With Taliyah, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Taliyah combines a kit of relatively simple abilities with a high skill floor with the power being in her combinations and map pro-activity. Taliyah’s kit excels at roaming, kiting, and punishing anyone who dares step out of position.

Passive - Rock Surfing

This ability creates the core identity of Taliyah. Rock Surfing allows Taliyah to gain movement speed based on level after being out of combat for 2 seconds. Taliyah ramps up to the faster movement speed for a small window once she comes near a wall and has met the out of combat requirement. Taliyah loses this movement speed, over a small window of time after moving away from any walls, upon using abilities, or taking damage. With Rock Surfing, any small roam window can instill fear in the opposing team as you can truly appear anywhere on the map very quickly.

Q - Threaded Volley

Threaded Volley is a skillshot where Taliyah throws a rock in a straight line that will damage the first target it hits. When Taliyah is not on Worked Ground, she will use the full mana cost to send out 5 rocks in a rhythm and create Worked Ground in the space where she was standing. If she hits the same target with multiple subsequent rocks, then each one after the first will do 50% damage. Off Worked Ground, Taliyah launches one rock for one mana cost. This Worked Ground lasts for 45 seconds after its creation and can be seen by faint circles on the ground that darken once you are standing in them. This is Taliyah’s primary damage ability, so max this ability first.

This ability has a few interesting uses. One common use is to use Threaded Volley on Worked Ground in lane to control your mana. This allows you to punish the opposing laner with safe trades and control over the wave with next to no mana cost. To do this, you first create Worked Ground with a full Threaded Volley that doesn’t compromise your wave control. Then, you can use this Worked Ground to safely last hit and punish your opponent if they step forward. Another interesting use of Threaded Volley is its synergy with Flash. Although the rocks begin to fly seemingly immediately after casting this ability, there is actually a slight delay between the cast and the launch of the first rock. This means that, with correct timing, you can Flash in-between casting the spell and sending out the rock which will allow one of two things. First you can Flash into an area of Worked Ground but still use a full Threaded Volley by casting off of Worked Ground. Second, you can use it from Worked Ground onto non-Worked Ground if you don’t have the mana for a full Threaded Volley but need a single rock sent out from a new location. Finally, it is important to note that the only things that will stop your full Threaded Volley are death and stasis, as it will continue through every other crowd control.

W - Seismic Shove

Seismic Shove is Taliyah’s hardest ability to use but also one of the most crucial to master. This ability allows you to knock a person in the direction of your choosing after a short delay. You must recast this ability to decide the direction the enemy is displaced, or it will default to knocking them directly away from you. You should try this with normal cast and quick cast to find what is best for you. This is the ability that can help your kiting and safety against engage while also crucially enabling the burst combo with Unraveled Earth by knocking your opponents across the unsteady ground.

E - Unraveled Earth

Unraveled Earth is more of an enabling ability for Taliyah’s other two abilities, with Unraveled Earth, you send out a cone of unsteady ground that does damage in the area upon casting and after a 4 second delay. Importantly, it also slows opponents in the area and will explode and deal extra damage to an opponent dashing or being thrown across it. This is where the synergy with Seismic Shove becomes important for burst combos, as it can throw your opponent across the stones to detonate them. This can also provide a layer of safety as opponents will hesitate to dash across the stones to reach you. You primarily want to use this for waveclear, being the highest AoE damage in your kit or guaranteed damage if your Seismic Shove should land. This is your secondary damage, so you should max this second.

R - Weaver’s Wall

Weaver’s Wall completes Taliyah’s identity as a roaming powerhouse. With Weaver’s Wall, Taliyah creates a massive wall that goes in a straight line and allows her to ride it for its range. With just one level, it is a relatively small range wall, but it greatly increases in range at level 11 and level 16. This ability is truly the hardest to use at its fullest, but can simply be used as an effective roaming tool. Its potential involves creating safe zones for your backline, chasing down opponents, heavily controlling objectives, and sandwiching the opposing team in a choke with no escape.

Runes and Builds

Taliyah at her core is a snowballing burst/control mage and this controls the builds she uses. Although, this isn’t to say that she can’t be used with other play styles that utilize other directions of builds

Runes

Taliyah intends to snowball games by punishing the opponent's mistakes very quickly and ruthlessly. This playstyle synergizes best with Domination tree primary. Electrocute, Taste of Blood, Eyeball Collection, and Ravenous Hunter synergize well with Taliyah’s combo. This set-up gives Taliyah quite a bit of healing since her Threaded Volley will count as a single target spell for Ravenous Hunter. Eyeball Collection is perfect for a champion wanting to roam and punish the opposing jungler and side laners with swift kills. Generally, for the secondary tree, you would go Manaflow Band and Transcendence to help your mana pool and give you 40% CDR. You could also replace Transcendence with Waterwalking for quick movement through the river. I personally do this when there is a very volatile top or bot lane. If you aren’t comfortable with creating roam timings with Taliyah’s limited waveclear, then it also works to use Minion Dematerializer and Time Warp Tonic, which will enable your roams. Another alternative to this page that is generally used for jungle Taliyah is taking Dark Harvest instead of Electrocute for accelerated snowballing if you plan to get a lot of kill participation.

