Teemo - proposed changes

My proposed changes are near the end. I encourage you to read from the start however, as the post builds up to and provides basis for my suggestions.

Looking at his kit - Good vs Bad assessed from viewpoint of Teemo rather than playing against. I feel like DoTs (shrooms especially) and the kite to win playstyle are detrimental to the overall LoL experience and have suggestions for moving Teemo away from this playstyle.

(Passive) Camouflage – Stealth (while immobile unless in a bush) after not moving with an AS buff when coming out of stealth.

The good: Is fun and rewarding if used correctly.

The bad: AS buff requires you to be close to take advantage of it. With a low survivability kit and short range, this means you’re betting your life on being able to either kill the person before your blind wears off or being to run away into your previously placed shroom field.

(Q) Blinding Dart – A low cd blind and Teemo's main burst damage ability.

The good: Some form of survivability (other than running away) once in a fight is great.

The bad: Blind doubles as only burst damage in a fight. This is not ideal as it often forces you to waste the point of the spell (the blind) in order to do damage.

(W) Move-quick – Passive movespeed increase that goes away if hit. Activate for double speed increase.

The good: Moving fast is nice.

The bad: A whole ability dedicated to bringing his movespeed up to a speed that can easily be overcome by any other movement ability (MF passive is stronger) in the game – most all of which come coupled with a secondary function. Add in that it’s passive goes away when damaged and you’ve got an ability that encourages Teemo to stay well away from combat and rely on annoying shrooms to do the work for him.

(E) Toxic Shot – On-hit damage and DoT for free.

The good: Improved on hit damage with DoT effect with no resource expenditure.

The bad: A whole ability dedicated to bringing his auto attack damage up to a useful level.

(R) Noxious Trap – Invisible wards that explode dealing DoT when stepped upon.

The good: Wards and damage.

The bad: Not much. As far as abilities go, this one is very strong with heavy utility.

His Role -

Teemo has been labeled “the Swift Scout”. In a combat game, there is little need for a champion that can’t participate in combat. With this in mind, I interpret his role as follows:

Scouts are trained to be resourceful and survivable in tricky situations. Teemo’s (Q) provides some of the resourceful, but when I think Scout, I think “swiss army knife”. Teemo’s (W) could help fulfill the resourceful bit.

Scouts are meant to provide information to their allies. The vision provided by his (R) fulfills this need.

**Some Thoughts - **

Teemo is one of those characters that you either love or hate. In my case, he was my first and favorite champion; and for that, I love him. However, after experiencing the game and seeing how it and champion sets have evolved, I hate where Teemo is and where he will continue to be stuck without some serious work.

Damage-over-time (DoT) based champions really don’t work with where the game is at. If we scale their abilities to be useful in team fights, they end up being oppressive lane opponents. Conversely, if we scale them to be reasonable in lane, the DoT damage they put out isn’t enough to keep them helpful in most team fights (think Cass q; it’s annoying to lane against, but late game is really only useful to set up her e spam for actual useful damage).

Getting past the trouble I see with Dots, is what I see to be the core issue of this champion. Unlike many champions, Teemo’s identity has been diluted to annoying by his poorly tooled single dimensional kit. Shrooms that hit for upwards of %50 health late game are not fun to play against. Furthermore, in order to achieve that level of damage, Teemo must build near fully AP – a problem for a relatively low range and squishy champion with weak escape from a fight once it’s started – short of running to the safety of a mine field placed earlier.

Don’t get me wrong, bouncing a shroom into a teamfight and watching HP melt can be entertaining, but it’s a fairly boring strategy to implement and quite annoying to place against.

Arguments can be made for tank or AD Teemo. While either can be somewhat effective given the right circumstances, neither playstyle fits his kit and he is easily outclassed by nearly any other tank or true adc. With this and the fact that all his ratios are AP based in mind, I choose to believe that Teemo is meant to be played AP.

The main usefulness provided by Teemo’s kid comes from his shrooms. Blinding dart isn’t perfect, but it’s also not terrible. However, both his (W) and (E) seem like missed opportunities.

**Changes – ** Some tweaks to base movespeed/damage may be required. (Passive) – leave it (Q) – leave it

(W) – _Teemo does need to move quick to keep in line with his name, but move-quick in It’s current incarnation encourages a boring and annoying to play against play style. _

Make this an “evade” type ability that ignores triggering attack (think fiora (W)) and gives brief stealth/movespeed buff (something actually noticeably fast) when triggered. Allowing this ability to absorb either an ability or an auto-attack as well as damage from a minion would require good timing in order for it to be more than a short speed burst and would help keep it quite balanced.

Coupled with Teemo’s Passive, this ability can be used offensively for AS burst or defensively (movespeed burst) forcing Teemo players to make important combat decisions to get the most out of it.

**(E) – **While I don’t like DoTs, I feel like this ability has been core to Teemo so long that completely removing it wouldn’t feel right. However, allowing a full dmg (that is non-stacking) application of poison encourages a poke and run playstyle which just doesn’t make sense on a low range auto-attack based champion.

Leave the on-hit dmg alone and make the DoT apply in a stacking fashion – initial application damage would be lower but allowed to stack up to a lvl that is more impactful for late game fights.

(R) – _The ward part of this ability is central to Teemo’s identity, but the lack of counter play (other than oracles) makes the dmg part of this ability absurd. _

Leave the ward, change how the combat part of the ward works.

When someone steps on the shroom, it ruptures creating a poison cloud (aoe field) that slows and reduces resistances (stacking while still in poison cloud). If Teemo attacks an enemy inside a poison cloud, the cloud explodes dealing dmg to all enemies inside it – each poison cloud can only explode once and once exploded dissipates.

**Afterthoughts – **

By requiring Teemo to auto an enemy in a shroom cloud to get dmg off, we can encourage more strategic use of shrooms, rather than just blindly warding and getting annoying free dmg off whenever someone is unlucky enough to step on one while not diluting the “scouty” feel that is core to Teemo.

Teemo’s new (W) will make it safer for him to stay in range/combat and is really the linchpin in this new design.

Lastly, his new (E) is set up to require Teemo to stay in combat in order for the DoT to be effective. This should allow for dmg scaling that keeps Teemo reasonable both in lane and later on in the game.

I would really love to see Teemo made useful and fun. I hope these changes seem like the right direction to you. If they don’t, share your thoughts. Maybe, if we make enough noise we can remove an annoying kit from the game while keeping the essence of my favorite yordle intact!