User blog comment:Johannah14/Maxing some Abilities/@comment-10198490-20130529223751

When Vayne was released, Tumble had insanely good damage from its cooldown and was also excellent for maneuvering as you noted. For this reason, on release Tumble Vayne (often w/ Sheen in fact) was the way to go. Now that Tumble has more reasonable damage, Silver Bolts is the way to go. The trick to laning Silver Bolts Vayne effectively is in how you carry out trades in lane, gotta try and make sure you get that 3rd hit (Tumble is great for this purpose), I either use it to chase for the 3rd hit, or to back out if I don't want to continue dueling the enemy.

I don't have much lane Riven experience as of yet. But I find it difficult to justify not maxing first the skill that has 90/165/240/315/390 base damage and 2.1 bonus AD ratio across its 3 casts. Although I do see the value in getting levels in the shield when facing enemies with strong early poke (Teemo comes to mind).

For Katarina, it depends on my lane opponent. Sinister Steel has an insanely short cooldown, so against an opponent that is melee, it's probably the best to max if they can force you to fight them (e.g. gap closing/good CC), otherwise ranged poke is very powerful even if it's been nerfed so much. I'd say its a matter of reading how your trades will play out with either option and choosing accordingly.