What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
The new champion, Taliyah is out on the PBE, and I got a chance to mess around with her
a bit and try out my thoughts.
She’s a really cool and interesting champion, and I’m really fond of the way that she
was designed as a whole.
I got a chance to take a look at her in pretty much every role that you might think of, and
I’m here to bring you guys my thoughts for just how good Taliyah is shaping up to be.
And as always If you guys enjoy the video don’t forget to hit that like button and
if you don’t enjoy the video hit that dislike.
And let’s get started.
So Taliyah is a champion that is very much designed to be a control mage, and as a result
functions somewhat similarly in playstyle to that of champions like Viktor and Anivia.
Control mages involve using zones to aggressively influence the positioning of opponents, while
also outputting damage with a decent amount of utility.
And control mages are really awesome in my opinion, because they are probably one of
the most well-designed playstyles a champion can have in league of legends.
She doesn’t have any super frustrating mechanics to play against, and her kit is really healthy
and fair to play against as well, while at the same time control mages are very complex
strategically in terms of positioning and using your abilities.
Although control mages might not always be the most complex champions in terms of mechanics,
in terms of the strategy to use your abilities and make plays, they are some of the most
in depth when it comes to that category, because often the control mages involve a lot of slow
and powerful skillshots that are pretty easy to dodge, and as a result require you to,
instead of just throwing them out at will, they require you to set up, predict, and manipulate
your opponent to force them into positions where your skillshots land, which is a really
awesome playstyle to design a champion for.
Taliyah is a unique control mage in the sense that she lacks a lot of damage, especially
some of the burst that a lot of the control mages have.
She definitely does a bit less damage, and as compensation she is given better utility.
Not necessarily more utility, but the utility that she has is a lot more impactful and powerful
to create plays if you can actually land it properly.
Let’s take a look at her abilities.
Her passive gives her bonus movement speed when moving next to walls.
This is kind of a boring ability, but it’s cool to like surf around on a rock, and the
passive gives you a bit of breathing room before it deactivates, allowing you to use
it to get back to lane a lot faster, as well as to roam around to other lanes, so it might
not be that exciting or interesting, but it’s reasonably useful, and helps give her a bit
more presence around the map without any downsides.
You just have to remember to make sure to actually walk next to a wall rather than down
the middle of a lane or something when walking around on the map.
Her Q is probably the strongest ability on her kit.
It’s going to be what you want to max outside of putting points into your ultimate whenever
possible, and this ability has a lot of dynamics to it that gives you a bunch of different
options.
It fires out 5 line projectiles with a relatively high range, that do a pretty solid amount
of damage.
The first one hit does some nice poke, and additional projectiles hit on the same target
do 50% damage.
In addition, it places a zone on the ground that lasts for 3 minutes and gives her bonus
movement speed when moving through it.
If you cast the Q inside one of those zones, instead of firing 5 projectiles you fire only
1, but you are refunded half of the mana cost.
So you can set up the zones and use the angles to cs and save a bit of mana, but it’s also
kind of weird to play around, since it definitely does lower your damage but it’s necessary
since she runs out of mana somewhat quickly.
However, if you are using the Q for the 5 projectiles, and manage to land 3 or more
on a target, this ability is a really insane amount of damage for a basic ability.
You proc thunderlords, and you can really chunk people out, although landing that many
projectiles on the target is easier said than done, but this aspect makes rylais a core
item on her, since by giving her Q a slow it makes landing 4 or 5 of the projectiles
on a champion quite easy, as long as you hit the first one.
As well, the hitbox width is generous, definitely larger than the animation, and it hits in
a small aoe radius so it kind of works for waveclear and harassing through creeps and
is a really cool ability to play with that is her main source of power.
Her W is probably my favorite ability on her kit.
This is her main source of utility that I mentioned earlier when it came to the fact
that she doesn’t really have more or less utility in her kit than other control mages,
but the utility she does have is a lot more impactful, since her W is almost like a mini
ranged alistar headbutt that can go in any direction, although it is quite difficult
to land, being able to bump an opponent into your team at a pretty significant range is
really awesome and is incredibly powerful, and is a great ability to set up combos, create
picks, disengage, and manipulate your opponents.
It has a petty big delay on it so it’s quite difficult to land, and that’s super cool
to see because it makes the ability super fair.
It’s difficult to land but a big part of her strategy revoles around it.
Since getting hit with the W counts as a dash, it also procs the second half of the damage
on her E, and allows you to combo to land a lot of damage on a target.
Typically, when you land a W on someone you should, at least in theory be able to land
most of your entire combo on them, so a really big part of her playstyle involves manipulating
your opponent’s movements in order to force them into a position to put them in a spot
where dodging the W is nearly impossible, which results in a really awesome strategic
playstyle.
Her E is what I think might be the most interesting ability on her kit.
Now this ability does like an okay amount of damage, and has a 4 second delay on it’s
reactivation for a second round of damage.
