Hi, Im ignix.

Im a Zed/ Talon player and reguraly stream at My twitch channel.
I make this guide to inform newer players about how to talon but also to expand my knowledge about him. I have been playing talon for a while now and used to main him before I started maining Zed, I have have managed to get 110K points on him. I can confidentally say that I know the champion really well. The main reason I started playing Talon is because of his moderate skill floor, carry potential and his ability to influence everyone/everywhere around the map.

Pros: Amazing roamer 1 shot potential Moderate skill floor High carry potential Really fun champion No complicated mechanics

Cons: Predictable roams Requires good macro High ban rate Bad into tanks Bad teamfight (without conq) Falls off lategame

So? When should you pick Talon?

Well, that's what this section of the guide is about

A good matchup

Talon's early game is really strong. Especially his level 2 is a real threat for the enemy. In a good matchup you can very often kill the enemy laner and roam a lot.

A weak early game jungler

Something a lot of high elo talon players do is they crash the 3rd wave (cannon wave) into the tower. After that they use their jungle tracking to know where the jungler is and kill him. This works really well into weak early game junglers. If you're doing this strat always think about the jungler's power spikes. For example if you do this against an Olaf he'll just shred you in his jungle. But againast a Karthus you get a free 300 sack of gold and 20lp. I'd recommend only doing this if you have good macro about jungle tracking.

When shouldn't you pick Talon?

Well this is quite simple, we pick when we SHOULD play Talon and reverse it so. 1) you shouldn't pick Talon in a counter matchup (duhh) and 2) you shouldn't pick Talon into an early strong jungler.

Electrocute

We take this because we really want to get into the domination tree and this is just the most valuable of the 4 keystones. It gives Talon a lot of burst which is perfect for assasins. This greatly improves your early trades and 1 shot attempts.

Taste of Blood

Taste of Blood provides really good well needed healing. You gotta understand that healing for 100 is more valuable than dealing 100 damage. It helps you win trades you wouldn't win with Sudden Impact which by the way is something a lot of people take but it's just lackluster compared to TOB. EVeryone always underestimates this rune, I'd recommend looking at the rune's healing at the end of your game. Usually your healing from just Taste of Blood is insanely high.

Eyeball Collection

Eyeball Collection is a very snowball heavy rune which makes those kills even more precious. Really good for an assasin like Talon. It will make sure you secure even more kills and gets you really out of control. A great item to 1v9 with.

Ravenous Hunter

This rune is just amazing, it heals for so much just like Taste of Blood. NEVER take Ultimate Hunter on Talon your r is just not that strong (compared to other champions). Relentless Hunter is also a very vialbe rune especially when your micro is better than your macro (you get early kills).

Absolute Focus

This just provides some extra damage, some extra wave clear etc etc. It's just a great rune overall for lots of situations.

Nimbus Cloak

Nimbus cloak is really good for the movement speed when catching up to opponents or running away from them. This is really a hit or miss rune, 100 or 0. You either get saved by it or you don't. If you don't feel comfortable taking this rune and want a bit of a better early game you can opt for Scorch

Flash as with every champion is just really powerful, you can escape death, secure a kill, chase further. It's really good for unexpected dives. You can just go Flash-Q(ranged)-R- Tiamat-aa. Sometimes when you need to run away really fast you even use it to go over walls. (even though you can use e)


Ignite Is a really powerful tool especially into good matchups, it just adds a bit of a better laning phase. It works as a really good tool to secure kills (especially tower dives with your r). It's a summoner which makes Talon's immensely good early game even better than it already is.


Cleanse Is something you can consider into heavy cc teams so you wont have to build Quicksilver Sash. It's very strong but just situational, keep in mind that if you get cc'd in teamfight you're ****ed (unless you're running conq). I'd recommend this into stuff like Sejuani + Lux or something similar. Carefully ***es if Ignite or Cleanse will be better. If you have high kill pressure, then Ignite is in most cases better. One backdraw of Cleanse is that is rarely gets picked so a lot of people freak out and just press it before they even get cc'd.

Blade's End

Talon's spells Wound champions and large monsters, stacking up to 3 times. When Talon attacks a champion with 3 stacks of Wound, they bleed for heavy damage over time.

Don't underestimate this damage! It would surprise you how much damage this does. You can catch opponents off guard really easily with this. If they have 2 stacks up just q on them, aa and ignite. Boom half their hp gone.

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Noxian Diplomacy

Talon stabs the target unit. If they are within melee range, this attack deals critical damage. If they are outside melee range, Talon will leap at his target before stabbing them. Talon refunds some health and cooldown if this ability kills the target.

