•Treat Q as a pacing tool, not just a combo button: a lot of Riven’s edge comes from knowing when to Fast Q for a punish and when to stagger Q1/Q2/Q3 so Q3 stays loaded and the next few seconds stay yours
•Your E should already know why it is being cast—shielding the real return hit, setting up E-AA-WQ, or covering Q1/Q2-W-E out—because Riven’s lane gets much worse when E is spent as a blank gap-close
•Good Riven games make top lane feel haunted: crash the wave, take another bite out of tower, then disappear over terrain so the enemy has to answer both the side wave and the threat that you already left, especially since her early leads lose force if they are not spent before the map clogs up