Hello reader, my name is ShadowVisions. Whether you are an experienced Taliyah player looking for advanced tips and advice to improve your gameplay, or some guy that got into a ranked game with the champ because your mid lane forgot to trade you back (screw that guy), this guide is for you. In this guide you will find both the basics and high level mechanics and knowledge, catered to both ranked ladder and competitive scene domains.

Briefly about me: I am a Diamond II scrub that enjoys playing fun, high skill mid laners such as Ahri, Azir, and Taliyah, though I can play most mid lane champions at a diamond level. I also play a mean Caitlyn if I get my secondary role. Not really. More relevant, however, is the fact that upon her release I spammed Taliyah in normals learning the ins and outs of the champion, achieved level 7 mastery with her three days after her release and subsequently took her into ranked play to much success. As of 6/8 I have over a 5 KDA and a 59% winrate with her over 34 games, and frequently have solo queue teammates be impressed saying “What a beast!”, “I never knew Taliyah could do damage..”, and perhaps even “That wall won us the game”. With some tips and a bit of practice, you too can reap the rewards of adding Taliyah to your champion pool.

One final thing about me- I’m the starting mid lane for North Carolina State University’s League of Legends team, and have spent a year with them enhancing my game knowledge and competitive prowess. Just this year we have grown from a pretty noob team to making top 8 in CSL (Collegiate StarLeague) playoffs and winning $500. I’ll have a separate section on competitive gameplay, but in short it’s a lot more dependant on teamplay, map movements and wave management than will ever be required of you when climbing the ladder, and Taliyah is a great champion for this. I hope I can lend you some of this knowledge throughout this piece. Onto the guide!

**UPDATE 6/15/17**
This season my team managed to get 2nd place in Riot's uLoL series for the South region winning $28,000 in scholarship money, of which I received $4,000. I play on a great team and I can't wait to see what we can do next year. Additionally, this summer through a lot of hard work I managed to reach Master tier for the first time playing mostly Ahri and Taliyah. I updated the guide to match some item and mastery changes I've been using, most notably Stormraider's Surge, Hextech GLP and Liandry's Torment. Thanks to everyone for their support and I hope you all continue to enjoy my guide!

Pros	Cons
> Extremely strong early lane phase > Strong situational waveclear > Insane teamfight presence as well as catch potential > Weaver's Wall allows for roams, map rotations and strong objective play > Good kiting and peel with Seismic Shove and Unraveled Earth	> Incredibly weak to all ins or assassination attempts > Low mobility makes it difficult to escape once caught > Worked ground mechanic makes it difficult to stay in one area for a prolonged time > Several bad lane matchups after early levels > No combat ultimate to rely on

Ferocity Fury vs Sorcery: Ability damage over attack speed, pretty clear choice. Double Edged Sword vs Feast vs Expose Weakness : Feast is really strong for laning, but given Taliyah's strong pressure capabilities this could very well depend on the matchup. If you're looking to bully Fresh Blood should be better. Vampirism vs Natural Talent : Split them because why not. They're both not very useful. A bit of spell vamp for sustain and scaling AP. Bounty Hunter vs Oppressor : Double Edge Sword is overall the most reliable, not sure about Battle Trance yet. Always always take Bounty Hunter if you're playing vs lower level opponents than you since it makes snowballing really easy.

Cunning Wanderer vs Savagery : Taliyah already has her passive for movespeed out of combat, so I just prefer this one for easier last hitting. Runic Affinity vs Secret Stash vs Assassin : Potions are better, assassin isn’t really useful outside of lane for a team oriented champion like Taliyah and I prefer the biscuits in lane as opposed to 2% damage. Merciless vs Meditation : More damage to low health champions, much better than the mana regen, Taliyah shouldn’t have many mana problems unless you spam spells too much. Bandit vs Dangerous Game : Big plays mastery. Also much more useful than the tilting 1 gold you see when you miss a last hit on a minion. Precision vs Intelligence : 45% cdr isn’t all that necessary over the very useful Magic Pen. Stormraider's Surge vs Thunderlord's Decree vs Windspeaker's Blessing : Thunderlord's decree is incredibly useful damage burst, will proc by hitting 3 out of 5 of your Threaded Volley, or knocking them up over your Unraveled Earth will do the trick. Super useful ability, better than every other keystone on Taliyah.

