Teemo is known as “Satan” within the League of Legends community (myself included). Right after release in 2009, Teemo dominated the Top Lane, quickly becoming every player’s bane, and rightfully so. But when Riot announced earlier this year that they are buffing this little cottonball of hatred, the entire community was in an uproar.
For those who have not experienced the pain that is Teemo, let me fill you in. Teemo is a little fur-ball of joy and happiness (known as a Yordle in the League of Legends lore) who heavily relies on poison and stealth to get his kills.
Teemo’s passive ability is known as Camouflage. This causes himto stealth whenever he is not moving for a certain amount of time. When he becomes unstealthed, his attack speed increases for a time.
Teemo’s first active abilty is known as Blinding Dart, which allows him to do massive amounts of damage and blind his target, causing them to not miss any basic attacks. This, combined with his poison, generally leads many to frustrating and very unavoidable deaths.
Teemo’s final ability is known as Noxious Trap (personally I think they should be named Obnoxious Trap). It allows Teemo to place little mushrooms on the ground that stealth (so they cannot be seen), then massive damage while poisoning the enemy. This ability is the reason why Teemo is so annoying - he can place an unlimited amount of those bad boys. But it’s also sometimes his biggest weakness, as he can only place these traps next to him.
Being one of the first champions in League, it is only natural that the viablity of Teemo would diminish over the years and would need a little boost. This is what Riot thought when they annouced that Teemo was getting a tiny rework earlier this year.
This rework allowed Teemo to throw his traps great distances, rather than just placing them on the ground next to him. The traps also now take a little time to arm themselves, rather than being active as soon as they are placed, which is a good way to balance out the whole “throwing traps across a quarter of the map” thing.
Teemo also got a change to his stealth mechanic, lowering his time to be stealthed in bushes and increasing his attack speed when he becomes unstealthed.
But despite this change, Teemo has yet to be played any more than he was before the rework. Riot noticed this and announced that Teemo was getting the following buffs in patch 5.20.
Riot says that his buff will help Teemo’s traps pack that little extra damage that matters in teamfights, as well as solo laning.
COOLDOWN 35/31/27 seconds per charge ⇒ 34/28/22 seconds per charge
This buff for Teemo is not as big as everyone would think, but it is something. It is kind of nice that Riot seems to be wanting to buff a lot of the older champions that have fallen off the radar, like Ryze and Skarner.
Whether these changes to these older champions will change the game for better or for worse, we will have to wait and see. Regardless, I’m excited for what is to come in League of Legends and what Riot decides to do with the game.
