Counter Guide

How to Beat Talon

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Talon doesn't beat you in lane. He beats your bot lane, twice, while you're still deciding whether the wave is safe to push.

He's an assassin who treats terrain as a road, so the distance between his lane and yours isn't the distance you'd measure on the minimap. Standing your ground in mid is usually fine. The game you lose is the one where he leaves four times and you never once made him pay for it, and by the time that's obvious there are three people on the enemy team who are ahead instead of one.

Matchup Snapshot Talon, the Blade's Shadow

Where You Meet Him Mid lane

Damage Type Physical, most of it arriving at once

Why He Is Frustrating The lane is fine and the game is lost anyway

Mobility He walks through walls

Biggest Threat Assassin's Path [E]

Hardest Counter Vex

What a Counter Needs

Crowd control that doesn't need to be aimed
A way to make the map answer for the roam
Enough armor by the time he has his first real item

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Talon on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Talon

Vex518 games54.0%
LeBlanc458 games53.3%
Viktor839 games52.8%
Zed854 games52.1%
Katarina590 games51.9%

Picks Talon Beats

Locke721 games43.8%
Galio430 games46.3%
Akali823 games47.0%
Ahri927 games47.1%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Talon. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 18,465 Talon games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Talon Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Terrain isn't an obstacle for him. Assassin's Path [E] makes the jungle a shortcut, so he arrives from angles nobody watches and leaves before anyone has finished typing.
His damage lands as one number. There's no ramp and no channel to interrupt. If he opens on a squishy target with his combo up, the health bar is gone before the fight has a shape.
He's strong the moment he's level 6. A lot of mid laners need an item or two. He needs a wave he can shove and somebody standing slightly too far forward.
Escaping is free. The exit and the entrance are the same button (Assassin's Path [E]), so a gank that doesn't include hard crowd control mostly just gives him a free look at your jungler.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't do anything about being held still. No spell shield, no cleanse, nothing. A stun that doesn't need to be dodged ends his fight before it starts.
He has to be next to you. Every threat he owns is a melee threat wearing a cloak, so a screen of minions and a teammate between you is genuinely a defense.
The roams are visible if anyone is looking. He's gone from mid for several seconds before he's dangerous somewhere else. That's a ping, and the ping is usually enough.
He gets much less scary in a real fight. Five people in one place is the worst thing for him. He's built to find somebody alone.
Falling behind hurts more than usual. He has no wave clear worth the name once he's behind, and no way to farm safely under tower while he waits to catch up.

Countering Talon

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Talon comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Have crowd control he can't sidestep. Point-and-click beats a dash every time. Aimed skillshots are a coin flip against somebody whose entire kit is repositioning.
Punish the lane he left. The roam costs him the wave. Taking plates and shoving while he's gone turns his best play into a trade you win.
Ward the sides of your lane and skip the river. He'll come through the wall next to the wave.
Buy armor earlier than feels reasonable. One cheap armor item bought before it's justified is the difference between surviving the burst and being a highlight.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Talon Matchup

Push the wave and stand in it. Sitting on a slow wave in the middle of the lane is the position he's hoping for, and shoving takes the option away while giving you a reason to be near your own tower.

Say the roam out loud. Losing your own lane by a small amount to stop him from winning two other lanes by a lot is a good trade, and it only works if the pings happen before the kill rather than after.

Buy the armor component on the first back. It isn't a wasted purchase even if he never touches you again, because everything he does after that is worse for him.

Best Talon Counters

He fights on the map rather than in the lane, so the picks below lock him down, follow him, or refuse to be catchable in the first place.

Vex Punishes The Jump

Everything Talon does starts with a jump, over a wall or onto his target, and Vex is built to punish exactly that. Any enemy who dashes near her gets marked, and popping the mark brings her fear back sooner.

The shield covers the landing. She can throw it up the moment he arrives, and a feared Talon stumbles away at a crawl with his combo half finished.

LeBlanc Gets There First

She clears the wave and leaves as fast as he does, so his roams stop being free. Wherever Talon shows up, a LeBlanc who shoved first can be there too, and her burst hits just as hard as his.

She's also one of the few mid laners who can trade into him and walk away, because her dash leaves a return pad behind. He commits to his jump. She gets to take hers back.

Zed Refuses To Be Caught

Talon's combo needs the target to stay put for a second or two. Zed has a shadow to swap to and an ultimate that makes him untargetable on the way in, so the burst tends to land on the spot he just left.

He trades back from range with his shurikens as well, and a Talon who has to stay and answer that isn't roaming.

Itemizing Against Talon

Two of these change the matchup and two are the ordinary insurance you'd have bought anyway:

Seeker's Armguard is the purchase that matters and it's worth buying earlier than the gold seems to justify, because his burst is tuned against a squishy target with no armor and it stops being tuned correctly the moment there is some. Plated Steelcaps does the same job for the part of his damage that arrives as basic attacks (more of it than people expect). Zhonya's Hourglass is the real answer once the game reaches team fights, since it turns his commitment into a wasted cooldown and leaves him standing in your team. Guardian Angel is for the carry he's actually hunting rather than for whoever is fighting him in mid, and it's worth deciding that early rather than at the point somebody has already died twice.