Talk:Riven/@comment-25553136-20141025122709/@comment-4834593-20141026141248

I don't have a REAL lot to add here, but there are some things. (okay, it actually DID become a real lot...)

1. It was mentioned already, but I want to stress the autoattacking a bit more. You have to autoattack after every ability usage, except if you really NEED the utility from 3rd Q, stun or shield. If you keep forgetting it, go into a custom and practise it. It's the difference between a bad Riven and a good Riven.

I suppose you now also what then the difference between a good Riven and a great Riven is, and that's animation canceling. Not only autoattacking after every ability, but using the next ability at exactly THAT moment you DO have the damage from the autoattack, but NOT the (larger part of) the animation. You can also do animation canceling with your abilities by the way. If you use EW really fast, your W is cast halfway through your dash and while the visuals are there, the animation doesn't go through, which means you're not effectively locked down for a short time. The downside is that it's hard to place your stun exactly right, as it's somewhere in the dash. Another thing you can do is RE really fast after one another, and remove the animation at the start of the ult cast.

2. Wall hopping with your third Q. This is often just a little thing, but it can probably one day save your life. The most notable hoppable walls are the small ones at river that we all know, the small ones at the tribushes, and there are small areas at the dragon, nashor, blue buff and big wraith you can hop over. There's also between mid lane base entrance and red buff a wall you can hop over, but that one is really damn hard. In one of aforementioned custom games I managed it like 2 times in 50-60 tries. And I realize I'm missing some more. If it looks small enough, try it out, or look up a YouTube video. Also you can hop Jarvan's ult wall or Anivia's wall with any Q or E, and you can also hop over towers with your third Q.

3. No one yet touched on items. Riven's not useful as a tank. Just not. You either deal no damage, or you're not tanky enough. Therefore, you should simply go full damage. I would advice for masteries (no, masteries are mandatory) the 5% cdr in the offensive page, for runes you could try 5% flat blues and 5% scaling, so you only need 25% from items to cap out (which is too good to pass on): Boots + Brutalizer. Considering you have less than no sustain, you'll need life steal, and you got amazing AD scalings, which means that Ravenous Hydra is often a really good buy, also because that, with the AoE from your abilities, lets you clear minion waves while just passing through the lane. The downside is that you can't freeze a lane once you have a Tiamat. Try start with Brutalizer + Tiamat, with a Vampiric scepter early if you need the sustain because you're against some b*tch like a Darius or Cho'gath who you can't simply bully away otherwise. You will also NEED a Last Whisper to deal damage, like any damage focused champion, and a Guardian Angel because you're a melee who doesn't scale well enough with health or defenses to make a Randuins or something like that worth it. After I tend to build a Bloodthirster for the 35% life steal with AoE damage (and therefore healing), at which point I'm at full build, except for the Brutalizer. There are people who build it into Youmuu's or Black Cleaver, but I personally prefer selling it for an Infinity Edge and then buying a blue pot to stay at 40% cdr. I have been thinking about an Essence Reaver because of the cdr it grants, but I've not tried it out yet because I tend to have 40% cdr and enough life steal without. You can also opt to sell (or just not buy) boots for another damage item, but then reaching cdr cap can be hard, considering there are few good damage items on Riven.

4. Runes and masteries. I already touched on the cdr. Personally, I like to run 19/11/0 masterieson Riven, instead of the classical 21/9/0 or the 21/0/9 (or maybe 19/0/11, I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to log in and check) I ran for a while for the life steal, because taking the 5 armor from masteries allows me to forego armor runes and take even more flat AD in the seals, even though it's, gold-wise, sub-optimal. A standard AD - Armor - CDR/Mr - AD page will do too, though. I've ran that for a long time.

5. As shatteredbow said, if all else fails, don't hang around top lane, but roam and try get a kill, dragon or tower elsewhere on the map. If you get a map objective and/or 2+ kills more than the enemy team, it's worth losing top outer turret. And you're a snowball champ. If you can't snowball from the enemy top laner, it's probably because he can outduel you, in which case you can't farm either. And if you can farm, you should probaby just be more agressive, because that means you're not simply bullied out of lane.

About the engage you mentioned, I tend to always engage with EQW or EW, but I sometimes think it's a bit of a bad habit in certain cases. A QW or QQ engage might cost a slight bit of damage, but it does allow to back off with less damage, considering the shield is normally already down with the counterengage coming in since the nerfs.