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Enabling Taliyah to Midlane

Ifneth··4 votes·25,888 views

Introduction When Taliyah became popular in the jungle after her mini-rework, her mains asked Riot whether she would be balanced around it, midlane, or both roles as a flex pick. Riot promised the latter, but her midlane pickrate these days ranges from the tiny to the undetectable. Midlane Taliyah needs targeted buffs to reduce the difference of power between her lane and jungle performance, making her a flex pick like Camille rather than a former midlaner like Nidalee.

Problem Taliyah has long cooldowns early and high mana costs late, limiting her waveclear but also her lane presence, overall safety, and uptime. Nerfs to the waveclear of each ability, and mage mana after lane, have so reduced her ability to just push and roam that these constraints can be relaxed both directly and indirectly.

Solutions We have several reasonable ways to help Midlane Tali. In order of potential metagame disruption, they are...

  1. Redund half the cooldown of Threaded Volley when it is cast on Worked Ground. It is punishing and immersion-breaking for Taliyah her to wait a third of a wave just because she wanted to snag a distant minion or poke an enemy by throwing another rock.

  2. Reduce the duration of Worked Ground from 120 to 90 seconds. Since spamming Threaded Volley is no longer an efficient waveclear tool, Worked Ground no longer grants movement speed, and jungle Taliyah rarely spends more than a minute in the same place, Taliyah should not have an effective 120 second cooldown on casting Threaded Volley from the same spot.

  3. Reduce the initial cooldown and mana cost growth of her basic abilities. Having them start at over or well-over 10 seconds and eventually cost as much as or more than her ultimate is a heavy-handed approach to limiting her waveclear, which has been nerfed by both reductions to the waveclear of her individual abilities and reductions of post-lane mana regen by the mage item rework.

-Threaded Volley: 11/9/7/5/3 and 60/70/80/90/100 to 10/8.5/6/4.5/3 and 60/65/70/75/80/85.

-Seismic Shove: 16/15/14/13/12 and 70/80/90/100/110 to 14/13.5/13/12.5/12 and 70/75/80/85/90.

-Unraveled Earth: 16/14/12/10/8 and 90/95/100/105/110 to 14/12.5/11/9.5/8 and 75/80/85/90/95.

Overall, these buffs would enable Taliyah to last-hit far minions, poke her opponents, have her combo and peel ready more often, and cast a few more spells ready during the mid and late game. While the latter two might help jungle Taliyah somewhat, the pauses between jungle activity and low economy of the jungle will prevent her from benefitting from them nearly as much as midlane Taliyah, who must cast or be ready to cast spells and reaches full build sooner.

What changes can you think of, and how might you improve mine?

7 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

Approved!

TheSingularity1 votes

Not a taliyah expert and only recently got into her. But with 2&3 (haven't played her enough to notice the Q CD early)

Just a few change suggestions that came to mind:

  1. For the duration. Perhaps the worked ground dissipates at double the rate if you stop using spells on it.
  2. Add more interactions with worked ground: Perhaps W and E work faster on worked ground.
  3. Give her R more window to ride it. As long as the wall is moving, taliyah should still be able to hop on and ride it. The very start shouldn't be her only oppurtunity
  4. I feel her passive needs to be reworked. It just isn't all that useful. If you're going to roam chances are that you will ult to get there, and since the move speed ends in combat it's a weak homeguard for the most part. 4.5 Perhaps grant taliyah movespeed on worked ground (so it isn't purely a punishing mechanic, correct me if I'm wrong here).

Can't think of much else, hopefully this spurs some discussion

Ifneth2 votes

{quoted}

Not a taliyah expert and only recently got into her. But with 3+3 (haven't played her enough to notice the Q CD early)

Just a few change suggestions that came to mind:

  1. For the duration. Perhaps the worked ground dissipates at double the rate if you stop using spells on it.

Not clear to players or opponents.

  1. Add more interactions with worked ground: Perhaps W and E work faster on worked ground.

The W delay reduction would be borderline OP. Her W needs its 1 second delay to be fair.

  1. Give her R more window to ride it. As long as the wall is moving, taliyah should still be able to hop on and ride it. The very start shouldn't be her only oppurtunity

Or at least let you ride by holding R. Having to double tap with a certain space between taps has cost me more than one ride into battle.

  1. I feel her passive needs to be reworked. It just isn't all that useful. If you're going to roam chances are that you will ult to get there, and since the move speed ends in combat it's a weak homeguard for the most part.

You just need more practice on her. She moves differently from all other champions. Stay near walls whenever you can to traverse the whole map faster and feel free to overextend, knowing you can ride away. Once you have even the 30% buff at level 10, you’re zooming. Try Relentless Hunter in Normal matches—you can outrun a Warwick’s Blood Hunt!

4.5 Perhaps grant taliyah movespeed on worked ground (so it isn't purely a punishing mechanic, correct me if I'm wrong here).

This used to exist. Apparently it made her quite hard to hit with skillshots and enabled too easy a chase with Q spam.

Can't think of much else, hopefully this spurs some discussion

I feel like maybe she could get a level-based buff from worked ground. 5-10% MS based on level. She would fly in the late game.

TheSingularity1 votes

Not clear to players or opponents

The worked ground could pulse while the accelerated cooldown is occuring. Or the ring could pulse solely as to reduce the amount of visual noise on the screen. Could also add new textures, so it looks less and less worked every 20-30 seconds or so? then it's clear when it's running out.

The W delay reduction would be borderline OP. Her W needs its 1 second delay to be fair.

Fair point.

Or at least let you ride by holding R. Having to double tap with a certain space between taps has cost me more than one ride into battle.

Same here, incredibly frustrating as it gets my mates killed as the 3v3 turns into a 3v2

You just need more practice on her.

I don't doubt it XD, only have like 12 games on her.

This used to exist. Apparently it made her quite hard to hit with skillshots and enabled too easy a chase with Q spam.

I thought so, was puzzled for a bit cos I swore it was a thing til I saw it absent from her kit. Perhaps make the MS bonus toward enemies only while also on worked ground? This would prevent the kite case.

PandaNator431 votes

What makes Taliyah so good in the jungle right now?

I mained Taliyah most of 2017.

InTheory2 votes

Her Q was changed from aoe to single target damage in 8.11 which significantly cut down her waveclear in lane while also heavily increasing her clear speed in the jungle against all those solo camps and the new rift scuttler (8.10).

PandaNator431 votes

been a while since I logged in....

I know her wave clear was gutted. But looking at jungle only, what change buffed her there? I can only think of the passive MS and the worked-ground q mana cost buff (less cost). Did she get any damage buffs?

Been having a lot of fun playing her in the jungle.

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