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Talon losing his silence was good. Please, hear me out before mass-downvoting.

Lil Soybean··61 votes·6,433 views

I'm going to have to put myself at risk of mass-downvoting here:

The fact that he currently is one of the few assassins that 1) ACTUALLY HAS TO COMMIT, and 2) Actually takes strategic thought, are the things he should maintain. That's how I feel. I like Talon's assassination kit because it's very high-risk/high-reward. I.E. he has to try to commit to a kill. Unlike Zed who warps out regardless.

However - the fact that his kit is pretty much point at the enemy and hit every key is definitely not healthy. You appear on them. They explode. Or they don't explode, and you probably die.

So the skill is in his decision-making. Can I assassinate that person? Is it worth the risk of diving in? Will I be able to escape with my ulti if I mess up?

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/36200000/League-of-legends-image-league-of-legends-36287397-630-446.jpg

But the issue lies in his mechanical skillcap.

Mechanically, he seems Garen-tier. Appear on enemy, press everything, hope they die. See the issue? I'm glad he has the strategic skillcap, but I really, honestly don't think an assassin that is this mechanically easy should be stronger than he is right now.
Take someone like him whose skillcap is all in his strategy, make them stronger, and what do you get? His skillcap would become significantly lower. "Can I blow them up? Definitely. Can they retaliate? Obviously not. Will I die? Lol, no."

Also, arguing that someone deserves buffs because they lose to broken champions is kind of redundant. Talon is finally balanced - why bring him to the broken champions' levels? Just bring the broken champions down so he can contend again.

61 Comments

forist27 votes

Most people are asking for insignificant buffs, not game-breaking ones. Like the majority of the players would agree that instead of a slow on his e he should have a different utility. Like interrupting channels or a micro-silence. I've seen maybe one thread on here that suggests we give him zed-like abilities, most are just asking for riot to retain some of his old game-play mechanics, such as preventing casters from destroying their team.

Also, having the silence on cutthroat did add decisional/mechanical depth to his game-play, because some targets are more inhibited by being silenced than others. For example: i would much rather silence a xerath or syndra channeling damage from the back line than a tryndamere or caitlynn who just auto attack away and wreck my team. Riot's the ones who removed this depth from talon's game-play thereby molding him into a jump on the squishiest target and unload champ.

You shouldn't lose sight of the fact that riot literally removed his niche as an anti-mage. Now his chances of being viable in competitive play have completely been thrown out the window and they know it. The truth is that they really don't care and that's what is pissing most people off. Champs like lucian or lee sin or zed are nerfed very cautiously, whereas talon was the same champ for 4 years, then all of the sudden: hey he can't silence anymore because its super unhealthy for the game. They didn't ask for any sort of feedback, didn't give adequate compensation buffs, and then said they would look over how the changes were received, which was overwhelmingly negative, but they just left it at that and haven't said a word in the last 4 months. It's just a slap in the face for the people who play this champ, me included. Of course, I'm not gonna stop playing him, but I'll be damned if I don't try my best to see that this champ receives equal treatment just like the rest of the champs in this game.

Cindikle10 votes

I don't think anyone really thinks his silence was healthy.

People are just mad that he was so highly balanced around it. But didn't get much back when they removed it. More damage is an obvious no-no. He has enough.

This put him in a place where he may be high risk/high reward. But there are champions who can do that too will less risk and sometimes even higher reward.

Leblanc can burst a target down just as fast and have an escape. Only upside to picking Talon over her is that he has a lot more AoE. IMO he just needs a reward for a successful kill.

Change his passive to "Killing an enemy champion grants Talon invisibility for 0.5 seconds and his next basic attack within 3 seconds applies his current rank of Cutthroat.".

This gives him a reward for killing his target as well as a damage boost to his next target.

B1naryB0t6 votes

While I agree with the fact that he needs something more, I disagree on the proposed change. Talon is my main assassin because I love that he is a proper assassin, he takes down one high priority target.

To be a healthy assassin, you should have roughly 3 things:

  1. No reliable escape.
  2. You should unload on one target and get out, not turn into a f***ing serial killer (I'm looking at you Katarina)
  3. You should put yourself at a huge risk for a huge reward.

