RTO Here! About Me I am a Peak 578 LP Challenger, North American Top Laner and Streamer representing Team Radiance, whose mission is to promote positivity in League of Legends. My main is Renekton, but I play many other champions when I am target banned. I also have an incredible amount of top lane knowledge that I want to share with you guys. Riven is a very skill intensive champion, who relies on animation cancels and combos to output insane amounts of damage in a very short period. She has no resources other than her cooldowns, but her skillcap is infinite. She's easy to learn, hard to master - but completely worth the training when you one shot someone with one combo! If you like this guide, make sure to check out my even more in depth guides at my new website

★ The best rune for Riven to take, due to the extra damage and healing it provides. You're always going to be trying to stick to your enemy, and Conqueror is the most useful of all the runes, helping you sustain and kill enemies.

★ Another that mostly focuses on the healing you receive, potentially turning fights around in your favor. You also gain an extra 20 gold on takedowns, a nice little bonus for helping you get fed.

★ Riven is very fast paced and she benefits from attack speed, as it increases the speed of her combos. It also synergizes well with Conqueror, enabling you to stack faster. If you're vs hard CC teams, take Legend: Tenacity. Better to lose out some attack speed, than be stuck in a Morgana binding for the full duration.

★ Riven excels at dueling enemies, and with the previous runes that we have chosen, it's very easy for her to outplay opponents, and Last Stand ensures that we manage that, increasing our damage the lower health we go.

★ The best rune for snowballing an early game lead, saving you 300g which goes towards your core items, and boosting your MS a little more after receiving the boots.

★ You gain 5% CDR, increases your max CDR, reduces the cooldown on your summoner spells, and an extra 5% CDR on any active items. Riven scales extremely well with CDR, so an extra 5% for free is not to be missed out on.

★ Increasing your AD overall is the best choice for Riven, we already have AS and CDR runes, along with the items we build. Flat damage will be more useful.

★ Your next two runes are interchangeable depending on the enemy match up you're against. More AP? Take magic resist. More physical? Take armor. Want / need more hp? Take HP!

PASSIVE ABILITY

Runic Blade ✦ Riven's blade gains a Charge for 6 seconds every time she uses an ability (stacks up to 3 times). Riven's basic attacks consume a Charge to deal 25% − 50% (based on level) bonus physical damage. ✦ Runic Blade is affected by critical strike modifiers.

Q

Broken Wings ✦ Riven dashes towards the target nearest to the cursor or in the direction she is currently facing, dealing physical damage to all enemies in front of her. Broken Wings can then be reactivated twice within the next 4 seconds, with the second cast refreshing the timer. ✦ The third cast knocks up and damages all enemies around Riven in an expanded radius. The third cast is also the only cast able to dash over terrain, and can do so longer than its normal range. ✦ Each Broken Wings cast causes her next basic attack to occur more quickly. This is not considered a basic attack reset. ✦ Targeted Broken Wings casts grant sight of an area around Riven to the enemies.

W

Ki Burst ✦ Riven's sword emits a burst of runic energy that shocks nearby enemies, dealing physical damage and applying a stun for 0.75 seconds.

E

Valor ✦ Riven dashes in the direction of the cursor, shielding herself for 1.5 seconds. If she targets an enemy with Valor, she will briefly reveal herself and the area around her to the enemies. ✦ Other abilities can be cast during the dash and their cast time is cancelled if used at the end or briefly after the dash.

R

Blade of the Exile ✦ Riven empowers her sword for 15 seconds, gaining (20% AD) bonus attack damage, 75 bonus range on her basic attacks, increased range on Broken Wings and Ki Burst, and the ability to cast Wind Slash once for the duration. ✦ Wind Slash - Riven unleashes a wave of energy in a cone, dealing physical damage to all enemies hit, increased by 0% − 200% (based on missing health). ✦ Wind Slash will briefly grant vision of an area around Riven to the enemies. ✦ There is a 1 second cooldown before Riven can cast Wind Slash after activating Blade of the Exile.

When it comes to the early game, depending on your match up, Riven can easily secure a first blood through a brush cheese - much like Darius. You can ready your Broken Wings by reactivating it as late as possible, and by the time your opponent makes it to lane, you can cast your third activation - and then have a 3 second cooldown - and have the new 3 charges. This effectively gives you 4 charges and 2 knock ups.

If you're against a melee champion, level 2 you want to take Ki Burst and engage on them as soon as possible - if you hit level 2 first. The trade should lie heavily in your favour with your extra stats and ability, allowing you to take priority of the lane. If your opponent is too tanky, or is ranged, you can just take Valor for safe farming.

You can out trade nearly anyone level 3 with your full combo, becoming a lane menace and capitalizing on any miss-steps your enemy does. You can do your quick Q combo, ending with your stun - and using Valor to shield yourself as you leave the corpse of your enemy behind! The following levels, you just become stronger and stronger, and this brings us into Blade of the Exile.

