Talon opinion/sugestions

So I was a dedicated talon/rengar main and pretty much a one trick phony, and while I dont have much to had to the rengar rework, I believe that by looking at the stats, the talon rework didnt quite hit the mark, therefore I decided to make a thread on what could be done to improve this lovely champion.

Be careful, long post ahead, without further monologing here we go:

changes/buffs I would endorse:

Noxian diplomacy:

• Increased Q range. Talon always functioned like a sniper/grenade launcher, the reason he was a sniper was because he had good range on his E, his E was the best target selection tool out there, the person you E'd was done for. Even zed and kha had 600 range on their gapcloser pre-buffs, not only did talon's E had great range but it also positioned him further away (behing his target) for even sligtly longer range plus it was instant. As binary as this skill was, it definined talon's range and was what alowed him to function like an assassin, without this binary displacement ability he would just be an AoE AD mage, and it was this range that allowed him to be effective against ranged match ups (which he is suposed to excel at). Since blink got removed and is unlikely to come back, I think that at the very least he should be allowed to have a little bit more range, if you compare him to the remaining assassins you'll see that he is very lackluster in range. Standart assassin range is around 700 (zed, kha, akali) some have more (rengar 725, kata 715, Diana 825) and some have less (LB 600(2x) , master yi 600, fizz q 550, kassadin 500), however talon's low 550 are targeted and not omnidirectional, aditionally his Q is encouraged to be used last in his combo for his auto to proc his passive.

My suggestion: make it AT LEAST 600 range, maybe 650 if you are feeling generous, OR make his Q range scale with level.

• Q tonned down. I am currently ok with talon having to choose between either gapclose or nuke people, im not ok however with it providing sustain. Why would a midlane assassin have acess to sustain? Aditionally, why does he have a 50% cd refund on his Q for killing a unit? It’s not like talon is going to chain kills with Q, since a partial refund means he still has 50% downtime, additionally he is not supposed to kill targets with his Q since it’s merely a tool to stack up his passive. On the other hand, the sustain it provides combined with the partial reset go hand in hand with promoting a gameplay pattern based on outsustaining the opponent trough Q farming which I believe is a behavior akin to a fighter, a filthy toplane fighter. Aditionally, melee Q damage is too high considering that it ALSO resets his aa timer, as a melee assassin talon should't punish fighters trying to get in melee range trough brute force, he should be put at a disadvantage against them and rewarded vs ranged match ups such as mages and marksman.

My suggestion: I would propose to remove his Q sustain and move that power elsewhere, additionally, regarding the partial CD refund, either tying it to champion kills rather than unit last hitting, having it partially refund it’s CD if used in melee range WHILE reducing some damage, or just having it removed and shift that power somewhere else. As it stands, his current Q is just overloaded as a single skill while some of his other abilities are lacking.

• W counter counterplay toned down. Right now his W is really weak and really only useful as a long range mini poke or a wave clear tool. The reason for this is because there is too much counterplay. His cone got narrower and in return the range increased way too much, the fact that it has 900 range like standard skillshots yet it is a cone, kinda defeats his own purpose as it is almost impossible to miss the first hit, YET, the second hit is only possible to connect if the oponent messes up hard. The fact that they can run trough it while its animation is still playing is counterintuitive, most bomerang skillshots get rewarded by hitting at max range as it lands both hits, talon's however no longer does this as oponents can just keep running forward do dodge the returning damage making it awful for chasing.

My suggestion: make the first half shorter in range (perhaps 850, 800 or even 750) and then make it travel a bit further during the animation (it would reach the full range over the delay period) aditionally enemys that pass trough it during this period would take the return damage efectively forcing people to walk around it or even coming a bit closer to you in order to dodge it sucessfully rather than just try to outrun it. Aditional sugestion would probably include a minor slow on the upfront part (5-10%max)

• E should be allowed to use on units . OK this one may sound silly, at best this could pass as a QoL buff. That being said, there is SOME reasoning behind it, while this change probably wouldn’t fix him, it would make him more consistent and not rely so much on his environment to be effective, as it stands his E is either too powerful or just plain useless, this change wouldn’t make him in any way oppressive, maybe slightly more anoying, yet it would also give him some small outplay potencial against everyone rather than just anivia, j4, trundle and talyah. Misusage of this feature would still be punishing because 2 seconds cooldown is a lot during a fight and he would be locked out of any action during the vault animation meaning he could still be hit during the animation. The internal cooldown of the skill would also make it a one time gimmick yet it could help him to position during W or even R and the added agility of this feature could help him in combat or during a teamfight since he still has no RELIABLE escape. Disclaimer, this is in no way an attempt to turn him into yasuo.

