[Champion] Riven

V1.0.0.125:

Broken Wings Broken Wings: Riven steps forward and lashes out in a series of powerful sword slashes. This ability can be activated up to 3 times in a short period.
1st/2nd Use: Deals damage to a small area in front of her
3rd Use: Jumps into the air and slams downward, causing a larger impact nova that deals damage and knocks nearby enemies back.
Ki Burst Ki Burst: Riven damages and stuns nearby enemies.
Valor Valor: Riven dashes forward and gains a shield for a short duration.
Blade of the Exile Blade of the Exile (Ultimate): Riven's sword reforms, giving her a percentage multiplier on her total attack damage, extended range on her damaging abilities and basic attacks and the ability to use Wind Slash once.
Wind Slash Wind Slash: While Blade of the Exile is active, Riven can reactivate the ability to emit a large shockwave that deals damage to all units hit based on their missing life.
Runic Blade Runic Blade (Passive): Riven's abilities charge her blade, causing her to do bonus damage on her next autoattack. Riven can store up to 3 charges, but only expends one at a time.

Strengths:
1. Scaling
As in the longer it goes the more and more powerful she will become (in terms of power curve relative to other champions, she only gets stronger: multiplicative AD on her ult makes this so), as long as you aren't getting denied farm on her its relatively easy to make a comeback against fed APs and AD carries with good positioning and itemization

If the game ever gets to the point where you have 6 items on you, you should not lose unless the rest of your team is like level 9 and even then it is possible to win because you 3 shot the tanky guys and 1 - 2 shot the squishies

2. Strength in lane
She's strong. She wins a lot of lanes outright, and the ones she does not, it is difficult to deny her farm because she has high mobility to escape from combos and ganks. She doesn't mind trading farm either in close matchups, because she will scale harder in 99% of them.

3. Scaling
I have to put it here again because it might have not gotten across the first time around. She is stronger than ANYBODY as long as you position and play yourself somewhat like what you really are, the hardest carry in the game. Unless you are the absolute tankiest person on your team you don't run in like a "tanky DPS". Let your teammates soak up the engagement cc, whether that be tibbers or galio ultimate. If you can avoid the majority of AoE cc and can get in a position to deal damage, you have done your job. Your e and q give you massive mobility, even through slows. As long as you're whacking something, you are doing your job. If you are whacking a squishy, even better for you. If I haven't sold you yet, here are some numbers. With a completed build, I see myself doing 1300-1400 damage crits lategame with passive and ult on, not to mention the 500 damage aoe nuke ministun on w (which is actually incredibly useful in teamfights, if your team has an aoe ultimate it is a really good setup as well as dumb aoe damage lategame), 500 damage shield on a super low cd esp with blue elixir and or buff (when you can shield every 4 seconds for 500 damage that adds up VERY quickly), and of course her ult which executes anybody who flashes away from your initial RAWRIHITYOUdamage. Lategame, as long as you take away their health to about 25-35%, the r active almost always a kill if you itemize correctly. She is a MONSTER, and you have to build a team around that accordingly.

Weaknesses:
With wriggles build, there is definite vulnerability while you are waiting for your first BF / BT against certain matchups, but no lane is impossible to farm if you know when to relent and when trading is worthwhile.

The reasoning behind each item is this:
Cloth5pot: I have tried various openings, such as dblade, cloth5pot, boots3pot, null mantle 2pot, whatever. except for a select few matchups against some casters, cloth5pot generally seems to be the strongest opening in the vast majority of lane matchups (especially top, where I feel riven is at home). Even against casters, cloth5pot helps against autoattack harass (which is extremely noticeable) and gives the riven player a nice margin of error to work with. In matchups where the opponent goes dblade or boots 3 pot (not giving riven the respect she deserves!) you can win via straight attrition. in cloth5pot matchups, riven's superior damage with no mana constraints usually wins you exchanges as well unless you take abnormal amounts of creep aggro. In general, a very safe, a very strong, and a very direct counter opening to most top laners.
Wriggles: gives all 3 of the stats that riven loves (mentioned above) and a free ward to boot! This is your laning item, as well as being just a nice little bit of everything until you really start rolling. There is at least one hero that becomes immediately more sustainable than you with wriggles (udyr) when you both get it, but don't give a damn cause you will outscale the bloody hell out of him later. Wriggles will let you farm against any laner as long as you know when to play passive and when to abuse the imba lifesteal it gives. If you have immediate trouble finishing your wriggles, you CAN go dblades and save the cloth for GA later, but you forsake the sustain that wriggles gives (which makes up for her natural lack of sustain: her base hp regen, while great, cannot make up for the sustain that a lot of skills and passives that champs like yorrick and udyr have) as the lifesteal on dblades are much more ignorable than that of wriggles. You don't get wriggles for the immediate damage or impact on teamfights though, but mostly as a method to be able to farm up for your
Bloodthirster: godly on her for abovementioned reasons. As soon as you get some stacks rolling on a bloodthirster, you are very powerful in teamfights. Also, if your laning opponent is unfortunate enough to still be laning against you, you can destroy him and then lifesteal whatever meager damage he has dealt to you. You will definetly notice the boost in damage on all of your skills and e as soon as you have completed the BF, and it will only get bigger as you complete your BT.
GA and mercs: both give very good defensive stats, and both of their passives are great on riven. If your opponent team is full of AD, then you may want to complete the chain vest or cloth armor before completing your mercs (or both!) for midgame fights. If you need immediate oomph in a teamfight because your team is struggling, then you should consider grabbing some of these before finishing your BT or BF; this is however highly suboptimal because Riven's weakest point is when she is farming for her first BF sword, and unless you can make an immediate advantage through winning a teamfight with the increased survivability, it just lengthens the time in which she is weak. When she has GA completed and BT stacked though, she is incredibly powerful, doing massive damage and being hard to focus due to her 150+ armor (often hitting 180-200 lategame depending on masteries and runes) and the GA passive combining well with her e and lifesteal.
LW / Additional BT / Iedge: More damage / lifesteal. Order is situational, if they're stacking armor because they are terrified of you LW, BT and Iedge are both solid choices otherwise. I will usually get whichever I can afford if I'm not going or have already completed LW. Neither is usually strictly superior to the other if you haven't sold your wriggles yet, but BT is more affordable and helps surviving more, IEdge is more damage (but I hardly ever feel a lack of damage at this point in the game). After you get Iedge, make sure to start chugging green elixers as it really is a huge increase in crit, and if fights are close (which they generally tend to not be after you finish most of your core) then red pots as well. Chugging all 3 pots is a must when you're ending the game or have your build completed.