That said, I don't think many assassins in the game are currently healthy, I think some could use nerfs Zed and some could use buffs Talon.

Cindikle2 votes

I wouldn't really call a 0.5 second stealth a reliable escape. If it is too much it can be made 0.25s or something.

Without his W and R he is very single target focused. And his Q isn't that strong without his W or R to proc it. Once he goes in, he's fairly weak afterwords. Which is fine. But he is usually stuck in the middle. I just feel he should get something to help with that.

I really don't find Katarina an assassin either. More of a highly mobile AoE mage. She cleans up fights. Not so much takes out a single target. Kind of like Yi. You never send him in too early.

GaleWinUnleashed1 votes

Whether it'd be effective as an escape or not, a .5 second stealth on kill or assist would be massively fun to work with.

Cindikle1 votes

Ideally it would just be on kill. It needs to have limitations. Don't need another Kha'Zix.

GaleWinUnleashed2 votes

No speed or anything, just stealth. I think it'd be amazing.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

I disagree -- on kill just encourages KSing. See also: Darius.

B1naryB0t1 votes

.5 second stealth can be used for a bit more than you think, but that's not what I'm saying. Not only does the proposed change encourage going for multiple people rather than making a proper choice on who to kill, but it also would remove his current passive, which, as you said, brings a lot of power to his Q.

And I call Kat an assassin because she gets a lot of benefit from bursting one person down. Also, you know, she's listed as an assassin.

Keltulis2 votes

{quoted}

While I agree with the fact that he needs something more, I disagree on the proposed change. Talon is my main assassin because I love that he is a proper assassin, he takes down one high priority target.

To be a healthy assassin, you should have roughly 3 things:

  1. No reliable escape.
  2. You should unload on one target and get out, not turn into a f***ing serial killer (I'm looking at you Katarina)
  3. You should put yourself at a huge risk for a huge reward.

That said, I don't think many assassins in the game are currently healthy, I think some could use nerfs Zed and some could use buffs Talon.

I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. Talon is the definition of a healthy assassin (although he's a weak contender in the current meta) while Zed could use some nerfs for the better.

I have no friggin' idea why Riot said Zed was healthy. Maybe they're catering to the Reddit circle-jerkers. Maybe they're trying to preserve their LC$BIGPLAY$.

ATM, the latter champion is just a better version of the former.

Hinagiku336 votes

To be perfectly fair...almost every champion in this game is at or near Garen-tier in terms of complexity. I've played almost every champion over the years and the ones I haven't I've at least looked over their kits and seen them played on video, and there are maybe 4-5 champs I would consider somewhat tricky. Talon's W is a cone skillshot which actually puts him ahead of some others since he at least has some choices to make and can miss his poke before he dives.

If Riot had a design reason to remove Talon's silence - fine.

Not giving adequate compensation buffs for a champion that was already "meh" tier is not okay though.

OblongOtter5 votes

An idea for a two part E (based off something I read a while ago but changed): Talon throws a teeny tiny knife. The knife collides with anything. Minions, champs, and jungle mobs. Now, for X amount of time (i.e. 5 seconds) Talon can use his regular E to jump to any target, point and click like always, the slow like it is now. However, if he jumps to the target he hit with the knife, he will also silence them for the old duration.

EDIT with some reasons why I like the idea:

  • If he wants the silence, it's a skillshot so counterplay is involved.
  • He cannot use his blink until his knife hits something or just disappears.
  • That delay both A) tells people he's about to jump and B) breaks his stealth before he actually jumps, although maybe the Ult blades should wait until he actually attacks or reactivates E before they shoot to him, so that he still does the same Ult damage
  • He can play mindgames by knifing the Malz, then blinking on Cait, trading the silence for unpredictability
  • One of his quotes says "Oh, I lost another blade. Wonder who it's in this time." This would finally have him remove a blade from his person and not have it come right back, so the quote works
ThePlasticSpork4 votes

This is actually a pretty good idea, although "make it a skillshot" seems to be the boards general reaction to any low counterplay point and click ability.