As with most mid lane champions, Taliyah benefits from having multiple rune pages prepared depending on the matchup. Thanks to the mage item changes in patch 6.9, it’s normally not necessary to run cooldown reduction in your rune pages (though Taliyah with max cooldown reduction is pretty desirable). As such, my default runepage for Taliyah looks like this:

• 9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration
• 9x Greater Seal of Scaling Health
• 9x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
• 3x Greater Quintessence of Ability Power

If playing against an AD opponent such as Talon, Zed, or even Varus, I sub out the scaling health for armor and run 10% cooldown reduction in glyphs:

• 9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration
• 9x Greater Seal of Armor
• 6x Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction
• 3x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
• 3x Greater Quintessence of Ability Power

Obviously there are more setups and pages you can run, but these two work for almost all mages and are definitely fine for Taliyah as well.

Flash: Necessary in 100% of games. Taliyah has no mobility aside from her worked ground and out of combat passive movespeed, that will not save you from being mauled if you get jumped on. Needed to stay alive in teamfights, needed to make big plays, completely required ability. Unless someone in the game is on your int list, then take ghost + cleanse (I don’t condone this).

Barrier: The other summoner spell I usually take with Flash, this summoner lets you bait a ton, survive burst and ganks early game, as well as in fights and will just overall tilt the enemy when you use it right. Staying alive is super important as Taliyah to winning games, so would definitely advise this 90% of games with Flash.

Viable Options to Replace Barrier

Ignite: If you want more kill pressure in lane against easy matchups, you can take this. Take this if you’re playing against lower level opponents or ones that don’t have experience playing against Taliyah. Who doesn’t want to win the 1v1?

Heal: If you aren’t laning against an ignite champion and want to be flamed if you forget to use it on a teammate, you can take this instead of Barrier. Has the advantage of movespeed and less timing necessary but a longer cooldown.

Cleanse: Take against Lissandra or high CC comps with an Ashe ADC or something. It will feel bad but less bad than getting blown up with no counterplay.

Teleport: Maybe take in competitive against other Teleport users to match global pressure. Not in ranked, your wall is just fine especially late game.

Ghost: The new standard summoner spell on mid mages like Viktor, Orianna, and more. Great for navigating fights and roaming which Taliyah can benefit greatly from so overall a safe and effective choice. Also helps avoid early ganks.

Rock Surfing: Taliyah gains out of combat movespeed (scaling from 20% up to 40% throughout the game with level) when moving next to walls. This ability seems pretty subpar at first glance, but helps Taliyah roam and get around. The range from the walls to activate this is pretty unforgiving, as well as the out of combat cooldown but it’s still important to make the most of this. At least the animation is pretty cool.

• Use Rock Surfing for level 1 strategies to get to areas faster than your opponent (you will beat them to mid lane and your team can sneak into a river brush through there, for example).
• Ride the walls to lane to save a few seconds of time when you back, the experience gained will add up from less minions missed.

Threaded Volley: There’s so much going on in this unique ability that it takes a lot of practice to get experienced with it. Taliyah throws five stones in a target direction doing small area of effect damage. Subsequent rocks do half damage, so the total damage for hitting all five stones is triple the damage of hitting one stone. The actual cast and feel of it is similar to Lucian’s The Culling, but it’s very important to cast it when you are going to hit it. This is because of her Worked Ground mechanic, where casting Q where you already have used it recently yields one stone and refunds half the mana. This can cause problems if you are not careful as far as positioning and waveclear are concerned. It’s important to note that Worked Ground duration scales down with cooldown reduction and gives Taliyah a movespeed boost on it that is half of her passive. That said, it’s an incredibly strong ability and will truly separate the good Taliyahs from the great ones.

