Barrier: The other summoner spell I usually take with Flash, this summoner lets you bait a ton, survive burst and ganks early game, as well as in fights and will just overall tilt the enemy when you use it right. Staying alive is super important as Taliyah to winning games, so would definitely advise this 90% of games with Flash.


Cleanse I don't often take it but it's a super spell to have when you're playing against heavy CC team comps. Picture this team, Annie, Thresh and Ashe, having Cleanse will go a long way to helping you not get locked down by their CC chain.

Rock Surfing: Taliyah gains out of combat movespeed (scaling from 20% up to 40% throughout the game with level) when moving next to walls. This ability seems pretty subpar at first glance, but helps Taliyah roam and get around. The range from the walls to activate this is pretty unforgiving, as well as the out of combat cooldown but it’s still important to make the most of this. At least the animation is pretty cool.

Threaded Volley: There’s so much going on in this unique ability that it takes a lot of practice to get experienced with it. Taliyah throws five stones in a target direction doing small area of effect damage. Subsequent rocks do half damage, so the total damage for hitting all five stones is triple the damage of hitting one stone. The actual cast and feel of it is similar to Lucian’s The Culling, but it’s very important to cast it when you are going to hit it. This is because of her Worked Ground mechanic, where casting Q where you already have used it recently yields one stone and refunds half the mana. This can cause problems if you are not careful as far as positioning and waveclear are concerned. It’s important to note that Worked Ground duration scales down with cooldown reduction and gives Taliyah a movespeed boost on it that is half of her passive. That said, it’s an incredibly strong ability and will truly separate the good Taliyahs from the great ones.

You can auto attack while casting Threaded Volley, and if you are stunned or knocked up it will continue to throw rocks. Knowing this, you can shove a minion wave while attacking the enemy and surprise them, or cast the ability right before being hit with crowd control to still do damage while locked up.


Seismic Shove: This is a fairly straightforward ability, but takes some getting used to based on its unique casting mechanic. Taliyah makes part of the ground erupt and can recast it to make it go in a target direction. You will always want to make this ability go a direction, whether that be back into your team, away from you, or perhaps to the side to catch them in that sexy Galio ult. If you don’t recast, the ability will respectably knock them straight up in the air for a short amount of time.

you will want to cast your Unraveled Earth before your Seismic Shove and not the other way around, or you won’t break any bones on the rocks.


Unraveled Earth: Taliyah throws out a minefield of rocks that initially slows and does damage. After four seconds, the rocks erupt doing half the initial damage apiece. Enemies that dash or are knocked over the rocks trigger the damage early. It’s important to note that an enemy can only take damage from up to four rocks, or up to triple the damage of the initial cast if everything hits. That’s a lot of damage.


Weaver's Wall: Incredibly fun and powerful ultimate, it lets Taliyah go crazy ranges and wall off immobile champions. Recast Weaver's Wall again immediately after casting to ride the wall, but be careful with this. If you take damage, you will be shoved off the wall on the side you take damage from, which will more often than not be extremely dangerous for a squishy Taliyah. You can hop off early by right clicking a particular side. As said above, the wall’s duration and length scale with level in the ability, so it is very formidable late game. Useful in a multitude of situations, but it’s important to note that you can take this wall down early if you royally mess it up. Can save you from a lot of flame in ranked. A great ultimate is absolutely game changing.

pros
+strong lane phase
+good wave clear
+solid teamfighter
+easy roams
+very good at kiting
+very high dmg combos

cons
-weak against assasins
-low mobility
-worked ground if different
-lacks a combat ultimate
-decent amount of hard matchups

Levels 1-6

Laning can be a bit awkward at first with Taliyah, but once you get used to it you can be incredibly powerful and surprise the enemy. Your ability to outplay and win the lane is dependent on two things: Your ability to cast your Threaded Volley and manage Worked Ground successfully, and your ability to land your Unraveled Earth and Seismic Shove. Of course along with this you have to use some combination of these abilities and positioning to work around whatever gameplay or cliche minigame your opponent has. For example, against Xerath or Varus you have to dodge their poke and weave your way into range, and against assassins you have to keep your distance and abuse your range advantage, while using your Unraveled Earth timing to outplay them. A lot of this will be included in the detailed matchup section of the guide.

From the start of the lane, the first thing to do is step to one side or the other of the first minion wave and use your Threaded Volley to clear the back line of the minion wave, weaving your auto attacks to clear the melee minions. If you can hit the enemy that’s great, if not it’s fine. Taliyah’s shoving ability is almost unmatched early and you can accumulate a gold advantage by watching the enemy fail to last hit under turret. When they are trying to do this you can walk up and hit them with a full blast of your Threaded Volley again. Hitting all five rocks early will do about half health and normally draw a Health Potion.

Take a minute to try and deduce where the enemy jungler started based on whether their top lane gave a leash or not. If they did, the jungler started top side and will most likely gank you from the bottom side early. If not, the jungler will most likely gank you from the top side. Most junglers finish their clear and can come mid lane around the three minute mark, so place your Warding Totem in a good warding spot based on where you think their jungler will be. You should back up and play less aggressively at this point unless you can say with confidence you can escape a gank. Knowing the enemy jungler’s champion can go along way: A Skarner or Shyvana won’t really give you as much of a problem as will a Rek'Sai or Elise.

