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What are some fair, reasonable troubles about Teemo?

Meta Phyton·3/14/2016, 1:55:04 AM·3 votes·1,159 views

Hi all,

So I've heard from a few original sources about how Teemo is awful. Some folks call him "Satan" or come up with other grievances that come from some source, so I'm listening now. I would like to know who first called him "Satan", though, because in my opinion that person deserves a hard shoulder punch for bringing such an awful, cult-inspired name into League of Legends where it has now stuck around and caused a lot of misery.

.......... Sorry for that. My feeling was some kind of annoyance there briefly, since I do like to play as Teemo myself. He actually might be terrible for the whole sportsmanship aspect of the game, though, and maybe I am just not seeing the obvious.

So ... what are the real and fair and reasonable troubles ... that are resulted in when players pick Teemo?

Could you answer these questions for me please ...?

  1. How does a player picking Teemo negatively impact the other players' enjoyment in a match?

  2. How are players who pick Teemo unfairly advantaged during a match? and conversely, how are players who are opposing Teemo put at an unfair and unreasonable disadvantage?

  3. Has Teemo never been successfully countered by anyone's sharp, clever strategics?

My opinion is, if any champ really creates such a huge disturbance in the whole gaming realm, then for my own part .. I'll find a new champ. I wouldn't really like to do that, but I will - since I don't want to be contributing to any players' misery, so long as their grievances are fair and reasonable.

So, can we open up a discussion about some of Teemo's aspects that can be called "enjoyment-ruining"?

33 Comments

disregardable3/14/2016, 2:07:59 AM4 votes

For the enemy team: Teemo's kit is about dealing damage and taking none in return. Harassing, kiting, and stealth are all very frustrating mechanics in a match. In an ideal scenario for Teemo, you simply can't hit him back, and that feels bad.

For your team: Teemo will almost always lose lane. He's the most defenseless top laner in the game. Being a ranged top laner, he's probably going to over-extend, get ganked, and have two ultimates used on him.

For very high elo games: Teemo forcibly denies being able to fight in the jungle and controlled areas. It's just not possible to sweep every area before you walk in it, which could lead to your entire team taking 1000 damage before the fight even begins. The few times Teemo has appeared in competitive in the last 2 seasons, the enemy team almost never left the lanes. That's also pretty bad for Teemo, because he rarely gets to use the most interesting part of his kit.

The Deckowner3/14/2016, 2:53:00 AM3 votes

As a Teemo main I can prove that everyone hates him, had people intentionally feeding in ranked game because i picked teemo top.

HongChongDong3/14/2016, 2:26:40 AM3 votes

Teemo originally became known as satan for having one of the most annoying kits to fight against and in turn players who are starting the game or possibly simply lower level players have the worst possible time against him. Simply put everyone at some point when they first started league would get teemo's that would absolutely infuriate them because they had no clue how to beat him.

As for Question 2# and 3#: Teemo is actually one of the worst champions in the current meta. It takes a great deal of skill and luck to play him in high elo matches due to all of the possible champions that counter him due to his: Low mobility, low defenses, and finally short range. Teemo is made to harass melee champions with little to no mobility to catch him but when you start picking champions that can jump on him in an instant and start putting down damage like renekton, fiora, jax ect. then he has almost no way to defend himself or escape.

BastionKross3/14/2016, 2:51:11 AM2 votes

How does a player picking Teemo negatively impact the other players' enjoyment in a match? How are players who pick Teemo unfairly advantaged during a match? and conversely, how are players who are opposing Teemo put at an unfair and unreasonable disadvantage?

  1. Teemo isn't the greatest teamfighter and would rather splitpush and ambush while creating a minefield on his half of the map. His allies can be negatively impacted if they expect Teemo to group up and have a 5v5. Whereas this is almost expected in the case of Trynd or Nasus, people tend to forget Teemo generally prefers to split. Communication is key.

