Analysis of New Talon from a Talonmain since start of S6 (from when I first started to play)

Hello everyone. Today we are going to analyze the new Talon kit. We'll see if the goal of his rework was accomplished, whether he needs nerfs/buffs, and whether his old state was better for what he was supposed to do.
As a reminder, the biggest objective of this rework was to give him more incentives to roam, because that was his strong spot pre-rework. The next objective was to make him focus one squishy and kill that squishy in teamfights. Let's start with his skills (we'll start with the skills that carried over from the rework first):

Rake Cost: 55/60/65/70/75 Mana Range: 650 Talon sends out a volley of daggers that then return back to him, dealing physical damage every time it passes through an enemy. The returning blades deal bonus damage and slow units hit. Talon tosses a volley of blades, dealing 50/65/80/95/110 (+0) physical damage to units hit and returning to him after a delay.On their way back to Talon, the blades deal 60/85/110/135/160 (+60% bonus Attack Damage) additional damage and slow the enemy by 40/45/50/55/60% for 1 second This is relatively the same except it lacks a lot of the upfront damage. Nice for zoning tho.

Shadow Assault Cost: 100 Mana Range: 550 Talon disperses a ring of blades and becomes Invisible while gaining additional Movement Speed. When Talon emerges from Invisibility, the blades converge on his location. Each time the blades move, Shadow Assault deals physical damage to enemies hit by at least one blade. Talon disperses a ring of blades that deal 90/135/180 (+80% bonus Attack Damage) physical damage to all units they hit, gains 40/55/70% increased movement speed, and becomes Invisible for up to 2.5 seconds. When the Invisibility ends, the blades converge, dealing the same damage again to enemies they pass through.If Talon cancels Invisibility with an attack or Noxian Diplomacy, the blades converge on his target's location instead. Stealth - Invisible: Talon can only be revealed by nearby enemy Turrets. Same skill, just more blades. It does more damage now, and synergizes with a Q-R or R-Q combo for his passive.

New skills

Blade's End Talon's spells Wound champions and epic monsters, stacking up to 3 times. When Talon attacks a champion with 3 stacks of Wound, they bleed for heavy damage over time. This synergizes with TLD a bit too well, but it adds "delayed burst". Ultimately it gave him more damage, because his old passive didn't scale this hard. It's not broken. I like it.

Assassin's Path Cost: No cost Range: 725 Talon vaults over any terrain or structure, up to a max distance. This ability has a low cooldown, but puts the used terrain on a long cooldown. Talon vaults up to 0 units over the nearest structure or terrain in the target direction. The vault's speed is affected by Talon's movement speed.Talon cannot dash over the same section of terrain more than once every 0 seconds. Everyone loves parkour, and Talon is not excluded. This skill gave him extra slipperiness in exchange for an actual combat skill. Was it worth it? I don't know right now, but if he receives one too many nerfs, the lack of a skill in combat could hurt him. Still, it's nice because it gives him an escape, so I like it right now.

And finally, the problem skill:

Noxian Diplomacy Cost: 30 Mana Range: 10000 Talon stabs the target unit. If they are within melee range, this attack deals critical damage. If they are outside melee range, Talon will leap at his target before stabbing them. Talon refunds some health and cooldown if this ability kills the target. Talon leaps to target and deals 80/100/120/140/160 (+110% bonus Attack Damage) physical damage. If cast from melee range, Talon does not leap but instead critically strikes, dealing [0]% damage (0).When Noxian Diplomacy kills a unit, Talon regains 0 health and refunds 50% of its cooldown. Ok. First, this skill is what breaks the new Talon. No, it doesn't make him OP. It breaks him. With the old Talon it was all about that terrible laning phase. Your main cs'ing abilities (such as your Q and W) costed a lot of mana and had high cooldowns. The new Q allows him to crit, heal, and has no CD all for only 30 mana. This gives him too much power in the laning phase, which is the exact opposite of what Riot wants to do. By giving him a crit, they shove so much damage onto his kit. Melees laning against him get screwed so easily because he can outrade most of them. His heal makes his laning phase easy. When I first played the new Talon, I couldn't believe they did this. He now has quite a bit of safety in the laning phase, and although this may be healthy for him, it's not healthy for game balance. The refunded CD makes cs'ing a no-brainer on this guy. His weak spot was once in the laning phase. Now, it could be argued that he has one of the strongest laning phases out of all the melees. By making his laning phase easy, he has no incentives to roam. With the old Talon, it was roam or starve because you have high CD, mana costs, and not much healing without lifesteal. Now, you can keep bullying the enemy laner out by out-sustaining them and out-damaging them.

The rework goal of Talon has been to incentivize roaming. They wanted him to spend more time ganking other lanes than sitting in his own lane. But now, with the changes to his kit, he has no problem with laning; it's a breeze. He is able to kill enemy laners over and over. And, as an added bonus (I say this sarcastically), they made him fall off late, which, although it may be something to cheer about for some, it's not very good for his other goal of his rework. Mistakes were made in the Talon rework.

Nerfs and Buffs It is undisputable that Talon needs nerfs to some skills and changes to others. His Q obviously needs some stats taken off, whether it be the heal, crit, or damage, but to make him scale harder make his Q apply onhit. And his E could use some changes, although frankly I don't know what. Ultimately though, this rework has been a big mistake on Riot's part (S6 Kog'Maw comes to mind) that will cause many problems for balancing his kit.

Old Kit vs New Kit Talon's old kit was much less fun during the laning phase. If you were lucky enough to get an enemy melee mid, your only way to poke and waveclear was very high mana cost and had a large cooldown. His Q was also high mana cost. If you were unlucky enough to get an enemy ranged mid, well, you won't be CS'ing very well. Or surviving very well. You would get poked out of lane easily. He had so many more incentives to roam. The only way to get fed was to roam. The new Talon kit is incredibly toxic to play against. His level 2 cheese is insane. W->Q->auto TLD means half their HP is gone (yes I've used it before). You get shoved so easily. Now he doesn't worry about getting fed. And his lategame power is much weaker. He cannot assassinate the squishy. A combination of ADCs being able to lifesteal their HP back with crits and his worse lategame scalings make assassination very hard if you aren't uber fed. And it's still not easy when you're very fed. Ultimately, his old kit gave more incentives to roam, was less toxic to play against, and helped him scale harder in late game. All three of those were goals for the rework of Talon. Looking back, one can clearly see his old kit is much more preferable to play against and play yourself.

TL;DR: Read the post.

Here's a pic of a cute Talon poro for making it so far :3 http://67.media.tumblr.com/6f17983e336ce910a9c2245cce16dbbb/tumblr_mm9gqzukta1rt5r3jo1_500.jpg