However, current Talon already does pretty well against most mages in lane, and this is inarguably a buff because Talon wouldn't actually lose anything compared to his current iteration for missing the skillshot. I feel like if it worked this way most talons would just do what they do now - blink on their target and kill them regardless of whether they hit the skillshot or not.

I think a good way to do it would to remove the damage from the bleed portion of Q, and add it so that he instead instantly procs that damage if he E's on a target that he hit with the skillshot bit. The fact that the damage is now instantaneous means that you could nerf the damage a bit to keep it in line, or maybe you could just make it so E'ing on targets hit with the skillshot just causes the bleed instead. I don't really think having a bleed makes sense gameplay wise (assassins are about delivering instantaneous damage, not DoTs), but meh.

OblongOtter1 votes

I like it!

GaleWinUnleashed1 votes

I like how this adds counterplay while ALSO giving the ability strategic depth. The usual "make it a skillshot" argument that gets used for every "OP" targeted ability is getting quite boring.

OblongOtter1 votes

Yeah, this has been turning around in my head for a while, you have no idea how happy I was to hear that someone thought it was a good idea. And someone with a gentleman poro skin, no less.

GaleWinUnleashed3 votes

You can always trust a gentleman summoner 30

Rinky Dinky5 votes

Talon actually requires a bit more skill than you would think in high elo...

Do you save your ult for escape? Do you use it to ambush? Pre-dash or after I dash in?

Does my target have a dash? Could he juke my rake by dashing?

The only thing I think Talon deserves and NEEDS to have is that his dash interrupts channels. It could keep its name, and it would also make his job alot easier.

Stonington4 votes

Yeah, overall I'm glad they removed easy to land targeted silences. From a s3 LeBlanc main.

Talamare4 votes

I really wish tho that his E and his Q weren't such slaps on the face of patheticness

E could at LEAST be half second slow

Q bleed could at LEAST deal 100 base damage at rank 5

Lil Soybean3 votes

{quoted}

I really wish tho that his E and his Q weren't such slaps on the face of patheticness

E could at LEAST be half second slow

Q bleed could at LEAST deal 100 base damage at rank 5

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The current slow gives you enough time to throw in an extra auto attack. Your combo's damage is stronger than before with that extra auto, especially once he has some AD.

JayenKei1 votes

That extra autoattack is completely useless due to the passive being completely useless Take into consideration that the passive isn't applied to his q which sucks Imagine this

Say a talon goes around rakes somebody and does a 1k AUTOATTACK (meaning q is not used) crit (this is pretty unrealistic but just bear with me) Mercy's passive gives Talon 10% more damage to someone that is basically cced. With a 1k AA crit Talon gets an extra 100 damage... People over estimate how much extra damage he gets from that passive and I can assure you, it does close to nothing. A 1k AA crit is pretty ludicrous but that much is needed just for Talon to add 100 more damage to his attack ._.

LilxPaprika3 votes

"Just bring the broken champions down so he can contend again"

i agree with this last statement. riot adds new characters to the game and they are so op. then they think thats the new normal, which it shouldnt be. granted they havedealt with the broken champions like akali, zed, rektsai , fizz, ahri. i wouldnt mind however if they could make talon a bit more jungle friendly. his laning is alright but i think his kit provides excellent jungle clear just cant sustain it unless you buy two doran blades.

GaleWinUnleashed1 votes

New champions can be the new normal, but only if Riot is willing to go back and buff all of the old ones that get left behind.

Budupops3 votes

Rengar was the only true assasin in league. Quickly oneshot their adc and take your own life. #worth

Lord Graves III3 votes

I just sort of wish Talon was allowed to be good. I don't really know what to do to his kit though.

He needs help, but he also needs a stronger direction than Dime store assassins creed knock off.

I love the strategic choice, I just wish he was allowed to have other niche stuff. What is talon's niche? AOE damage? single target removal? It certainly should be in solid assassination runs. Talon shouldn't be dueling or skirmishing in my opinion. Talon should be focused on lining up a perfect assassination run past the fighters around the support straight to the Marksman and Mage's throats. How can this be differentiated from Zed?

Also, should talon be black? I used to think he was black.

