Riven/Strategy

		"Some things must remain buried." Strategy is highly subjective and may become outdated without any notice. Because of this, the League of Legends Wiki has decided to retire strategy pages and would recommend using other platforms (such as YouTube) to find guides. For more information visit this thread. This page continues to exist for archive purposes.

Champion Spotlight

Recommended Items

Summoner's Rift
Starting	3
Early
Essential
Offensive
Defensive
Consumables

Summoner's Rift (Jungler)
Starting	3
Early
Essential
Offensive
Defensive
Consumables

Twisted Treeline
Starting	2
Essential
Offensive
Defensive
Consumables

Howling Abyss
Starting	3
Essential
Offensive
Defensive
Consumables

Tips

Playing As Riven

• Try to chain the key parts of your abilities to cover your vulnerabilities and capitalize on the opponent's mistakes, such as the downtime of their escapes.
• Riven's Broken Wings locks onto the champion your cursor hovers over at the time of cast. If you want to move past your opponent, make sure that your cursor is past your opponent as well.
• Riven lacks a source of healing or strong defense and must compensate with burst combos. Lead into fights with Broken Wings and Ki Burst, while using Valor to escape and absorb counter-harass.
• Riven is great for Twisted Treeline. Her strong early game and mobility with abilities help her to dominate top lane, as well as give her great ganking ability. She also performs very well in the jungle. After netting a couple of kills early, you should be able to snowball pretty hard.

Playing Against Riven

• Don't forget about Riven's mobility should you overextend, her Broken Wings allows her to dash up to 3 times, and her Valor allows her to dash and grants her a shield. This can create a very long gap between you and Riven.
  • Riven has a great deal of mobility but she cannot move very far with any one skill. Rooting or silencing her during her combo will greatly reduce her effectiveness.
• All of Riven's damage is physical, prioritize  armor if an opposing Riven gets out of control.
• Riven excels at dueling multiple melee attackers at once, as she will be on an almost equal footing damage-wise. If pairing up against Riven, don't go in as double melee until she has expended her full combo.
• In lane, when Riven uses her abilities against your minions rather than yourself, she becomes vulnerable. She'll lack the damage and escape mechanisms that they provide while on cooldown, enabling you to briefly play aggressive. This is usually only advisable when she uses Broken Wings against minions, since it's her main damage source and escape ability. Of course, the more abilities she has on cooldown, the better. Take advantage of these situations as much as possible before she gets any cooldown reduction items, as her abilities have high cooldowns at low ranks.

• Wait for  Riven to use  Wind Slash or until after  Blade of the Exile has worn off before striking her. Riven has no innate sustain and the shield is her only source of damage mitigation.
  • Do not face Riven as her Wind Slash deals more damage the lower your health is. If you're still squishy and you know she has acquired her ultimate, do not linger around with below 25% health even to turret hug, as she can, and will, flank around to kill you with Wind Slash.
• Do not underestimate  Riven's defensive stats, even if she is building straight damage.  Valor scales off her bonus attack damage and has a considerably low cooldown late game.
• Save your high-damaging channeled spell (e.g. Nunu's Absolute Zero) as Riven's 3rd Broken Wings and Ki Burst can interrupt channeled spells.
• Avoid towerdiving a Riven, as her kit and mobility excels at countering any attempts to kill her under tower. For example, with Ki Burst she can stun you, under her tower

Playstyle

Riven is an aggressive combo fighter that can weave into the fray to decimate and disrupt weak opponents. Her sustained damage and frequent uptime give her dangerous momentum and excellent mobility.

• Riven's abilities have a ton of combinations to chain together depending on the situation. Combined with her animation canceling, she becomes a fighter that can deliver a large burst of damage in very fast motions. Starting practice is the only surefire way to get better at using her kit.

