Welcome to my guide, Summoners!

I guess I'm just an average League of Legends player - nothing really special about that. I've been playing for around 1.5 years now, but had some bigger interruptions within that time.

The reason why I'm writing this guide is, because I (without having checked all the Talon guides, I must admit!) wasn't able to find a guide that makes one-hundred percent sense.
Obviously it would be really arrogant to say that I've got the ultimate solution - I'm sure there are people who don't like my way of playing Talon. I'm fine with that, also if you've got constructive critics and are able to bring them up without hiding it within 10 lines of immature bollocks, please feel free to add to the Guide Discussion at any time.

As I already said this is my way of playing Talon and I've been playing Talon since his release and continued to play him after his first and his second massive nerf - and I still enjoy playing Talon, a lot actually.

Also I'm fully aware that this guide doesn't look like much at this state. This is my first guide ever. Also I'm writing all this within a single evening and I prefer ending this today as an ugly useful guide than as a good looking useless guide.
Please feel free to let me know your suggestions for the design and structure of this build.


Last but not least:
People always want to see proofs and I'm aware of that. That's why I've played a single random match with Talon some minutes ago. I know that it is not representative at all, but I haven't played Talon in months so I really do not have other screenshots at this moment. However I'll try to do more within the next weeks.
I censored all the names but my own, so that there shouldn't be any hard feelings against uploading this.

Start with Boots of Speed and 3x Health Potions.

As soon as you can afford it, get Avarice Blade. It will give you a higher critical chance and give you additional 5 gold per 10 seconds. This will help you, even if you struggle with last-hits on your lane.

Then upgrade your Avarice Blade into Youmuu's Ghostblade which will give you 30 Attack Damage, 15% Critical Strike Chance, 15% Cooldown reduction which is important for Talon so you can use Cutthroat more often and last but not least +20 Armor Penetration. Also, it's active (Movement Speed + Attack Speed bonus for 4 seconds) might help you in some situations, e.g. when chasing an enemy.

After that, you need to get Berserker's Greaves - or if your enemy team does have a lot of CC, you might think about getting Mercury's Treads instead.

Get Infinity Edge which will dramatically upgrade your Attack Damage, Crit Chance and Crit Damage.

Now Zeal is for adding some more Attack Speed while even gaining more Crit Chance.

Finally you buy Bloodthirster, which will help you stay alive with its life-steal and damage.

Then you buy my favorite for Talon, Frozen Mallet - it will make you do 10% more damage on every enemy you hit with your basic attacks, thanks to Talon's passive. The bonus damage and health can't hurt you either.

Now upgrade your Zeal into Phantom Dancer for additional Attack and Movement Speed.

Say bye-bye to your Youmuu's Ghostblade and get yourself another Bloodthirster for the extra damage and life-steal. Sorry Youmuu's, you served your duty.

Timing:
As I said in Late Game: Talon is all about timing. You have to enter a fight, decide it and then be able to escape as soon as possible. (Except of course all enemies are dead, there's really nothing to run from in that case.)
If you get the feeling for the right timing, you'll see that even a bad round can be turned around with Talon. I remember matches where I was at 0/3 and then was able to turn it into a 7/4 - which isn't exactly great, but way better than 0/3.

Targets:
The best and easiest targets for Talon are slow champions who push a lane solo. Go through the jungle, turn up behind them. Slow them with Rake (W) , hit them with Noxian Diplomacy (Q) and your basic attacks. If they try to escape, either get them with Cutthroat (E) or if they're already too far away use Shadow Assault (R). You really should be able to chase an isolated champion and kill him, before his friends turn up. (Obviously.) Which makes us return to the topic of Timing.

Early Game:
Stay defensive. Before you reach level 6, Talon has almost no chance to escape a gank. Of course, you have your flash - but from my experience I think it often doesn't help enough.
However, you do not need to turret hug all the time - you need minions nonetheless.
You'll get the feeling for it, it's as everything in life: trial and error. At some point you'll see when the enemy is going to engage - if it's before level 6 and he hasn't out-farmed you by a lot, you'll survive a 1 on 1 towerdive thanks to your combination of heal and flash. And most likely your enemy will not!

Mid Game:
After you have your ultimate (and if it's not on cooldown, obviously) you'll be able to escape a lot better. Please note: while escaping with ultimate do not use flash while you're invisible, or it will stop your ult - most likely resulting in your death. The timing is important, flash right after the ult is finished, and you'll be able to escape more enemies than you think right now. But this does not mean you can escape alone against 5 champions - stay realistic. (And try to stay away from Blitz' grab and Amumu's ult!)

Late Game:
As phreak said (a lot!): you deal tons of damage. Also, you'll be very important in teamfights. Try to go into a teamfight in the right moment: when the enemies have already focussed on someone else. Talon is all about the right timing. (see top)

Not much to say about that part of my guide. Runes are pretty standard AD runes which I also use for champs like Corki, Varus and even Yorick.

Anyway, some words about my thoughts:
Even though Talon is an AD Carry and needs all the damage he can get, he's still very squishy in the early game. While other people tend to giving him more AD by the runes, I prefer the "safer" way.

Flash is pretty basic, the reasons are obvious: you can escape, especially early game ganks can be prevented.

Now to the more, let's call it "controversial" Summoner Spell: Heal.
Many people seem to have hard feelings against summoners who choose Heal as a summoner spell - and to this day I couldn't hear many convincing arguments against using Heal, here's a list of the 10 arguments I hear when playing Talon, Corki, whomever with Heal (listed from 1 very often to 10 never) :
1. "noob"
2. "****ing lucker"
3. "noob healer"
4. "omg heal"
5. "ur soooo noob for taking heal zomgfzorz"
6. "m*****f****"
7. "omg noob"
8. "please take exhaust, not heal"
9. "Thanks for saving me with your heal, dear teammate!"
10. "Very nice idea of teasing me into towerdiving you and then activating your heal, you did a very good job right there"

As you can see, you'll probably have to face a (excuse my language) *****torm when picking heal. This is mainly because people can't deal with someone using heal.

The 3 ways of using heal
1. To avoid getting ganked by a towerdive in early game
2. To avoid losing a 1v1 fight
3. To save your teammates

I for myself often happen to save myself with heal and very often I happen to save my teammates - they rarely say something against me using heal afterwards, although they rarely say "thank you" as you can see on my arguments list.

PRO Talon:
- high damage in mid and late game
- ultimate can be used for offense or defense
- can be played on any lane


CON Talon:
- vulnerable before ultimate, with which he can escape if things get too hot
- since the second nerf the cooldowns are pretty long, especially for Cutthroat
- few damage early game
- always gets focussed by the enemy team