Hi i am by no means an amazing pro player, but i believe my self to be a pretty proficient build designer. even though their are a ton of talon guides out already i felt many were missing the point.

Their are 3 key things i feel people are missing about talon

1) He is an Assassin Champion - assassin champions are meant to bide their time and pop in at opportune moments and drop a vital member of the opposing team. Then get out of the fight and repeat. a lot of people are building survivability on Talon because they are staying in the fight too long. Talon is all about hit and run.

2) He is a Burst Champion - I see so many people getting hung up on his Passive and building frozen mallet. Talon is not a right click hero. he shouldn't be in the middle of a fight long enough for this to matter. also look at the passive in the grand scheme of things its only 10% damage. if you have 300 damage that's only 30 extra damage. Also it only affects basic attacks. none of your abilities get a damage boost. you could spend the money your spending on frozen mallet and get a better damage bonus that also boosts your ability damage. rake should also provide more then enough time to get in some hits with your passive.

3) Talon's AD Scaling - i think a lot of people are missing how well talons skills scale off AD. Q has a .5 scaling, W has a 1.2 scaling, E haven't done math yet, and his R has a .9 scaling. Talon's main source of damage should be from his abilities. its best to think of him as an AP caster that uses AD to scale instead of AP, and build him in a similar manner by stacking as much AD as possible.

I find these runes to work well with talon

ArPen Marks - helps him across the board providing bonuses to both his auto attack damage and abilities.

Armor Seals - Talon is squishy and this build picks up no survivability. this is to provide him some limited protection to improve his chance of getting in an out of a fray, and nothing in this rune category really helps him except mana regen. talons spells are cheap and his mana pool is rather large. i dont feel its worth sacrificing the defense gained here for mana regen that he really doesn't need that badly.

Magic Armor/lvl Glyphs - same as above. talons spells have really low cooldowns already. between brutalizer/Ghost, blue buff, and/or blue potion he's cooldowns are low enough already. CDR glyphs aren't worth the lose of defense.

HP quints - same as above.

straight forward mastery for a AD champ. you can put the 9 points in defense instead if you want more survivability. more of a personal preference kind of thing at this point.

Flash - no brainier. vital for talon to be able to get in and out of battles quickly. taking this is non-negotiable.

Exhaust - best summoner spell for talon. it slows causing his passive to come online, and the damage debuff is amazing for him as usually by the time it ends you have killed the target anyway.

Ignite - this really shouldn't be needed. talon is perfectly able to kill a target with his built in burst. if your worried about people that escape with little to no hp talons Q has a built in bleed.

Rake - this skill is your everything. its the primary source of harass, last hitting, farming, disable, and burst. this should be maxed as quickly as possible. try not to cast it too much at level 1 as the damage is very weak. once you get it to two it starts paying off.

Noxian Diplomacy - this is talons strongest burst skill mid-late game. it is capable of critical hits allowing it to hit for over 1k once you get infinity.

Cutthroat - primary purpose is to gap close. the only scaling component is the cooldown, and the damage amplification. this is why its capt at 1 until late game.

Shadow Assault - just like talons rake their are many uses for this skill. keep in mind that you get a speed boost when activating it making it a great escape tool. also be aware of your positioning when you trigger the second activation of the skill as if your target isnt between you and the blades they wont get hit. EI if your chasing someone you have to get in front of them to deal the damage.

The key here is to stack AD as quickly and efficiently as possible. the trick is to grab basic component items and spend money combining them ONLY when you run out of inventory space. the reason for this is it provides talon a much stronger early game as the only thing he really needs until people start getting armor is RAW AD. the great part is all these cost effective little pieces your picking up will all later be built into your much bigger items. you must follow this build to a T or you will find yourself without enough space to build certain things or end up needing a large chunk of cash to build an item all at once because you don't have room for components.

Mercury's Treads - pretty much mandatory. a disabled talon is a dead talon. if the opposing team has little to no disables you might get away with some other boots. talons boot slot is the only slot dedicated to defense. you should be picking up these or ninja tabi. if the opposing team is lacking disables and burst then you might consider Ionian Boots but these situations will be rare.

Ghostblade - provides a lot of stats that talon can put to good use. the CDR, ArPen, and AD are the most vital stats here. everything is just icing on the cake that benefits talon in some way.

Infinity Edge - really strong item for talon. his Q is able to crit. making the crit components of IE effective for increasing his burst. IE also has the second highest damage bonus in the game second only to a fully stacked Bloodthirster

Bloodthirster - A fully stacked bloodthirster gives the highest damage bonus in the game. talon can also life steel of his Q. giving him a big chunk of health mid fight.

Last Whisper - as the game goes on people will start building armor to counter you. the ArPen provide by last whisper is vital to your ability to continue dealing damage late game. the fact that it gives you 40 more AD is icing on the cake.

Why double infinity?

you should never really get to this point, but the reason for double infinity is simply its the best choice for More AD. ya you lose the passive, but your almost certain to get a Q crit. Q Crits hit for over 1k usually making them happen more consistently is a huge boon. your other option is getting another bloodthirstier but trying to get that stacked so late in the game is difficult and the added life steal really isnt needed.

Why no trinity force?

the stats Trinity are not that impressive for talon, most are a complete waste. the AP is a completely waste and the health bonus is so small its hardly worth it. their are also problems with the passive. the slow is chance based and your battle usually happen in small windows so getting it to proc reliable is a problem. the bonus damage also has a problem of only being based off base damage. this means that it does not gain the benefit of any damage items you have. talons base damage at 18 is ~100. this means a TF proc is only adding ~150 damage. TF also has a built in cooldown of 2 seconds so you cant get the bonus damage again for a bit. in the grand scheme of things your not gaining that much burst. if you compare it to say IE your getting +40 damage on Q, +96 on W, and +72 on R. this isn't factoring in the further damage you will get from E's damage amplification. i also want to add that 2 of these abilities are AoE. this is why TF is bad.