Can we discuss Talon?

Fauxfire·6/12/2015, 12:49:33 AM·7 votes·1,124 views

Talon's basic attacks deal 10% additional damage to any target that is slowed, stunned, immobilized or suppressed.

Talon’s passive really disappoints me. Talon has some insane single-target or potential team-bomb burst damage and all of his scalings are 1:1 or above, but with all of this cool damage amp and assassin-like utility why is his passive so weak? It's troublesome for these reasons:

  1. It only does 8-50 extra damage per hit (throughout the game). It's so small a window to make so little a difference. Mercy doesn’t scale/increase from on-hit effects. That means the passive damage from Blade of the Ruined King, Sheen or critical strikes would not increase, but remain the same if Talon attacked and triggered his passive. Nor does Noxian Diplomacy (q) benefit from Mercy. It’s only bonus damage added to the auto attack based off of total attack damage.

  2. It’s extremely unintuitive because usually mid-late game Talon isn’t strategically looking for slowed targets to assassinate so he’ll do an extra 100 damage with his burst. Late game if Talon decides to use his combo to proc Mercy, he’ll be missing out on damage just because of Cutthroat’s damage amplification and his ability sequence to secure a kill.

I don’t claim to be a really good player, however I understand Talon’s strengths and weaknesses. I’m not asking for a Talon buff, rather a change. I hate to see all of Talon’s strengths loaded into four parts but the fifth has to be intentionally extremely weak to compensate. Talon has enough damage and needs no more, but it just feels really imbalanced and not rewarding to use.

13 Comments

Edge of Daybreak6/12/2015, 1:35:28 AM6 votes

The major issue behind the passive is that Talon works already even with a useless passive so anything not useless would put him over the edge. Riot refusing to talk about him outside of nerfs doesnt help either but the fact that he actually has the most uninteresting/unoriginal passive in game is pretty lame and I would love to know why riot is set on avoiding him. It's not like we can get a reason but one day the sun may explode and they will say something.

Rico Nasty6/12/2015, 1:44:10 AM3 votes

He is fine.

Arsames6/12/2015, 1:00:00 AM2 votes

Diamond lvl Talon player here, you should build item 3022 and enjoy perma passive, kappa.

MLDzXnRRR6/12/2015, 11:28:47 AM1 votes

He is useless vs tanks and couldn't even burst anyone with the old Warmog. Needs better E and passive.

ccseancc1436/12/2015, 1:47:12 AM1 votes

Talons passive amplifies crits so if you hit for like 1100 which isnt uncommon late game it give like a extra 110 damage which isnt that bad, its like a free 50-110 ad late game.

Mat7itan6/12/2015, 3:03:42 AM1 votes

His passive does suck, especially now that he only has 1 way to CC someone, and I think he does need a passive that is actually useful.

Rencith6/12/2015, 4:18:29 AM1 votes

Rip Talon. Hope you enjoy your new home right next to veigar. I used to love Talon. Then realized that there are just so many assassin's that do that job better. Eg zed, fizz, lb. Not to mention most mages these days can easily counter his predictable combo. Also if he doesn't get mega fed early, he is absolutely useless last game. It's going to take more than a new ppassive to fix him