Hi, I am a Boxbox wannabe. I was a Platinum IV player in season 5 and currently is an unranked pleb in season 6. I mainly used riven to climb up the ranks in season 5 and obviously played her a lot thus I know most of the in and outs of this champion. Through this guide, I hope to teach you everything I know so that you can become a decent riven player!

PROS [+ve]
- Very Fun
- A monster early-mid game
- Great snowballer
- Fantastic split pusher
- Amazing initiater
- Insanely mobile
- No mana!

CONS [-ve]
- Needs items
- High skill capacity
- Squishy

Teleport: Really good spell as it can be used in many situations. For example, helping your team secure objectives, ganking bot lane, split pushing and applying pressure. Overall really versatile and very good on riven. Do not use it to go back to lane, it is a waste and removes a lot of pressure from the map unless you are losing badly and there is a huge wave at your tower.

Flash: By far the best summoner spell on riven. Can be used aggressively and defensively depending on the situation. Gives you the extra reach you need to initiate and take your enemies by surprise.

Ignite: Ignite is really good early game as it can help you snowball by giving you the extra damage you need to secure kills. It also gives you some form of reach besides your Blade of the Exile. However, it falls off late and the extra damage probably will not affect tanks that much.

Ghost: Good if you are chasing somebody or just running away but is kinda unnecessary as riven is already so mobile. Flash is way better than ghost as it has the element of surprise and is just much more versatile.

Pretty standard AD Marks and Quintessences to give riven more damage early game. For Seals, take armor or magic resist depending on your opponent for more survivability (Usually armor). For Glyphs, take 6 cooldown reduction and 3 scaling cooldown reduction. This gives you 9% cooldown reduction from runes at level 18. Normally, that 1% does not matter that much and you can hardly feel it.

FEROCITY
Fury VS Sorcery: Easy pick here. Sorcery gives you more damage on your abilities which you will definitely use many times when fighting.
Double Edged Sword VS Feast: Easy pick here as well. Double Edged Sword gives you more damage overall.
Vampirism VS Natural Talent : Slightly harder pick? Vampirism is better as you get the benefits of both effects whereas you only benefit from the bonus AD from Natural Talent . Vampirism also gives you more sustain in lane.
Bounty Hunter VS Oppressor : Even pick. What you pick depends on your play style as you benefit from both. I choose Bounty Hunter as I like to snowball better. In general, if you are a risk taker, pick Bounty Hunter and if you like to play safe, pick Oppressor .
Battering Blows VS Piercing Thoughts : Extremely easy pick. AD over AP any day.
Warlord's Bloodlust VS Fervor of Battle VS Deathfire Touch : This pick revolves mainly between Fervor of Battle and Deathfire Touch . Warlord's Bloodlust is not really good as the build does not focus on critical strikes and it already has insane lifesteal. I chose Fervor of Battle as it is really easy to maintain 10 stacks of Fervor of Battle which means the mastery basically means 80 AD at level 18, thats insane! Deathfire Touch probably gives more AD (I can't count) but its damage is in the form of damage over time which is less preferred when you want to burst someone down quickly. This pick totally depends on your playstyle.
CUNNING
Wanderer VS Savagery: I chose Wanderer as I feel that I do not need help getting creep score but choose Savagery if you need it.
Runic Affinity VS Secret Stash : Secret Stash gives you more sustain in lane and you hardly get any buffs as a top laner so Runic Affinity is pretty useless.
Merciless VS Meditation : Merciless over Meditation as you do not use mana.
Bandit VS Dangerous Game : Dangerous Game for more sustain in team fights and 1v5s.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity - Distortion - Pretty OP on riven as it gives her 10% CDR and an additional 25% CDR on your summoners. Furthermore your get movement speed whenever you Teleport or Flash.
Ravenous Hydra - This item is a must buy item on riven. You can use it to cancel your animations, split push more efficiently and give you more DPS in general.
Youmuu's Ghostblade - A nice utility item to have. Gives you more movement speed to chase or to escape and also more attack speed for splitpushing or 1v1 dueling. Plus, it gives 10% CDR which helps you to achieve 39% CDR.
Bloodthirster - Great lifesteal item which gives you more damage and sustainibility. Also has a shield making you more tanky.
Dead Man's Plate - Tanky item with movement speed making you more mobile.
Spirit Visage - Really OP in this build as it synergises really well with Ravenous Hydra and Bloodthirster making you untouchable. Also gives 10% CDR.
These items give you a total of 30% CDR. Adding the 9% from your runes, you will get 39% CDR!
SITUATIONAL
Mercurial Scimitar - Get it if you are constantly getting locked down.
Black Cleaver - Get this instead of Spirit Visage when your opponent does not have any AP.
Guardian Angel - Only buy it if you die too much as there are better tanky items than this.

Runic Blade: Utilize this passive as much as possible. Do not spam all your abilities without weaving in some auto attacks in between. This gives you A LOT of extra damage.
Broken Wings: Your bread and butter skill. It helps you generate stacks on Runic Blade and also your Fervor of Battle . At rank 5, you can use Broken Wings infinitely by maximizing the duration between casts of Broken Wings.
Ki Burst: A simple stun in the area around you. Pretty self explanatory.
Valor: A low cooldown dash and shield! Really good for survivability and also crucial for cancelling animations.
Blade of the Exile: Increases your AD, range of your auto attacks and damaging abilities. Really good for sieging, dueling and team fighting. After patch 5.22, the cooldown of Blade of the Exile increased in the early ranks so refrain from using it to push down the outer turrents during the early game.

Cancelling cast times: Valor and Ravenous Hydra can be used to cancel animations. For example, if you want to cancel the animation of Broken Wings, use either Valor or Ravenous Hydra before using Broken Wings. A special case is Riven's ultimate, Blade of the Exile. In addition to using Valor or Ravenous Hydra, you can also use Broken Wings to cancel the animation of Blade of the Exile. Just use Blade of the Exile before using Broken Wings. All of these works with both casts on Blade of the Exile.

Wall hopping: You can hop over walls with riven's 3rd Broken Wings. Use Valor to get close to the wall before using Broken Wings if you are new to wall hopping, practice makes perfect! Corner cutting is way more difficult but is very useful as you get to jump further than you normally can.

Cancelling auto attack: You can cancel the animations of your auto attacks by clicking away after every auto attack. The sequence goes like this AA>Q>Click away>AA....

Here are some video examples. (Credits to creators) Play Video Play Video Play Video

Thanks for reading, hope I helped. Please tell me anything I missed and areas I can improve on as I am bad at the game. Support me by donating at www.sellout.com!