My Opinion Of Talon In Season 9 - By A Challenger Talon Abuser
Knight Assassin: The Second Book of Talon by James Boschert. A joyous homecoming turns into a nightmare, as a trained assassin must do the one thing he didn't want to do-become an assassin again. Knight Assassin is story of treachery, greed, love, and heroism set in the Middle Ages, just prior to the Third Crusade.
Hi /r/talonmains and hopefully any Rioters who are reading :). I'm Yamikaze, a challenger talon one trick. Most of you guys know me but I have a few thousand talon games, 2M+ mastery, ended rank 100 chall, etc. There's been a bit of discussion on Talon's balance and design and I figured I'd share my thoughts.
Here are a link to the two threads I am building off of:
First, I would like to say: New Talon is WAY better than old talon. Imo, anyone who's calling for a revert is either looking at old talon through rose-tinted glasses or plays at an elo where old Talon was considered good (like how current Wukong is considered good in certain elos...). Furthermore, I am NOT saying that Talon is weak. I'm 100% confident that, if I had the time, I could easily maintain a 60-70% winrate to from high diamond to Challenger with Talon's current state. If you play him well, he's very strong. With that being said, there are problems with Talon that make him feel bad to play (again, not the same as weak) compared to other champions. In this post, I will be sharing my opinion of the points made in the links I posted above. I do not agree with everything but I believe there are a lot of valid points to be made.
First, I want to discuss Talon's primary issues atm. My understanding of Riot's balancing philosophy is that the primary counterplay to 1-shot assassins is itemization, with focus on stopwatch and its upgrades (hourglass and GA). Out of any champion in the game, I believe Talon gets shut down the hardest with the ease of accessibility of stasis. Let's look at some examples given the situation of an hourglass rush, which negates any kill pressure or even skill-expression from Talon:
Fizz: Okay, so stasis is really good at shutting down Fizz. However, big problem: Fizz is an AP assassin, meaning the time it takes for the enemy mid laner to build hourglass gives Fizz plenty of time to look for solokills after popping the stopwatch (I'd also like to note Fizz easily pops banshees with protobelt).
Zed: AD assassin, gets shut down by both seekers rush and hourglass rush. However, a good Zed player has counterplay: using hourglass to dodge either the initial Zed R mark or the R damage allows Zed to guarantee a perfect triple Q - AA-E combo, which kills any squishy when Zed is fed.
Ekko: lol stasis his E and he just casts it again xD
Talon: An hourglass rush, no matter the skill difference, completely shuts down Talon. Enemy mid laner rushes seekers? Okay you're never going to kill them in 1 rotation (which is reasonable, same with zed). However, if the enemy mid laner properly times hourglass, there's zero chance you will ever 1-shot them (or even kill them anywhere over 40% hp tbh). Unlike Ekko, your Q gets completely negated by hourglass. Your W-R, passive, etc. as well. No matter how well Talon plays, if the enemy team buys 2-3 stasis items, you're useless. You can't triple Q, you can't just do magic damage, and you certainly can't re-cast Q after the hourglass. No matter how strong Talon is or how big the skill difference, a single item makes an entire champion useless. It feels absolutely awful to play Talon mid when you know every champion on the enemy team that can realistically buy hourglass will have the item by 15-20 minutes.
Talon's second primary issue is that he lacks a 3rd ability. In lane, you play with passive, Q, and W. Your e doesn't exist except as a crutch so bad Talon players aren't punished for poor positioning. Since I find Ekko to be the most similar champion to Talon in design, let's compare a couple things about them.
Passive: Ekko has a 3-proc passive (just like Talon) EXCEPT the damage is instant and you gain movespeed after proc'ing it (also you gain stacks with autos). It's literally a better version of Talon's passive.
Q: Same as Talon's W, except it feels more fluid. Talon's W feels like a rushed, last second change to his previous W, while Ekko's Q has acceleration, stops when it hits an enemy target so its easier to redirect, etc.
E: Comparable to Talon's Q. While it lacks a melee component, I argue it's literally a better version of Talon's Q. Not only does it allow for more skill expression (a fast-dash into a blink to dodge / outplay in fights, versus Talon's slow, linear dash), it is, most importantly, not completely shut down by a singular stasis item.
