Hello! This is a jungle Riven guide, as I find her to be an overall weak laner too easily shut down by Morgana and similar champions early game. You can probably solo top VS a bruiser like Irelia if you really want to.

I am not a master Riven player, she hasn't been out long enough for that but I hope this helps you none the less... she is one of my favorite champions now.

PROS
-Strong jungler
-Strong Ganks
-Sustained AoE Damage
-Powerful Shield
-Good AD scaling on all abilites, including passive and shield.
-Strong Team fighter if not focused down
-High Damage if played properly
-Mobile

CONS
-Squishy in this build if you dont shield properly in team fights
-Low Base stats
-Weak Laner
-Destroyed by Hard CC if not protected

You want standard defence runes but for marks take attack damage, it speeds up jungling and scales with all her abilites, including Valor and her Runic Blade.

If you take a different pair of boots I recomend CDR glyphs.

Pretty standard for jungling. Riven has a good escape abilty built in with Broken Wings, if you are confident enough Exhaust or Ignite work well in place of flash but be warned, Q doesn't go over walls and won't save you from everything.

I take offencive mastery to speed up early jungling as attack speed isn't amazing for her. The increased XP gain and buff durations help early game as if you fall behind with Riven it's hard to catch up.

Items seem to be a much debated subject for Riven.

CORE



Trinity Force and why not to get it:

I find Triforce useless on her. Which seems to be a popular choice atm. Costs a ton and you get almost no benefit. Here's an analysis of just stats. You get ability power and mana, you use none of these.Attack damage and health from phage are both useful but early game you'll be getting RED for ganks.Attack speed is not very good for Riven, more will be explained later on as to why. Crit and movement speed are both decent.The Sheen proc wont proc after every skill as youll be procing too fast. You will gain much more damage overall from the bonus AD on IF or Blood Thirster.

Build Order

You want to start with a vampyiic scepter, it synergizes well with your passive and will get you through your first round of the jungle. Once you back get Cloth Armor and 1-2 Health Potion. After that finish your Wriggle's Lantern and get Boots if possible, followed by The Brutalizer for the lack of armour pen runes, and the CDR. Next you want your Ionian Boots of Lucidity for the CDR since your are an abilty based fighter. After that you want B.F. sword and turn that into Infinity Edge or Blood Thirster depending if you want more burst VS survivability. I find bloodthirster over all more usefull early game. After that pick up the other.

If the game lasts long enough you can go for traditional defence items, Banshee's Veil, Thornmail, etc. Tiamat synergizes well with her kit increasing her AoE damage to more consistant levels. If the game still isn't over turn your brutalizer into a Youmuu's Ghostblade You may also get this item between IF and BT if you choose.

Alternative boots: Mercury's Treads for a heavy CC team. If you feel you don't need CDR I recomend Ninja Tabi

You may also get Cloak and Dagger for tenacity.

DO NOT GET: Berserker's Greaves I tried these and found fluid skill use is much more effective than attack speed. Any AP items or magic items. Philosopher's stone Many people get this for GP5. you have no mana. if you want GP5 get an early Avarice Blade

Situational: Last Whisper sometimes they all build armour... you need this then. Quicksilver Sash CC being your main weakness, this can come in handy... or Cleanse I suppose.


Closing:
With lifesteal and your AD scaling shield you should be able to survive without having to build tank, I feel you lose too much potential going so tanky and dont have things like Hiten Style to deal damage for you without items.

Start with Broken Wings at level one, then get Valor at 2. The shield from E helps sustain you in the jungle and procs your passive. Follow that up with [Ki Burst]] for an extra AoE attack and then at 4 get another point in E. Then max , Broken Wings stopping for Blade of the Exile at 6, 11, 16. After that max Valor with your Ki Burst being last. The reason being is W roots you in place for the same duration as your targets, this is a good disrupter or to use to freeze someone while ganking for allies to catch up to. You do not want to spam this for damage. it may get you killed with its incredibly short range.

Runic Blade scales with your AD and applies bonus damage to your next (up to 3 stacks) auto attack. Her skills proc these stacks and they dissipate after a few seconds of not being used. This passive and her no resource fuel allow riven to deal heavy consistent damage without ANY attack speed items. Making her unique in a world of AD carries.