Summon Aery used to be the primary keystone taken on Taliyah but has fallen off. However, this rune still has some viability. It allows Taliyah to take both Transcendence and Waterwalking while still having the healing from Ravenous Hunter or the movement speed from Relentless Hunter. The idea of this rune page is more poke oriented so that you can look to pressure your opponent in the lane with your Threaded Volley and lower the risk with the Seismic Shove combo. This allows you to take a poke trade approach, making the opposing mid hesitant to step up, which can help with roam timings while lowering solo kill threat in lane. This style might also help those learning Taliyah after being used to other control mages.

One more viable rune page for Taliyah starts with Glacial Augment as the keystone. You combine Glacial Augment with Magical Footwear, Minion Dematerializer, and Time Warp Tonic for the primary tree. With Domination as the secondary tree, take Taste of Blood or Cheap Shot and Ingenious Hunter. This build will put your roam spike later as a trade off for extremely easy utility. This can make your teamfighting more straightforward. With Glacial Augment and Ingenious Hunter, you can slow the entire enemy team multiple times in long teamfights.

Builds

On the subject of Summoner Spells, it goes without saying that you will need Flash on Taliyah. If you go Glacial Augment, I would suggest Flash and Teleport to get your one-item spike much faster and allow yourself to be more accessible to the team. For any other rune page, I prefer Ignite in most matchups to assist with snowballing or Barrier for when it’s an uncomfortable or counter matchup, such as Fizz or Zed.

Doran’s Ring and two Health Pots or Corruption Potion are the two common options of starting items. Generally, Electrocute and Aery pages will go Doran’s Ring and the Glacial Augment page will use Corrupting Potion.

Luden’s Echo is an item that gives CDR, mana sustain, and waveclear assistance. This makes it an obvious choice for a first item spike, unless you take Glacial Augment, in which case you will start with Hextech GLP. Sorcerer Shoes will be your primary choice of boots for the magic penetration unless there is a lot of crowd control and engage on the enemy team, in which case Mercury Treads are a viable option. If you are against a strong AD assassin, the value of Seeker’s Armguard before you finish Luden’s Echo cannot be understated. Slowing down your first item is worth hurting their snowball as you can be more useful in more stages of the game if you accomplish this correctly.

After boots, the build becomes much more situational and can change game to game. It’s important to account for where the opponent’s threats are, if there is a snowballing assassin or a strong control mage, Zhonya’s Hourglass or Banshee’s Veil can complete your 40% CDR early while giving you good survivability. In situations where there is not a very strong threat on the enemy team or if you are already in a position to snowball, then Morellonomicon is good into squishy teams, teams with a healing support, or strong healing across the board. Other options for second items are Void Staff for tankier teams or Rylai’s Crystal Scepter for a strong slow and synergy with a potential Liandry’s Torment.

Generally, Rabadon’s Deathcap is a pretty crucial third item to give you the AP to consistently find one shots on opposing carries. However, if you need utility like health burn from Liandry’s or magic penetration from a Void Staff you can push off Deathcap as your fourth item.

For your last item, you need to understand the state of the game and what utility you will need to fight against the enemy team. Generally, this leaves you with some freedom on the last item.

Some good finished builds on Taliyah can look like (in build order):

Gameplay

For this gameplay guide, I am going to focus on gameplay with the primary Electrocute rune page I discussed earlier in this article. Proactivity defines the playstyle of Taliyah, as she can be extremely dangerous in anything from a duel to a full 5v5 teamfight. Speed comes naturally to Taliyah and it is important to use this to control vision, snowball for kills, and kite out enemy engages.

Laning

Taliyah’s priority in the lane should be vision control throughout the river and strong control over the side lanes and jungle’s success with heavy roaming, allowing for consistent numbers advantage in early skirmishes. With more difficult waveclear than other roaming champions, like Talon and Pantheon, this can be more difficult than it appears at first. What Taliyah lacks in waveclear, she makes up for in early kill pressure. With an early Seismic Shove and ignite, you can easily kill or force your laner back, this means that they really have to respect your combo and thus cannot contest your control of the wave. With this strategy, you can build a stacked wave that provides pressure so that you can assist your jungler and control vision. With this early control play style, you can win the jungle very early on, which you can follow through into the side lanes.

