Taliyah is fine. Here are some basic tips to play her better.

Now before I start I am by no means an expert at this champ. I have played her about 50-60 games (30ish ranked) in diamond 5 (where all the boosted animals are).

1. Do not spam q in lane and fill up your entire lane with worked grounds. If you do, you lose any kill pressure.
2. Use your q ON WORKED GROUNDS to help you farm AND to harass. Just because you are on worked ground doesn't mean your q is useless.
3. Always start with your W and follow up with E if you are trying to combo another player. This way you will get most of your burst in the shortest period of time. There are situations were you could place your E then follow up with your W after if you are trying to zone or maybe your W still has a 1 or 2 second cooldown, but usually when they see the E come out they will move away.
4. DO NOT RANDOMLY Q AT A CHAMPION if you are not going to guarantee more than 1 q to land. If there are minions coming and you try to harass with your q, but your opponent runs behind the minions, that's generally not very good given your limited space.
5. When roaming always stick near walls, this is probably a given.
6. A typical combo I use in lane is W E Q and auto attack. Until you get rylai's your Q's are easily dodge-able unless they are slowed from your W E combo.
7. In teamfights, you need to move around a lot, whether you are kiting back or forward, never stay in the same spot, you lose most of your damage if you do.
8. Her ult is very unique, you can use it to cover large distances or even block people off. Something you could take into consideration is walling off the enemy while you are taking dragon/baron, which forces them to flash or go around.

These tips are pretty basic, if you want more specific tips watch higher elo taliyah mains. The only difficult part about taliyah is knowing when to make worked grounds and how to play around it.