• Her Threaded Volley is great for shoving in minions early. Most champions in the midlane cannot match this at early levels and will have a very hard time last hitting under turret. To abuse this and make them hate you, at level 1 use your Threaded Volley plus an auto each on the back line of minions to clear them instantly and shove the wave. Then, while the enemy is trying to farm under turret they will be vulnerable and you can usually get a full Threaded Volley on their face while using mastery emote.
• Worked Ground is incredibly important to master. I find it best to take odd angles you know you won’t use in combat to clear minion waves, and leave the middle of the lane open for you to cast against the opponent. When defending in siege situations, mix up your angles so you can cast the ability for three or four times and buy enough time for the worked ground to disappear. In teamfights, move around and you will do damage, but you won’t be nearly as useful if you don’t.
• In difficult matchups, let yourself be pushed in after early levels. Taliyah can farm under turret just fine, and using worked ground on your half of the lane ensures that you have a lot of extra movespeed to both dodge abilities and escape jungle ganks. On the other hand, if you want to roam, use Threaded Volley to shove the wave quickly and buy yourself time to cross the map unseen before missing the next minion wave.
• You can auto attack while casting Threaded Volley, and if you are stunned or knocked up it will continue to throw rocks. Knowing this, you can shove a minion wave while attacking the enemy and surprise them, or cast the ability right before being hit with crowd control to still do damage while locked up.

Seismic Shove: This is a fairly straightforward ability, but takes some getting used to based on its unique casting mechanic. Taliyah makes part of the ground erupt and can recast it to make it go in a target direction. You will always want to make this ability go a direction, whether that be back into your team, away from you, or perhaps to the side to catch them in that sexy Galio ult. If you don’t recast, the ability will respectably knock them straight up in the air for a short amount of time.

• This ability can be super awkward because it locks you out of your other abilities (including summoner spells like Flash) for the duration and you can only move. This means you will want to cast your Unraveled Earth before your Seismic Shove and not the other way around, or you won’t break any bones on the rocks. Unlucky.
• You almost always want to use this ability in conjunction with your Unraveled Earth, but you can use your Unraveled Earth without Seismic Shove.
• If you’re being jumped on, holding this ability can go a long way to ensure you hit it. Wait for key abilities to be used, such as Fizz’s Playful / Trickster. If they’re on top of you, cast Seismic Shove on top of you and fling them away (or under tower, if you’re feeling spicy).
• More often than not, predict the enemy to run backwards when you are trying to knock them into your team or your Unraveled Earth. A lot of players aren’t prepared against this ability and fail to dodge it successfully.

Unraveled Earth: Taliyah throws out a minefield of rocks that initially slows and does damage. After four seconds, the rocks erupt doing half the initial damage apiece. Enemies that dash or are knocked over the rocks trigger the damage early. It’s important to note that an enemy can only take damage from up to four rocks, or up to triple the damage of the initial cast if everything hits. That’s a lot of damage.

• Save this ability for secondary waveclear if you can’t use Threaded Volley due to Worked Ground. It’s slower but also discourages enemies from sieging under the threat of you using your Seismic Shove under tower.
• Always use this ability before casting Seismic Shove so you can knock opponents through the rocks. Pretty self explanatory.
• If your opponent has a dash such as Yasuo, Fizz, LeBlanc, Ahri… try to predict it and you’ll most likely win the trade.
• Spam this in teamfights. It gets to a pretty low cooldown, has large area of effect slow and damage, and discourages enemies from using their mobility spells in the heat of the battle, saving both you and your team.

Weaver's Wall: Incredibly fun and powerful ultimate, it lets Taliyah go crazy ranges and wall off immobile champions. Recast Weaver's Wall again immediately after casting to ride the wall, but be careful with this. If you take damage, you will be shoved off the wall on the side you take damage from, which will more often than not be extremely dangerous for a squishy Taliyah. You can hop off early by right clicking a particular side. As said above, the wall’s duration and length scale with level in the ability, so it is very formidable late game. Useful in a multitude of situations, but it’s important to note that you can take this wall down early if you royally mess it up. Can save you from a lot of flame in ranked. A great ultimate is absolutely game changing.

