Talon Mega Thread?

I Do not believe removing the silence made Talon super weak, only harder to play.

The problem with Talon, and the main reason why he was hit or miss, was he was SO risky to play, that he relied almost entirely on the 1 second safety bubble that silence provided for him, without it, he would die instantly. But instead of creating a risky to play champion that took intense skill to survive with, they made a button mash champ that can, under specific circumstances, instagib someone in the small window of opportunity his silence gives then either escape unscathed or die a horrific death.

Now he has no safety, at all. Not unless he instantaneously ults every single time he teleports.

What they should have done, in my opinion, was remove the silence, and make his teleport a short range jump towards a target, a temporary invisibility that would be broken immediately on offensive action, like any other stealth, and that amplified the damage of his next attack against the target he teleported towards.

What this does is allow the target to react. If the talon disappears all of a sudden, and you have a mark, you have the brief window of opportunity between talon disappearing and him appearing next to you to hurt you to use some ability to try and counteract it, either an escape or an AoE to get a headstart on him (if you can). And what this does for talon is allow him a more reliable, and easier to use bubble of safety that also gives him the opportunity to rethink his decision, more easily trick his opponent for a better position, or possibly escape and make a flashy juke.

Of course, this is all my opinion.

The removal of the silence was actually an understandable move from Riot, since it is true that it didn't allow for enough counterplay from Talon's targets.

That being said, the main issue with the changes aren't the tweaks brought to the silence (the removal), but the nature of it's compensation.

Talon needs at least one defensive aspect in his kit, his silence was that aspect. It allowed him a small window of safety to compensate his lack of escape/mobility. But instead of adding a defensive aspect, they added a 99% slow for 0.25 second on Cutthroat activation. This slow, while useful for a couple of reason (synergy with the passive and allow for easier W placement), does not make sense, because instead of giving him a small safety net, it just give him the opportunity to deal more damage. He doesn't need more damage, but a safety net.

He already had a slow in his kit and he needed a defensive change. It could be a damage reduction from the target for a few seconds, the ability to use Cutthroat back on an allied target only if the original Cutthroat was used on a slowed opponent, silencing an opponent for 0.5 second when using Cutthroat on a slowed opponent, etc. These are just examples of how Cutthroat could make more sense on Talon and give respect the name to the ability. Like some people said, it's Cutthroat, not hamstring.

Riot has not said anything about what they want to do with him. I think there is about a 50/50 chance they will give him some buffs to compensate for his loss of silence. He really needs the buffs now, but it might not show in the stats for awhile since the slow makes it a lot easier to land the w for new talon players.
As for a rework, i do not see it as likely. If they were interested in bigger changes on talon they would have said so. They just kind of glossed over the change, saying things like they didnt intend it to be an overall nerf and that it only affects a few of his matchups

let's not forget about the pitiful dmg amp on his E. Seriously, in order for talon's E to produce any meaningful dmg, talon would have to deal over 2000 dmg to the marked target before the mark expires. And assuming talon did manage to get 2k dmg off (in what was it? 3 secs? 4?) he'd only get 300 extra dmg out of it. This is doubly problematic. First, if any assassin is doing 2k dmg in less than 3 secs, the target is already dead to begin with. If an assassin is attacking anyone with more than 2k hp he is either doing something wrong or super fed. Secondly, and this is a problem I have with a lot of dmg amps, is the fact that 300 bonus dmg is nothing special. If riot gave his E a 210 base dmg + .7 bonus ad scaling (safe numbers imo) I'd be doing more dmg with the spell than if I had a 15% dmg amp.