Ability Usage

• Autoattacking in between each Broken Wings allows for the most sustained damage as you consume Runic Blade stacks to deal extra damage
  • Since Broken Wings produces three Runic Blade charges, which is exactly the number that it can store, you may wish to complete it to initiate a fight with her knockup, following up with autoattacks and her other skills.
  • It is a good idea to learn how to autoattack cancel with Riven. This can be done by using any of her abilities immediately as the damage is applied during an autoattack. Because Riven's autoattack animation is longer than the time it takes for the damage to actually register, doing this can cut off more than a second with a combo such as Q > AA > Q > AA > Q > AA.
  • You must apply a new attack command in between each Broken Wings to obtain the quickest damage possible.
    • The best way to go about this is by autoattacking, immediately pressing Q when the damage of the autoattack is dealt, while hovering over the target. As the animation of the Q is playing, order Riven to move anywhere beside the target and immediately right click the target again. Both of these clicks should happen before the animation of Q is finished. This will allow both the animation of the Q and of the autoattack to be cancelled and will significantly increase your burst speed once mastered.
• Some combinations of abilities allow for better speed. For example, any cast of Broken Wings can be used while the animation of Wind Slash is still running. The fastest way to burst down a squishy target, if you can do it without additional autoattacks, is E > R > Crescent > W > Q > R > Q > Q. Every ability in this combo will cancel the animation of the ability before it, except for the 2nd R and the 3rd Q.
• Blade of the Exile lasts for 15 seconds so use it at the start of the fight instead of at the end.
• Using Broken Wings in conjunction with Valor will give you small boosts of mobility as they move you forwards a bit. This is a very efficient way to move around the map, as your moves cost nothing. Broken Wings, however, allows you to click on the mini-map and use it to continue moving, while Valor will cancel your move actions.
  • Beware using abilities right before a skirmish, as your abilities will be on cooldown and thus be unavailable for the fight.
• Broken Wings can also allow you to chase an enemy so that you can knock them up.
• Remember that Broken Wings and Valor give you some mobility boosts for fleeing, but only the 3rd strike of  Broken Wings can pass map terrain. You can, however, dash with all of them through terrain generated by abilities like Crystallize, Cataclysm, or Pillar of Ice.
  • Make sure you test what map terrain is jumpable over, an example being: the walls separating the river and the jungle in Summoner's Rift.
• Be aware that Wind Slash has a cast time and a travel time as well, so you shouldn't waste it on enemies who are just about to leave its range. Try using smartcast to save precious seconds in aiming the ability.
• Wind Slash deals maximum damage to multiple opponents at or below 25% maximum health, therefore use Wind Slash to finish off enemies who are fleeing or deciding to stay despite low health.
• Riven is an all-around strong champion in top solo lane due to her ability to avoid ganks with her mobility, her manaless costs, and her instant cast shield. Play aggressively and use Valor to shield your way through harass.
• Broken Wings resets her autoattacks on each cast and it is useful to cut off its animations (tested under attack speed slows).
• Broken Wings' dash speed is roughly equivalent to 475 movement speed. At 550 movement speed, however, simply moving is faster than using Broken Wings as a method of faster travel.
• Ki Burst can be used to cancel the animations of both Riven's autoattacks and Ravenous Hydra's Crescent active, however Ki Burst's own animation cannot be cancelled. If you like playing risky though, you can use Ki Burst during your Valor animation, as it removes Ki Burst's animation. Because of the movement however (and that's the risky part), you may not use your stun in the area you would like. Make sure you don't waste the crowd control just because you wanted to spare out one animation.
• Riven may cancel the animation of  Wind Slash with  Broken Wings' 3rd cast. Use this to speed up your combo. 
• Don't use Wind Slash right away if the target is no longer stunned or knocked up, because you risk missing them if they Flash away or simply dodge it. As the range is quite long and shaped like a cone, it's easiest to hit when the enemy is not right next to you, so it may be wise to hold on to it until they try to escape.

Runes

Being a combo fighter with no resources to manage, the Domination tree grants the most synergy.

• Electrocute can easily proc from Riven's combos.
• Sudden Impact allows Riven to hit squishy targets harder, and will always proc from Broken Wings.
• Ravenous Hunter provides Riven with much needed sustain for her to survive skirmishes.

