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Enabling Taliyah to Midlane

Ifneth·9/1/2018, 12:47:42 AM·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

ModKnightsKemplar9/8/2018, 1:16:35 AM1 votes

Approved!

TheSingularity9/8/2018, 2:15:37 AM1 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

PandaNator439/13/2018, 9:43:57 PM1 votes

What makes Taliyah so good in the jungle right now?

I mained Taliyah most of 2017.