My opinion on the Teemo rework

Hi everyone =) This is the first time that I make a post here, so if I do something wrong correct me. I started playing LoL recently (I am lv 30, but I am unranked) and I have mained Teemo since I saw him in the shop (I didn't even read his moves before buying him: i bought him because he is cute and adorable XD)

In the patch 5.15 Teemo was reworked, and these changes were, in my opinion, a very big nerf, and in fact some of the nerfs were reverted (the decaying slow and the removed vision on the enemy. Actually the enemies hit by mushrooms were never revealed, but in 5.14 an exploded mushroom gave vision in a big area around it, so however the Teemo player and his team could see the enemy walking) in 5.16, but I think new Teemo is not only still weaker compared to pre-5.15, but also boring to play.

I'm not saying that this rework is bad and I don't want to receive comments like "omg you are Teemo main you should kill yourself" (I know that many players hate Teemo and people often insult me for maining him): I just want to give some suggestions and create a constructive discussion.

With this rework, Teemo obtained these buffs: -More range on his mushrooms (and the bounce, which basically is an increasing of the range lol) -Shorter setup time for his passive and higher attack speed buff at later levels

But he also received these nerfs: -Duration of the mushrooms reduced by half (the worst nerf in my opinion) -Increased arm time (Obviously I'm not considering the nerfs that were reverted in 5.16)

The buff to the passive is nice. His passive is made for ambushing people, especially when combined with his mushrooms, and the increased attack speed (actually at level 1-5 it is lower, but when I use the passive in lane i usually get only an extra auto, and I can get it even with 20% instead of 40%) makes it more effective. The reduced setup time is a nice buff too, but, in my opinion, it isn't as useful as the scaling attack speed.

The increased range that allow him to throw mushrooms is almost useless in every situation, except for planting a mushroom safely, without risking to find an enemy waiting you. When I first heard about these changes, I thought that increased range could be used in many ways, but I tried everything and I found it useful only when i wanted to plant a mushroom in a bush without going into it at level 2 or 3 (I'm not talking about the level of the champion but the level of the move). I tried to save my mushrooms for a teamfight (and however this mean reducing enormously the number of traps on the map) to throw them at the enemies, but it almost never worked, because my opponents either destroyed them or simply ignored them and walked away, sometimes it worked, but only when my opponents stopped moving and didn't pay attention to the mushroom, I tried to throw them when i was chasing someone (or being chased by someone) at narrow points to block the road, but the hitbox of the mushrooms is so small that the enemies could easily walk near to the wall and avoid the trap, even if it was already armed: in the main map of the game (I think its name is Summoner's Rift, but I'm not sure XD) the only point small enough to make it work is the horizontal corridor in the jungle, between the wolves and the blue buff, and I also tried to throw one of them to make an opponent walk away and step into another mushroom that I placed previously, but it was like a roulette and it worked only when I was lucky. Honestly, this is what makes Teemo boring to play for me: he now hasn't to think where enemies are before placing a mushroom, so he doesn't get punished if he makes a mistake, and everything I tried to do relies more on his opponents making a mistake or being unlucky than on the Teemo player being good. Thanks to the increased arm time throwing a mushroom safely isn't "unfair", because Teemo can still be defeated in 1vs1, but however I think that placing a trap without considering where enemies are and without being careful is boring

Let's now talk about his nerfs: the increased arm time can sound meaningless on paper ("only" 0.5 seconds), but actually it is an huge nerf: before the 5.15 patch, when someone jumped on Teemo, he could drop a mushroom on the ground to slow the enemy and escape from the fight (or even win the fight sometimes), but now the trap does not explode, so the enemy can easily attack Teemo and go away before the mushroom arms, so his 1vs1 potential is very weaker, but, in my opinion, this is a nice nerf, because a character who has great map control should not be a good duelist at the same time, unless he is in a zone that he already controls: and in fact, he can still run to a mushroom that he has already placed. He just can't anymore hold a mushroom and use it whenever an enemy jumps on him like a "wild card" or "free exit from jail card", but this doesn't mean he can't use them in a fight if he has already placed them, and this fits perfectly with Teemo's playstyle: he has to prepare the battlefield before interactng with enemies, and this nerf makes it even more important, so I like it (actually, I'm disappointed for this nerf because of the nerfed duration, but I like the increased arm time individually, so if the nerf to mushroosms' duration were removed, I would be happy and say the game developers made a fantastic job)

As I said previously, the nerf to mushrooms' duration is, in my opinion, the worst nerf, because it allows Teemo to have only half the number of traps he could have before the patch, nerfing heavily his ability to control the map, which was his unique strength. Without his mushrooms, Teemo is weaker than many other champions in most situations: in 1vs1 he is very weak and has no escape (his W, Move Quick, is very weak when many champions have a dash or any form of CC, even a slow can make it useless), in teamfight he is like an ad carry (unless the player is using Teemo tank or on hit, but I am talking about his AP build, which is the one that I use most frequently), but he deals very little damage compared to others ad carries and has a relatively small range, he can't waveclear as effectively as other characters, he can't control a zone... but when he uses his mushrooms correctly, he becomes much better and useful for the team, so reducing the duration so hardly makes Teemo very weak, especially in mid-late game, when he needs to place mushrooms to control objectives, help his team and control the map, instead of just protecting himself from ganks. When I talked about the increased arming time, I said that a character with great map control should be weak in duel, unless he is in a zone that he already controls, so if the number of mushrooms that Teemo can have on the map was unchanged I would say this was a great rework, but why make the character weak in duel while also nerfing hardly his map control?

I would propose to make the duration of the mushrooms scaling with the level of the ability: at lv 1 a mushroom should last only 4 minutes, at lv 2 they last 7 minutes, but at lv 3 they should last 10 minutes, and I think that their mana cost should be 100/100/100 instead of 75/100/125. The reason why i suggest these changes is to make Teemo's mushrooms weaker in early game, but much stronger in late game: the cooldown at lv 1 is 35 seconds, so (unless Teemo has already bought cooldown reduction, which is unlikely to do in early game) Teemo can have only 6 mushrooms on the map if they last 4 minutes, but he probably won't place all of them due to the increased mana cost (even if he does, he will run out of mana and his opponent will be able to fight him without caring about the blinding dart): this makes him much easier to gank in early game, giving the opponents a larger window of opportunity to shut down him early (especially for the characters who are countered by him), but making at the same time Teemo stronger in late game (thanks not only to the reduced mana cost and increased range, but also to the buffed passive).

English is not my native language, so if I made some grammatical errors, correct me please ^^ I'm sorry for the wall of text, but I hope that a constructive discussion comes out by this post =)