Most match ups can be easily one shot post 6, and by using your combos, you can secure 1v1 duels and even turn around a 1v2 - especially if they think they can tower dive you. Make sure to keep an eye on any potential ganks coming if you push up, you don't want to use your Broken Wings escape or your Valor - and end up dead. Don't push under tower if you're against an enemy Nasus, you're just going to open him up to free farming his stacks - it's best to freeze near your own and make them vulnerable to ganks.

Riven is very adept at clearing waves, even in the early game. Make sure to push the waves when you're going to recall, netting as much CS as you can, while potentially denying the enemy - if they are in base and you've crashed the minions into the tower.

Help out your jungler if he comes to take Rift Herald, and secure first blood tower for your team. At this point you can potentially invade the enemies jungle, taking away vital XP, gold and their blue buff, if you're on red side.



Outside of laning phase, you have the option to group with your team and take objectives, or split push. If your team has a strong team fight, you can group with them, invading the enemy jungle, forcing fights over objectives, or pushing lanes.

Riven can split push rather well. She's an excellent duelist, and her wave clear is extremely strong. You should have capped CDR by this point and insane survivability, allowing you to easily pressure the map. If you do decide to split push, these are the most optimal times -

If Baron Nashor is alive and your Teleport is available, you can split push bot lane.
If Baron Nashor is alive and your Teleport is down, you will be split pushing top lane.

If Baron Nashor is dead, and your Teleport is down, you will split push bot lane, especially if a dragon will be spawning.
If Baron Nashor is dead, and your Teleport is available, you can split push top lane.

You want to split push the lane opposite to the most important, neutral objective, if your Teleport is available. This way, you can take the majority of pressure off the objective, as the enemies will not be able to answer you solo, and they give up the objective to your team. If you know the enemies will be collapsing on you soon, you will want to spam ping your team to complete the objective as quickly as possible. If the enemies collapse on your team, you can Teleport to them to quickly reach the fight.

Riven is not a tank, even though she can sometimes feel like one. Your job is to take out the backline carries, and peel for your ADC/APC as much as you can, without inting for them.

Before a teamfight breaks out, you want to be priming your Broken Wings as we spoke about in the early game & combos section. If you can do it from fog of war, this is the best way to catch your enemies off guard. If they see you doing it, most people know that you're going to engage shortly after and they will back off. You can then activate Blade of the Exile and Flash with Valor and Ki Burst, into a Wind Slash to easily one shot a squishy target.
Be careful if the enemy team have a Lulu, she will Whimsy you, completely negating any of your damage and essentially rendering you useless. The same goes for any very hard CC such as Morgana's Dark Binding, or Malzahar's Nether Grasp.

Broken Wings Cancelling :-
Riven's Broken Wings applies damage before the animation is completed, and by inputting a movement command during the animation itself, you can shorten the during you are locked into Broken Wings.

Auto Attack Cancelling :-
When you auto attack, the damage is applied before the animation is completed, resulting in the end animation being virtually useless. You can cancel the end of the animation with move commands, item actives, and all of Riven's abilities.

Input Buffering :-
The first ability - Blade of the Exile has a cast time, and pressing any ability after that is automatically queued up to be cast next. As soon as the first ability is cast, the next is essentially cast at 0 MS.

Double Cast Combo :-
Riven's Valor lets her cast two abilities simultaneously, if both keys are pressed at the same time, shortly after pressing Valor. This is hard to get used to, and takes a lot of practice. Once you've mastered it, one of the highest damaging combos that takes advantage of this is Valor > AA > Ki Burst & Broken Wings.

Adrian Riven is one of the best Riven mains out there, and this is a well known clip of him showcasing the Double Cast Combo -:



AA > Broken Wings > Move - This is the "Fast Q Combo", your Q is used to cancel the AA animation, and your movement is used to cancel the Q animation. This is hard to pull off at first, but it's your bread and butter so you need to learn it!

Valor > Ki Burst

Valor > Blade of the Exile > Broken Wings

Wind Slash > Broken Wings

Valor > Broken Wings

Blade of the Exile > Ki Burst




Valor > AA > Ki Burst & Broken Wings

Valor > Blade of the Exile > Flash > Broken Wings > AA > Ki Burst > AA > Wind Slash

Wind Slash > Ki Burst - If you use this correctly, you ult while your opponent is stunned.

Valor > Blade of the Exile > Ki Burst & Broken Wings

Valor > Blade of the Exile > Flash > Ki Burst > AA > Wind Slash > Broken Wings

I hope you have enjoyed and learnt enough from my Riven guide, to exile your foes, and conquer the game.

If you're interested in seeing more of Riven, Renekton and myself, please follow my stream! I am streaming every day, and I engage with my chat consistently.

If you like this guide, make sure to check out my even more in depth guides at my new website

[*] 11/27/2019 - Published Guide.
[*] 11/23/2020 - Updated for preseason.