2000boxes2 votes

and and the slow on his e actually makes use of his passive when the old silence didn't so the slow is also a damage buff to compensate for the silence removal

GaleWinUnleashed1 votes

The slow is too short for his passive to really start to have an effect. It might affect one auto-attack.

lxlLilybellelxl2 votes

NO NO NO, for the love of god no silences on asssasins. If you take the risk to make a play, and fail there is no reason you should be able to skip away dragging your pants around your ankles and no one can do anything about it. If you kill you kill if you fail you fail. An auto-target Silence on an opponent you can most likely 100-0 is not healthy and it's stupid. Everyone needs to be able to make plays, and be punished for bad ones.

Duchess of Deer2 votes

Mechanically, he seems Garen-tier. Appear on enemy, press everything, hope they die. See the issue?

Katarina laughing in the distance as player rolls face across keyboard

but seriously talon as severely outclassed by just about every assassin in game most adc's have some escape nowadays and he's countered by armor i played a game as talon where although I did well in lane everytime I jumped on the carry they flashed/jumped/dashed away his silence was the only thing making him viable

WhereTheNamesAt2 votes

TBH he is probably the least counterable assassin by armor. Have you ever seen a Talon's build? It is straight up armor pen. He stacks it harder than any other champ in the game (even more than zed).

Adalore2 votes

Have had late game Talon games, I must agree with this man. The only non pen items you have are boots and Hydra. :P

WhereTheNamesAt1 votes

yea and when I'm playing him I'm also running +17 armor pen runes

Adalore1 votes

Minor correction on my part. but yes on the pen runes.

3 of the 6 items are pen items because unless the ten pen from a brutalizer is worth it it's probably more valuable as a BFS item.

pleep1 votes

{quoted}

yea and when I'm playing him I'm also running +17 armor pen runes

Same. 19 here.

But the makes lane phase HARD AS FUCK. Its the only way to make him usefull late game though

WhereTheNamesAt1 votes

Usually I just have to survive to level 6 and i'll be pretty much be set. Get that brutalizer and you already have +29 flat armor pen. And if I get a kill or two on Talon the other laner might as well leave lane because I'll kill him every time I could possibly E to him.

Hard Penetrator2 votes

Talon problem is that his lane is bad. He isn't viable counterpick for any mid at the moment (maybe khartus and veigar but there are plenty champions good against them). Even less popular champions like Jayce, Malz, Vlad!, Kennen Diana or lissandra will outmatch him most of the time.

Balanced champion should in my opinion have strong and weak matchups. He should fill certain role and be good at it.

Look at Rengar, he is balanced champion with interesting design (after nerfs and bugfixes), more build paths, deeper gameplay (more than 1 sad combo from Talon), and he can jungle with is perfect for assassin with stealth. Both Talon and Rengar are doing pretty much same thing yet one of them was nerfed harder because his kit was way to straightforward.

Yes, you can have fun with him, yes you can win games and do well. But against good opponents with strong champions you will feel less useful. And no,Riot won't nerf 10 champions just to make Talon decent.

Sorion2 votes

I think the only problem I see is that if the skill is called cutthroat and you cut their throats, like the icon shows, one would imagine they can't talk (silence). That's it. I think the silence removal was pretty necessary. Champions that give you 0 ability to fight back are generally on the chopping block when it comes to nerfs, and Talon was one of them. A level 6 Talon could 100-0 you and by the time you got the opportunity to use your skills again you'd already be at a massive disadvantage, if not dead. The slow at least lets you react.

gubigubi2 votes

Nice post. I like Talon as he is now. Pretty strong but not OP.

GaleWinUnleashed2 votes

The problem with Talon is that he's rather binary. If he can kill them, then he'll go in and do just that. If he can't 100-0, then if he does go in, he'll get obliterated. There's some room for outplay, but it's almost entirely tied to using his E to dodge a critical source of damage.

As you stated, once he goes in, he's boring. All of his interesting gameplay happens before he actually touches the opponent. Once he does, the fight is essentially a foregone conclusion, and either Talon will successfully kill his target, or they'll live and likely kill him in return.

junglerboy161 votes

Yeah, tbh, Talon is even lower skullcap than master Yi, because Master Yi at least has to think about dodging abilities and reducing damage, where Talon is just go in, lay down damage, and walk away or be dead.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

Ahh, you dont understand the difference between a skillcap and a skill floor.

