What gives more damage on Riven; bloodthirster or black cleaver?

GuileRaven·7/10/2015, 5:42:28 AM·1 votes·1,186 views

Obviously bloodthirster is the better pick if you are more worried about nuking squishies, but what about against a team with 2 or 3 beefy champions (or at least one heavy duty armor stacker?)

My typical full damage build has always been (not in this order) Ghostblade, Hydra, Maw, Last Whisper, and Bloodthirster. However, I am wondering if it might be better to grab black cleaver over bloodthirster against a heavy tank team. I'd grab it over last whisper, but last whisper is too cheap of a powerspike item to pass up.

5 Comments

JakeIsAFox7/10/2015, 5:46:54 AM2 votes

build whatever you want, press r.

Roaranor7/10/2015, 1:57:14 PM1 votes

Black Cleaver essentially replaced Youmuu's as Riven's CDR/armor shred item. It sacrifices the 10% crit and active (she didn't honestly need the attack speed that much thanks to animation cancelling), but some of that latent power was returned through the phage passive you get (less ms, but more consistent), fairly nice amount of HP, and higher amounts of armor shred and CDR.

tl;dr replace ghostblade if going against a tank team, either works on squishies

GundayMonday7/10/2015, 4:49:06 PM1 votes

Depends on the amount of time you have to work with and how much armor your opponent has. Things to consider: Flat AD the item gives. 40 extra AD on blood thirster. Amount of armor negated by the black cleaver (extra damage as you stack the cleaver on an opponent). Amount of time the fight will be (cooldown reduction from cleaver matters more for longer fights than shorter ones). In that same regard, the blood thirster will heal you a little from the lifesteal, so you can factor that in as well. Are you getting kited? Are you melee range and landing abilities? Are there creeps that you're also hitting and lifestealing from?

Lots of things to consider. Depends on the matchup and the situation which one is better from an overall DPS standpoint. Make sense?

Drunk Rummate7/10/2015, 4:52:12 PM1 votes

yoummus versus squishies. lets you auto attack a lot faster due to the active which means your burst combo is almost instantaneous.

cleaver is good vs tankier teams or teams high in CC because it opens up merc treads as a strong boots option in addition to the added pen.

GuileRaven7/10/2015, 8:03:24 PM1 votes

No youmuu's is essential for taking out towers, 1 shotting adcs, and all around survivability with the sprint. Also, brutalizer is such a cheap power-spike item. It's simply too good to pass up.