  2. For the enemy team, running into a Teemo shroom is one of the worst feelings. You can't pink ward or scan every bush and choke point all the time, so it's inevitable that you'll step on one sooner or later. When you do, a large chunk of your HP is sapped away with little you can do about it outside of hoping you or your allies have a heal or shield ready.

  3. Special mention goes to immobile melee opponents laning against a Teemo. Teemo acts much like a Quinn, in that the enemy laner will want to slash his wrists open on the keyboard out of frustration. Teemo pokes his opponents down, can run quickly to avoid potential trades and all-ins, is protected from ganks after level 6, and has a ranged point and click ability that can both deny CS and do lots of damage because of the high ratio.

Has Teemo never been successfully countered by anyone's sharp, clever strategics?

There was a time where you could buy and put down as many pink wards as you wanted. Even then people still didn't do it though, that's a whole lot of gold putting those pinks down everywhere. I think they were 125 gold a pop back then IIRC.

I wouldn't really like to do that, but I will - since I don't want to be contributing to any players' misery, so long as their grievances are fair and reasonable.

Play what you want to play. Teemo is among the most frustrating champions, right in there next to Yorick, old Poppy, old Sion, and old Morde. That's the primary reason champs like those are kept less powerful than others; Riot wants to subtly steer players away from them. So the trade-off is that you get to play champs that can easily ruin other player's fun, but you'll also be handicapping yourself by playing a champion purposefully kept underpowered.

In the end, if you enjoy playing Teemo, play Teemo. You'll have to deal with occasional barbs and jabs about you picking Satan. Then again, this is League of Legends, and you'll get the occasional barb and jab no matter what you do.

If you feel guilty about the opponents you frustrate, hold a discussion on the forums or Reddit with the purpose of coming up with ideas for a Teemo rework that both retains what you and other Teemo mains like about him and makes him healthier to play against. It doesn't hurt to give Riot a few ideas to bat around on the PBE if you manage to come up with good ones.

Miror B3/14/2016, 2:21:36 AM2 votes

Third question doesn't make any sense, but the first 2 can kinda be explained with the same point. Every champion in this game has a point in the game in which they become their most powerful (some happen in the early game with 1 item, some in the lategame when they hit 3-4 items). In the case of teemo, his powerspike happens incredibly early but due to his crappy base stats and scaling ratios he often ends up being more of a "ability bot" than a reliable tank/damage source which makes a lot of other characters safer if you're able to scale with them. The poison on his autos also gives him the potential to "steal" a lot of kills, which can make people rather annoyed if they're concerned about those kinds of stats. [slayer-jinx-catface]

AMADEUSdotEXE3/14/2016, 2:40:12 AM1 votes

Teemo struggles against tanky comps. You need like 5 shrooms just do do any decent damage to them in combination with autos and Q. (ex. Mundo is chasing you and you're kiting him.) Not to meantion his lack of hard CC is an issue. Like for ex., I tend to pick teemo into tryndamere for obvious reasons, though at the same time i end up regretting not picking someone else because then i might be able to disable more than one opponent at a time, such as Wukong or Riven.

MunchCrunchLunch3/14/2016, 4:31:26 AM1 votes

most teemos are terrible. which is why people don't like to have him on team. no literally 1 out of 20 teemos don't feed and lose lane. a teemo should never lose lane even if hes countered. or camped. a good teemos splitpushes and neutralizes adc in team fights.

SirSmokeysAlot3/14/2016, 6:04:30 AM1 votes

The thing is that Teemo is really not nearly as powerful as he used to be. I'm not sure what his ap ratios on shrooms used to be but those things used to kill you at full hp. Thats barely an exaggeration. Satan comes from seasons 1 through 3 to be honest. He's a shadow of his former glory.

Stained Spear3/14/2016, 2:02:31 AM1 votes

The bind

DeloricVI3/14/2016, 7:18:31 AM1 votes

  1. His main problem is where he's played. In general, though, he's a poke champion. His autos feel unfair because his poison will always damage you, and if you can't come up with the range to trade with him, he will bully you out of lane. It feels a lot less fair than it is, because a lot of the people who complain about this kind of thing never play Teemo and learn his weaknesses, or that his strength only comes from game knowledge and his opponent's mistakes.

