Talon's Silence Removal
Dear Riot,
I've mained talon since he first came out back in Season 2 and I have to say the argument for removing Silence on Cutthroat (E) is understandable regarding counterplay. It's not fun not being able to react to certain abilities, but please see many other burst based champions who also sport a slew of stuns, silences, roots, or suppress. It seems odd you would focus Talon's Silence over say mobility, damage output, or invisibility.
Mobility creep is a well known powerful stat that makes fighting against, for instance, a ward-hopping Lee Sin or Riven sometimes frustrating. If Damage was the concern you could have shifted ratios, or gated damage behind certain conditions.
However, simply removing the Silence and replacing it with a .25 second slow which I already have on Rake (W) does not do Talon's kit justice. It feels very contrived and rushed with little planning put in as to larger kit mechanics and the flow of abilities. Sure I can proc my mercy auto-attack, but this feels almost trivial in the larger picture of talon's kit unless I am working on crit, which is still RNG and not always built until late game.
I propose that instead of removing silence, you could have gated the silence behind a meaningful decision and trade off risk and reward--which is what has always made Talon so eminently (and imminently) fun to play.
For example: Talon could have used Cutthroat (E) on an opponent and had to build up minor bleed stacks or stay within a certain range for a given length of time before a Silence could proc. Moreover the Silence could have been reduced to .25 and scale up .5, .7, 1.0 seconds.
OR, my favorite, you could have simply reduced the range of Cutthroat itself to easily put talon within a targetable distance of enemies and allow very viable counterplay. And you could have even paired this with for instance a reduction in base MS from 350 to 325 to make it even MORE difficult for Talon so he'd have to choose very carefully when to engage an opponent.
Now I am not a game designer, I work as a proposal writer, but these are just some of my thoughts regarding Talon and a few of the ways I think Riot's vastly creative game designer's could have approached Cutthroat (E) and the issue of counterplay.
Please reconsider Talon's Silence, the issue of counterplay, and his kit as a whole once more.
Thank you,
Hunger
, Arcane Shift
, Shunpo
, Living Shadow/Death Mark
, and Rocket Jump
from being used to escape or react to Talon, while still being able to use abilities to provide counterplay against him like Frozen Tomb
, Intervention,
and Pryromania procs
. It would still allow for counterplay, but would give Talon some counterplay as well.
a jungler has a multi hit one
. And 
top.too. yet mid is toxic? Idk why they do this and openly keep others. I like talon, haven't played him well enough. But what I notice is many "op" assassin has a 2 dashes of some.form. meaning they have lots of.follow up if one fails. Yet talon.has.one.and.is his.bread and butter. Without that silence he is less of a threat imo. He is a rare champ, that is spoiler because of the bad apples in mid lane.