Keep Talon's Cutthroat

Riot is planning to change Talon's Cutthroat on PBE servers; from a 1 second silence to a 99% slow for 0.1 seconds. This is horrible and will gut Talon to oblivion, offering him minimal trading potential in laning phase, and affecting his kit severely. Two assassins have already had their silences removed (LeBlanc and Kassadin), and a third is coming our way.

LeBlanc and Kassadin both had RANGED, DAMAGING, SHORT CD, LONGER silences than Talon's E. LeBlanc and Kassadin both had reliable poke with their silences, causing the enemy being unable to respond (as they were silenced). Talon on the other hand, puts himself in melee ranged and only has his ultimate to escape if needed.

Both LeBlanc and Kassadin have really short cooldown jumps, while Talon does not have ANY gapcloser, save his E which you have already used to trade. I hope most of you agree and will sign this petition to make Riot change their minds.

On the PBE Forums, a summoner named "Vepotox"wrote an amazing post on this issue: This change is idiotic. 0.1 second slow, no matter how powerful, is next to useless because the duration is way too short to actually do anything. Besides, his W already slows.

I don't understand why Talon's silence is compared to what Kassadin and LeBlanc previously had. They were ranged, had way shorter cooldowns and had a longer duration and at the same time it put neither of them at a real risk because both Kassadin and LeBlanc have short cooldown blinks on their other abilities.

Talon's Cutthroat is his only direct gapclosing ability, it has a rather long cooldown and the silence lasts only 1 second. Not to mention that it deals no damage by itself. If he uses it, he puts himself at risk because he has no way out because he's now in melee range of his opponent(s) unless he uses his ultimate to escape, and if he does, the second damaging part of the ult will most likely miss while also not being able to use basic attacks, so as a result the enemy probably survives because he didn't deal enough damage.

The above part doesn't apply so much in 1v1 scenarios though, because in those situations Talon rarely needs to use his ult to escape as he, and most assassins in general, can kill squishies because that's kinda what their role excels at; assassinating lone targets. But the thing is that generally, their purpose is to kill and/or be killed due to their natural squishiness. In team fights this is especially apparent because a single mistake will probably result in death, and well, because Talon has no real escapes unlike some other assassins (Zed, LeBlanc, Kha'Zix, Katarina to mention a few), he can't easily jump/blink/dash away back to safety (sometimes after a kill). So he's similar to Rengar in that way. However, unlike Rengar, Talon has no defensive tools like Battle Roar to help in surviving in the fight itself.

Talon is different from most assassins because he has that silence (well, in addition to having better AoE damage than most). Removing it would make him similar to Zed, Rengar, Kha'Zix and the like in the way that all of them have a gap closer, a slow and high damage. Do you, Riot, really wish to make all assassins the same? Do you consider those three the definitions of an assassin? Why do you think assassins shouldn't have any interrupt abilities, like most of them currently don't? Is that considered as "toxic" and "unfun" gameplay? If you think that assassins are bad for the game, why don't you just remove them then?

From what I've seen, usually assassins are looked from the viewpoint of a squishy carry. That the poor little carry can't do a thing because the mean assassin bursted them. What about assassins? Have you thought about how they feel? When they can't do their job properly because suddenly, the carry activated their Hourglass while their team instantly destroys the assassin, or they jumped on the carry but they die because they get knocked back and CCd to death while the carry is protected by shields and heals.

The whole thing about assassins is that they are a "high risk, high reward" role, meaning that if you do well, you should be rewarded for it. But that doesn't always seem to be the case because some others can obtain just as high reward with less risk. If an assassin gets behind, it's hard to come back because they lack tools to do other than kill champions.

About there being "not enough counterplay". If you are against Talon, or pretty much any other assassin for that matter, you can simply buy Zhonya's Hourglass and use its active to instantly invalidate burst combos. Talon jumped in your face? No problem, activate Hourglass and watch as he either wastes his ult to escape or get torn apart by your team while you chill in the stasis. No Hourglass or it's on cooldown? Use shields and/or heals to survive while you use Exhaust/CC on the assassin and see him die in a matter of seconds. Stealth? Throw a Vision Ward on the ground or use Oracle's Lens to see the enemy.

As you can see, the counterplay clearly does exist. It's your own problem if you are too ignorant to use it.