Usually, you can proceed to do the minion shoving technique for the first two or three waves for most matchups. You will hit level 2 off the first melee minion on the second wave, and take Unraveled Earth and try to get in range to use it. If you can’t or they are playing far back, you can use it to shove the wave harder. Clearing waves is important on Taliyah because it allows you to look for roaming opportunities, but also allows you to get a head start to nearby developments such as helping your noob jungler not get invaded or die trying to steal that red buff. Some matchups you definitely won’t want to shove after the first level or two, such as most assassins. Fizz, LeBlanc, and Yasuo come immediately to mind where it’s better to take control of the lane under your own turret.

At level 3, you can take Seismic Shove and attempt to hit the enemy with your Unraveled Earth + Seismic Shove combo. It’s important to normally wait until they use their mobility spell to maximize your chances of hitting the ability. Also, once you use these abilities you should back off as you are most vulnerable to an all in when you have your displacement spells on cooldown. After this point, it gets pretty matchup dependant, but in general, you want to continue looking for favorable damage trades, use your trinket off cooldown unless you have information on the enemy jungler, and set up ganks for your own jungler. If your jungler has reliable crowd control, it can be best to let them initiate and hold your Seismic Shove for guaranteed follow up and huge damage with your Unraveled Earth and Threaded Volley.

Wave management

You’ll also want to use Wave Management techniques to maximize your advantages. For example, if you get a kill or the enemy is forced back, shove the wave into them and they will miss all of the gold and experience. On the flip side, if you really need to recall, it is best to wait until the wave before the next cannon minion wave, shove it in hard with your abilities, and recall. This way, even if the enemy shoves in the cannon wave, it will not die to turret as fast due to the tankiness of the cannon minion to turret and you can usually get back to lane in time thanks to your passive Rock Surfing that you won’t miss more than a melee minion or two. Finally, when trying to roam you’ll always want to shove the wave as soon as it gets to lane to maximize your free time before missing experience and gold from the subsequent wave.

Roaming

Roaming is incredible important to secure and snowball your team as Taliyah. Her roaming ability can be comparable to champions like Twisted Fate, but requires a bit more setup beforehand. Before starting to roam it’s important to identify the best place to go. First thing to look at is champions- good luck killing a Riven that can just hop your wall, or a Thresh playing far back that can simply lantern their carry over. You want to look for immobile champions playing far up in the lane. At this point, you want to make sure you aren’t being too obvious. Shoving the wave and buying pink wards is optimal for this so you know you aren’t being spotted out too early. It’s easy to identify if you have been spotted because the enemy will immediately run away before you can get in range. If there’s nothing you can do about it at that point, it’s okay; going back to your lane to farm isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Something else effective that you can do is coordinate with your jungler, especially one that you can trust. You can ping them lots of times to a lane and do a two man gank with them that can be strong, and also secure an objective early like dragon or rift herald. With the new buff timers in the game, you can also coordinate a buff steal, using your wall to trap the enemy jungler from the rest of their team. Maybe you’ll even get the blue for yourself. In competitive, having synergy with your jungler is one of the most important aspects of winning the early game, and Taliyah is best picked with a hard CC jungler such as Rek'Sai, Elise, or Gragas (If you want to see Pluckin Penguin’s (NC State Jungler) Gragas guide, you can click here). Don’t try too hard to roam if it’s just not possible. Taliyah is not a champion that falls off. She is incredibly potent in team fights and provides a lot of control to her team in the form of peel, crowd control and objective play.

Teamfighting

Taliyah is an extremely strong teamfighter, because she is versatile and always useful in many different types of fights. Your dynamic of play should be malleable depending on the current scenario in the game. If you have a fed hyper carry and you aren’t particularly far ahead, use your displacement to peel for them and they’ll thank you later. If peel is covered by a good Janna or others, you can use your control mage abilities to aim for an enemy carry and knock them out of position for your team to clean up. If you don’t win the initial burst of the fight, it’s okay because Taliyah has tremendous kiting abilities once she purchases Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Her cooldowns are low late game and being chased as well as chasing enemies will be so easy.

One part of Taliyah’s kit that really make or breaks the player is their ability to use the wall benevolently in fights. A bad wall can really screw over your team, and you should be watching to see how it works out and whether or not you should take it down. If you trap a few enemies and they all flash over, take the wall down so your team can chase. If a few low health enemies escape and you still have the wall up, you can cut them off or even ride it and chase them yourself to clean up.

Taliyah is pretty bad when she gets jumped on, so it’s best to stay behind your front line and kite out opponents. Once big ultimates and cooldowns are used from the enemy, she can skirt in on the sidelines and deal massive damage while keeping herself and her team alive and protected. Try to use your abilities off cooldown, but move around so you can full cast your Threaded Volley unless absolutely necessary. When fighting on Dragon and Baron objectives when your team is defending, use Threaded Volley on these objectives sparingly so you can still fight the enemy on the ground when they engage. Optimally, you will have a wall down to secure the objective and allow your team to escape or at least regain their footing and prepare for battle.