• Use Weaver's Wall for roaming. It will get you halfway to bot lane at early levels, so ping your lane enough times and cut off the enemy. Great against immobile ADCs such as Ashe, Twitch, Jinx, you name it.
• Use your Seismic Shove to knock enemies back over your wall if they flash over. They will be tilted for life.
• Cut off enemies at the start of teamfights, separating their front line from their back or just catching an immobile carry pinned to a wall will almost guarantee a favorable trade. You can also siege turrets or defend sieges with this: Weaver's Wall in from an unseen location, and your team can get or defend the turret and clean up any unsuspecting opponents.
• Use the wall to secure objectives, particularly baron. Have your team start the baron, get it to about half hp (or even healthier if it’s late game and wall lasts longer), and throw the wall down blocking enemies from contesting. After that, it’s on your jungler, but you can help by Seismic Shoveing the enemy jungler away or out of the pit. Goes a long way for being honored after the game.
• If a team fight breaks out and you don’t have a chance to use your wall, use it for cleanup after a won fight. If low health enemies are limping away and you think you can take them if they turn, use your wall to fly at them and take them down. Looks great on montages, but also ensures your team can capitalize on a won fight.

Always take Threaded Volley level one, unless you are possibly invading and need Seismic Shove for knockup, in which case I would still only take it if you absolutely have to. Unraveled Earth is best to take level 2 due to slow and damage, and W level 3 to have all abilities and to hit that sweet sweet Unraveled Earth + Seismic Shove combo to do all of their health while you use your mastery emote. Always upgrade Weaver's Wall at levels 6, 11, and 16. The wall is such a great ability, and ranking it up is really important for the cooldown, and even more importantly Weaver's Wall duration and length. At rank 3 the Weaver's Wall will stretch half the map and you will rule Summoner’s Rift as long as you aren’t 0/10.

Some people think Unraveled Earth max (instead of Threaded Volley) is good, but I don’t really see an argument for it unless it’s a specific matchup (maybe LeBlanc, Fizz, Yasuo, etc). Your Threaded Volley is just such a good ability and does huge damage when maxed, and the cooldown also goes down extremely quick and that’s great for Taliyah in both lane and in fights.

Starting Items


Only items I would recommend buying on Taliyah to start the game. Doran's Ring is great mana sustain, provides health and everything you need in an early game item. If you back early you can buy a refillable potion. It’s important to note that you should buy a pink ward on every back if you have 75g and an item slot left over, my play improved a lot once I started doing this. You can buy a second Doran's early, but personally I prefer to dive straight into either my Morellonomicon or Abyssal Mask components. Also be sure to pick up at least Tier 1 boots early on or you will feel like a slug on the rift, and remember to sell the Doran's Ring at some point if you need 160 gold.


Core Items

Morellonomicon: This should probably be your first item every game, unless you are facing extremely heavy AP or AD (in which case, Abyssal Mask or Zhonya's Hourglass respectively, then Morellonomicon). It gives high AP, mana, and a healing debuff useful on champions like Vladimir and Swain. Most importantly, it gives 20% cooldown reduction for a low price, which is very important on Taliyah and gives a great spike when completed. Some people prefer a Rod of Ages or Hextech Revolver build, but I think Morellonomicon is far superior due to the cooldown reduction, though Rod can be a situation solution vs high mixed damage team compositions.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter: This is such an amazing item on Taliyah and you will take over the game once you finish this. It provides a large AP boost, health, and the slow effect that feels great for both chasing and kiting enemies with your Threaded Volley. You will be a team fight god after this is done. Try to always complete it after finishing Morellonomicon unless you desperately need something else.

Boots

Sorcerer's Shoes: I get these 70% of the time. Magic pen is great to have, and you will probably be set on cooldown reduction. Try to finish these between the time you finish your first and second item, unless you have a convenient amount of gold at another time.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: I get these 25% of the time. Only buy these if you didn’t buy at least one of Abyssal Mask or Zhonya's Hourglass, then you will be at 30% cooldown with blue buff maxing you at 40%. Also the summoner spell cooldown is nice especially for flash. The other situation you can get these is if you have between 600 and 800 gold but really need boots.

