Taliyah. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Now Taliyah has been out for a few days now and I have had a chance to sit down with a handful of players who have taken to this rock weaver. I am going to give a review based on the accounts of my own playing as well as the experiences of the others I have spoken with since her release.
The Good: Taliyah is considered a traditional mid line type of mage. She excels at zone control and can potentially do a lot of damage if she sets up a combo right. However a lot of players I have spoken to have preferred to take Taliyah into the game as a support rather than burst mage. Her ability to set up enemies for ganks can leave the enemy team tilted and feeling frustrated. Her kit can synergize well with her team if she is played right and can make or break a fight.
The Bad: Unfortunately one glaring issue a lot of players seem to have with her is that she is just too weak on average. While she can potentially pull off some pretty impressive plays it takes a lot of work to get her to that point and it never really feels like you are doing anything. While she does have good zoning capabilities it feels almost useless if you or your team has fallen behind. Her kit often feels clunky and hard to use and often times doesn't make a meaningful impact people would like it to. For a supposed traditional mage it feels like the Riot team kind of just threw her together with whatever ideas they had, but the result has fallen very short of expectations.
The Ugly: Speaking as someone who had mained Annie for about a year and a half into his league lifetime I found Taliyah to be a very poor excuse for a mage. She is confined by the fact that she must max her Q or she ends up underpowered and completely helpless against roughly 2/3s of all the matchups I have seen and played. Even the matchups where they say she has an advantage feel like a struggle because her kit is just so awkward to use. The fact that after her first use of her q it's passive makes one patch of land unviable for nearly 3 minutes is absolutely unacceptable. The meager mana refund does not make up for this downright atrocious drawback to using one of her basic spells. A lot of times these patches of worked land can hurt Taliyah players far more than they help them. This passive clearly was not thought over well enough because apart from the fact that it provides a very small sum of movement speed when running over them Taliyah gains absolutely no benefit by standing on them whatsoever. It feels like this kit could have been so much more. If you truly wanted a zone mage you should have added more to her kit. Give us the ability to manipulate the worked land with her abilities. Do something that makes those areas feel meaningful instead of just a spot where she can't cast her Q for 2 and a half minutes.
Even off the top of my head I could point out several things to Improve Taliyah.
If you want to keep the worked land then build her kit to work with it rather than against it. Players should not be punished for standing on these patches of dirt. Give us something that makes it worthwhile to stay near these patches of worked land.
One instance could be whenever Taliyah casts Seismic shove on worked ground, the area of effect becomes larger and the knock up lasts slightly longer with more damage or perhaps applies a slow to the targets that are struck.
Another idea could be that whenever you cast Unraveled earth on these worked patches then the rock mines deal extra damage both on place down and explosion. Perhaps adding a new effect such as bleeding or a lingering slow after they detonate.
I feel overall that her ultimate should be completely changed. As it stands her ulti feels extremely worthless. Apart from the fact Taliyah should automatically be riding her wave upon casting it feels bad in the fact it does no damage and does nothing to contribute to a fight other than cutting off fleeing opponents. One major issue is that if casted improperly it can not only ruin a fight for your team, but could wind up costing them dearly if they get locked out of dragon pit or prevented from contesting another objective or fleeing.
One major way I could see this improving would be allowing players to have more control over the wave. Being able to change directions and create more intricate walls. It would let her set up team fights by not only sealing off their escape, but herding them into corners. The idea of a control mage is to force your opponents to play like you want them to. To put them in a fight or flight position and right now she just is not accomplishing this.
There are probably plenty of other ideas on what could be done to improve Taliyah, but I have rambled on Enough for now. It's time to let other people have a say.
