got a chance to mess around with her a bit and try out my thoughts. She’s a really

cool and interesting champion, and I’m really fond of the way that she was designed as a

whole. I got a chance to take a look at her in pretty much every role that you might think

of, and I’m here to bring you guys my thoughts for just how good Taliyah is shaping up to

be. And as always If you guys enjoy the video don’t forget to hit that like button and

if you don’t enjoy the video hit that dislike. And let’s get started.

So Taliyah is a champion that is very much designed to be a control mage, and as a result

functions somewhat similarly in playstyle to that of champions like Viktor and Anivia.

Control mages involve using zones to aggressively influence the positioning of opponents, while

also outputting damage with a decent amount of utility. And control mages are really awesome

in my opinion, because they are probably one of the most well-designed playstyles a champion

can have in league of legends. She doesn’t have any super frustrating mechanics to play

against, and her kit is really healthy and fair to play against as well, while at the

same time control mages are very complex strategically in terms of positioning and using your abilities.

Although control mages might not always be the most complex champions in terms of mechanics,

in terms of the strategy to use your abilities and make plays, they are some of the most

in depth when it comes to that category, because often the control mages involve a lot of slow

and powerful skillshots that are pretty easy to dodge, and as a result require you to,

instead of just throwing them out at will, they require you to set up, predict, and manipulate

your opponent to force them into positions where your skillshots land, which is a really

awesome playstyle to design a champion for. Taliyah is a unique control mage in the sense

that she lacks a lot of damage, especially some of the burst that a lot of the control

mages have. She definitely does a bit less damage, and as compensation she is given better

utility. Not necessarily more utility, but the utility that she has is a lot more impactful

and powerful to create plays if you can actually land it properly. Let’s take a look at her

abilities. Her passive gives her bonus movement speed

when moving next to walls. This is kind of a boring ability, but it’s cool to like

surf around on a rock, and the passive gives you a bit of breathing room before it deactivates,

allowing you to use it to get back to lane a lot faster, as well as to roam around to

other lanes, so it might not be that exciting or interesting, but it’s reasonably useful,

and helps give her a bit more presence around the map without any downsides. You just have

to remember to make sure to actually walk next to a wall rather than down the middle

of a lane or something when walking around on the map.

Her Q is probably the strongest ability on her kit. It’s going to be what you want

to max outside of putting points into your ultimate whenever possible, and this ability

has a lot of dynamics to it that gives you a bunch of different options. It fires out

5 line projectiles with a relatively high range, that do a pretty solid amount of damage.

The first one hit does some nice poke, and additional projectiles hit on the same target

do 50% damage. In addition, it places a zone on the ground that lasts for 3 minutes and

gives her bonus movement speed when moving through it. If you cast the Q inside one of

those zones, instead of firing 5 projectiles you fire only 1, but you are refunded half

of the mana cost. So you can set up the zones and use the angles to cs and save a bit of

mana, but it’s also kind of weird to play around, since it definitely does lower your

damage but it’s necessary since she runs out of mana somewhat quickly. However, if

you are using the Q for the 5 projectiles, and manage to land 3 or more on a target,

this ability is a really insane amount of damage for a basic ability. You proc thunderlords,

and you can really chunk people out, although landing that many projectiles on the target

is easier said than done, but this aspect makes rylais a core item on her, since by

giving her Q a slow it makes landing 4 or 5 of the projectiles on a champion quite easy,

as long as you hit the first one. As well, the hitbox width is generous, definitely larger

than the animation, and it hits in a small aoe radius so it kind of works for waveclear

and harassing through creeps and is a really cool ability to play with that is her main

source of power. Her W is probably my favorite ability on her

kit. This is her main source of utility that I mentioned earlier when it came to the fact

that she doesn’t really have more or less utility in her kit than other control mages,

but the utility she does have is a lot more impactful, since her W is almost like a mini

ranged alistar headbutt that can go in any direction, although it is quite difficult

to land, being able to bump an opponent into your team at a pretty significant range is

really awesome and is incredibly powerful, and is a great ability to set up combos, create

picks, disengage, and manipulate your opponents. It has a petty big delay on it so it’s quite

difficult to land, and that’s super cool to see because it makes the ability super

fair. It’s difficult to land but a big part of her strategy revoles around it. Since getting

hit with the W counts as a dash, it also procs the second half of the damage on her E, and

allows you to combo to land a lot of damage on a target. Typically, when you land a W

on someone you should, at least in theory be able to land most of your entire combo

on them, so a really big part of her playstyle involves manipulating your opponent’s movements

in order to force them into a position to put them in a spot where dodging the W is

nearly impossible, which results in a really awesome strategic playstyle.

