Taliyah, first impressions

TL/DR:I realize the champ is brand new and still has tuning to do, but here's my initial impression. i love the lore and the character design, just... doesn't feel like the character and kit come together as a cohesive whole

first. How she looks. Apparently some people are complaining she isn't 'hot' enough, I have no problem with a character not being ‘hot’ i actually think her overall design is pretty in a cool way. i especially really enjoy the bird references in her surfing profile, sleeves, shoulders and hair. my only thing is, something just bugs me about her face. it might just be the art style, but it feels kind of uncanny valley-offputting. i like the design and the character, especially the lore is really cool, she just feels... idk, rather... odd or weird. hard to put into words. the same with her kit, individually the abilities feel cool, but it just kind of feels... weird all put together.

her 'rock surfing' passive looks amazing... but feels really underwhelming. sure she can roam ok, but it limits her mobility options always having to hug walls, and i don't think she can actually capitalize on a roam very well without her ult, as she lacks very good cc and her ult is on a very long cooldown i like the q changing terrain and making you move faster... but combined with a zone mage, it feels like you're limiting your own options more than the opponent because you're sacrificing dps. sure her q hits hard, but only once from that area in 3 minutes. then you get to run faster, but her passive already does that. so she's got 2 different ways of moving faster, one is defensive, one is roaming, one is only in a spot she's q'd in, and the other is only next to a wall. i feel like it's kind of redundant to have two seperate speed boosts and it might work better to join them together, or take away the passives and give her a higher base movespeed, as she's naturally as slow as anivia.

Her w is cool, but feels just a little awkward to use, maybe it's because i'm used to vector skillshots, but it just feels off. and since... i think it's the only knockup in the game that doesn't actually stun, it feels rather useless to use on it's own unless you manage to knock someone 10 inches closer to your tower. when i read 'knock champs over walls' i thought it was more akin to an any directional alister headbutt

her e is really interesting for penalizing dashes without stopping them (and cool synergy with champs like poppy, vayne and blitz), but in lane it pratically feels useless to cast unless you're combining it with her w, feels like there's no reason to cast either ability on their own Then her ult is really cool looking with her surfing on a giant wall. however, an ability like that on a control mage doesn't feel like it works very well for the champ.

I guess to summarize, it feels like she's trying to wear too many hats 'she's a zone/control mage' but requires a bit of time to set up for her own safety, but that also severly limits her own dps. and her passive is designed for roaming, which means she can't set up those speed zones; but she's not that good at ganking as her w is fairly small and easy to dodge (in my limited experience) and it barely qualifies as hard cc. 'she's good at initiating with her ult' but she's not tanky enough to survive initiating or she has to be in a very aggressive/easily caught out position to get a wall behind the enemy team, which is suicide for a squishy mage, 'she's got good poke' but only until she runs out of area to chuck at people. so we have a zone mage with minor cc, an initiator who likely can't survive initiating, especially since it's not hard cc like a malph ult. a poke mage who literally runs out of stuff to poke with, and a roaming champ with limited catch potential' she also has peel/slows/zone control, which would be great on a support or working in tandem with another champ, and yet all of her abilities being aoe means she'd be a horrible support;

just some ideas i came up with: instead of her q zone boosting her speed, what if it slowed enemies by... 10% or so? it couldn't be very strong, as she can pratically cover a lane with them, but then Q zones have more value to her team, and also synergize with her 'zone control' idea, she rips up the ground and throws it at her opponents, and for a while that rough terrain slows them down a bit. while she still has her own passive for movespeed.

as for her passive, instead of 'gain more movespeed near walls' what if she instead got a small burst of movespeed upon hitting someone with a spell, similar to sivir? combined with the slow from her q that i just mentioned, that might make her too good at kiting though.

or have her passive make all of her abilities leave a weak slowing field, say -20 movespeed to any enemy that walks over the areas created by her q/w/e. i feel like this would fit better into the 'terrain control' motif that she seems to be running. or increase the slow a bit, but all of the zones decrease her dps while she's standing in them, similar to how q works now. so she'd have to gauge if she wants to fight in the slowing field and deal less damage, or kite away and get more

don't get me wrong, the rock surfing passive looks really cool... just doesn't feel very good to me