Something really tricky with this ability is the decision between melee and ranged q's. Melee q's deal more damage but self stun you for 1 second. Ranged q's deal more damage but don't self stun. In a lot of scenarios you will only get a kill if you use the correct one. When you're chasing you generally want to melee q. During 1v1 situations where your opponent doesnt want to run you should melee q.
Quick tip: you can ranged q to a minion/monster to gap close.
Quick tip2: If you're low in lane and you have blue buff, last hit with q for some extra hp.

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Rake

Talon sends out a volley of daggers that then return back to him, dealing physical damage every time it passes through an enemy. The returning blades deal bonus damage and slow units hit.

This is your main form of wave clear together with tiamat. You just w the whole wave, tiamat + aa the backwave and then only 3 low hp melee creeps are left which you can just last hit. In lane if you try to poke with Rake(w) try to get 2 hits (daggers coming out and daggers returning). If the enemy is slowed you can q (ranged) in. aa once and passive should activate dealing massive damage.

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Assassin's Path

Talon vaults over any terrain or structure, up to a max distance. This ability has a low cooldown, but puts the used terrain on a long cooldown.

This is what Talon is most infamous for and this is what makes him broken. You can just roam across the whole map in mere seconds. Theres no champion in the game who can match your roams. This allows you to splitpush, draw 1 opponent to a sidelane and then quickly group mid --> 5v4 fight.

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Shadow Assault

Talon disperses a ring of blades and becomes Invisible while gaining additional Movement Speed. When Talon emerges from Invisibility, the blades converge on his location. Each time the blades move, Shadow Assault deals physical damage to enemies hit by at least one blade.

This is a really good form of (dis)engaging since the movement speed + invisiblity allows you to come out of (almost) any situation. You can also just r into a teamfight. In teamfight you should use this ability to deal big aoe damage. just r and walk through their team, if need e out. NOTE = if you e the daggers converge back into you.
If you go all-in on someone you want to q-r always. Creating your strongest combo: W-Q-R- Tiamat-aa. This is what you'll use to 1 shot people. Check the combos section for more information.

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W-Q(ranged)-aa

This is your all in combo before you have Tiamat. If you land 2 w procs you get passive with this. If you get passive you (almost) always win the trade.

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W-Q(ranged)-aa- Tiamat-aa

It's basically W-Q(ranged)-aa but with Tiamat added. This is your early all in combo if you do have Tiamat but you aren't level 6 yet. It's still very good damage despite not having your r in it. This itself can already 1 shot most squishys. If you get 1 of these off in lane without much punishment for it you'll be set.

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W-R-Q(ranged)- Tiamat-aa

This is your full damage combo, this is what you're going to be doing to 1 shot squishys. Sometimes you won't use w tho if you don't need it. This is for maximum dps the most reliable combo there is. Ofcourse you can throw and ignite in there if you want. If there's any combo you wanna practice for Talon it's this one.

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R-Q(ranged)- Tiamat-aa-W-aa

This is basiaclly W-Q(ranged)-R- Tiamat-aa but you use R first to catch up with your opponent. The reason this is less efficient is the fact that R1 will deal no damage and usually W2 will not hit.

Early game

Check the items section of the guide to know what to start. If you started Corrupting Potion you should be trading a lot and using a lot of mana cause you have plenty. The most important part of Talon's early game is that you want the 3rd wave (cannon wave) to crash into the tower. So what you do is create a small minion lead wave 1. Make that a bit bigger wave 2 and wave 3 you start hardpushing. When the wave has crashed you're going to go to the opposite buff where the enemy jng started (only do this if it's an early weak jng). You can now kill him. Boom, you already have a lead. You want to push a lot of these waves and keep this pattern going of killing the enemy jungle. If you don't know where he is you can go for deep vision with your roam timer or you can gank bot/top (preferabbly bot since they have 1 squishy(Ez kill for lethality)).
Alright now that you have roamed a lot and youre only down a little cs. The mid game starts.

Mid/late game

The mid game with Talon is very situationally but what I usually do is the following: split bot/top, let an enemy catch the wave you pushed. If no one does just take tower. Once some1 is there, abuse ur e to go to mid where your team should be grouped up. Ready to take a 5v4 fight. Aren't they there? Who cares, you just got some good cs. Try to always be cs'ing in the mid game and extending your lead by getting more xp/gold. If you are losing you should be playing to minimise your losses and still get maxiumum exp/gold.

Be sure to play for objectives and try to always think, that's how you're gonna improve in the long run. Just always ask yourself: "Why am I doing this?"

Thank you so much for coming to my Talon guide!
I really enjoyed making this guide and I feel like I greatly increased my knowledge about Talon when I did research for this guide and created a deeper undestanding of the champion for me.

If you want to thank me for this guide, the best way to do that is to check out my social media, click one of the pictures to go there.

My main platform is twitch, I stream daily for ~5 hours usually starting 1 pm CEST - 6 PM CEST


Thanks a lot guys!