On Teleport: Analysis and Response

In this analysis I ignore the current "Meta" of Toplaners taking tp and only pay attention to the usage of tp

TLDR: TP is used for 1) Laning 2) Map Presence. Cooldown while laning is 4 min, Cooldown when using Map Presence is 5 min. I believe that the cooldown to towers should be increased allowing more aggressive summoners spells/champions to punish them in lane while trying to retain the value of the summoner spell in macro gameplay. I also believe other avenues can be used to make Teleport weaker, such putting more value in laning phase.

Teleport is an extremely potent spell if used well. Although, if the cooldown is increased too much it will disappear from the game. I see Teleport as having 2 main functions: 1) Ability to sustain oneself in lane against an overbearing opposing laner/jungler. Allowing a weak laner to return to lane after being chunked out at the cost of a summoner that can help in skirmishes. 2) Ability to enter a fight within a few seconds globally to a ward/minion/tower/etc. Allowing this champion either split push pressuring a separate part of the map than their team or allow our champion to sway the favor of a fight from 2v2 to 3v2.

Both of these functions I think are healthy and interesting parts of the game that can be tailored to a player's playstyle and skills. But what we see too often is that it is mandatory for teams to run TP or be at a disadvantage late game to the splitpush pressure of the TP team.

Function 1 right now when teleporting to a tower is default 240s or 4 minutes, which is very strong maybe too strong. In theory this either gives the laner 4 minutes to survive until he can back again without losing anything or 4 minutes until they can exert pressure on other lanes with their teleport.

Function 2 we will assume that they do not teleport to a tower as towers are usually not in an ideal position for these purposes, thus the cooldown default will be 300s or 5 minutes. This leaves 5 minutes in which the enemy can leverage a teleport against you or 5 minutes in which you cannot leverage teleport against them.

Say if the CDR on TP to towers is increased, this would likely only effect laners being bullied and are reliant on TP for sustain and survival. In other words it would strengthen lane bullies and weaken scaling champions. Thus fighting summoners like Ignite which aim to kill or push a laner out of lane would be stronger against a weak laner with TP.

If the CDR on TP to non-towers is increased it would create more downtime between possible splitpush threats that end in 4v5 or between other lane interventions. In the first place these TPs take more skill/timing and are not always as successful as simply teleporting back to lane and should feel as impactful as their cooldown is.

My Opinion: I believe that removing or decreasing the CDR to towers will open the toplane/midlane to more aggressive summoner spells to punish them. The recent trend of toplaners doing a camp and then teleporting to lane level 2 because the cooldown is so low they cannot be punished is an example of an unhealthy mechanic. Not gamebreaking but unhealthy and unreasonable. Increasing the cooldown to nontowers is also a good option, but I believe that this change should be less extreme than to towers. While to towers should be closer to 30 seconds to a minute. TP to non-towers should be more like 15-30 seconds. Ideally we want to weaken the summoner spell without making it feel useless. I believe the core identity of TP should be for map pressure lategame and/or lane sustain early game, and if you don't desire those uses then you should feel more inclined to take a different spell. In my ideal situation I would have TP to towers at 4min30s(270s) and TP to nontowers at 5min20s(320s).

Epilogue: After rereading I find my post quite repetitive and a bit simple, but after so many underwhelming patches when it comes to balancing and overall time it takes for the balance team to fix/address numerous huge problems I find it necessary to be thorough. I believe it would be better to overshoot the nerf than undershoot the nerf since there have been other changes such as the experience range and bounty gold that have further made passive laning much less punishable. The community seems to be swaying towards disliking how team-dependent the game has become, the actual problem is how unimportant laning has become because the cost/reward ratio for being aggressive isn't worthwhile and simply being passive in lane often nets more reward. Reverting the xp range increase from patch 4.11 back in July 2014 would be another route in making the laning phase more meaningful should you want to review overlooked mechanisms like that in the offseason. With that I have rambled on enough and I hope you can find something useful or thought provoking in what I have typed.