Riot devs explain new PBE changes for Teemo

One of League of Legends’ most popular champions will be experiencing some changes on the game’s Public Beta Environment (PBE).

Jeevun “Jag” Sidhu, the senior game designer on Riot’s champions team, posted a new thread on the League forums Tuesday that discussed the changes to Teemo the developers have come up with in the last few weeks. Among the changes, Jag said the tiny champion will have less damage and no more bonus HP on his mushrooms, but his mushrooms will be able to bounce forever.

Teemo’s invisibility has also been changed, and he can now enter stealth while moving. To counter this, though, enemies can knock him out of stealth by dealing damage to him. Jag said the devs feel this allows Teemo players to “be tricky and find previously inaccessible places to ambush opponents,” while not making too powerful where opponents cannot counter Teemo.

While invisible, Teemo will also leave behind footsteps, which will warn opposing players of the sneaky Teemo they’re playing against. Jag explained his thought process with this move, stating he wants to keep Teemo interactive while invisible. He also said the footsteps may be better than knocking Teemo out of stealth, which could cause the latter to be removed entirely.

This entire thread was a continuation from Teemo’s 10th birthday PBE changes, which saw the devs propose scrap invisibility in exchange for a camouflage system. Players on the forums overwhelmingly opposed this change, which caused Jag and the rest of the team to reexamine what they want to do with that ability.

The responses to this batch of changes seem to be slightly more positive, but there are still several players that feel his W ability, which increases Teemo’s movement speed, is still too weak.

And although it’s entirely possible the devs do something to quelch these complaints, Jag hasn’t really discussed the ability much to give the impression they will be changing it. Per usual with reworked champions, the PBE changes will disappear for several months so the devs can work on the visual FX before officially releasing the reworked champion.