Talk:Riven/@comment-26861478-20150806123817/@comment-5557556-20150811000814

Small history lesson for you guys.

When Riven came out, almost 4 years ago, wow when I think of it, it seems like it was yesterday, she had no good offensive items on her. Hydra didn't exist back then, Black Cleaver worked only on autos and had 45 attack damage and 30% attack speed plus 15 flat armor reduction that stacked 3 times, so completely useless on Riven. Frozen Mallet had only 20 attack damage.

So, for Riven there was only Youmuu's, Hexdrinker (Maw Of Malmortius also didn't exist), Bloodthirster (old one with stacking mechanic) or Last Whisper. Not a good selection. So people would go tanky with her in the early days. They bought only one or two offensive items, and those were mostly Last Whisper and Bloodthirster.

Now, thing with Riven was, she had the greatest health regen in the game. She had 12 health per 5 second regen. Second champion was Trundle (if I recall corectly) with 8.something. So when she starts the game, she would buy regrowth pendant which would get her another 15 per 5 totalling in 27 on level 1 with no runes, masteries or additional level. With some runes and masteries that was even crazier.

Now this continued into Force Of The Nature. This was like a core item on her. It spiked her regen so much she could outsustain Garen but unlike him, her's couldn't be interuppted. This followed to mercury threads or cdr boots but mostly mercury, then guardian angel 90% of the time. In between boots and guardian angel there would be either bloodthirster or last whisper or even both, in the end you would slap 1400 health warmog on her and some more regen.

So from the day one it was Force Of The Nature, one and only item that everyone rushed. I clearly remember it. She was unkillable because all that regens would pile up up to the point of being like Mundo or Garen with 3 aoe spells.

Then slowly things changed, regens on Riven were nerfed several times, then FotN removal, then Warmog health reduction, new items (Maw Of Malmortius, Hydra) and all other things that changed.

This gave an oportunity to build her full AD since there are now plenty of items to put on her where previously there was like 3 or 4 at total.

Everyone hated her because of her stupid regen, she could simply charge in, get low enough if you had enough firepower to kill her with so many tanky items, then get out quickly, wait a little bit (bonus points if you had baron regen, regen runes and masteries) and then engage again.

Riven never bought Banshee's Veil, it used to give mana (core Ryze item).

I don't know about skill order because I never played her back then. Also another thing to note, there was no champion that could effectively counter her except Garen who was pretty much the same as he is now. Olaf could also go toe to toe with her but when she bought warmog with 1400 health he was pretty much screwed. Kenen and Cho were useless because of her build path that hugged a lot of magic resist and Pantheon back then was pure garbage, he was in a terible pre-rework state with gigantic mana costs and no real items to build.

Other strong top laners didn't exist at the time so she was basically a king of the top lane.