Broken Wings is your basic ability. the first 2 hits deal small frontal AOE damage, the 3rd deals 360 AoE damage. To use this effectivly you need to Q, Auto Attack, Q, AA, Q...this will proc your passive between attacks. dealing max dmg. You can lock on to a specific target by hovering your mouse over them. This is for the skill only, you auto attacks will still go on the last target you clicked to attack. You will move forward otherwise with each Q press. If you cant master this skill you cant master Riven.

Ki Burst stuns all targets in a small radious for .5 seconds. You are rooted for a similar duration. Use this to stun an enemy during a gank so an ally can get close enough for a kill. Use it to prevent fleeing. use it to stun a chasing opponent to save a teammate then E and Q away. This can be dangerous if they have stuns up... be careful!

Valour dashes you toward your curser. Much like Tumble and grants your a strong AD scaling shield. Use while running for the shield, the dash distance is neglible. Good for re positioning in team fights.

Blade of the Exile increases your AD by 20% for its duration. This boosts your AA and Skill power. Fantastic Ult.


Wind Slash can be triggered once while your R is active and does more damage the lower health the enemy is. Use this to your advantage. It has a long animation before firing the projectile, you may need to lead your target. It is also another AoE attack. Try and hit as many champions as possible.

---

Broken Wings and your auto attacks are your main source of damage, you want to keep these consistent and hitting as many champions as possible. I must stress the importance of not spamming Ki Burst whenever its up. You need to make sure you will hit as many champions as you can, when to interupt your normal Q combo to add this to it or when you think a channel needs to be broken * Death Lotus* Riven is extremely disruptive of abilities if used properly, and while spamming W may annoy the enemy and hurt them it will not change the team fight in your favour unless timed properly to lock down 3-5 for .5 seconds or, as stated, break channels.

Always focus on squishies while trying to catch others in your AoEs. You deal good consistent damage to the majority of the enemy team if positioned properly. This is invaluable and not somethign many champions bring to the table.

Do not Valor randomly, make sure you aim it. Blade of the Exile should be activated right before you enter a fight to maximize bonus damage.

There are plenty of guides for this I'm sure, however I find her to be terrible at it and recommend not doing it.

This is the important part. You wont to start at wolves and position correctly to hit them all with your AoE on Broken Wings. After take a traditonal path to wraiths, Smite blue wraith, then move to wolves after AoEing down the small wraiths.

Note: Positioning is important, you need to position yourself to hit every creep with AoE damage or you will slow down your jungle and take extra damage.

After coming back from base with Cloth Armor and 1-2 health pots take down blue, then wolves, wraithes, red, golems. You only want to take blue this FIRST time to complete your jungler route. You won't need it later once you have your Ionian Boots and Brutilzar. Get blue for your AP carry every opportunity you have after this.

On Ganking: You will sometimes find yourself in good health after golems at level 3. You can sometimes gank mid if its pushed at this point, however I do not recomend it. Dark Binding and similar hurt you very bad early game.

Generally you will be low health at level 5, I recomend backing. Clearing wolves/wraiths etc one more time and then going out to gank a pushed lane at 6 with Blade of the Exile. Activate this just before you start your first combo on an enemy champion for max damage. Do not use Wind Slash until they are A) Low enough to get maximum damage, B) Otherwise out of range and you cant catch them otherwise, or C) Your ult is about to run out. Riven says something vocal about 2 seconds before your ult ends. Riven's ganks are extremly potent and devastating to a pushed lane with her chasing abilty and high damage.



Defend your towers as needed while helping lanes push theirs during mid game. it's pretty standard at this points. Get dragon when you can.

WARDS. This is your job as a jungler, keep dragon and the enemy jungle warded (yours too if your down towers) and try and keep your blue buff warded as well. Get blue buff for your AP mid as often as possible.

You will need to wait until your tank engages, as is standard for many ADs. If you feel you will be immediately focused go in with E for your shield. Do your standard Q rotation and W when you need to interrupt a channel, stop some damage on you or an ally, or secure a kill. Dont forget to Valour often to reposition and keep your shield up, you can use it every few seconds and is the only thing that keeps you from dropping like Ashe & Miss Fortune

Be wary of skill shots, your high mobility with Q and E let you dodge these fairly well. Morgana and to a lesser extent Lux can easily shut you down in team fights with snares and stuns... be careful!

This is a guide, not a stone slate... mix and match as you need and I hope this helps! Would love to hear feed back, good or bad and I hope to get this a little more detailed with situational awareness in the coming weeks.