W (the delayed stun circle): I'll compare this ability to Talon's E, as they're both primarily utility-focused. Although Talon's E is certainly better in certain situations (especially for bad Talon otps to constantly survive and 'outplay' enemies despite having god-awful positioning), Ekko's W allows Ekko to punish stopwatch usage (again, something Zed/Ekko can do that Talon cannot) and, most importantly, has this additional aspect: 'Ekko's basic attacks deal 3% (+ 3% per 100 AP) of the target's missing health bonus magic damage to targets below 30% of their maximum health.' Even though the ability is primarily used for utility, it's still useful as the game progresses, making Ekko a strong, scaling champion. Compare this to Talon's E, which offers nothing except utility. One point in E and 5 points in E do the exact same thing and being level 1 and being level 18 also do not change the ability's usage at all. There is no incentive to ever put points in your E as it does nothing except reduce the cooldown of walls.
R: An extra ability for Ekko, as he doesn't need his R to proc his passive in a fight like Talon does.
So, to summarize, Ekko is an AP Talon with a better passive, a better utility ability, and what is essentially an extra ability on R because he's not forced to use it in teamfights to proc passive. Furthermore, the argument that 'Ekko is weak early and Talon is strong' is false because, unless you're playing against bad players that give you an early kill, Talon's laning is equally bad as Ekko's.
Talon's W nerf forces him to rush Tiamat every game. In any mid lane snowball matchup, being forced into rushing a 1325 gold item in exchange for 1-shotting the back wave feels disgusting. Even if you have a lead on an enemy Zed, for example, there will be a point in lane where Talon has Tiamat + dirk or Tiamat + boots + long swords, while Zed has a completed ghostblade. Regardless of your lead, Zed will still solokill you due to the completed item powerspike.
Generally, Talon's gameplay (given these issues), looks like this: Lane as an AD melee mid laner versus a ranged AP mid laner. Have no kill pressure due to barrier, armor runes, and seekers rush in lane. After your first lethality item is finally completed (after having to sink 1325 gold into tiamat), be relevant for the next 15 minutes until the enemy mid laner has a completed hourglass, the enemy ADC has a completed PD and tabis (or Kaisa starts building an hourglass), and then fall off. By picking Talon mid, you agree to pick an AD melee mid laner with a weak laning that falls off and is completely useless by 30 minutes. That just feels bad.
Now, given these problems, I have several solutions I'd like to offer:
Revert Talon's W nerf and allow him to compete with other snowball mid laners without the Tiamat gold sink
Add scaling AD, an extra passive, etc. to Talon's E so there's a reason to put points in it. I would even go as far as to make Talon's walljump itself a stack-based ability or unlimited usage out of combat and stack based in combat (takes away rewarding bad Talon players for bad positioning and rewards good positioning).
Give Talon's passive grievous wounds, damage through shields or extra damage to shields, or even damage through stasis (to give Talon a form of counterplay for poor stasis usage). Btw I'm aware that stasis means no damage can be taken but Riot has already shown they're willing to go against these set rules with Akali's true invis in W and her mechanic to follow teleports with E.
Reduce the power of Talon's passive and shift it towards his other abilities so he's not completely reliant on passive in fights (and thus making him useless when he can't proc it, e.g. when he doesn't have R).
Finally, I want to touch on some of the points made in the other two posts and my opinion of them.
Talon's cast times feel fine imo, idk why everyone suddenly got the idea that the delays in his kit are some kind of bad thing. .5s cast time on W is pretty normal for this kind of ability, melee Q is an auto reset and should definitely not be instant, and the R cast time is barely noticeable and can be easily canceled by casting it in Q. Although I do think there are ways to make Talon feel more fluid, e.g. allowing Talon to cast abilities sooner after he lands from E, being able to cast W in Q/E dash (I rly like this idea btw), etc.
Disagree with reducing / removing wall cooldowns, as part of the skill expression in playing Talon is having to take a different path to escape.
Also do not agree that it is bad for Talon to be useless when behind. Every snowball champion feels useless when behind and I'd go as far as to say that Talon is one of the best comeback snowball champions due to how easily he can get a pick and get a bunch of shutdown gold.
Anyways, that sums up my opinion and thoughts on the discussion going on. Again, I'd like to stress that I am NOT saying Talon is weak or unplayable, simply that he feels frustrating, clunky, and unsatisfying to play due to these issues. I'll be responding to comments :).