Taliyah's W just got ruined.

I was worried that they would ruin Taliyah's W with these changes, and I was correct.

I use Smart cast/quick cast/whatever you want to call it. Prior to the changes, I really enjoyed Taliyah's W. Once you got used to it, it was very intuitive. You would hover over where you wanted to cast the W, press W, and then if you wanted to knock them somewhere other than up, you would move your mouse in that direction and then press W again.

Simple, quick, and because the spell was cast the first time you pressed W, the delay started immediately.

Now, let's look at it after the changes. You have to hover over where you want to cast the W, hold down W, move your mouse into the direction you want to knock them, and then let go of W.

Why is this worse?

Because it's now vector cast, the spell will not be cast until you let go of W. And before you let go of W, you have to move your mouse in the direction you want to knock them. And only after that will the spell's delay begin. This means that there is an unavoidable delay caused by the player having to move the mouse before letting go of W. That fraction of a second can mean the difference between hitting an enemy or not.

Furthermore, the need to decide in what direction to knock them takes out some of the decision-making allowed by her W. Previously, after you cast W the first time, if you were fast enough, you may be able to notice changing circumstances which would alter the direction you want to knock them to. Let's say suddenly another enemy champion appeared and you now wanted to knock them away from you so that you can escape rather than knocking them into your minefield, which would put them closer to you. With the old W, there was a possibility for you to do just that. Now that her W requires a direction on the initial cast, you cannot.

And finally, because her W now requires a direction, you can no longer knock people up. It's now just a knockback. Again, you are taking decision-making potential away from Taliyah. Sometimes you don't want to knock an enemy away in any direction, because you want to keep them where they are. Maybe it's because you have them at the perfect distance from yourself. Maybe your team has a bunch of skillshots and you just want to use the knockup as a pseudo-stun without messing with their targeting. Whatever. There are definite reasons to sometimes want to knock an enemy straight up rather than knocking them in any direction. Now you just cannot do that. This further strips Taliyahs everywhere of options.

Taliyah's W is not Rumble's R or Viktor's E. Those spells cast all at once. There is no delay. And because they are rays, they require a direction by definition. But Taliyah's W is much different. It is not a ray. It's just a circular area of effect. And more importantly, it has a delay. Because of this delay, you can do things with the spell that cannot be done with Viktor's E or Rumble's R. It is simply a completely different spell, and it should not be pigeonholed into using the same casting system that the other two use just because Riot wants to reuse systems.

Riot, this is terrible. Her new W is a mockery of a once-great spell. Give us back our options and decision-making. Make Taliyah Great Again.