The Teemo champ of the week has been one of the toughest yet. Teemo is missing a lot of the mobility and survivability that other champions have, not to mention that he has one of the weakest passives in the game. He can still have an excellent early game, though, as long as you’re willing to play carefully.

I started the week trying to tweak my typical Teemo build to take advantage of Trinity Force and Wit’s End. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of gold to put toward items that best augment a naturally high attack damage or a naturally higher attack speed. Teemo’s poison certainly gives him a lot of damage, but it adds magic damage to each shot, both when the attack lands and in the damage over time. For that reason, Malady/Bloodrazor seem to be the best way to go, with a little survivability as you need it. I’m not typically a fan of Frozen Mallet, but it really is a solid item for Teemo if you don’t need a Banshee’s Veil.

The strangest thing about Teemo is his secret taunt passive. For whatever reason, players love to kill Teemo. Even in fights in which I thought I was second or even third priority, I often found myself getting focused immediately. In a weird way, this can absolutely help your team. Teemo’s damage output is great once he’s farmed, but depending on map position, taking the priority off your carries can be effective.

For the most part, I think Teemo is in a pretty good place. He needs a team with enough crowd control/peel to help keep him alive, a favor he can return with the exceptional map control offered by his mushrooms. If I could change one thing about Teemo it would definitely be his passive. His passive has essentially one use and one use only: level 1 harassment. It can be helpful when setting up a teamfight, but unless you’re well ahead of your opponent, it usually doesn’t make sense to stand still long enough to take advantage of the passive. I’d like to see him get some sort of damage or utility, potentially giving him the survivability to make it into the jungle. My few attempts to counter jungle were met with almost immediate failure. Counter junglers really need to be able to control creeps, not champions, and Teemo just doesn’t have that power early in the game.

Stay tuned later today for this coming week’s Champ of the Week.

One of the most anticipated changes in the recent patch was the Teemo rework. Formerly queue-dodge material, Teemo was supposed to find a place on the team this patch. I don’t think it worked.

Teemo’s big issue has always been that he doesn’t do well in a team fight. He’s fine during the lane phasing, great at covering the jungle with shrooms, but multiple shrooms don’t provide scaling damage, and during a team fight, Teemo struggles to maintain position, especially with the big AOE metagame.

Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule, as we know from the few posts that have popped up claiming that Teemo is “doing well in high ELO.” But a champion needs more than a professional-level player and the right circumstances to be a valid choice in ranked matchmaking. By taking a look at his design it’s easy to see that he’s in a confused place right now, not quite a caster, not quite a carry, and somehow still not a hybrid.

Think about building him as a carry. It sounds fine, and he can do respectable damage, but he has no escape mechanism and his poison doesn’t stack like Twitch. Toxic Shot gives him a weak initial damage modifier with a poorly scaling DoT. Blinding Dart is great against a carry, but toons like Miss Fortune, Kog’Maw, Ashe, and even Tristana still have damage dealing skills that can be applied outside the dart. If you don’t outfarm them, they’re probably still going to kill you. Attack damage also means his shrooms are just glorified wards, providing small utility in place of a truly game-altering ult. Shrooms also have the disadvantage of being goldmines to players with an Oracle’s Elixir.

As AP Teemo’s shrooms are more of a threat, though still countered by vision mechanics. His poison gets a little buff, but again, it doesn’t stack, so you’re stuck with a mediocre DoT and a decent blind for your damage. Let’s see, which other casters have attack damage modifiers, no CC, and a single-target nuke? None. He’s completely outside the caster archetype for damage.

As a hybrid, Teemo suffers from a mixture of the above afflictions. His shrooms don’t hit quite hard enough, his attacks are mediocre, and he’s still stuck dancing at the edge of a fight, trying not to die.

Teemo still has a long way to go before he can be taken too seriously. Riot has mentioned that he’s not going in the direction of a carry, which is nice, if only because it suggests that he’s unfinished. I do hope, though, that they find a place for him.

