Champion Guide: Talon, The Blade's Shadow

Introduction

Talon, The Blade's Shadow is a high mobility assassin who specializes in taking out the big threats in any team. His kit highlights this with an auto attack reset, a slow, a targeted gap closer with silence and stealth. If you enjoy playing tactfully, having a high-threat level and outplaying the enemy, you'll excel at playing Talon.

 

Runes

The runes I recommend include a good mix of offense and defence. The aim of the runepage is to take advantage of your strong AD scalings and survive the laning phase. I am using 9 Greater Marks of Attack Damage, 9 Greater Seals of Armour, 3 Greater Glyphs of Cooldown Reduction, 6 Greater Glyphs of Magic Resistance and 3 Greater Quintessences of Lifesteal. The attack damage runes will help with last hitting and poking the enemy with your Rake on lane.

The resistance seals and glyphs will stop you from dying in lane and helps you reach level 6 safely. The cooldown reduction paired with your masteries will give you some nice cooldown reduction so you can harass easier and have your ultimate up more often. Your lifesteal quintessences pair well with your resistance runes and synergize exponentially with your Noxian Diplomacy.

 

Masteries

The masteries I run primarily focus on enhancing your ability as an assassin. You should be aiming to catch people out of position and punish them for it. The main masteries in the offense tree are: Double-Edged Sword, Feast, Spell and Blade Weaving, Executioner, Devastating Strikes and Havoc.

Double-Edged Sword is a high risk, high reward mastery that you should definitely take on Talon. It trades 1% more incoming damage and gives you 2% outgoing damage.

Feast allows you to restore health from CSing which you should be aiming to do anyway. This essentially gives you free health.
Spell and Blade Weaving greatly increase your poke and your all-in. You can quickly gain stacks of each with your skillset and the synergy with Cutthroat is amazing.

Executioner is a great amplification mastery which helps your all-in and burst. Plus, it opens up Dangerous Game which is another high risk, high reward mastery.

Devastating Strikes is a staple mastery for anyone going into offense. It is useful in every phase of the game.

Havoc is another amplification spell that works wonders on Talon. Any damage you deal will be amplified by 3% which makes this a must-have mastery.

 

Summoner Spells

As an assassin, you should be aiming to enhance your ability to deal damage and be mobile. Ignite and Flash are two great instances of each. Ignite will add a nice bit of damage to your combo and ensure a low health target won't escape on a sliver of health. Flash is a high utility spell that can be used to catch a target or to escape a threat.

Some alternative summoner spells you could take are teleport or barrier. Teleport will allow you to split push and gank other lanes increasing your presence across the map. Barrier can be taken if you feel like you have a hard matchup or you're not confident in your ability to survive against the enemy team composition.

 

Abilities

Passive - Mercy - A nice 10% damage amplification to your autos if the target slowed, stunned, immobilized, or suppressed. This procs from your E, Cutthroat.
Q - Noxian Diplomacy - An auto-attack reset that does DoT to champions. It has a high AD ratio and can fully stack a Black Cleaver by itself. It grants sight with a blood graphic but not actual vision of the champion.
W - Rake - A cone AoE skillshot that applies a slow. It has a fast missile speed so it's not hard to hit.
E - Cutthroat - A targeted gap closer that silences your target. It also amplifies all your damage done by a nice %. It has a long cooldown so try to pick someone off with it rather than jump into 5 enemies. You can also use it on minions, too, to escape.
R - Shadow Assault - Talon's ultimate stealths him for 2.5 seconds and gives him a boost of speed. It can hit enemies twice (once when you enter stealth, once when you exit stealth). You exit stealth once you hit an enemy or once the skill times out (2.5 seconds). It is a good ability to use offensively and defensively and also has a small cooldown so use it freely.

 

Items

Even with recent nerfs to the Doran's Shield, I still feel it is a good start for Talon. It provides a nice chunk of health and some health regen. The passive flat reduction on it is still incredibly strong and will stop any ranged opponents from bullying you with their auto-attacks. Your first priority in lane is to not die and your second priority is to get kills.

On your first back, it is definitely advantageous to get boots of speed. It will allow you to roam and help your team by providing pressure or picking up kills. The first damage item you should aim for is The Brutalizer. It increases your damage exponentially as you have nice AD scalings and it gives you flat armour penetration. From here, you should assess your impact on the game. You can choose to build more offensively if you are ahead or defensively if you are taking a lot of damage.

If you decide to opt defensively, Banshee's Veil is a strong Magic Resist item that you should aim for. It will grant you the passive ability to block the first incoming spell that would otherwise hit you. It is a great item that can completely nullify the burst some mages can deal to you and can save you from certain death if you're lucky. After this, you should be safe enough to work towards your Bloodthirster. Bloodthirster stacks up to 100 AD and 18% lifesteal. This is nice for Talon as it boosts the damage from his auto-attacks and his damaging spells. Lifesteal allows you to heal up through auto-attacks to sustain yourself without potions. Upgrading your boots will give you more movement speed and give you a bigger presence on the map with ganks as well as more mobility to dodge and weave any enemy skillshots.

The boots I tend to choose are Mercury Treads as they give Tenacity and will reduce any CC I get caught by. Magic Resist is also useful as conventional mid laners will generally deal magic damage. Ninja Tabis are also viable if the enemy team are primarily physical damage dealers. Boots of Swiftness are a risky but viable choice if the enemy CC use a lot of skillshots, though I would not recommend it. Your last core damage item would be Last Whisper. The current meta includes a lot of tanks and armour is vastly accessible to nearly all champions.

Last Whisper grants you a huge 35% armour penetration. This will combo with the mastery 'Devastating Strikes' to give you 39% flat armour penetration. At this point in the game, you will start to realise there are more threats other than your enemy mid laner and that you will need more than Magic Resist to survive the harsh battlefield. Building Randuin's Omen will grant you a big boost to both your health and armour and also grant you a nice active item that will slow any enemies in a 500 range AoE around you. Even though this is viewed as a defensive item, it can be greatly offensive, too, for Talon as he gets a 10% damage amplification on his autos for anyone slowed. Don't forget to use this to your advantage!

The last change to your build should be upgrading The Brutalizer. It can be built into either Youmuu's Ghostblade or Black Cleaver. Youmuu's Ghostblade is a severely underrated item that grants you an active ability. The flat armour penetration is higher than for Black Cleaver and is very useful if you do not have time to stack the Black Cleaver. The active ability is a 6 second buff that allows you to attack and move faster which is useful for kiting or chasing. The downsides to Youmuu's are the lowered base stats compared to the Black Cleaver and the effectiveness versus armour-stacking units. Black Cleaver is a highly offensive item that also gives a slight boost to your health pool. The passive ability of the Black Cleaver shreds a percentage of the enemy champion's armour each time you deal physical damage with your champion. It is a solid choice for all targets.

An honourable mention goes out to Hexdrinker. It is a strong AD, Magic Resist item that is really advantageous to have early game. It falls off in the lategame and the upgraded version (Maw of Malmortius) tends to feel lackluster compared to other items. It is an endgame MR item that only provides 40 Magic Resist.

 

Conclusion

Talon is a highly mobile assassin with great potential. He is a high risk, high reward champion that is fulfilling to play. His game play will keep you on your toes and is definitely a solid addition to any player's champion pool. If you like to play analytically and can assess situations rapidly, Talon is a sure-fire way to win your games.

Though I may be slightly biased, I feel Talon will be seeing competitive play shortly with his solid Assassin potential.

"Live and die by the blade"