I get other boots 5% of the time. You’d be hard pressed to find a game you need Boots of Swiftness, Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads as Taliyah but it’s possible depending on how the game goes. Not recommended but an option in some games.


Situational Items

Abyssal Scepeter: Buy this item as a rush against hard AP, or as the item after your Morellonomicon and Rylai's Crystal Scepter as the game unfolds and you can see which champions on the enemy team you have to deal with. The passive can potentially allow for you to do true damage to squishy targets in combination with the magic penetration from your boots, runes, and masteries. It gives 10% CDR which is good, I would recommend buying at least this or Zhonya's Hourglass every game, as the resists are nice. You can buy both Abyssal Mask and Zhonya's Hourglass but by doing that you have to make sure you have other threats on your team like a damage top/jungler or a strong hyper carry bot lane, because your damage won't be the highest.

Zhonya's Hourglass: Buy this item as a rush against hard AD, or as the item after your Morellonomicon and Rylai's Crystal Scepter as the game unfolds and you can see which champions on the enemy team you have to deal with. The active is obviously great against champions like Zed, Yasuo, Talon, and more. It gives 10% CDR which is good, I would recommend buying at least this or Abyssal Mask every game, as the resists are nice. You can buy both Abyssal Mask and Zhonya's Hourglass but by doing that you have to make sure you have other threats on your team like a damage top/jungler or a strong hyper carry bot lane, because your damage won't be the highest.

Void Staff: Buy this item after Morellonomicon/ Rylai's Crystal Scepter if the enemy is stacking Magic Resist. This is a great item, negates Aegis of the Legion and popular tank itemization such as Spirit Visage, or even just a Maw of Malmortius. You’ll normally want this somewhere in an endgame build unless the enemy is all squishy and buys little to no defense at all.

Rabadon's Deathcap: Buy this item after Morellonomicon/ Rylai's Crystal Scepter if you need more damage, less defense and the enemy isn’t stacking Magic Resist. It’s a very large investment but comes with a huge damage output boost. If you opt for Void Staff first you can still buy this after to ensure you blow people up in late game teamfights.

Farsight Alteration: You should also consider switching from Stealth Ward to Farsight Alteration as the laning phase begins to end. Outisde of laning phase the game becomes very objective focused and it's really important to be able to use Farsight Alteration to try to keep track of the enemy, check objectives, or ward key locations.

Levels 1 - 6

Laning can be a bit awkward at first with Taliyah, but once you get used to it you can be incredibly powerful and surprise the enemy. Your ability to outplay and win the lane is dependent on two things: Your ability to cast your Threaded Volley and manage Worked Ground successfully, and your ability to land your Unraveled Earth and Seismic Shove. Of course along with this you have to use some combination of these abilities and positioning to work around whatever gameplay or cliche minigame your opponent has. For example, against Xerath or Varus you have to dodge their poke and weave your way into range, and against assassins you have to keep your distance and abuse your range advantage, while using your Unraveled Earth timing to outplay them. A lot of this will be included in the detailed matchup section of the guide.

From the start of the lane, the first thing to do is step to one side or the other of the first minion wave and use your Threaded Volley to clear the back line of the minion wave, weaving your auto attacks to clear the melee minions. If you can hit the enemy that’s great, if not it’s fine. Taliyah’s shoving ability is almost unmatched early and you can accumulate a gold advantage by watching the enemy fail to last hit under turret. When they are trying to do this you can walk up and hit them with a full blast of your Threaded Volley again. Hitting all five rocks early will do about half health and normally draw a Health Potion.

