Talk:Riven/@comment-32820852-20170810111843

I'll just lay out the most successful and used Riven builds since there's some confusion about it here.

Death's Dance/Black Cleaver/GA: This is what you should be going most games. It gives you a nice mix of damage, survivability, and sustain. A lot of the time you will want to rush Death's Dance instead of Cleaver but you can go either. BC is best when you just want a lot of cooldown reduction fast, and it's 500 gold cheaper than DD. Most games I end up going something like Caufield's Warhammer > Kindlegem > Death's Dance > Cleaver > Tabis > GA. You can go Mercurial Schimitar, Ravenous Hydra, Lord Dominik's Regards, or Randuin's Omen after this core.

Duskblade of Draktharr >  Youmuu's Ghostblade : Lethality core. It's suboptimal most games because typically you're against a bruiser/tank top lane, and a tank jungler. But if the enemy top is reasonably squishy and the jungler is Elise/Kha/Nidalee or something of the like, feel free to go this build path. Just note that while you're going to disintegrate squishies, the first two items give no defensive stats or survivabilty. You can round out the first two core items with early Boots of Lucidity to complete your CDR core, or you can stay on tier 1 boots and wait till Ghostblade is finished to cap CDR with another Warhammer. You can go GA right after this, but typically I'd just get a more expensive AD item and bring the pain, Death's Dance third is great with this build. QSS isn't amazing on the DD/BC/GA build, you play more of a frontline role with that build, so eating CC is fine; with this build, it can be necessary as you need to shorten combat as much as possible.

There's some other niche (or just outright awful) builds but these are the most optimal for most situations. Please note that you're taking Fervor of Battle 99% of your games, with the exception of Gangplank matchup in which you take Thunderlord's Decree, and Tryndamere in which you take Stormraider's Surge.