Today’s patch is big. Huge. Big McLarge Huge. Seriously though, there are a metric ton of changes this patch, including a big mechanics change to the stealth system. I’m going to leave it to you to read the patch notes in their entirety, but I’ll cover the big stuff here. To the disappointment of many, we also didn’t get the Eve rework originally scheduled for this patch.

Let’s start with the champions, shall we?

Jax is the first champion, alphabetically speaking, to get significant changes. Leap Strike now casts faster and moves Jax faster. His Empower has been reworked so that it resets the auto attack timer and only affects one unit. It caught a small damage buff and a significant increase on the AP ratio as well. His ultimate also has an active that grants additional Magic Resist based on his dodge value. I really think it’s an underwhelming change. As it stands, Jax has one cool skill – Leap Strike – and three skills that either do nothing or have no “fun factor” on use. This doesn’t change that.

Katarina got a decent buff in that her Death Lotus now slings three knives at every level. I don’t play Kat often, but when I did, I hated that I felt gimped until level 16. This should help her quite a bit, though she still suffers against all the stuns/silences now available in the game.

Miss Fortune is finally catching a nerf, though it is a small one. Bullet Time has reduced range and damage scaling, Strut got a small speed nerf, and Double Up now has shorter bounce range. It doesn’t change the fact that she wrecks the laning metagame but it’s a start.

Morgana is also getting a small set of nerfs. Dark Binding has a smaller hitbox, Black Shield has a slightly lower AP ratio, as does Soul Shackles. Soul Shackles also got a small base damage at the max rank, though I couldn’t tell you why. Does 25 damage at level 16 really matter?

Rammus is getting a set of buffs across the board. Most of his cooldowns were reduced, the mana cost on his taunt was lowered, and Defensive Ball Curl now scales with his armor. It’s not a perfect situation, considering he still gets no benefit from MR, but it’s pretty nice.

Singed, of all toons, is also getting buffed. He’ll have more base health, gain more health per level (though this may be making up for a slight reduction in base MR), and has his cooldowns slightly reduced for Fling, Mega Adhesive, and his ult. His ult lost its cast animation, so you won’t be interrupted while running.

Sivir got a strange set of buffs that almost definitely won’t return her to playability. Her ult got an attack speed buff and Spell Shield now has a shorter cooldown and returns slightly more mana. Yay?

Swain got ability power buffs across the board, a tiny increase to Torment base damage, and a buff to the mana regen from Carrion Renewal. Again, probably not enough to make him the caster you always wanted, but he should at least be better.

Teemo got some serious attention this patch, though I wonder if it’s actually enough to make him worthwhile. Here’s the rundown:

-Base movespeed increased to 305 from 300
-Base damage reduced to 47.5 from 51.3
-Damage per level reduced to 3.0 from 3.3

Camouflage
-Fade time reduced to 2.0 seconds from 3.0
-Being invulnerable will now prevent Teemo from Camouflaging. Specifically, Zhonya’s Ring and Guardian Angel’s effects will block Camouflage while they are active.
-Recalling and Teleporting will now prevent Teemo from Camouflaging

Blinding Dart
-Duration reduced to 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 from 1.5/2.0/2.5/3.0/3.5
-Cooldown reduced to 8 seconds from 10
-Blinding Dart will now cancel autoattacks in progress when the blind is applied

-Move Quick’s tooltip will now update to display the effects of cooldown reduction
-Toxic Shot per tick damage reduced to 6/12/18/24/30 from 8/14/21/28/35
-Toxic Shot on-hit damage increased to 9/18/27/36/45 from 8/14/21/28/35

Noxious Trap
-Teemo now gains a “stored mushroom” charge every 30/26/22 seconds. Maximum three charges
-Each cast requires and consumes a charge
-Time to gain a charge is reduced by cooldown reduction effects
-Time to gain next charge does not progress while you are at maximum charges
-Teemo always has two charges stored upon reviving at base
-Cooldown on placing a trap reduced to 1 second from 20
-Damage changed to 250/475/700 from 350/500/650

Obviously some big changes there, but it seems to favor an AP build for the Noxious Trap buff, which still has the problem of non-stacking damage as his primary damage source. Sure, he can get out more mushrooms, but it might not translate to a better playstyle. We’ll see.

