AP Teemo, Not Just a Troll Pick Anymore

The very first game of NA LCS, the much hyped face off between summer split champions Cloud 9 and the new and improved Team Solo Mid, became a whole new beast when C9 Hai broke out the AP Mid Teemo stunning crowd and casters alike.



"I don't really die unless he brings another person because I run barrier and flash." ~ Hai

For a long time in competitive play Teemo was considered a bit of a troll pick. People would hover over him but not pick him, and he rarely saw play outside of games that didn't effect tournament standings. Despite that he was never a bad champion. AP Teemo has always been a bit of a lane bully chunking out melee opponents and out dueling many top lane favorites thanks to his blinding dart, which has a ridiculous 80% AP scaling, and his intense poison damage.

Annie gets deleted by a Blinding Dart. 

Even many of the current popular mid lane champions like Gragas, Kassadin, or Nidalee have trouble dealing with AP Teemo because he's safe in lane against their low early damage, and Teemo's begun strangling the map with shrooms by the time they hit their power spike. Teemo was rarely played though because he is very susceptible to burst at all stages of the game and as a result offers little in a team fight, and once the enemy could afford to keep Oracles Elixir up the shrooms were easy enough to clear making Teemo sort of a 3 spell champion.

Season 4 is a whole new ball game thanks in large part to the vision changes which came in the preseason. The restrictions for everyone to only be able to have 3 stealth wards at a time meant Oracles Elixir was removed to avoid scenarios where teams were simply unable to ward. The red trinket was intended to make up for the lack of Oracles, and for the most part it does, except where Teemo mushrooms are concerned. The long cool down on the sweeping lens trinket makes it nearly impossible to clear Teemo shrooms.

"He can go 0-6 in lane but he has shrooms everywhere on the map and his team gets dragon, Baron, whatever they want because he has shrooms." ~ Hai

Now that his 10 minute duration shrooms are no longer countered with a simple Oracle's Elixir purchase Teemo creates immense map control. The enemy team can't walk through the jungle, circle around Baron or Dragon, or even step into the wrong lane bush without getting chunked by Teemo shrooms which easily passes 800 damage from a single shroom with only 3-4 items.

A single mushroom late game is devastating even to tanks like Nasus. 

The huge damage of the AP Teemo mushrooms makes it infuriating to fight against a Teemo when he's ahead. You can't engage on Teemo's team because of the health deficit, you can't pick up your buffs or contest objectives because of the very real danger of dying to Teemo shrooms despite him being no where near you. The only real way to fight against an AP Teemo is to hard engage, before your team trips on a shroom, and hope you can pop him before his team can react.

Thanks to his strangle hold on map control caused by the preseason vision changes Teemo can be a strong part of any siege composition, and with his ability to stand toe to toe in lane with most popular mid picks in the current meta Teemo could be a common contested pick on the current patch. That's assuming that other mid laners decide to pick up everyone's favorite yordle, otherwise it might simply be a permanent ban against Cloud 9, allowing Hai access to one more of his previous favorite mid lane picks.