unkempt turret
Teemo used to be a champion that would build anything for the situation and it would just simply work. Because of the old runes and masteries system, you could build way more adaptive than what you can today, and your main mission, your main goal was one: TILT THE ENEMY AND TILT THE LOSING GAME IN YOUR FAVOR. Nowadays you're stuck with the boring Riftmaker Nashor build for the poke. Sure, you can build AD, lifesteal, tank, etc. and all will work in certain situations, but there are so much better champions for those roles that will perform much better than Teemo. After all, you're playing him to be a sad little sack of annoying shit that ruins everyone's day and makes them cuss at you. Sole purpose of Teemo is not to win the lane or the game, but to win the mental game you play with your opponent. His purpose was to be the Satan himself.
But here's an explanation why this isn't as good as it used to be before, regardless of Teemo only receiving buffs and buffs and buffs for the entire patch note:
Teemo's got 500 auto range which is shorter than a lot of other ranged champions. Relatively low auto range makes you enter the range of other top laners' spells that will crowd you, stun you, displace you etc. and, while you take off 10% of their health, they chunk you off for 35-45% or kill you entirely with the full combo because you're so squishy, and if not, they will repeat that in the next rotation all because you lack any sustain or burst that didn't come from runes and items. They then make you lose XP and gold just to stomp you even harder when you return to your lane. Them buying just plated steelcaps or mercury threads first item means game over for Teemo, you will no longer deal damage. His E, which is DoT, is just outscaled by any sustain or shield, either through items, runes or kit. It's not impactful when the enemy will ignore half of your damage dealt and oneshot you. You lack burst, and the only thing this provides is some poke if the enemy lacks sustain as well, which won't matter anyway because their damage output is higher than yours. Actually, you're so squishy that you'll die even to tanks. Very small health pool early, very poor defensive stats early. His poke isn't what it used to be before where you spit a few poison darts and the enemy is already low and needs to recall. Might be the rune change, might be the items, I don't really know what exactly happened here, but patches had to give him on-hit damage to compensate, yet you feel the lackluster. His W is just a movespeed buff, which isn't too effective as so many champions have a dash in their kits, it's one of the worst escape tools in the game. Very poor engage/disengage. And let's not talk about ganks, you most certainly won't survive one v two if the gank was successful and you didn't run away in time.
In the current meta, it feels like you're just a walking 300 gold for the enemy to collect, and GOD FORBID you get a bounty over 150, you'll get focused because that little walking bag of gold is now worth even more.
The problem lies within his kit, if he had at least a dash like in Wild Rift, so many more matchups would be easier to play without solely relying on movespeed and sacrificing damage runes for same. His total/global damage output is fine, especially in the late game where your one mushroom shreds entire teams no matter the composition. But it's so hard to successfully reach that point of the game which would require you to have over 10k gold if all you can do is just sit under your turret and farm, or even harder if you're dying to your enemy laner. He desperately needs some kind of a change if we don't want him to be a trollpick or a meme, especially since he's so iconic and legendary.
P.S. Imagine an ultimate spell being countered by an item that's FREE
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