Talk:Riven/@comment-116.75.5.74-20120522095303/@comment-4834593-20120522161957

^ Bloodthirster should indeed be core, but always remember that you are a melee. If you go too offensive early game, and take it directly after boots, you will be too squishy. You at least need a Wriggles first, and even then I wouldn't say you are perfectly safe. Exception is if you are roflstomping your enemies already.

IMO, Frozen Mallet is core on each carry, because of the health and the slow, which means noone gets away from you. And yeah, there are people who say Riven doesn't need it because of her dashes, but I often see I need my four dashes to be able to land just one basic attack on a fleeing enemy. With Frozen Mallet, this enemy is dead. Withou Frozen Mallet, he walks away. If you have it, you should also build an Atma's Impaler (it gives more attack damage/gold than a BF sword at 1500 health, when you are putting armor and crit chance equal in price to Chain Vest and Cloak of Agility. If you say you need more per gold because you are a bruiser, well, you get another 15+ AD from it, which equals to ~750 gold). It is for three reasons: The armor, which makes you survive longer in team fights, the attack damage, which is obvious, and the crit chance, because just your abilities won't kill anyone except a carry with the wrong runes at this moment in the game. A Maw of Malmortius can also be a very good item, because of the magic resist (that is not in any of the earlier items yet), and of course the attack damage. And the passive isn't bad either, if you have "only" 2800 health and 100 magic resist against a burst mage.

Situational are Infinity Edge (nice AD, plus you already have crits from Atma's Impaler), Warmog's Armor, if you need more tankyness, and it also gives you 18 or 19 attack damage from Atma's Imapler, Guardian Angel if you want some more armor and magic resist (and that nice passive), and a lot of other items that can be build on all bruisers.

Of course you also mustn't need to forget to sell Wriggles Lantern for (another) Bloodthirster endgame.

Last, the boots are depending on enemy team, as someone above already said: Ninja Tabi (heavy AD), Merc Threads (heavy cc), Ionian (neither heavy).

And for runes ask someone else. I just use the same as I use for Olaf, even while there are maybe (read: most likely) better ones.