-26/08/2011 Talon: The Master Assassin guide completed!
-27/08/2011 Added Talon's kit section, and Laning/Harassment Section.

Talon, you may be reading these guides on mobafire.com on this newly released champion, thinking what one should I pick? Which is the best? Well this guide will show you how to build talon, play talon, own will talon, carry games with talon (Not be a carry, as talon is a clean up assassin). And everything else you can ever think of!

Here is my recent match history the first 2 days of playing talon to let you know I'm not just writing a random guide without knowing how to play on talon.

As you can see, I do pretty good on talon. The reason for this is, my build is a hybrid between AS/AD. I get AD and cooldown reduction first to complement his main focus

Pros:
-Good early game with rake harassment.
-Extremely high burst damage.
-Has an escape mechanism(Stealth ulti, rake slow.)
-A slow on one of his skills(The only slow he needs imo)
-Did I say really high burst damage?
-Very fast tower killing late game, between AS, Q+Sheen, and ghost blade.
-Great mana usage compared to other classes, as long as you handle it right, as in not spamming q and w every time they're off CD, and using it when you can hit minions+champs.
-Amazing ganker, you go in, you 3 shot people, they die, nuff said.

Cons:
-Bad early game will lead to a horrible late game, talon is pretty item dependent and if he doesn't have good items then he can't burst anyone down, and he then just gets focused and blown up.
-Squishy
-CC vulnerable
-Needs good positioning/knowledge of when to gank/initiate.
-High cooldowns early game.

Overall his con's are pretty easy to overcome, just by your (hopefully balanced) team backing you up, and you coming in once the enemy team has blown your CC and you just clean up, and buying cooldown reduction items as my build suggests.

This spell has gotten me kills countless times and gotten me kills countless times, being able to flash over walls is unrivaled. I take this on almost every champion I play.


This spell is AMAZING early game and through out the whole game. it gets you first blood very easily. It keeps people from running. It gets you a clutch kill lowering their damage. It can give you 40 kills instantly using it on a minion....okay maybe it can't do that, but it's one of the best skills on a melee assassin.

Optional Summoner Spells

This spell grabs you kills when you get them to 1 hp and they JUST get past the tower. I personally don't like to take this over exhaust, as exhaust does it pretty much the same thing for you.

This skill can be a viable option instead of flash, until someone flashes over a wall and you can't flash over the wall as well to kill them.

Greater Mark of Desolation9 Armor pen marks and Greater Quintessence of Desolation3 Armor pen quints on an AD burst character, nuff said.

9 Armor seals for early game survival vs high ranged, high AD characters, talon's weakness.

9 Cooldown reduction glyphs, talon's early game really suffers from his long cooldowns with low level skills, cooldown reduction helps this a lot, along with grabbing a brutalizer +lucidity boots early (if there isn't a ton of CC on the enemy team, or you can't make use of the tenacity and magic resist because you die too fast.)

21/0/9

Basically talon is already squishy, so defense masteries won't help.

Talon is an assassin, more damage, makes a happy talon.

[icon=Mercy size=64]Passive: Mercy

This passive isn't as useful as it seems, as talon usually already kills everyone in one combo, so he can't make use of it as much. It's better than nothing, and it does work with exhaust.

Noxian Diplomacy

Now this skills is your bread and butter....of LATE GAME! Once you start getting it's levels up past 9 once you max rake, you'll start doing some crazy damage with this skill. The reason I level this up second is because rake is an aoe and has a higher AD scaling ratio AND is ranged. At late game you can start doing 500-600+ damage criticals with this, when it's on a less then 4 second cooldown. Crazy stuff.


Rake

This skill is your bread and butter for early and mid game. It make's farming minions fun, seeing all the gold pop up at once like you're a veigar using dark matter on a huge group of minions. Basically this is one of the 3 main damaging abilities you have. I level this up first for the great early game harassment it gives. DO NOT FORGET IT HAS A SLOW. It's extremely useful even if it isn't a huge slow.

CutthroatCutthroat

This skill is your main combo starter, it silences them for 1 second and amplifies your damage on the target you used it on. In early game this skill is amazing for harassing in lane. You jump in with this skill, do W and Q, maybe R if you think you can kill em then get outta there. I level this skill last because it doesn't do any actual damage and the cooldown doesn't get decreased too much.


