Full Thoughts on Taliyah Changes

Introduction For reference, I am a 600k+ Mastery Taliyah main who's been playing her since early in the summer of Season 7. I will be addressing each of her changes in groups. Also, here's another thread about this subject from another Taliyah main for a different perspective. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-discussion/0ORLUyAQ-can-we-talk-about-these-taliyah-changes

Overall These changes rock. They were woven together with love and attention for her gameplay and story, and I appreciate all of it. Taliyah is more like herself now than she was before. Her design is healthier, too, with less hidden, conditional power and more obvious, statistical power. Oh, and reverting lots of nerfs is almost better than goat's milk.

Statistics Reverting the nerf to Taliyah's base health is nice, and giving her 15 base movement speed is fantastic. From her lore to her Instalok song, she was known for being quick on her feet; she should be among the fastest mages on the Rift. This movement speed will help her dodge skillshots, escape ganks, catch fleeing enemies, stay on target when firing her Volley, and position herself for an all-in combo.

Innate: Rock Surfing Granting Taliyah the maximum speed boost from level 1 and a very short out-of-combat lockout is an innovative and feels-amazing change. The intent of the change is obvious. Instead of just floating in the air and firing her Q for the speed boost, Taliyah will surf on anything she can find, transitioning between her abilities and her rock surfing as she runs. This means more rock surfing in more situations and a total change of this passive's identity. It's not just an out-of-combat transport system anymore.

If this change goes through, then Rock Surfing will become League of Legends' first lore-driven, interactive, semi-combat passive and enable a play pattern that has never been seen before. Whether chasing or kiting, Taliyah will fire her abilities and then hop on her surfboard to reposition, with her opponents being able to stop the chase, but only if they can land a shot on her. Taliyah, of course, will be dodging just like in her mini-movie. O. M. G.

And why? Because the increase to her movement speed will finally enable her to weave between jungle walls and cross entrances without dismounting her surfboard before the late-game. This will also remove the annoying moment when you surf past the entrance behind the inner turret during laning phase and then dismount and then remount unless you carefully surf onto an invisible spot between the edges of the entrance. She could even take creative jungle paths but arrive at the same time as she would have otherwise, cutting off or fleeing opponents in a totally unexpected way. This also creates a totally unique, totally Taliyah form of skill expression.

But wait! Having a full rock surfing movement speed and from level 1, along with the short lockout, also greatly buffs her early game roaming and makes her rely less on her ultimate. She can dip into the jungle and hop onto her surfboard immediately. That feels so good and also increases the time she spends on her board rather than walking, saving time. It obviously means that her board-riding will be faster, making her non-ultimate empowered roams faster. It even means that she'll be able to leave a roam sooner and faster whether it goes well or poorly and return to lane faster.

Last, since making her roaming depend less on her ultimate will make her healthier in professional play, she could be healthy and strong in both environments without ever being overpowered or underpowered in either one. This is what you meant when you talked about making champions with ultimates that are super-strong in professional play less reliant on them. I just knew that you were talking about Taliyah, and while I dreaded what you might do, this is wonderful and must have been the focus of your changes.

Q: Threaded Volley Reverting the cooldown is a huge relief. Casting the spell no longer feels like committing to a long idle time. Granting full mana refund when cast on Worked Ground helps with her mana problems, too, whether when poking an enemy or snagging a cheeky last-hit. Losing the Area-of-Effect damage sounded dreadful at first, since her waveclear combo leaves minions pretty low, but removing the damage reduction of subsequent rocks to minions actually makes last-hitting the minions easier and clearer. No more managing the AOE--just aim the rocks and fire.

However, totally losing the movement speed buff when on worked ground creates a problem. Taliyah needs a small buff to her movement speed when on worked ground in order to keep pace with fleeing opponents, since casting the ability briefly interrupts her movement. I recommend instead reducing her buff to grant her the same Q-speed that she had previously. Remember to consider the case of her having tier 1 and tier 2 boots. It's also important for making her 'floating' during her Threaded Volley feel like the 'flying' of a "little sparrow," per her lore and the bird references in her lines.

W: Seismic Shove Reducing the cooldown to 12 at all ranks feels fantastic. The current 16 second cooldown is incredibly punishing. Even with 20% CDR from a first item, it's 13.8 seconds on live. This promotes aggressive gameplay and give Taliyah more chances to use her combo in lane and during fights. Since this is also her main safety ability, it also means feeling 'helpless' for less time.

E: Unraveled Earth Alright, alright. You caught me. I abused the on-cast damage to cheaply perma-shove the wave under the turrets of my opponents and also abused the burst damage to chunk them for making the blunder of ever not dodging every single shove. Nerfing the very early damage is reasonable considering how cheesey the former tactic was and how much more often Seismic shove will be off cooldown.

R: Weaver's Wall Changing the wall duration to 5 seconds at all ranks may have the unintended consequence of nerfing Taliyah's ability to cut off enemies with a max-range ultimate. Her wall riding speed is 1,500 units per second, and the range of her maximum rank ultimate is 6,000 units. That works out to 1 second of wall uptime at the end of a maximum range, maximum rank ultimate, rather than the 4 seconds she currently has. The simple solution would be to just increase the duration to 6 seconds at all ranks.