Talk:Riven/@comment-3093118-20110920012715/@comment-1973463-20110920030646

Sheen costs 1260. This is 1260/1650 th of a BF sword, or 34.4 AD that you could have bought instead. Mana and AP are 100% wasted on Riven, so the only thing to compare is the proc.

So let us compare. First Sheen, because it is easy. At lv 6, Sheen grants 70.5 damage every 2+ seconds. 84.25 at lv 11. 103.5 at lv 18.

Now the AD. This boosts her basic attacks by 34.4, passive's bonus by 17.2, and each hit of Q by 20.6. A simple Q into basic attack then has 34.4+17.2+20.6 = 72.2 extra damage. This is better than Sheen until lv 7.

Now we must also consider that Sheen has a 2 second cooldown from when the proc is consumed, so in order for you to get every Q to proc Sheen, you would need to wait 2 seconds from when you attack until you press Q again. Considering that it takes time from when you press Q until when you attack afterwards, this means a delay of more like 2.5 seconds between Qs. If you do not wait, you will miss the proc on the second Q at the very least. If you do wait, you have time for at least one additonal basic attack. Assuming we wait, the AD is now giving us 34.4+17.2+20.6+34.4 = 106.6, which is better than Sheen even at lv 18. Assuming we do not wait and simply forgo the second Sheen proc, Sheen essentially only gives us 2/3 the damage over a Q combo, now giving 47 per Q at 6 and 69 at 18. In either case, it is notably worse than straight AD at low levels and still worse by 18.

There are other things to consider as well. First of all, sometimes parts of Q are used without any time to attack in between, for instance when used to cover distance or used to get the knock up quickly. In these cases, you may only get one proc out of Sheen over the entire combo. Furthermore, Riven has other skills besides Q. W and E have 1.0 AD ratios rather than Q's 0.6 per hit, resulting in 34.4 AD increasing the damage of W into basic attack by 34.4+17.2+34.4 = 86. and with the addition of more skills and more situations in which to use them, you have even less luxury of waiting 2.3 seconds in between each skill activation. Sheen likely ends up being activated half as often as Riven uses skills considering that max level W and E alone can trigger Sheen as often as possible with some CDR by alternating between them every 2+ seconds. and one more thing to consider is that Q and W deal AoE damage that gets increased by raw AD. Sheen doesn't improve AoE at all.

Therefore Sheen is bad in all situations. especially considering that most items with AD on them do other things as well. Brutalizer gives about 920 gold's worth of AD and then a nice chunk of armor pen and CDR for just ~400 gold. Bloodthirster is cost effective for the AD it gives and also gives life steal essentially for free. etc.

Upping the Sheen to Trinity Force makes the proc deal 155 damage at 18, which, assuming it gets activated once for every two skills and basic attacks, can actually compare to the numbers presented previously for straight AD. 155/2 = 77.5, compared to the 72.2 and 86 noted above. It is more complicated now, however, because Trinity Force costs much more than Sheen and has many other stats on it as well.

So I resort to the following: Phage is good on Riven: it gives AD, which is of course good, and health, which is also good due to her need to be able to take hits. And the slow is essentially free and is useful. Zeal is not good. Q and E's dashes are not instant and do not scale with move speed, making it a less useful stat on Riven than on most other melees. Attack speed and crit are also not as good on Riven as she relies more on her skills and passive than straight up autoattacking. Sheen is not good, as demonstrated. Phage is the only good component and can be built into a different item than Trinity Force that does not include Zeal or Sheen. Therefore I think it's pretty safe to say that Trinity Force is suboptimal.

tl;dr: Sheen sucks, proven by math. Trinity Force sucks less but is still bad.