Master Yi as a VERY HIGH skill cap, although, a very low skill floor. This means that anyone can pick him up and do good, HOWEVER, the amount of things you can do based on how skilled you become with him is VERY high.

This means he is very strong at face value, but is much more effective when used to full potential.

This is different than Garen, who you can play a single game as and be the best you can be with him. If you have mastered the game, you have mastered Garen. However, I would argue Garen's skillcap goes up after he leaves lane. Laning with Garen is braindead simple. After laning however, you can pull off some pretty cool shit.

Honestly, the lowest skill-floor champion, with the lowest skill cap, is probably Taric. The most outrageous thing you are going to do with him is flash E.

Saying Talon requires no skill, is well, foolish.

He has a moderately high skill floor, and a decent skill cap.

I hope this clears that up for you. People tend to downvote without explaining why.

Probably because the majority of people that say yi is a "no skill champ" are trolls/n00bs.

junglerboy162 votes

I certainly do know the difference and said what I meant to say. Yi has a higher mechanical skillcap than Talon. Nowhere did I ever say talon requires no skill, stop putting words in my mouth.

To be fair, Yi is probably a poor comparison though because his skill cap is actually quite high. I was simply trying to think of a champ that people tend to call low skillcap, but they only call Yi that because they don't understand skillcap vs skillfloor.

forist3 votes

Too many people believe that yi is a high skill-cap champion simply because he can dodge abilities with his q or mitigate damage with his w if his timing is good. A good talon player can use his e to dodge skills in the same way that cowsep, or whatever other yi streamer people watch, does with his q. Saying that talon has a lower skill cap is just your opinion, and a lot of other people on here would disagree with that.

Talon has a kit that can also be very difficult to use correctly, even more so than yi's in my opinion. If you want I can explain some of the more advanced/situational techniques that players who are new to talon wouldn't be aware of. Yes, yi has some advanced techniques that take awhile to learn, but I wouldn't go as far as to say he is harder to master than talon.

Rinky Dinky2 votes

There are alot more things yi can besides what you mentioned. Also, I fell that the majority of people just think that Yi is 100% no skill, low skillcap low skill floor (Salt OP).

Talon, well, I do not see as having as high a skill cap, but at the same time, his skill floor is higher.

They kinda do different things a teamfight however, in the sense that their way of dealing damage and killing enemies is different.

I do not think comparing these champions is very fair.

forist1 votes

I wasn't insinuating that yi is a no skill champ. I was just stating that I believe talon's skill-cap is higher. Sure it doesn't look as flashy, and his kit lacks the reset mechanics that yi's offers, but I do strongly believe that talon is a much harder champ to master and play at a more competitive level than yi.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

Taric requires AA weaving to hit his skill cap, which is more advanced than some champs (See; Warwick).

TwoD1 votes

People crying about Talon now too? I feel like you people would just complain about anything lmao.

What Talon needs is flexibility in gameplay, hes once again underpowered compared to most if not all Assassins in the game again after losing his silence. Yeah he was doing too good with his silence, but taking that out and replacing it with a 1 or less than second slow is a little too lazy isn't it? The fact that they even put that 3 second damage amplify is another sign of laziness, just why would you put another an extra damage dealt buff for 3 seconds on a blinked target?

Talon also suffers for being one of the Champions in League to have a nearly useless Passive, it also doesn't affect with his Q, so that's already a problem that he has skills that doesn't affect the other skill, it's only 10% and it has to be a CC'd target so that's another problem. His Ult might look like it's his strongest ability, but what most people don't want to understand is that it's also his biggest weakness and relies deeply on it.

Talon has so much kit and gameplay problems, that people don't seem to see or just completely ignore. It's so bad for Riot that their Balance team is notorious for ignoring Champions and biased towards what they think is cool, like it's so obvious they're scared to make changes that's needed for the game just because of self-serving bias and a "certain" outrage of "people/players". So sad.

I just have to mention again, Talon has one of the worst Passive in this game.

JayenKei1 votes

Thank you...someone who understands Talon's garbage passive

Hyrum Graff1 votes

I'll just leave this here.

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