade, and then valor the heck outa there.

When initiating I will valor in, auto attack while expending the runic blade charge and in turn using valor's shield to block their attack, then ki burst interrupting them or just plain stun them then auto attack again expending another charge. Then I will use broken wings twice if they need to be interrupted saving my last broken wings for that, or use all 3 if not and then auto attack three times expending the 3 charges. By this time your cooldown's are coming back up and you can use them to chase or continue attacking.

In order to reach the cooldown cap I had to sacrifice tenacity. I solve this buy using cleanse which I consider a much better alternative to tenacity anyway.

To help with getting kited and early game ganking I take cripple. The damage reduction it gives will give you the edge in a 1v1 and the slow will help immensely with ranged champ's trying to kite you or get away with with little health.

In closing I would just like to say I AM a bit of a noob and am in no way saying that I am a professional Riven. Working on her like I have been I have felt more comfortable with these items and build then any other I have tried. Feel free to add positive feedback so that I may explain more in depth or make any confusing points clear. Thanks for your time and any help with making this guide prettier is welcome!