This skill is amazing in pretty much all areas, it gives you that last burst to kill someone after they JUST survived your combo, it gives you that movespeed to catch up to a runner, it saves your life, allowing you to escape with a sliver of life. Basically the uses are endless with this skill. It has an EXTREMELY low cooldown, so you can basically spam it in every encounter you have, just never use it on minions! :P

Level this up whenever you can.

Items, the big controversy of Talon, Talon as I've said a billion times so far is an assassin. If you're getting hit as him, you're doing it wrong. I build basically full damage, and some life steal, to burst people down before they burst me down, and to clean up once my team imitated and the enemies have all blown their CC, giving me free reign on more often then not a triple kill. Now onto the actual items themselves.


Great early game item, Damage, Life steal, Hp. It helps you get first blood. Boots and 3 Health Potions would be good aswell.



Cooldown reduction, and Attack damage, AND armor pen is amazing on talon, especially early game. Basically all you need.



Cooldown reduction boots in my opinion are the best boots for Talon, as he's just too squishy to make use of merc threads.


Finishing your brutalizer gives you an amazing item, with an amazing ganking active, and even better brutalizer stats as well as crit rate.


Grabbing a B.F. Sword early in mid game after you finish your youmuu's really boosts your damage, and once you finish your bloodthirster you grab a lot more survivability, and damage. After this you should REALLY focus on not dying, and just farming up those 40 minions for the extra stats. Although this item is very good, an infinity edge would be better if you can't keep the stacks up on it, or cannot farm 40 minions after you've lost some towers and you need to teamfight. Thanks to ArisenMadness for bringing this to my attention.



Getting your trinity force now, really benefits you as you're starting to need a bit of survivability, and your Q should start doing some RIDICULOUS burst now, you're usually critting about 400-600 on it now.


You may or may not get this item by now, but if you do, you're damage goes through the ROOF. Your Q should be doing 50% of a squishy's HP. I can do 800+ damage crits once I get this.

Now your last slot, I didn't add this into the top item build because this last slot is really situational.

Basically your choices are unlimited, just choose whatever you feel you need. If you need survivability, get Health/Mres/Armor items, if a tank is really owning your team and you can't seem to get past him, get a last whisper, etc. Just experiment with your last spot if you ever get to it! This build already costs a lot of money so using your last spot is usually not gonna happen.

Ganking:

You go in the from the side when someone is over extended in a lane, wait in the bushes until you know it's a good time to go and kill them, then pop your ghost blade as you enter, or after you use E, auto attack, W, then Q, then your ulti. By then they should be dead or really low, they'll be running so just run infront of them in stealth and keep whacking on them with your q whenever it's off CD, and use your W to slow them.

Team fights:

Now, these are a bit trickier. You need to wait until your team goes in, and then wait until you see the enemy team blow all their stuns and **** on your more tankier team mates, then you flash in there onto the highest priority target with your E skill. I'll do my normal combo as if I'm ganking, then pop my ulti and move onto the next lowest/squishiest character, until they're all dead or I'm too low hp to keep fighting.

Laning

You should always go to a duo lane on talon, he just cannot survive in a solo lane as he gets zoned out extremely easy. Grabbing a doran's blade early game really helps get first blood.
Talon should go to the lane with a CC partner, sion, taric, blitzcrank, etc, you can easily grab first blood with a stun and exhaust, or blow their summonerspells/make them zone out.

Harassment:

Harassment is the action of hitting your opponent in lane, with the intention of either killing them, zoning them out, making them unable to get those creep kills, or saving your partner.

Talon's harassment comes in 2 ways:

1. Spam your W, Rake, Whenever they come in range of your creep wave.

2. Use your full combo, pop in with E, then do W, then Q and run away into a bush, back up behind your creep wave.

Once they start getting below 50%ish health you should be able to pop in and kill them, maybe using exhaust if they try to run, and popping your R if necessary.


Valuable tip: FOCUS ON LAST HITTING, it is your main priority. Harassment should always come after last hits, if there are a bunch of minions getting low hp, just sit back and last hit, then start harassing.

TL;DR

Build Talon high burst damage. He doesn't need A TON of survivability if you play him right, as an ASSASSIN! Don't go in team fights right at the beginning, stay in the back until you can go in safely. And gank whenever you can! Talon is amazing when ganking.

Thanks for reading! Please comment and vote. :)