im starting to main riven now, loving watching westrice play riven and the way he just burst pokes with her reading up some guide on her i know he maxs w >q>e and i do the same but after today watching a few games of her in the new spec mode i noticed every riven i saw was maxing q first, about 5 different rivens i saw all maxing her q first why do people max there q first? isn't w better then q ? all of them were top solo but 1 was jungle i can understand maxing q in jungle. what do u max first?

Depends on the match up.

For champs like Gangplank and Pantheon that like to harass from a distance, I usually max E first.

Q or W depending on how others react.

With hundreds of Riven games.... I can safely say it's mostly preference, or situational...

W first is safer, better for your team, better for kiting and guerrilla style bush play. Q is better for damage. Sometimes I raise the two equally. or sometimes I'll get a few points in E earlier if I need it to survive a heavy poker in lane.

If you're starting out I suggest you just try different ****. See what you like, see what suits your play style.

It depends who you're laning against, but I can't think of any time I've leveled Q first. Always either W (far more often) or W. I suppose Q would be better if you're laning against somebody slow and you can smack them between each jump for maximum damage, but generally you're better off just maxing your W for a decent amount of burst and stun.

always max W first, what you max afterwards is situational.

B4 everyone used to max stun first but since they moved some power from the stun to her Q's it's been like 50 50.

I feel the damage on Q gives you more dominance in lane especially when being aggressive. That's just what I've done since they nerfed damage on W and buffed Q.

I max out Q first. However, I used to max out W before Riven's latest tweak, as it did a lot of damage at the expense of a very low cooldown. Now her W is weaker (though the stun remains the same), but the Q does more damage. In any case, even though I changed my mind when the patch came out, I still don't see any problem on maxing out W first.

...One thing though. If the enemy happens to be a pretty annoying poker, like Gangplank, I usually take 2 points early on E, just to block his Q, but need a pretty good timing for it and know when he's going to Q on you. I personally think it's worth it, as you'll be able to farm without big worries.

q sucks for damage since you will be mostly using it to close the gap.

You can say whatever you want, but for me is WAY more useful to max Q first. Having a faster really small stun isn't useful, you only need 1 level for the stun, 2 at most. I've killed just way too many people with Q, because it deals quite a good damage if you max it first, you just need to know how to play Riven. If you don' t understand her playstyle, of course Q will suck for you.