4 seconds is obviously a massive delay, and I talked about this mechanic of giving something
a delay a couple days ago, and we can really see this mechanic in this ability on Taliyah
as well.
If someone uses a dash within the zone of her E, it procs the second part of the damage
instantly, but it does not stop the dash, however landing her W also counts as a dash
so those two abilities kind of combo together.
Now the main reason why I think this ability is so interesting, is because of how short
the range actually is.
Where every single ability on her kit is actually quite long ranged, this ability is ridiculously
short ranged which Is really cool, since it gives her incentive to put herself in a position
where she is a little bit closer to the fight and a little more at risk.
As a result, she benefits a lot from tank stats, so a proper build on her is probably
some form of hybrid ap, maybe like a rod of ages first, then a rylais, and an abyssal
scepter, then zhonyas and a rabadon’s or void staff.
Don’t pay attention to my builds in the video, because whenever I play champions on
the PBE I basically just try out a bunch of random garbage that often ends up sucking,
but it’s a good way to learn a lot about the champion quickly.
And in teamfights, a lot of postioning and manipulation with the rest of her kit can
allow you to land that second proc of the E, especially on tanks or champions that are
easily kited, and even if you can’t, the first part still does relevant damage and
it gives her nice waveclear.
And her ultimate definitely is the coolest ability on her kit.
This ability took a while for me to get used to and I kind of messed it up a lot, since
it’s a little bit slower than I had expected it to be, but it essentially creates this
huge wall of impassable terrain at a massive range, so much so to where you can wall off
entire areas.
You can wall off escape routes of an opponent in lane completely, which makes it an awesome
tool for ganking, and you can wall off people to be stuck inside the baron pit.
Think of it as like a massive semi global anivia wall, but what’s great is that you
can use it as a pseudo teleport kind of ability to travel to somewhere really fast, and you
can also deactivate the wall at any time in case you mess it up, or if the positioning
of the players change to where the wall is more of a burden.
The wall lasts for 6 seconds, and when you are riding on it, you can also jump off at
any time, so as a result it’s quite versatile, but the range on it, and the plays you can
make with it are so hilarious it’s actually quite awesome.
From using it to travel to a fight faster, to completely cutting off an escape route
for ganks, to zoning out opponents from fights and splitting them off, this ultimate is a
really awesome ability that has a high skillcap as well, but gives her a lot of hilarious,
but also quite good playmaking potential.
It doesn’t do any damage, and the fact that it doesn’t is a big part of why I say that
Taliyah in general is maybe a bit lower in damage than other control mages, her damage
overall is still quite alright, she just lacks the one shot burst combo of a control mage
like viktor might have on some targets that get caught out.
But yeah her ultimate is awesome, it’s just that her all-in potential isn’t enough to
kill someone from full hp, and that results in a fairly strategic playstyle.
Her laning phase is pretty interesting since she lacks a bit of burst damage, but she has
a lot of nice harass and using her q can be quite effective, and she performs well versus
mostly immobile champions, since she is fairly skillshot reliant.
But her laning phase is alright, and her waveclear is pretty solid, since although her E has
a super long delay, it’s not really a huge deal when using it to waveclear.
Her roams are great, and her teamfighting is really interesting since there is a lot
of strategic things you can do through manipulating opponents and zone control.
Taliyah is definitely designed for the mid lane, but she has some potential in other
roles too.
She has a fair amount of utility, so she has potential on support, and her tools for ganking
are insane, so she has potential in the jungle as well.
And since she kind of works off of a tanky-hybrid kind of style, I wouldn’t be surprised to
see her having success in the top lane as well.
It’s hard to know if her utility will be useful enough without the damage though, and
I’m leaning a bit towards it being a no, since although her W is awesome, it’s really
difficult to land if your other abilities aren’t threatening, so I don’t think we’ll
see her on support, and in the jungle she lacks a bit of the waveclear you would want
from a good jungler, and the control mage style in general is one that is much better
suited for mid lane, and with her ultimate and passive roaming on her is powerful, so
her meta role is almost certainly going to be mid lane, and I’m not confident that
she will be successful in other roles, although she definitely does have some potential.
Overall though, the design of Taliyah is something that I am really impressed by.
She really does not feel overpowered at all, and she doesn’t feel underpowered as well.
She’s probably one of if not the most balanced champion in terms of the gameplay design that
I’ve seen for a really long time.
Her design is really awesome, and she feels great to not only play as, but also to play
against, and she has a pretty high skillcap which makes her have a lot of potential to
be powerful at the competitive level.
I really don’t think that she’s overpowered, and she might not even be that strong, but
she definitely feels really really balanced which is really cool, and says a lot about
the design of the character, so big props to the lead designer Daniel Klein, who also
designed Azir, Tahm Kench, Lucian, and the Xerath rework, he did a great job with Taliyah,
and I’m looking forward to her release and would recommend her to anyone looking to try
out a new control mage once she hits live servers, which should be in two weeks from
the day I am uploading this video.
And that’s gonna be it, thanks for watching, subscribe if you want, an I’ll see you guys
next time!