  2. Most teemos get the advantage out of the simple mechanics. This is a double-edge sword, because the enemy may have more tools at their disposal to more easily defeat Teemo. However, what people don't know is their biggest weakness against Teemo. If Teemo has enough information about the game (i.e. good vision and good knowledge of damage and cc options available to all players) he can be a nightmare, but a Teemo player is weak if all he does is poke and doesn't know when to use his blind, or how to position/kite around his ultimate, or if he doesn't know where to place his ultimate for maximum effect. The main advantage he has over an enemy at higher levels of play, is is ability to surprise-attack people and use his mushrooms. Since they're invisible, people can try to counter with a pink ward or sweeping lens, but there's no way that they can destroy them all faster than they come off cooldown. Teemo also has one unique tool in his kit that makes him stand out; he's the only one in the game with a "true blind" left in his kit, since Quinn's blind has been changed to a nearsight instead.

  3. Yes. Very often, as a matter of fact. While he's thought to be countered by Teemo, Garen actually does well against him, in the right hands. A good Garen will abuse his passive to negate Teemo's poke, and will eventually outtank Teemo. As long as Garen plays safe and Teemo doesn't get fed, Garen will come out on top. Many other champions can outplay Teemo by baiting out his blind, or punishing him for using his blind to cs. A good Fiora will also be able to parry his blind and destroy him. Hell, even as Sion and Tahm Kench, I myself have countered Teemo, because he has no hard cc, and his speed boost doesn't help him avoid getting cc'd to death over and over again. Even a slow can be detrimental to Teemo, and unskiled ones will be caught by skill shots every time. Pantheon can also destroy Teemo, because Teemo is squishy, and Pantheon's ability to jump to him, stun him, and use his spear attack thing really ruins Teemo's day and often leads to him getting killed because of Teemo's weaknesses, especially because his jump is slightly longer than Teemo's auto attack range.

Alex Sloan3/14/2016, 2:03:11 AM1 votes

Chill out.

Stained Spear3/14/2016, 2:07:30 AM1 votes

Its retarded and theres nothing u can do to counterplay it

Meta Phyton3/14/2016, 2:08:59 AM1 votes

As a little part about me ... I'm not upset here. I am just a player who strives to do my own part to create a fun, enjoyable atmosphere for the rest of the community. Yet all I can do toward that goal is change my own behaviours. So that's why I've made this thread, to hopefully get some true, honest feedback on why so many have a grievance with Teemo.

If the responses are really fair and reasonable and really shed light on this, I don't see a reason to continue playing him and I'll go play another champ. But ... I wonder if that can even be done by anyone now ...? just maybe ... has sensationalism about Teemo grown too huge on its own, so that lots of folks have made a mountain out of an ant hill...?

4th Chiming Lamb3/14/2016, 2:13:09 AM1 votes

1: Teemo is a nightmare to play against unless you're someone such as Gnar, or maybe Poppy. His Blind is frustrating and his Poison, you can't do anything about it. Shrooms are fucking horrible. It's more of his status effects that cause intense frustration than anything else

2: This is more of a matchup question. If your lane is Poppy versus Teemo, or Riven versus Teemo, you'll probably be okay. If you pick someone like Nasus against him, you're gonna have a bad time.

3: Yep! Just like every (most) champion(s) , you can counter Teemo, so long as you know what you're doing. Ability-oriented tanks (Gnar and Poppy come to mind for me) can do him in pretty well.

Overall, Teemo is more of an asshat to play against because of his frustrating kit, making you miss CS and doing almost constant DoTs to you. And the shrooms...everything about them is horrible. But he's not all that bad to fight at the moment, aside from being the most annoying little piece of shit in the League with those god damn shrooms and blind and toxic shot

tl;dr: Teemo isn't all that bad if you know what you're doing, but he's SUCH an asshole to fight with his status effects. Fuck those things.