Her E is what I think might be the most interesting ability on her kit. Now this ability does

like an okay amount of damage, and has a 4 second delay on it’s reactivation for a

second round of damage. 4 seconds is obviously a massive delay, and I talked about this mechanic

of giving something a delay a couple days ago, and we can really see this mechanic in

this ability on Taliyah as well. If someone uses a dash within the zone of her E, it procs

the second part of the damage instantly, but it does not stop the dash, however landing

her W also counts as a dash so those two abilities kind of combo together. Now the main reason

why I think this ability is so interesting, is because of how short the range actually

is. Where every single ability on her kit is actually quite long ranged, this ability

is ridiculously short ranged which Is really cool, since it gives her incentive to put

herself in a position where she is a little bit closer to the fight and a little more

at risk. As a result, she benefits a lot from tank stats, so a proper build on her is probably

some form of hybrid ap, maybe like a rod of ages first, then a rylais, and an abyssal

scepter, then zhonyas and a rabadon’s or void staff. Don’t pay attention to my builds

in the video, because whenever I play champions on the PBE I basically just try out a bunch

of random garbage that often ends up sucking, but it’s a good way to learn a lot about

the champion quickly. And in teamfights, a lot of postioning and manipulation with the

rest of her kit can allow you to land that second proc of the E, especially on tanks

or champions that are easily kited, and even if you can’t, the first part still does

relevant damage and it gives her nice waveclear. And her ultimate definitely is the coolest

ability on her kit. This ability took a while for me to get used to and I kind of messed

it up a lot, since it’s a little bit slower than I had expected it to be, but it essentially

creates this huge wall of impassable terrain at a massive range, so much so to where you

can wall off entire areas. You can wall off escape routes of an opponent in lane completely,

which makes it an awesome tool for ganking, and you can wall off people to be stuck inside

the baron pit. Think of it as like a massive semi global anivia wall, but what’s great

is that you can use it as a pseudo teleport kind of ability to travel to somewhere really

fast, and you can also deactivate the wall at any time in case you mess it up, or if

the positioning of the players change to where the wall is more of a burden. The wall lasts

for 6 seconds, and when you are riding on it, you can also jump off at any time, so

as a result it’s quite versatile, but the range on it, and the plays you can make with

it are so hilarious it’s actually quite awesome. From using it to travel to a fight

faster, to completely cutting off an escape route for ganks, to zoning out opponents from

fights and splitting them off, this ultimate is a really awesome ability that has a high

skillcap as well, but gives her a lot of hilarious, but also quite good playmaking potential.

It doesn’t do any damage, and the fact that it doesn’t is a big part of why I say that

Taliyah in general is maybe a bit lower in damage than other control mages, her damage

overall is still quite alright, she just lacks the one shot burst combo of a control mage

like viktor might have on some targets that get caught out. But yeah her ultimate is awesome,

it’s just that her all-in potential isn’t enough to kill someone from full hp, and that

results in a fairly strategic playstyle. Her laning phase is pretty interesting since

she lacks a bit of burst damage, but she has a lot of nice harass and using her q can be

quite effective, and she performs well versus mostly immobile champions, since she is fairly

skillshot reliant. But her laning phase is alright, and her waveclear is pretty solid,

since although her E has a super long delay, it’s not really a huge deal when using it

to waveclear. Her roams are great, and her teamfighting is really interesting since there

is a lot of strategic things you can do through manipulating opponents and zone control.

Taliyah is definitely designed for the mid lane, but she has some potential in other

roles too. She has a fair amount of utility, so she has potential on support, and her tools

for ganking are insane, so she has potential in the jungle as well. And since she kind

of works off of a tanky-hybrid kind of style, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her having

success in the top lane as well. It’s hard to know if her utility will be useful enough

without the damage though, and I’m leaning a bit towards it being a no, since although

her W is awesome, it’s really difficult to land if your other abilities aren’t threatening,

so I don’t think we’ll see her on support, and in the jungle she lacks a bit of the waveclear

you would want from a good jungler, and the control mage style in general is one that

is much better suited for mid lane, and with her ultimate and passive roaming on her is

powerful, so her meta role is almost certainly going to be mid lane, and I’m not confident

that she will be successful in other roles, although she definitely does have some potential.

Overall though, the design of Taliyah is something that I am really impressed by. She really

does not feel overpowered at all, and she doesn’t feel underpowered as well. She’s

probably one of if not the most balanced champion in terms of the gameplay design that I’ve

seen for a really long time. Her design is really awesome, and she feels great to not

only play as, but also to play against, and she has a pretty high skillcap which makes

her have a lot of potential to be powerful at the competitive level. I really don’t

think that she’s overpowered, and she might not even be that strong, but she definitely

feels really really balanced which is really cool, and says a lot about the design of the

character, so big props to the lead designer Daniel Klein, who also designed Azir, Tahm

Kench, Lucian, and the Xerath rework, he did a great job with Taliyah, and I’m looking

forward to her release and would recommend her to anyone looking to try out a new control

mage once she hits live servers, which should be in two weeks from the day I am uploading

this video. And that’s gonna be it, thanks for watching,

subscribe if you want, an I’ll see you guys next time!