Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Spotlight featuring Riven, the Exile
Riven is a melee fighter who specializes in mobility and intricate ability combos.
Playing her perfectly will require timing, planning, and managing your cooldowns.
Broken Wings is a three-part ability. You can activate it up to three times, dashing forward and damaging nearby enemies with each use.
The third activation will also knock back these enemies.
If you activate the ability while your cursor is hovering over an enemy, Riven will dash toward that enemy. Otherwise, Riven will dash in the direction she is facing.
Ki Burst damages and briefly stuns nearby enemies.
Valor causes Riven to dash toward your cursor and gives her a temporary damage-blocking shield.
Blade of the Exile is Riven’s ultimate.
This ability re-forges Riven’s broken sword, giving her bonus damage plus increased range on her attacks and offensive abilities.
You can activate the ability a second time to cast Wind Slash, sending out a skill-shot cone nuke that damages all enemies in its path.
This nuke deals more damage to enemies who are injured.
Riven’s passive is The Art of War. After each ability cast, Riven gains a buff, which can stack a few times.
Basic attacks performed by Riven while she holds this buff deal bonus damage and consume one stack.
Unless you attack in between some of your abilities, you can hit the stack cap and waste some of your passive’s potential.
Early on, Riven has an excellent harass game.
While you do put yourself in danger doing it, tossing around Broken Wings and dealing damage with The Art of War will give you a leg up.
In this case, chasing around Singed isn’t very smart, but I’m able to constantly poke at him.
At level 3, I can head in with Valor, use the shield to block counter-attacks, and blast through my abilities with basic attacks in between casts.
As I repeat this process, he keeps getting lower and lower until I dive in for the kill.
Valor into Broken Wings lets me land Ki Burst. Watch as I land one basic attack in between each use of Broken Wings.
As he Flashes out I chase in and pick up First Blood.
Once Singed comes back into lane, I’m able to play as a total bully.
Because of Riven’s mobility, once you gain the advantage you should try to keep it.
One combo gets him to half health, and then after the cooldown, I push in again.
I stick to him with Broken Wings, lock up his movement with Ki Burst, and finish him off with Blade of the Exile.
At this point Singed is underfarmed.
A lot of games have that one opponent who ends up being an easy kill, so let’s look at how to take those champions down as quickly as possible.
Lead with Broken Wings into Ki Burst and land a basic attack while he’s stunned.
Then close back into range with Broken Wings and hit another attack. Hit Broken Wings a third time for the knock-back and attack again.
Now you want to use Valor to chase as he runs, landing another attack.
I ended up having to waste Flash because I activated Blade of the Exile far too late.
Ideally you want to pop it early in the fight for the bonus damage and then activate Wind Slash for the killing blow.
Riven’s high mobility makes her great at chasing champions, even if they have crowd control spells.
I run to Lux who is extremely low.
As she turns to fire Light Binding, I turn to the side, move my cursor away from the spell, and dodge with Valor.
Then I head back her way and push through with Broken Wings. Unfortunately she’s just out of range, but I keep chasing.
As I follow, she makes the mistake of trying to juke me by turning around, but I close the gap immediately with Valor and Broken Wings.
Even with the Light Binding, I make sure I face the right way, activate Broken Wings two more times, and kill her during the knockback.
In the same vein, Riven is really good at running away. I activate Valor again and use Broken Wings to create more distance.
Make sure you keep giving Riven movement commands in between activations of Broken Wings to make sure she’s heading the right direction.
As Singed catches up, I put on a shield with Valor, tanking the Fling until my team arrives.
As Kog’maw comes to help, I use Exhaust, Ki Burst, and Broken Wings for damage.
As Singed creates distance, I Valor back into range and continue with basic attacks and Broken Wings for the knockback and the kill.
I catch Amumu in the jungle. Because he’s not running, I space out my abilities:
Ki Burst, attack, Broken Wings, attack, Broken Wings, attack, Broken Wings, attack, Valor, attack, Ki Burst.
Amumu runs away after hitting his ultimate. I could have dropped him with Blade of the Exile, but I hold onto it as we chase him down.
I miss Broken Wings and Kog’Maw takes him out with Living Artillery. Miss Fortune walks up and I Valor into range for Ki Burst.
As she runs I land three attacks empowered by The Art of War, picking up the kill.
We get into a teamfight in the enemy base. I attack Singed, following him with Broken Wings through the minion wave.
As he tries to escape, Valor into Ki Burst get me the first kill.
I try to leave the enemy area of effect spells and then see Lux get low.
I activate Blade of the Exile, then chase her with Valor and shoot her with Wind Slash as she retreats.
Karthus grabs the kill with Requiem and I turn to Amumu. Ki Burst, Broken Wings, and basic attacks pick up that kill.
Immediately I turn and Valor toward Miss Fortune, landing the third activation of Broken Wings for a knockback, then two more attacks for my third kill of the fight.
For runes I take armor penetration marks, flat armor seals, flat magic resist glyphs, and flat health regeneration quintessences.
This set-up is geared toward early game power, allowing me to survive almost any encounter in lane while dealing decent damage.
My masteries are 21/6/3, focusing on increasing my physical damage as much as possible and then increasing my durability.
I take Exhaust and Flash for summoners, mastering Exhaust in the Offense tree.
I take a point in Broken Wings at level 1 and leave it there, maxing Ki Burst first and Valor after.
I choose this build because the cooldowns on Ki Burst and Valor decrease with level and I want to use these cooldowns for increased mobility and to charge my passive.
This build does not give you the most burst damage. If you want to head in and kill targets in an initial burst, you should max Broken Wings above Valor.
For items I open with a Doran’s Blade. Then I grab Wriggle’s Lantern and Mercury Treads which give me a nice mix of damage and durability.
From there I graduate to some mid-tier damage and utility with Hexdrinker followed by Youmuu’s Ghostblade.
Then I head into late-game damage and durability, with my main considerations being Bloodthirster, Black Cleaver, Guardian Angel, and Infinity Edge.
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