(Proof of Master) Play Video Hi!
I am Zephon, a talon enthusiast.
My Twitter.
Currently while writing this guide, I am a Master tier Talon player, and I am the 10th best talon on EUW.Here is a link to my stream.

This guide offers an introduction to Talon jungle. The different combos to one-shot with, will not be introduced in this guide.

I highly recommend watching this video Play Video
uploaded by Challenger Talon Yamikaze for an in-depth run-through of Talon's combos.
This is my first guide and I hope you all will take it well.

Starting strategy
The current strategy in the jungle is to walk over to the pixel brush, channel your recall at 0:45 and place the yellow trinket while recalling. This allows you to gain an early sweeper and control over the vision in river.
Although you might not need the control in river, a sweeper is extremely strong on Talon.
The enemy jungler will spam ping their laners, and they will cower in fear.

First back
Particularly, you would like to get Tier 1 boots and a Long Sword or two and a control ward. If you get a bad base, you can always get a Long Sword and a control ward, to help you clear faster.

It is often very crucial having a control ward on you. Talon is built around having vision control. If the enemy does not know where you are, they panic everywhere. Make sure you are not seen before ganking a lane, as counterganking Talon is extremely easy.

Boot options
Ioanian boots are absolutely broken right now. The Ability Haste is very strong on Talon, since CDR (Cooldown Reduction) was removed from lethality items. It is highly recommended to run Ioanian boots every game, unless you struggle and need an early Plated Steelcaps.

It is better to get a Hexdrinker, if you feel like the enemy LeBlanc or Nidalee oneshots you. Mercury Treads are not worth it, if you only are intending to get it for the MR.


Going into the early-mid game
Make sure to play around vision and getting those early Long Swords. By getting Serrated Dirk, you can start to one shot fiesta anyone that try to walk up to you!
Here you need to make sure that you can get away with buying Prowlers Claw and another Lethality item. If the enemy team is super tanky or bought a lot of early armor, you can opt to buying an early Last Whisper.

About the Mythic and other lethality items

Youmuu's Ghostblade:
This item has an active that allows Talon to run up to the enemy ADC and remove her from the game at once. Talon's E scales with Movement Speed, so this will drastically improve flanks. Especially this patch. They buffed it heavily.

Eclipse:
Eclipse is the main mythic for the First Strike build, as Q'ing or W'ing a low hp target will first proc First Strike and then Eclipse as it is two different damages at one time. Also the omnivamp can be nice to heal up a bit after fighting. The main reason for this item is because of the Armor Pen passive and 6% max HP damage to combat bruisers.


Prowlers Claw:
Prowlers Claw allows for new combos to come to light. If you are in range, you can throw W and insta pop R, Prowlers Claw (it will not cancel the invisiblity), walk behind them as this will drag the W towards them, getting 3 passive stacks, auto attack and hit with a Q. This will give you full Conquerer stacks, and allowing you to duel better with Challenging Smite (assumed they didn't just got oneshot).

Serpents Fang:
With the recent change to this item, this item has high value against shielding opponents. Lets say that enemy team drafted Karma Support and Yone Mid. Serpent Fang will allow you to oneshot through their shields.


Edge of Night:
This item is extremely useful if you need to jump in rather first or second, so you don't get insta-CC'd by a Malzahar R, get hit by a random Thresh hook. Or if you need to dodge damage like negating a LeBlanc ability, Diana Q, etc.
Typical good uses of this is into Cassiopeia, Malzahar, Annie, etc. Champions that have difficulty hitting you with one ability before their crucial ability!

Umbral Glaive:
This item is the essence of vision control. If you feel like you can't really one-shot anyone or if you are behind, build this item. This allows you to be extremely useful removing wards, as the game progresses. You are in the jungle already, and with the sweeper at level 1, you can force objectives that your opponents are scared to contest because of lack of vision/preparation up to the objective.

What to buy going into the late game
Last Whisper is a very good item on Talon. By buying a Last Whisper and already having a lethality item or two, you almost triple Talon's damage to squishy targets. It is like cutting through butter with a warm knife.


The Black Cleaver offers talon great surivability regarding the HP, AH, AD and most of all, the passive shred.
The Black Cleaver is good against more tanky team compositions, or if you need to shred armor for your team. Typically, this item is very situational. You usually don't target the tanks.

Lord Dominiks Regards can be seen as a questionable item in this build path, since with the Season 11 changes, the item holds Crit. What we are looking for is the 35% armor pen and the passive, which allows you to do up to 15% bonus physical damage to targets with higher max HP than you. Imagine a Nasus that builds a lot of HP is in the sidelane, with Conquerer stacked, Lord Dominik, Serpent Fang/Youmuu's Ghostblade, Challenging Smite and/or Black Cleaver, this guy has nothing on you.

Ravenous Hydra / Deaths Dance / Sterak's Gage
Often when no frontline is picked on your team, your playstyle switches from clean-up assassin to frontline-assassin. That meaning, that you join the fight sooner than the clean-up playstyle, so you can tank bruiser damage for your team.
These items provide a more "1v9" playstyle, as you sustain a lot in fights. This is not recommended, if you are not very ahead already. If you feel the need to frontline, because of draft, you shouldn't have picked Talon to begin with.

Antiheal?
Consider if you need the anti-healing. Primarily good against champions such as Vladimir, Soraka, Seraphine, Yuumi ...
Yet, YOU are not the one supposed to buy the anti heal - Putrifier (support item) is in meta currently for enchanter supports. Besides, delaying your item spikes with 800 gold is not optimal. Seek for your team mates to buy anti-heal, as your primarily job is to oneshot, not do sustained damage for them to heal anyway.

Why First Strike?
Reasoning is simple. If you believe that you are able to get away with oneshots, lets say, the enemy team have 3-4 squishies and a tank/bruiser, you should go this rune. This lets Talon jungle obtain easy free gold You are not stronger early game, but once the gold trickles you would ramp in items faster. The 10% damage increase is definitely also good for some damage.

Why Conquerer? [\b]
The answer is simple, if your preferably choice of play is to have sustained damage and would rather stick to a target. This is your core rune choice, as skirmishing as talon in the early game is strong. Conquerer amplifies that.

One of the most powerful things with this setup, is that you gain such invade kill pressure level 3!
Here is how I do the insane cheese strategy on the enemy jungler, to get their flash/a kill.
Play Video
How to do it:
The trick behind this, is to KNOW where the enemy jungler starts.
If he starts red, you start red. If he starts blue, you start blue. Make sure you are NOT seen.
In the video, I did the early game ward as described earlier in Strategies and items. I then had my sweeper, to be sure he did not have the pixel brush warded.
I leaped to his blue, overestimating his clear time and proceeded to smite wolves from him and get a kill.

This is a video from Season 10, however, this cheese still holds. I do not recommend this, as it is a "gamble". But if it works, you basically won the game.

If you are unsure on using the cheese strategy or if you are against a jungler that can survive your burst, (e.g. Lee Sin) you can path "normally". The following video shows how to path.
Play Video
The current most abused strategy is to full clear. Start at your red, krugs then raptors. You will be Level 3 from this. Clear Wolves, Blue buff and Gromp in this order.

Once you are level 4, you can start using walls to surprise the enemy.

An example of playing around vision control and wall management on Talon: Play Video

Hey! Thanks for reading the guide.
Please comment if you have any questions or something to add regarding the guide.