The State of Talon

Tusutaki·Feb 3, 2017·3 votes·1,524 views

Since its been a while and the dust has settled, what is everybody's opinion on the reworked Talon? I personally love the rework but there are a couple of small things I would like to see changed such as how his Q works. I dont know if its just me but I notice a slight delay where his Q actually connects/deals damage. Im not talking about the dash but the application of the damage. Is it intentional?

I know that Riot mentioned that they want to buff some of Talon's core items to help him out a bit but what items would that be? Why buff the items where it would benefit all of the already good assassins and not just Talon himself? I personally think having his Q apply onhit effects would be good enough.

But thats my thoughts. What are your opinions on Talon?

8 Comments

Risen29Feb 4, 20172 votes

He's a lot more fun to play.

Nothing like jumping over a wall to catch someone completely by surprise for the kill. Or wall jumping my way through the jungle to chase down someone at low health before they can get back into base. The best is when you can wall jump over midlane into the enemy team, get a kill, and escape with stealth + another wall jump over the other side of midlane.

He is very dependant on setting up his kills now though. You have to hit them with your W before going in with Q, and if you really want assassination level damage you need another way to close the distance to them.

I do feel like his E and R give me more flexibility about entering, exiting, and re-entering a fight to make use of my trait bonus damage; but I can't say how easy it would be to reliably execute at higher elo where players aren't making lots of mistakes you can exploit.

I can see how they integrated more counterplay into this design - you don't get slowed by W in the first hit, and there's a big delay before it returns, and it's not as wide or as long ranged. All this makes it quite possible to dodge the second strike and deny talon his trait based damage, unless he can pop ultimate.

However, I feel like this also gives him the potential of out trading many match ups in lane if you can land both Ws and follow up with a Q. For some reason it feels better than before, where you only wanted to go all in when you thought you could get the kill. Maybe because the Q damage potential is higher at a lower level, so you don't feel like your only option is to W harass until you can go all in with E/Q/R.

The health regain on Q is a nice idea, giving him more lane sustain. But it's probably easier to pull off in top lane where you aren't punished as heavily for going in for melee hits.

I think that's the main reason Talon is doing much better in top lane than mid now - He can't farm as well from range in mid, and it's more difficult to trade with the mid mages. His W doesn't do as much damage to minions as I remember it doing, it's not as long ranged, and it's not as wide. Talon depended on his W to get farm against most mages until he could get enough gold and levels to kill them. You also don't have the benefit of being able to kill most mages at level 6 with a long range jump combined with high damage. Your ability to close the distance is more limited, and dependent on the terrain.

I think it's annoying that his ultimate has a delay before you can reactivate it again. For some reason it bothers me a lot, whereas the W delay doesn't. Maybe because the R use to be something you had control over returning to maximize burst damage, but now you press R a second time and you're never sure whether or not it will actually return.

A great boon for Talon now is that his E, combined with hydra, makes him a better split pusher than he was. It also fits better since he seems better at top lane now than mid.

My biggest wish for Talon at this point is that he were a bit easier to jungle with. His E is made for the jungle, made for surprise ganks, made for counter jungling ganks, and I think he thrives as a roaming ganker in general - but it's difficult to execute that from mid lane where you will be fighting from behind and tied to babysitting a turret. He needs the freedom that comes from being able to appear from anywhere on the map, surprising people with his vaults over terrain.

SteamedSuperiorFeb 3, 20171 votes

I believe that Talon is a great pick right now. He is very fun and mobile. He can shred people and he can just end up one shotting people.

slôwFeb 3, 20171 votes

Hes completely and utterly terrible at higher elo. His laning phase is awful against the strong mid lane picks. New rake is not as reliable as old rake.

Basically shit, especially in comparison to LB, Kat, Fizz etc.

XevestosFeb 3, 20171 votes

They were talkin about duskblade dmg buff amd nights edge active cd bein reduced.

Lethality buff made him a bit op.

Risen29Feb 9, 20171 votes

I just went 23/0/3 on Talon. http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2420102598/65201151?tab=overview

Got a lead in lane, used it to snowball.

Might not work so well at higher elo.

The upcoming mastery and lethality nerfs might hurt this. I might have died some, and missed some kills, because many of them were a razors edge. Which is bad considering how poorly the enemy team was playing, they really didn't deserve any kills.

A big part of what made this game work for me was maximizing his mobility and stealth to strike only what I wanted when I wanted, and then getting away. I took very little risk, had a good sense of what I could get away with, and didn't misplay mechanically in a way that got me killed.

That, combined with a lot of split pushing to take advantage of my kills. I used his vault to the maximum to jump from one lane to the other, keeping the enemy off balance and chasing me around, as I often do with fast split pushers. I'm very glad that Talon can now do this now, because it's one of my favorite ways to play on some other champions.

I feel like Talon doesn't have the same kind of overt power that a lot of other assassins or fighters do, where they can just wade in and go ham on the enemy if they have an item or level advantage. Even with my advantage, some of my opponents were too dangerous to let them see me coming. I had to try to take them by surprise with a combination of high speed and vaulting over terrain they are near, so I could get close them and have more time to get of my combo before they could think as much about how they should react.

I feel like Talon needs to use his vault to really get the most out of him, but if you do it's very satisfying.

TusutakiFeb 10, 20171 votes

I've been having a lot of fun with Talon. I like that they greatly improved on his early game by making him safer and better waveclear. I still feel like his Q could use a little adjustments as it feels odd. Like lets say I ult somewhere hitting no one, Q onto an enemy, does it automatically proc the bleed or will it only stack twice?

Just a minor buff to his Q I feel would make him top tier.

Risen29Feb 12, 20171 votes

{quoted}

I've been having a lot of fun with Talon. I like that they greatly improved on his early game by making him safer and better waveclear. I still feel like his Q could use a little adjustments as it feels odd. Like lets say I ult somewhere hitting no one, Q onto an enemy, does it automatically proc the bleed or will it only stack twice?

Just a minor buff to his Q I feel would make him top tier.

My impression so far has been that his waveclear is worse. You use to only survive as midlane talon by using your W to farm. But now it seems to do less damage, has less range, and has a lower arc. That may be part of why he is struggling midlane.

But I think he ability to harass other melee champions pre-6 is improved, along with some possibility of escape via E, so maybe that is why he seems to have more success at top. His all in potential at level 6 is not as high, so it's almost not worth having to put up with all the harass that comes from most midlaners when the payoff for surviving isn't there anymore.

My biggest annoyance with the way his new kit works is not being able to retract your R quick enough. It's way too easy for an enemy to avoid both hits, and it's potential for burst is no longer there.

His damage over all is spanned out over a prolonged encounter of setting up your W and R for both hits and moving into position for a max damage Q - which works ok if you are dealing with low tier players who can be taken advantage of to weave in and out of combat as necessary, but I can see why Talon is not considered good at higher elo. Once you no longer have ample mistakes to take advantage of, and can catch inexperienced players off guard with your wall jumping shenanigans, your ability to output burst damage as an assassin is limited compared with your other champions.

For instance: There are many times where you'll wall jump into a Q/W leaping burst attack, but then you'll have to immediately use your R just to get out of there and survive. So you do some damage to the enemy team, but don't secure a kill. You have to hope your damage tips the scales for your teammates to finish up, or that you can swing around for a follow up strike (without the benefit of R to get away this time).

It's a very different way of playing, and can be very fun when it works. It really feels like you are moving in and out of combat fluidly. But I can see how it would not work out well against a team that knows what they are doing.