QSS is situationally okay, but if you're playing correctly GA does lessen the threat of a suppression instaburst. Buy in place of the second BT if needed, and probably sell it for the BT by endgame anyway.

Riven's level 1 is terrifying. It should not be played passively if possible. With flat AD quints and the masteries above, your passive gives you 10 additional damage on an autoattack with it charged, each q does 37 damage per hit, and she has 67 base damage on her autoattack.
So before resistances, if she gets a full combo with q auto q auto q auto off, she deals 342 damage total. That is quite a bit. Of course, with resistances and a margin of error of one less autoattack, it will come out to less, but it is still extremely formidable.
As Riven, you want to general take creep advantage level 1 or 2. Even if it means that you eat a little poke, suck it up and push the wave so that you will hit level 2 before the opponent (or at least get rid of the melee minions as early as possible). From there you can push your advantage and go aggressive with your q.
If you hit level 2 before your opponent and have already gotten level 1 damage on him, you can go again and chain in your w when you feel necessary. He should be near dead and forced to pop a pot. By nature of this kind of aggression, you are a target for ganks, so it is good to be wary of where the enemy jungler has started / is at any given time. If you feel the threat of being ganked early is very high, you might even request cvs / wards being put down by your support for toplane. Aside from ganks, there are relatively few lanes that you should lose straight up top lane if you open cloth5pot. The one thing to be wary of is if you run teleport to not go full retard against an opponent with exhaust or ignite, and to know your limits. This requires a little bit of falling and getting back up again (i.e. playing certain matchups until you know your limits and theirs) but once you have a good feel for it you can do well.

garen can go for a level 2 kill wtih dblade and ad marks, but if he doesn't manage to kill her then, he's fucked
and her e makes it so that you can trade with garen post 3 very easily
not to mention you can w before his q auto gets into range and run away if you dont wanna fight with him at any point

pantheon gets destroyed and is fairly easy to gank
nasus gets destroyed and is easy to gank

cho is really disadvantaged level 1-2, but if he can get over the rocky early levels and builds some good armor early it can become a farm off (i still wouldn't want to play cho against her because you're kinda forced into a static build path that the enemy AP should be able to take advantage of but w/e)
they're both decent to gank for, but late game riven is a much bigger beast
midgame fights they're both strong

olaf is strong vs her, its a matchup with very little margin of error for riven, but whoever gets the first gank will usually win. riven outscales him like fuck, so he MUST win or he's screwed

tryndamere scales comparably with riven and is equally strong or stronger at levels 2-3, so that's another matchup that comes down to ganks and individual skill level / use of skills well.

ryze with boots can kite her quite well, riven needs boots in that matchup because of how ryze's w works. after ryze gets tear, its a pain in the ass, because you WILL be forced back, even with wriggles.

udyr and irelia work, but neither can usually shut down her farm, and neither like trading farm because there are very few windows where either is as strong as riven in teamfights (level 7 irelia is pretty scary, but most dragon teamfights won't happen then; riven does a lot more aoe damage than irelia as well as being comparably or more mobile).

gangplank... i've never seen a gangplank shut me down, but i have shut down a TON of gangplanks. he has less survivability if he builds glass cannon, and his kit in general is less suited for teamfighting with the exception of his ult (and riven's probably does more damage anyway) and will get shut down if both riven and GP have wriggles and they are trading hits

i would probably go ryze or olaf because each definitely has a time period during which they are definitively stronger than riven in lane and in teamfights, and tryndamere for a safe fall-back that has good scaling (because olaf at least gets outscaled like fuck by riven, and ryze while having quite a bit of utility has less damage than her for sure)

Don't just blindly r->qqqweqqweqweqweqweqwe. Getting the most out of lifesteal and your insane 1.8 scaling on your passive is what makes or breaks a Riven player. Of course if you can be autoattacking and using your skills on the enemy Caitlyn or Vayne, do so (and she is really exceptional at taking them down). However, most reasonable teamfights start off with the two teams hitting each other and the enemy ad and support starting off to the side away from you. You can start off with a q or two and your ult turned on, and if the ad ever hits you while you're not cc'd, use your e and the third q to jump on them, autoattack, w, and then try to land your ult on as many people as possible. Don't charge super blindly though, and don't be the first to soak up all of the aoe cc. Use positioning, common sense, and your flash to do what you need to do.