Take a minute to try and deduce where the enemy jungler started based on whether their top lane gave a leash or not. If they did, the jungler started top side and will most likely gank you from the bottom side early. If not, the jungler will most likely gank you from the top side. Most junglers finish their clear and can come mid lane around the three minute mark, so place your Stealth Ward in a good warding spot based on where you think their jungler will be. You should back up and play less aggressively at this point unless you can say with confidence you can escape a gank. Knowing the enemy jungler’s champion can go along way: A Skarner or Shyvana won’t really give you as much of a problem as will a Rek'Sai or Elise.

Usually, you can proceed to do the minion shoving technique for the first two or three waves for most matchups. You will hit level 2 off the first melee minion on the second wave, and take Unraveled Earth and try to get in range to use it. If you can’t or they are playing far back, you can use it to shove the wave harder. Clearing waves is important on Taliyah because it allows you to look for roaming opportunities, but also allows you to get a head start to nearby developments such as helping your noob jungler not get invaded or die trying to steal that red buff. Some matchups you definitely won’t want to shove after the first level or two, such as most assassins. Fizz, LeBlanc, and Yasuo come immediately to mind where it’s better to take control of the lane under your own turret.

At level 3, you can take Seismic Shove and attempt to hit the enemy with your Unraveled Earth + Seismic Shove combo. It’s important to normally wait until they use their mobility spell to maximize your chances of hitting the ability. Also, once you use these abilities you should back off as you are most vulnerable to an all in when you have your displacement spells on cooldown. After this point, it gets pretty matchup dependant, but in general, you want to continue looking for favorable damage trades, use your trinket off cooldown unless you have information on the enemy jungler, and set up ganks for your own jungler. If your jungler has reliable crowd control, it can be best to let them initiate and hold your Seismic Shove for guaranteed follow up and huge damage with your Unraveled Earth and Threaded Volley.


Wave Management

You’ll also want to use Wave Management techniques to maximize your advantages. For example, if you get a kill or the enemy is forced back, shove the wave into them and they will miss all of the gold and experience. On the flip side, if you really need to recall, it is best to wait until the wave before the next cannon minion wave, shove it in hard with your abilities, and recall. This way, even if the enemy shoves in the cannon wave, it will not die to turret as fast due to the tankiness of the cannon minion to turret and you can usually get back to lane in time thanks to your passive Rock Surfing that you won’t miss more than a melee minion or two. Finally, when trying to roam you’ll always want to shove the wave as soon as it gets to lane to maximize your free time before missing experience and gold from the subsequent wave.


Roaming

Roaming is incredible important to secure and snowball your team as Taliyah. Her roaming ability can be comparable to champions like Twisted Fate, but requires a bit more setup beforehand. Before starting to roam it’s important to identify the best place to go. First thing to look at is champions- good luck killing a Riven that can just hop your wall, or a Thresh playing far back that can simply lantern their carry over. You want to look for immobile champions playing far up in the lane. At this point, you want to make sure you aren’t being too obvious. Shoving the wave and buying pink wards is optimal for this so you know you aren’t being spotted out too early. It’s easy to identify if you have been spotted because the enemy will immediately run away before you can get in range. If there’s nothing you can do about it at that point, it’s okay; going back to your lane to farm isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Something else effective that you can do is coordinate with your jungler, especially one that you can trust. You can ping them lots of times to a lane and do a two man gank with them that can be strong, and also secure an objective early like dragon or rift herald. With the new buff timers in the game, you can also coordinate a buff steal, using your wall to trap the enemy jungler from the rest of their team. Maybe you’ll even get the blue for yourself. In competitive, having synergy with your jungler is one of the most important aspects of winning the early game, and Taliyah is best picked with a hard CC jungler such as Rek'Sai, Elise, or Gragas (If you want to see Pluckin Penguin’s (NC State Jungler) Gragas guide, you can click here). Don’t try too hard to roam if it’s just not possible. Taliyah is not a champion that falls off. She is incredibly potent in team fights and provides a lot of control to her team in the form of peel, crowd control and objective play.

