I recently have been playing with malzahar at mid and I played against a talon.

Long story short, i got wrecked, went 0/10/2 by the 25 min marker.

How can anyone hold off this kind of hero at mid?

(apparently he was a 1800 elo and im lvl 25 but still want some ways to counter him)

play lee sin mid.

Talon is made to hard counter AP mids (like malz.) If he counterpicked you, there wasn't alot you could do.

The best thing to try and do is to survive. Getting cs will be really hard, especially post-6 where he can instagib you with his combo. Try to stay back, and use long range spells to last hit. For malz, just tower hug and attempt to lasthit with Malefic Visions whenever the wave is close to your tower. Try to get jungle ganks as often as possible, so you can at least force him back and get cs.

Pickwise, you can take leesin, khazix, or other AD mids. They fare well against him.

If he was 1800 and you're still 25 there was probably a big skill difference, not to mention he probably has correct runes and masteries, whereas you're still getting the proper runes. Add the snowball effect add the fact that he flat out counters you and you get the result you just experienced.

An early chain vest would reduce your pain some.

There isn't a lot to say because the skills you need to deal with a Talon in mid will come naturally with practice, but on thing to note is that Talon is a very short ranged champion, and Malzahar in particular is the king of turtling in mid. Just keep your distance and work on pumping points into Malefic Visions and using your range and Voidlings to keep your farm up while you avoid getting hit with Rake or Cutthroat. You'll fall behind early on but that's the price you pay for getting countered, mid game Malzahar can drop a single Malefic Vision into a wave and it will propagate continually on its own allowing you to rack up massive farm after you get out of lane.

Just watch out for Talon's Ultimate, he can dive effectively with it even if you don't get hit by the initial burst. So try to be conservative with Flash to deny Talon as many kills as you can, and use your Ultimate combined with Malefic Visions and Null Zone (Under your own feet) to punish Talon for coming into melee with you after his silence ends. Once you become a little more skilled, you can learn to silence Talon while he's in stealth. This will usually waste his ult completely if you time it well enough, this can give you a fair chance to retaliate easier and you can get fair trades with him. But overall playing against Talon is very difficult, do your best and try to keep him from snowballing. Also having your jungler keep him on his toes with the threat of a gank can be very helpful and can save you from the threat of tower diving. Your primary job is to keep him from snowballing as he scales quite well with gold, but you will scale much better as Malzahar. Letting him own the laning phase is a small price to pay if you can shut him down later.

-GLHF

>MeGal0d0n that is probably the most detailed answer i could ask for thank you

build hp and armor early. Just because you are malz doesnt stop you from getting ninja tabi and doran shield to stay safe in lane.

your best friend might very well be zhonyas hourglass, a bit of armor and the active at a critical point can turn the battle around, but talon is made as a counter to squishies, so either way laning vs him is never fun

Yep, Talon is a typical AP mid counter, so unless you can manage to catch him in a bad position (like burst him because he stayed in lane with too low hp), you're basically playing defensively and relying on the jungler.

And when I say relying on the jungler, that means you're basically turret hugging and warding so you aren't caught in a gank so that you're ready for the jungler when he/she can actually get to you.

Building some armor can help, but with the direction things are going, armor is providing only so much mitigation.