That’s pretty much it for the big changes. There are a lot of significant tweaks in this patch that I would highly encourage you to read over. I’m also only going to mention one item below, Malady, because the others aren’t necessarily game changing and I’m sure you can sort them out.

Malady was remade to be the following:

Malady (remake)
-Recipe changed to: Dagger + Dagger + Amplifying Tome + 550 gold = 1825 total cost
-Base stats changed to +50% attack speed, +25 ability power
-Unique Passive changed to: Your physical attacks shred your target doing 20 magic damage and reducing their magic resistance by 6.
-Magic resistance reduction stacks up to 4 times.

Am I allowed to say I don’t get it? Seems like this was built specifically with Teemo in mind, maybe Twitch, Maybe Kog’Maw. Other than that, though, there aren’t many toons that benefit from the MR reduction and the attack speed. Kayle, I guess. It’s a strange item, sort of like a mini Nashor’s Tooth. I’ll be interested to see who makes the most use of this.

Remember that post I made about armor penetration? It has finally been changed! Don’t get excited, though. It’s not much. The runes were all nerfed by 15 percent, which still leaves them ridiculous at the early levels. In their place, the damage runes have been significantly buffed. Personally, I don’t see a bunch of people rushing out to get damage, but it could be good for a few toons.

That pretty much does it for this patch. Obviously there will be more to say once we get to play with the changes. Stay tuned.

This post is fueled in part by my own rage surrounding some recent losses, but it’s something that also really needs to be addressed. If you expect to win ranked games, stop picking Teemo.

Some of you are going to say “lolwut?” and lucky you. If you aren’t seeing Teemo in your ranked matches, you’re in much better shape than I am. I see him regularly, and most of them are players without any concept of how the game works. A recent Teemo actually said, after I took mid as Ez because I was the carry, “lol since when does Ezreal carry?” At any rate, if you’re picking Teemo, I’ll give you a few good reasons to stop.

First, his passive is nearly worthless. The attack speed bonus made it better, but better from the most situational uses in the game. If you’re looking for an attack damage champion to play, consider Tristana, whose passive keeps her out of harm’s way, or Ashe, whose passive grants critical strikes when you’ve been out of battle for a period of time.

Beyond his passive, two of Teemo’s other skills are next to worthless. Poison is only good at very early levels – it’s laughable damage later in the game – and Move Quick (or as I call it, Scamper) is only good for getting up to a fight. His one real skill outside his ultimate is his Blinding Dart, which only affects one target and has a fairly long cooldown. His mushrooms can be nice, but they require you to go out of your way to bait people into them, and most smart players won’t follow you. They are also directly countered by an Oracle’s Elixir.

If you’re playing against a smart team, Teemo turns into a one-skill champion. He can blind, and that’s about it. There are plenty of ranged carries offering more utility and a much more devastating lineup of skills to help bring your team a victory.

Please remember, this is a guide for ranked games. Teemo can be a lot of fun if people aren’t paying attention to your shrooms, so by all means, enjoy him in your normal and practice games. If you want to improve your ranking, though, leave Teemo at the champion selection screen.

As an aside, Teemo generates more fan art than any other character as far as I can tell.

I’ve covered both Al’Zahar and the sweeping changes to the magic/armor penetration system, but this latest TR patch also includes a number of fairly serious champion changes. It’s also worth mentioning that Riot has removed base critical chance percentages from all champions, as well as their scaling chance to crit per level. It’s a small change toward reducing the RNG factor of early game fights, though I wonder if critical chance runes won’t become a whole lot more popular because of the change, especially since armor pen runes will be terrible for physical damage dealers. Compared to the penetration system changes, though, this is small potatoes. Let’s focus on the champion changes.