Taliyah is an extremely strong teamfighter, because she is versatile and always useful in many different types of fights. Your dynamic of play should be malleable depending on the current scenario in the game. If you have a fed hyper carry and you aren’t particularly far ahead, use your displacement to peel for them and they’ll thank you later. If peel is covered by a good Janna or others, you can use your control mage abilities to aim for an enemy carry and knock them out of position for your team to clean up. If you don’t win the initial burst of the fight, it’s okay because Taliyah has tremendous kiting abilities once she purchases Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Her cooldowns are low late game and being chased as well as chasing enemies will be so easy.

One part of Taliyah’s kit that really make or breaks the player is their ability to use the wall benevolently in fights. A bad wall can really screw over your team, and you should be watching to see how it works out and whether or not you should take it down. If you trap a few enemies and they all flash over, take the wall down so your team can chase. If a few low health enemies escape and you still have the wall up, you can cut them off or even ride it and chase them yourself to clean up.

Taliyah is pretty bad when she gets jumped on, so it’s best to stay behind your front line and kite out opponents. Once big ultimates and cooldowns are used from the enemy, she can skirt in on the sidelines and deal massive damage while keeping herself and her team alive and protected. Try to use your abilities off cooldown, but move around so you can full cast your Threaded Volley unless absolutely necessary. When fighting on Dragon and Baron objectives when your team is defending, use Threaded Volley on these objectives sparingly so you can still fight the enemy on the ground when they engage. Optimally, you will have a wall down to secure the objective and allow your team to escape or at least regain their footing and prepare for battle.

Ranked	Competitive
> Roam often, as the enemy will communicate less > Pick the champion into good lane matchups, not as dependent on composition > Focus on your own play and play slightly more selfishly > Use walls to catch out enemies	> Roam less as communication will be strong, communicate with your jungler to coordinate stronger ganks together > Pick the champion with a good surrounding composition and less about the lane matchup > Play for the team and channel farm into the ADC depending on the situation > Use walls for objective control and siege scenarios

My Gameplay

My team plays in the HouseParty5v5 Minor League, an LCS-style amateur league filled with diamond level teams. Here is one of our upset victories against a top team where I played Taliyah to success. NOTE: the use of walls to both roam, siege and secure objectives such as baron.

Professional Gameplay

Admittedly, I’m not quite a pro player, but thankfully some very good players have started to pick up Taliyah. Here’s an early video of TSM’s mid laner Bjergsen trying his hand at her in ranked and succeeding.

Though many others would disagree, I feel like Taliyah is pretty strong overall and will be seeing professional play due to her strengths when a team is developed around her. That said, it’s important to pick Taliyah in an environment where she can succeed. Taliyah is great against immobile champions that cannot dive on top of her, and fantastic against easily kitable champions such as Darius or Udyr. She works well with hard CC junglers and strong ADCs, as well as champions that have strong area of effect and can make use of her wall grouping enemies together. AD carries like Graves and Vayne are also good because of their high damage and abilities that can make use of her wall. Taliyah also should not be blind picked into mid lane without a lot of preparation into all matchups. She has a very bad time after early levels against assassin, and will lose most 1v1s with burst mages once they unlock their damage ultimates ( Lux, Annie, Ahri, Syndra, etc). This encourages a roaming and objective focused playstyle after a short laning phase in these matchups. As far as scaling goes, I think Taliyah has an extremely strong mid to late game, not quite on the same level as champions like Azir, but very good relative to the average mid laner. A wise Taliyah player can end up solo carrying games in certain situations, but more often than not will rely on a smart team to follow up on her plays. Overall, I think Taliyah is a very fun and rewarding champion to play, and she has quickly become one of my absolute favorites to play.

Thank you so much for reading my Taliyah guide! I really hope you learned something, and if you have any specific questions you can leave a comment and I will be more than happy to answer. Good luck on the rift and go have fun with Taliyah!


A special thank you to the following:

• jhoijhoi: I made use of some of her wonderful templates from her guide about Making A Guide.
• Pluckin Penguin: For formatting everything for my guide and being a huge help with the template. Also for sometimes ganking my lane.
• NCSU Prime: For allowing me to practice my Taliyah play in a team environment occasionally.