She is great. Sick damage, sick mobility, a low cooldown AD scaling shield is great on a map where healing is reduced, high damage low cooldown ult, strong dueler, great disruption. She is beast mode on dominion, period.

I build either Merc Treads or Ninja Tabi (start boots 1 + prospectors blade) depending on the enemy team, brutalizer, spirit visage, phage, atmas, finish entropy, finish ghostblade, then sell prospectors and build sanguine (or LW if enemy stacking armor) if the game goes that long, but it never does.

I suppose I should elaborate:

Riven is powerful, but has the same weaknesses that a lot of heroes do:

She isn't Tryn/Jax/Akali. Her skills are incapable of critting, and attack speed is a very lackluster purchase on her.

*shrug*

Currently, I think Riven's biggest problem is itemization. There simply aren't that many good choices for her without wasting money on crit/AS.

That said, I've been building her Armor Pen / CDR and doing quite well. Your shield scales 1:1 with AD, and the cooldown is stupidly short if you get CDR. If I could just pick 6 items to throw on her, I'd go with

Ionian Boots
Entropy -> Hexdrinker (SR)
Youmuu
Sanguine Blade -> Wriggle's Lantern (SR)
Last Whisper
GA

On SR you have less money (usually) and extra defense matters more.

I smash Jax with Riven. He jumps in, I stun, QQQ, dash away, then activate ult. No autoattacks so I dont proc his stun. He jumps in, my shield absorbs it, I stun, QQQ, dash away. He jumps in, shield absorbs it, I stun, QQQ, Wind Slash. Jax dead I walk away with half health.

AWISE FROM YO GWAVE.

I haven't seen Riven in a while... whatever happened to her?

Riven is good in theory. She runs off no mana and she takes advantage of the free armor pen from the Dominion buff.

Brutalizer is definitely core. I'm not sure how exactly I would itemize her since you can't stack Sanguine Blades the same way you stack Bloodthirsters.

My build might look something like: Prospector's Blade + Boots. Rush Brutalizer. Get a Sanguine Blade. Get a Phage, finish Youmuu's Blade and Ionion Boots then finish Entropy. Game should be over by now. If not, then itemize properly with things like Tiamat/Hexdrinker/Spirit Visage/Aegis/Thornmail.

That's probably Riven's greatest weakness. Hard itemization because only one big item gives AD and Cooldown Reduction.

She's strong. Good pick.

Riven's my most reliable champ in Dominion. She can control the windmill fight, dominate bot, sustain forever, burst someone down, etc.

P.blade + boots
Brtutalizer
hexdrinker if needed
merc's or cdr boots
sanguine
entropy

Now that masteries give you AD/level, 21/9/0 or 25/5/0 for cdr.