Welcome to my Riven guide!
Riven is a champion that I believe to be best played as a tanky dps. She has a good early game with decent harass from her skills and a strong shield, a good mid game with her excellent team play capabilities, and late game functionality as a survivable damage dealer or initiator.

I should note that "tanky dps" doesn't mean "offtank". It means a dps dinner with a side of tanky. I tend to play her as a skirmisher in lane and a bruiser lategame. She darts in and out of the fight, disrupting enemy champs and taking focus off the carry. She can't do this if she gets bursted in one rotation. She has to live through damage while also doing enough damage herself to help land a kill on the biggest threat.

My playstyle allows her to usually live for about 4-6 seconds under heavy fire and do decent damage for the carry to run cleanup. Riven does need another tanky champ to help her hold focus, and she has a good chance of dying if she is under heavy CC focus. However, that's CC not directed at your carry. By "carry" I mean "ranged AD carry" or "AP carry". Riven can carry games, but she isn't what most consider a "carry" in strict game terms.

This Riven build requires you to be fairly aggressive. However, "aggressive" does not mean "stupidly charge opponent". It means making fights happen. Smart, calculated fights. Under this playstyle, you have a decent chance of dying under focus fire, but if you are smart about it, your one death will mean four of theirs.

+High mobility
+Shield that increases in strength with AD
+Damaging AOE stun
+Manaless champ
+Insane early damage

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-Needs proper timing on her skills to be effective
-Cooldown dependent
-A bad start is hard to recover from
-Shut down hard by CC and armo

Greater Mark of Attack Damage Greater Mark of Attack Damage - These will give you a good early game boost, and with the ArPen masteries and strong scaling on Riven's skills, these are the strongest choice.

Greater Seal of Armor Greater Seal of Armor - Standard runes. These will help keep you alive early before your Valor shell really kicks in. Armor seals give you the early game defense until you've leveled up Valor enough. Scaling armor seals or HP seals can both serve as suitable replacements, if you prefer.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist - Scaling MR. Equal benefit at around level 6, I believe. These make an excellent substitute for your CDR glyphs. These are generally better than flat MR, unless you are laning against a magic dealer top. Even then, these are probably still better than flat. Your call.

Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage - Once again, Riven's scaling makes these the best choice. The same rules of the marks apply to the quints.

Runic Blade Runic Blade // Passive
Riven's abilities charge her blade, causing her basic attacks to deal bonus physical damage. Riven's blade may be charged up to three times and expends one charge per attack.

This is a wonderful passive, and her charges should never go to waste. While throwing your abilities, you need to autoattack in the mix, between different skills. This makes her damage output incredible. Although I don't really recommend autoattacking with Riven, using these stacks in the middle of your Qs or Ws is a perfect idea and it puts the hurt on enemies, from early to late game. Using your combo, even at level one, can kill the enemy or get you first blood with Qs and autoattacks.

Broken Wings Broken Wings // Q
Riven strikes out in front of her in a short line. This ability may be reactivated 2 additional times.
1st Use: Slashes forward, dealing 30/55/80/105/130 (+70% bonus AD) physical damage to all units she comes in contact with.
2nd Use: Slashes forward, dealing 30/55/80/105/130 (+70% bonus AD) physical damage to all units she comes in contact with.
3rd Use: Leaps into the air and slams the ground dealing 30/55/80/105/130 (+70% bonus AD) physical damage and knocking nearby enemies away from the point of impact.
Riven will target the unit your cursor is hovering over, or if no targets are present, Riven will simply strike the direction she is currently facing.

This is Riven's key skill. It can be used to deal heavy damage or it can be used as an escape. The three jumps are a great way to get away from enemies if you're being chased. But the main strength of this skill comes from the fact that it has amazing scaling off of Riven's AD, and it gives you three charges on her blade from her passive. You can use this to initiate, to chase, or to get away. It has many uses and it makes Riven very unique. Broken Wings is also a great farming tool. Especially late-game, running up to a minion wave and activating this ability quickly kills them all. Farming is a breeze and you can kill the neutral monsters in the blink of an eye. This makes getting stacks for The Bloodthirster incredibly easy. In conclusion, this is a beautiful ability and is one of Riven's key skills.

