Talk:Tahm Kench/@comment-25280175-20150926141904/@comment-5289193-20150926204917

I bet a decent part of it was your build. Here are a few general rules for item builds on top champions/tahm kench:

1. Rushing titanic hydra is rarely (never) a good idea, since you won't have the hp to back up its damage. You always want at least one hp item (and more levels) before buying it, and on a champion like tahm who doesn't have any attack speed steroids, gap closers or strong sticking power, you only want to buy it because you will be getting a metric ton of health, so definitely don't buy it until relatively late into the game (if at all).

2. Sunfire is generally the best rush item as tahm top against ad opponents, and also generally the best rush item in the game vs. riven on tanky champs who make good use of it and don't want a different item far more. This is because it gives you a good mix of armor and health, as well as helping your abysmal pushing power and some nice base damage for fights. And against riven you generally want armor and health to take a dump on her burst damage.

3. Always err on the side of more defense items when you are behind in gold. Since tahm already benefits greatly from stacking pure defensive items, this especially goes on him.

4. Mercs are usually better than swifties on tanky, kiteable melee champions like tahm if you are getting kited, and especially if you are behind (see rule 3).

If you had followed these rules, you would have been harder to zone for the riven (so more farm and thus more gold) and the gold you were spending would have made you more tanky. Thus it is not that tahm is bad top (or weak vs. riven), you were just building (and possibly playing) him wrong.