The Problem(s) With Taliyah and How to Fix Her

Hi LoL community,

This is a long post. I'm just a modest silver pleb who picked up this champion and I honestly love her. Great personality and super fun in game however, she has several weaknesses that I have identified in my many games with her. I have come up with a few solutions that I believe will take the champion in the right direction.

1. Utility Mage?

Taliyah is a utility mage but when compared to other utility mages (, , ) her utility skills are no where near as reliable or frequent as others during the mid game where utility mages shine brightest. Her W and E are easy to counter/out play, highly telegraphed... other threads have explained it well enough. Yes her wall is super powerful but it has no use during a teamfight as it will easily screw your team as much as disrupt the opponents'.

Also utility mages have abilities that are 'get out of jail free cards' Lux Q, and shield, Lulu Ult and shield, Ori shield and W speed and Ult. Taliyah has a weak slow on her E and, a highly telegraphed easy to dodge knockback (Her ult should rarely be used as and is a terrible escape mechanism as any damage will prevent you from riding it and it has an unbelievably long delay and cooldown). Also because this champion is designed to use all her abilities to reliably damage a target she immediately lacks self peel if she does as her ranges aren't high enough to dissuade the retaliation that will come.

My suggestion to fix this is in the next section.

2. Worked Ground

This mechanic is ridiculous. It is I believe the first 'bread and butter' ability that nerfs itself. Imagine if each Q reduced his attack speed or each Q cost more and more mana for the same damage. How useless do both these champions sound if their primary and most reliable damage/harass negatively impacts their play? Also the 'bonus' movement speed she gets on these patches is irrelevant rarely will it give the extra speed to escape chasers as her base move speed is abysmal. Viktor and Ahri both have significantly better move speed bonuses attached to their abilites but Taliyah with on worked ground barely cracks 390.

In jungle fights you'd think Taliyah would excel but one Q in the narrow corridors and unless the fight moves or lasts long enough for your W and E to come up again you become nearly completely useless (move up for more fresh ground and you'll get blown up, move back and you will likely only hit a tank if anything). Also have you tried to baron or dragon? unless you are ready to trap yourself in the pit to use Q's it's really quite pointless.

Alright say we keep the worked ground. My first suggestion is to make it smaller and increase the move speed bonus as this allows her to have areas available in lane and will greatly improve her jungle fighting.

My second suggestion; put a stun on her worked ground Q. Not only does this increase her usefulness in a teamfight but it gives her very linear kit options. Stay on worked ground for stuns or move to fresh ground for damage. Similarly this gives her a low cd tool to prevent ganks and set up plays. I understand that a 4 second stun is crazy late game so giving it a buffer of say 10 seconds before it can stun the same target again would alleviate this.

3. Unraveled Earth

Great skill, if an opponent is stupid enough to dash through it or not immediately back off when you lay it down. The initial damage is not great and the damage afterward is not great. It only hurts dashing (but my god does it hurt dashing). Once you use it twice in lane your opponent will learn to wait for the weak damage, weak slow skill to wear off then destroy you. By late game your opponents rarely make the mistake of dashing through this skill and will save dashes till wears off, or the fight moves.

So a lot of her damage is packed in this one area that can be easily seen and avoided and needs specific triggers (dashes). This SUCKS! Getting your combo off is awesome but if you miss you have this essentially useless patch of ground that tanks and other quick champions will ignore completely and run through.

My suggestion is to make the detonation activatable this way you can decide on more damage for hurting dashers or pop it quickly to hit champions in the area for less damage burst (like a E).

My second suggestion is to give the second detonation more damage in addition to the ability to trigger it. Because for a large part of the mid game once you use your W you have upwards of a 16 second wait to combo again for 'dash damage'.

4. Weaver's Wall

Cool ability with superb utility. Crippled by a staggering cooldown and the awkwardness to position. When we compare Taliyah's ult to other incredibly long cd ults , , , this ability doesn't quite measure up. Yes you can wall off entire sections... but did your ult win the team fight? The thing about these other ults is that they always have great utility while Taliyah's is powerful but requires very specific situations and positioning.

My suggestion is to put the worked ground stun mechanic i explained earlier on her ult as a passive. With the duration for 'same target stun' going down each rank in the ultimate. This change would fully cement Taliyah's role as a utility mage with strong, strong zoning potential.

5. Conclusion

Thank you for sticking with me. I am just a silver pleb but this champion is so much fun that I really would like her to be viable and these are just my few suggestions how.

Final thought, the stun could be on her passive but rock surfing is actually awesome :). God speed fellow summoners.