Proposed QoL changes for Taliyah

#Proposed quality of life changes to bolster Taliyah's popularity Hello, I am not satisfied with the current Taliyah. And I know many of you aren't, either.

I am "low elo", and I encounter Taliyah players hardly ever. It makes me very sad. I mean, they didn't even include Freljord Taliyah in the holiday skin section, and they expect people to take notice of her?? I have decided to take it into my own hands, with your help.

Please, do not merely suggest "revert Taliyah". Even if it was the ideal option for the players, from Riot's side, they have nothing to gain. Old Taliyah felt horrible for low elo, was difficult to balance because of waveclear and high elo, and winrate graphs have clearly shown a healthier coalescing of her elo winrates and a healthy centering around 50%. But while her winrate graphs are seemingly healthy, graphs aren't everything, and her gutted waveclear feels awful facing everything from a kayn to a jax, from a yasuo to a malzahar. Taliyah players shouldn't feel punished for playing a team-oriented champion. They need their faith restored.

I'm just trying to explain why I feel Taliyah is in a bad spot. Despite some of her recent changes being beneficial, Taliyah feels like one of the worst champs to play. Well I think Taliyah is by far the nicest champion in League of Legends, in aesthetic, in kit, and harmony of the two. She deserves to be more popular in low elo solo queue, and her team-based style and wholesome character design can only help league. This is why I think it is important that you please consider the changes below.

1. The main change I discovered while playing urf. It is a lot easier to notice while you are trying to kite with 3 q's a second, probably if you've played Taliyah a lot you have stopped noticing this. When Taliyah q's she actually stops moving. And this tiny tiny hiccup I think is enough to completely destroy her kiting ability. I see no reason this mechanic oversight could not be removed. Not only would it contribute to her intended dps/kiting in teamfights playstyle, it would also help lower elo players who are less smooth with their mechanics. Also, it is going to annoy me forever now.

2. The second change a friend pointed out to me. While q'ing it is a great boon to be able to move so that you can dodge abilities or kite. However it is also a detriment; it means that in order to deal maximum damage you have to be in a very specific place(in relation to the target) for the entire q duration. Slightly lowering the duration of the q, meaning less time elapses between rocks(while the relationship of the time between each rock stays the same, two long intervals followed by two short intervals), would allow less skilled players more opportunities to deal their full damage, while not actually causing a problematic damage increase. You could even scale it based on q rank. The complaint here will be "it makes her less unique and more bursty". Her damage and cooldowns will be the same, it merely increases the margin of error you have to move to the edge of worked ground, which will actually support her playstyle rather than changing it. Currently, what is really enforcing her "bursty" playstyle is "multiple hits on the same champion deal 50% damage", giving low skilled players margin for error by hitting "at least one" rock (this is also increasing her WG q damage). What is creating such negative feedback among the Taliyah mains is the new single-target nature of the q is not synergistic with "multiple hits on the same target deal reduced damage" (which forces you to try to hit 5 targets instead of one to deal the most damage with your q). A possible change this could lead into is distributing the damage evenly among rocks, rewarding players who hit all five rocks, this would be possible now because of the leeway between volleys.

3. The third item is more of a complaint. I have my hotkeys set up to quick cast (sometimes I use quick cast with indicator). However the behavior of the w does not change between quick cast with indicator and quick cast, it is still a two-part vector cast. At least the box "cast the pressed spell upon pressing another spell" should apply to the quick-cast version of w, since it is THE SAME. But the real problem arises when attempting to do a w->e combo using quick cast. I press w, flick the mouse, and must RELEASE w before pressing e. If I press e WITHOUT RELEASING, the w fails to activate. Whereas using quick cast with indicator, the w politely activates at the same time as the e (if you press first on e without releasing w, it will wait until you have cast e to activate the w, even the direction will be correct if they are in different directions!). Not only is this a failure of your control scheme to behave the same across all cases, often times this is can be fatal for the Taliyah player. New players picking up Taliyah find this needlessly hard casting that takes twice as long, of course they would be turned off. (If I am completely missing something in the hotkey settings, please let me know.) And also, idk if it's just me? but if I cast two spells very fast, it cancels my movement command(on anyone, not just Taliyah). But all of this is very awkward for a champ who needs to keep moving.

4. And while we're here lets talk about runes. Nullifying orb is an insult. There is no reason to pick nullifying orb over the other choices in line 1 of Sorcery. Playing a mage is hard enough in this game, and you put in a rune who's specific use is anti-mage? If anything, it should help the MAGES against the constant meta picks of the vast majority of junglers, and assassins; which all mages struggle against, who constantly invade midlane picks, making games unfun, snowbally, and even devoid of counterplay. But instead, they take out the one rune that highlights the strengths of playing a mage, Ultimate hat, and give it to the jungler/assassin tree (without even bothering to act like it's fair and removing an option for them) and replace it with an extremely situational rune (that negates the Phase Rush keystone btw) which only half of champions can even USE AT ALL.

5. Ultimate stopped by windwall? That's just lame.

6. q remaining on while in zhonya's would be flavorful and cool. And may I point out it already works during stuns, so there's no reason not to. This would let accomplished Taliyah players show off their skill, it would be intuitive, and it would make people more confident about buying Zhonya's hourglass.

7. And a new skin of course. (And don't give me that excuse "she's not popular enough" because skins boost champ playrate not just the other way around.)

Thank you for reading. I know you probably won't do some of these changes, like #2, but I hope you seriously consider them, and I would appreciate a response and so would the other Taliyah players. Riot could stand to open some rapport and present yourselves as a little empathetic.