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.