Inspiration has some interesting choices:

• Kleptomancy will reap a lot of benefit since Riven can proc it frequently, rewarding her playstyle with additional gold to help her snowball faster.
• Since Riven seeks frequent ability usage yet has no energy or mana limit, she benefits from the Cosmic Insight more effectively than most other champions.

• Conqueror from the Precision tree might be a better choice with a build more focused at trading extensively, especially against tankier opponents.

Items

As a frequent fighter, Riven benefits from items that grant  Attack Damage,  Health,  Cooldown Reduction, and  Lethality.

• Having a way to slow the enemy or speed yourself up is mandatory on Riven.
  • A Frozen Mallet is good for this, since you will be using auto attacks in between abilities to maximize Runic Blade (none of your abilities will otherwise proc the slow). It also gives you health, which is a must, since Riven is squishy when stunned, rooted, blinded, or otherwise prevented from auto attacking or using her E or her Q to escape and/or shield.
  • Randuin's Omen works very well on Riven as while she may have four ways to dash, they are all short-ranged and Broken Wings loses damage if used fairly far-away from the enemy, and she is still a melee champion that can be damaged by ranged champions without reprisal until she gets close enough. Valor can move Riven close enough to a target to slow them with Randuin's Omen and then walk close enough to have casting Broken Wings move her into melee-range while damaging the target.
  • Duskblade of Draktharr's Nightstaler passive also gives a very effective slow provided that Riven utilizes a bush or Fog of War to charge the passive. In addition, Duskblade of Draktharr improves cooldown reduction, AD and lethality, allowing her to scale faster and deliver more damage to squishies and tanks alike. And, the out of combat movement speed rewards flanks/ganks onto the backline, but Riven must be more careful about their positioning if they want to make full use of the movement speed.
• Riven can make good use of the second life from Guardian Angel since she can fight her way out of tough situations.

• Maw of Malmortius is sensible for surviving a lot magic damage when Riven needs to stay close.
• Death's Dance not only gives as much attack damage as The Bloodthirster but also cooldown reduction, spell vamp, and burst mitigation. Moreover, Riven's shield can absorb some of the bleed damage coming from Death's Dance's damage mitigation passive.
• Riven does only physical damage, so a Last Whisper is a good item to counter the armor that should be built against you.
  • The Black Cleaver is also a great item on Riven, as Riven can easily stack its passive with her combos, not to mention the extra health, extra mobility and the cooldown reduction the item gives are very useful.
• Riven is a fairly squishy champion. Grabbing Doran's Shield, Cloth Armor, or Boots of Speed and a few Health Potions into a match will help your survivability early on. Later these can be built into Ninja Tabi or a defensive item.
• Riven's damage output is severely hampered by crowd control since it will disrupt your flurry. Consider taking Mercury's Treads over Ionian Boots of Lucidity and getting Mercurial Scimitar against crowd control heavy teams.
• Youmuu's Ghostblade should be used after the 2nd hit of Broken Wings or during the last frame of animation of the 3rd strike to maximize the effective time of the active.
• Stacking Doran's Blades early game provides the most cost efficient combination of sustain through life steal, health, and AD.

Counterpicks

• Riven relies on her abilities and quick combos more than her basic attacks, anything that can disrupt her combo (such as a  silence, a  stun, or even a blind) can drastically reduce her damage output.
  • Champions with multiple interruptions, such as  Alistar, can work well as effective counters for her in a 1v1 lane.
• Malphite is a very painful matchup for Riven, as he gains massive amounts of armor with his passive, can continue to stack armor items, can slow Riven's attack speed with his Ground Slam which disrupts Riven's combo, and can lock her down with his ultimate Unstoppable Force.
• Cho'Gath can also be an effective counter, as he can silence Riven and disrupt her combo with that. He is also one of the few champions capable of winning extended trades against Riven. While difficult to hit considering Riven's insane mobility, a Rupture will ruin Riven's day, making her vulnerable to the rest of Cho's combo. He can also stack health, making him unburstable and making him last a long time against Riven since she has no means of dealing damage based on Cho's max health.