Ki Burst Ki Burst // W
Riven's sword emits a burst of runic energy that shocks nearby enemies, dealing 50/80/110/140/170 (+100% bonus AD) physical damage and stunning them for 0.75 seconds.

Another wonderful skill. Riven has ridiculous scaling on her W. All of her bonus attack damage is added to the base damage of this ability. It stuns enemies for a short duration, but because of how much Riven can do, it's enough. Her stun can stop channeled ults like Katarina's Death Lotus. It is a great way to initiate a fight and it can stop enemies from escaping. It can stop enemies from chasing. If they tower dive you, activate Ki Burst, and then take care of them. Her Ki Burst is precious and really helps the team as a whole. This is Riven's only CC.

Valor Valor // E
Riven does a quick dash in the direction of your cursor and becomes shielded, blocking up to 60/90/120/150/180 (+100% bonus AD) incoming damage for 2.5 seconds.

Another skill with incredible scaling. This is a shield that Riven gets, and it dashes her forward. It's a wonderful escape tool, but it also helps initiate fights. If she dashes in, she absorbs the initial harass from her enemies, and you can stun them and get off your other skills and charges. I mainly use this skill to step over traps from enemies, to escape, to dodge, to chase, and to initiate. It is very useful even though it doesn't do any damage. It's also great because it scales so well off of AD, so if you find yourself in need of some defense, it's okay to build her offensively. Her shield is great and gets stronger if you do this, haha! The best defense is a good offense.

Blade of the Exile Blade of the Exile // R
Riven's weapon surges with spiritual energy for 15 seconds, granting her 20% extra Attack Damage, increased range on her damaging spells and attacks, and the ability to use Wind Slash once.
Wind Slash: Riven fires a shockwave that deals from 80/120/160 (+60% bonus AD) to 240/360/480 (+180% bonus AD) physical damage to all enemies hit, increasing based on how much health they are missing.

This is Riven's ult. It is INCREDIBLY powerful, especially the activated ability, and it wipes out escaping champions easily. With Riven's ult, almost no one should escape from fights. It deals a LOT of damage to anyone with low health, even though it does almost nothing to those with full health. The passive of this skill helps with pushing towers or taking Baron, but it also helps during fights. 15 seconds is a long time, so you can activate this at the beginning of a teamfight and deal extra damage with your abilities, and then fire Wind Slash to secure kills on people running away. The scaling is wonderful. It is an ult that almost never goes to waste and it dominates fights. Another great thing about her ult is that its cooldown is incredibly low, so you should pop it every teamfight, when you are going for a kill in your lane, while you're pushing hard on a tower, or when you're taking Baron/Dragon. It will always be up so there's nothing to worry about.

Boots Boots of Speed and 3 Health Potion Health Potion Helps you to start, you are fast and can refresh 450 HP.



Bloodthirster The Bloodthirster Its the first Item u should buy, cause it does lots of dmg, and additionally you have the life steal.



Ninja Tabi Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads Mercury's Treads depends on your opponents. Take the one you need more Armor/Magic Resistence.



Frozen Mallet Frozen Mallet gives you life and damage and this slow.



Black Cleaver The Black Cleaver - This item exists for AD casters. Allows for an insanely strong early game item, The Brutalizer The Brutalizer, to be built into an extremely strong burst item. Riven utilizes all of the stats extremely well and there are no negatives to buying this item.



Randuin's Omen Randuin's Omen - Armor, health, a MS AS debuff, and a great slowing active. This item is the perfect anti-AD carry item. The active let's you stall their team and the passive also helps zerg the enemy AD carry with ease. Also is a great item when escaping, as the slows will stop the enemies from chasing while you run away. This item greatly helps your engage-disengagement ability.



Guardian Angel Guardian Angel gives you great amount of Armor and Magic Resist and this great passive of a second life! Really useful in endgame, if teamfight and u get focused...

I hope you all enjoyed reading my guide. I've been putting a lot of work into it, and I hope that it was informative. Maybe it was even a little bit fun.

Fine, I'll settle for you not being glad that it's over, at least.

Thank you all for reading!