Ashe
Ashe finally got the Plentiful Bounty rework in the form of a directional truesight shot called Hawkshot. For now the particle looks like Ezreal’s ult and casts in the same fashion, though it only covers 15-20 percent of the map in a straight line. It does grant vision to an area, so you can catch invisible targets. The spell kept its gold/kill passive, which is kinda nice, but I don’t think there’s great reason to take more than one rank . That’s not really a problem, since most characters encourage you to focus on two skills and then the ultimate, but it is kind of anticlimactic. Ashe also caught a long overdue volley nerf, bringing the number of arrows down to seven from nine. A lot of people are upset about it, but considering that Ashe is in almost every game and that building her for mana regen and CDR gave an almost unparalleled level of harass says to me it was time.

Cho’Gath
The only serious change Cho’Gath got was losing up to three Feast stacks on death instead of losing them all. It’s a decent solution to the death problem, though I think it could make him a little strong. Cho already snowballs pretty hard, and giving him the ability to die and be essentially right back at that massive level doesn’t seem like the right solution to his problems.

Teemo
Teemo’s been the subject of the forum’s ire for a long time, though it took one of the PTR Fridays to get him onto Shurelia’s “list.” His camouflage now takes three seconds for fade instead of four and grants 40 percent attack speed buff for three seconds on stealth break. It’s a nice thought, but how often will you really take advantage of that change in a fight? Standing still for three seconds is a lot of wasted time. Move Quick has changed so that it only breaks on damage from enemy turrets and champions, which is nice. His poison was also changed to deal one tick of bonus damage on hit rather than after the first hit. It’s a minor tweak but should help him a bit with last-hitting.

Evelynn
I saved Eve for last because she received the most dramatic changes, changes that Riot has said aren’t complete. Her passive is now a 30% AOE damage reduction, which seems completely ridiculous compared to some of the other passives in the game. From a design perspective it seems to me that a champion has poorly designed engagement or disengagement if you have to give her an amazing damage reduction skill, particularly as a DPS toon. Hate Spike now has built in spell vamp and hits two additional targets (up from one), which gives her some extra lane stay. I don’t mind this change so much but coupled with her new passive it makes her difficult to kill. Her stealth now lasts 40 seconds at all ranks and grants a move speed buff. This was an obvious fix so that you only take one rank of stealth and focus the rest of your points on damage abilities. Ravage now grants the bonus MR/armor reduction regardless of your attack position, which again, coupled with the other buffs is over the top. To cap off the ridiculousness, her ultimate grants cooldown reduction along with 35% flat damage reduction for 15 seconds. Do you see where I’m going with this? They’ve turned her into an unstoppable machine of death with stealth, a two-second stun, massive damage reduction (almost on par with Alistar’s ultimate) and lifesteal. I saw her take down a level 18 Jax who was massively farmed with three elixirs while she was sporting a Rageblade, an 8-stack Mejais and a Gunblade. It was absurd. I’ll save much more criticism for later, but only because Riot said the ultimate is going away. Even with something different, though, I think they made her far too durable for a character that also has the benefit of stealth and a stun. Oracles is practically worthless against her because in all likelihood you won’t kill her, even if you have a couple people focus fire. But I’m criticizing and I said I wouldn’t. Just know that her changes might not go live with this patch, but if they do, you better be ready to see her in every game.

Other heroes got some small tweaks that won’t change much about the game. Rammus will be more mana efficient and a little better at farming. Janna won’t be quite so ridiculous at level one on TT. Zilean caught an early game nerf but a buff to his assists, and Ryze won’t burst quite as hard. I’m keeping a cautious eye out for the rest of the Eve changes.