At the time of this guide I was rank 7 on Taliyah and top 30 Global. I went from Silver 1 - Diamond in 113 games this season playing only Taliyah Mid. I will look to get a top 3 rank later this season if I have the time.

Note: Account was Diamond when guide was made. I've since quit league and it will decay indefinitely, will keep the guide updated patch by patch though.

Taliyah gets no respect. Your opponents won't respect your damage and your teammates won't be going out of their way to get you fed so picking her is somewhat of a double edged sword and you need to be very proactive to have success with her.

Don't expect to sit in lane and get ganks from your jungler. He/She will most likely just focus top and bot instead.

You will almost always have lane priority as Taliyah as her passive will allow you to go into the jungle faster so look to be the first person to arrive at any fight and you will snowball the game. This tip is VERY important to climbing with Taliyah.

Using your Ult. It can be good to gank side lanes but even in normal teamfights you can walk off to the side and ult behind a squishy or two preferably without a dash, this will either force the flash or result in their immediate death as their team cannot protect them. Make sure theres no lane exits they can run to, do this against another wall.
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Taliyah has a strong level 1, no power spike level 2, and a very mana expensive one at level 3. Focus on slowly shoving the waves/poking early on using your worked ground Q which is only 1 Mana and auto attacks while keeping an eye out on the minimap for jungle skirmishes. Once you get lost chapter full on shove the wave with W-E-Q Combo and roam. Some like to W the back line minions some like to W the front line minions, you can clear both ways so its whatever you prefer.

*Always make sure you have 1 vision ward on the map and 1 in inventory*

Your first purchase depends on many things, e.g how much gold you have, who you are laning against, and your strategy. For example with 850 gold I could purchase Boots Dark Seal Health Potion and Vision Ward. Or if I'm confident I can solo kill the enemy laner (e.g no flash) I will go Blasting Wand instead.

At any time if you have 1100 gold on your first base rush Sorcs. If you have 1300 rush Lost Chapter.

If you have low kill potential and require heavy spell use to keep up in farm just rush dark seal and sapphire crystal.

Defending against ganks. A jungler will almost always attack you up until you reach your turret, try to lure them there than W-E them into turret range. Follow this with a Q-auto-ignite and with 1 turret shot that should be enough to get a kill and tilt them.

Mid game you should focus on shoving mid, getting picks/ganking side lanes and using that advantage to take turrets/drake/rift/baron.

Taliyah is very good at catching out squishies. If you went the Hextech route you can use it to slow people at max range than walk in for an easy W-E-Q 100-0. Try to go for this as often as possible as it will always result in a kill or a flash burned and its only a 40 second cd.

Another thing you could do is ward on one side of almost any wall, and stand on the otherside. Wait for someone to walk by and W-E-Q them over the wall and they will either die or be at around 10% health and have to base in which cases you now have the 4v5 advantage to go for an objective. The better you get at doing this the higher your win rate will be.

Good times to do this is if your team is doing drake or baron, use this to get an instant 4v5 advantage and zone them out, than back up and ult to give your team enough time to finish the objective and zone the enemy out with more Q's.
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Taliyah's damage output is insane. You will see as you get better with her expect to do the most damage in almost every game. Focus on getting picks on supports adcs and mids.

A great way to get an easy kill is to put a pink ward in the enemy jungle before an objective is about to spawn, stand in it and wait for someone to come up and ward. Cast your W-E-Q + Hextech from the bush, it will be sure to kill them than run off to your team. This works so well against any comp and is key to winning with Taliyah.

There are many places to do this, I will upload a photo of all the spots on the map this will work best at in every game.

In late game team fights try to stay in the middle of your team or even more towards the back of your team, Taliyah does not need to be close to do damage and if you are winning the fight and they are running with low health just ult to them and finish them off as shown below.
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