In these early laning trades and skirmishes, it is key to use your Seismic Shove correctly. The best way to use this ability is to wait for moments of vulnerability. The most obvious example of this is whenever a teammate of yours can land another form of crowd control. However, you cannot rely on this. You must also learn to look for vulnerabilities in the enemy playing pattern. These involve consistent dodge patterns that they stick to, when they cast abilities with short channel times, and when they step forward for a last hit. By using these three windows and observing closely, you should be able to master Seismic Shove in no time.

Generally there are two spikes you are looking for to begin roaming into side lanes. One of these spikes is the level 6 spike when you get your Weaver’s Wall, which means that even if your laner attempts to follow, you have 10-15 seconds on them with your Rock Surfing and Weaver’s Wall, which is long enough to win a skirmish that early into the game. The other major spike is on Lost Chapter buy, this purchase allows you to control your mana pool while also being more pro-active with waveclear allowing for quicker plays once you notice an overextended side lane or a river skirmish that you can provide numbers advantage for.

The way that Taliyah confirms fights early in the game is by guaranteeing numbers advantage with the movement speed from Rock Surfing. Keep this in mind when following your laner to a skirmish. With low mobility, you need to have vision on your laner while you follow them so they cannot turn without your knowledge, allowing you to not be baited into a disadvantageous situation.

There are key weaknesses to Taliyah’s laning that must be considered. Taliyah without Seismic Shove is a sitting duck to all-in trades against enemy laners. Once you miss Seismic Shove, you must play respectfully until the cooldown is over unless the enemy has also used their key crowd control or all-in ability. Also, Taliyah does not have a strong dueling spike at level 6 because her ultimate does not do damage. This generally means that you want to play respectfully of the enemy's level 6 spike and look to slowly grind out a health lead post-6 before you go for all-ins so you do not risk being overpowered by the enemy having one more damage ability.

To summarize laning, think it is important to understand that your success relies on vision control and effective Seismic Shove usage. This success can lead to a very strong snowball and heavy map control.

Mid Game

In the mid-game, Taliyah can really start showing off her strengths. As I stated earlier, speed is crucial to her gameplay. You can really begin running your opponents around the map as your Rock Surfing gives you more movement speed with higher level. The core idea to play around in mid game is vision control and movement. You generally want a line of vision connecting you to your team and you want to use this line to provide safety and create pick opportunities. By going in side lanes consistently, pushing waves, and then living in this line of vision between you and your team, you can create confusion and pressure in the opposing team’s movements that will cause them to either force bad fights or miss-position on the map. This allows you to use Taliyah’s strength in pick situations and high neutral monster damage to force plays with your team. It is important to never overstay in the side lane, though. Once you see the enemy team begin to move in your direction, use the safety of vision to stay out of reach.

Teamfighting

Teamfighting is one of the hardest parts of playing Taliyah as her kit isn’t the most natural for it. Although, if you can master it, you can always be useful even if your DPS isn’t topping the charts on your team. There is a surprising amount of utility that you can use as well as game winning plays you can make with a pick on a crucial opposing carry.

There are two general roles you will carry out in a fight depending on opportunities present. The ideal teamfight layout will involve you getting access to an opposing carry and blowing them up with a Seismic Shove combo. With this scenario, you can make the fight a 4v5 before the opposing team can begin to control the fight, allowing your team to have a very advantageous fight. This is not a situation you should always reach for if it is not readily available, as it can result in quite the opposite result and you could be picked off giving the enemy team an advantageous fight. In situations where you cannot reach the carries, you can prioritize adding your Threaded Volley DPS to the target that your team is focused on. In the event of a dive from the opposing team, use your Seismic Shove combo to compromise the enemy dive. Always keep your eyes open for good opportunities and most importantly, always move actively so that you can get as many full Threaded Volleys as possible. Teamfights are where full Threaded Volleys are the hardest to consistently get but you must prioritize this as it is your primary DPS.

The most advanced skill set to be able to use with Taliyah is having effective Weaver’s Walls in teamfights. I will go over a couple examples of what an advanced Taliyah might use their wall for that you can look forward to with practice. For one, Taliyah can use the wall to flank and provide herself with access to the opposing carries. Another use could be splitting the enemy team so that certain members will have to watch their team die before they can provide assistance. One of my favorite methods is to lock the enemy team in a choke making them vulnerable to easy engages from my team. One of my more creative uses is to lock your hypercarry away from the enemy divers so that they are able to free hit, this is the easiest one to fumble in a way that compromises your carry's safety with poor use timing. Keep these in mind and look for opportunities as practice is the best way to learn.

 
I hope to see you Taliyah mid players out on the rift!

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