• Combo clunkiness adressed. At the moment his combo relies on him stacking up his passive as fast as possible and then proc it with a melee AA. The problem here lies in the fact every ability except for Q encourages him to be AWAY from from his target, this means that either he has to use his Q and subsequent AA to finish his combo or using his stealth to deliver the final AutoAttack. This means that unlike pre-rework talon who would pop behind his target, proceed to unload his kit on said target and THEN use the stealth to get away while reactivating your ult to deliver the finishing blow once at safer distance, new talon is SUPOSED to give up his stealth for a kill and then rely on his E for escape. While this concept doesnt seem that bad, I've come across 2 main issues: A) Clunkiness. Unless you somehow manage to land both hits of W or happen to be in range for the first round of shadow assault, talon's most usual stack build up LATEGAME will usually end up with talon stealthed and his target with only one stack of passive and if you happen to Q-AA him or even AA-Q-AA him, it is possible that the blades won't converge in time to trigger his passive, and there are a lot of reasons for him not to be able to proc a second AA (low attack speed, target using an escape, enemy team colapsing upon you, etc). B) Predictability. Talon's target will almost always be the one he manages to hit 2 stacks of passive on, and since his Q range is so low he literally has to walk up to said target, making his assassination both predictable and sluggish (unless you are melee range, then there's no saving you just like pre-rework).

Tldr: Unless you are in melee range it is possible that by the time you autoattack your target during ulti, the blades still haven’t reached the target making that autoattack not trigger his passive.

My suggestion: make it so that the first AutoAttack DURING stealth count as a stack for the passive, OR make it so that Qing DURING stealth counts as 2 stacks in order to proc his passive more reliably.

• Increase his base MS. Simple, he is a situationally highly mobile yet immobile melee assassin and as such he should have melee assassin like base ms, every melee assassin except for fizz has at least 340 base ms, talon got his 350 nerfed into 335 which is weird considering his gapcloser also got nerfed from 700 to 550 and his other gapcloser is situational. Sure Fizz only has 335 as well, yet, in adition to his also 550 targeted dash, he does have 2 on demand omnidirectional 400 range dashes that he can combine for a total of 800 units, in adition to hard cc ofc. While some can argue that during the right circunstances talon can be more mobile than fizz, hence the 335, a counterargument arises in the form that both fizz and talon are on the botton of the spectrum of assassin class base MS while assassins such as Zed have a 700 omnidirectional on demand BLINK paired with a 625 range targeted ulti that can return to cast point, or rengar who has free situational dashes on an atk speed based cooldown, or even kha zix with a 700 to 900 range on demand omnidirectional gapcloser with a possible reset, or even katarina that has up to 3 BLINKS prior to even making a kill, or akali who has 3 targeted 700range dashes subjeted to resets, lee sin who... well the list goes on and on, the point is: Every melee assassin aside from fizz and talon have better base movement speed which makes sense, considering they are MELEE, why does talon, whose extreme mobility is purely situational, possesses bottom tier base movement speed? I believe he should at least be allowed to run at the same pace as some RANGED marksman or mages such as graves, xerath, veigar, brand or even zyra, just for consistency of course.

To conclude, Talon, whose kit is perhaps just as binary as before is sitting at a remarkably low winrate while his playrate is not even that high. Personally believe that this is because he is WEAKER than his previous iteration. His old kit had remarkable synergy with itself and this consistency made it a really solid combat kit, all his skills functioned individually yet when combined they worked even better. Right now every skill he has functions individually well and are pretty solid when look at them just one at the time, however they have low synergy when paired togheter. His passive requires him to stack it as fast as possible and then melee AA, yet, his Q is extremely SHORT ranged, his W is extremely LONG ranged and while one stack is garanteed the second one is almost impossible to hit, his E is just great OUT OF COMBAT utility, and his ult is MEDIUM range, because of the lack of synergy of his kit his ult will either used as an escape or as a gapcloser(suicide during a tf). I believe the main problem is: what is talon's ideal range right now? He used to have 4 abilities that could just be used independent and regardless of order (well E first most of the time), but the new passive makes him have an ideal combo, and unfortunatly Q his best used last...

Well that's about it, sorry for the long post, for those that took the time to read it thank you (no potato tough, sorry)