Teemo the Swift Scout: Top Lane Shroom Placement

I’d just really like to dedicate this post to my favorite champion in League of Legends. TEEEMO! He was my very first main and I still enjoy playing him to this day. Although, I have been known to throw him into some unorthodox situations continuing to push the boundary. But as we all know Teemo the Yordle is primarily the most effective in the top lane. This is due to his extreme bullying potential against the regular top lane bruisers who are primarily melee. This does not discount him from playing other positions or mean that he is less viable in other positions bc I assure you he can perform well in ANY role. I would like to discuss the strategies that I have found to be tried and true.

First of all, in ranked play people are going to hate you for picking Teemo in any role. This is pretty much the part where you dont play him in ranked unless you are certain you can win lane or get first blood bc the team morale will tilt and blame will certainly fall upon your squishy pick. Probably my favorite matchups for Teemo would be Nasus, Tryndamere, Irelia, Garen, and Malphite. You can easily shut these champions down and secure first kill with a good flash and ignite. I think its necessary to extend your laning phase as long as possible on Teemo to give you the initial gold advantage in items for when you do start roaming. Being the Teemo that inspires fear on the rift is the main focus of this post. I believe that regardless of your opponent and your laning phase you can still be viable in any situation given the right positioning and the gods grace of MAP AWARENESS.

Which brings me to the first major breakdown of shroom placement and ward placement. I have created a little diagram for the top lane and I’m sorry about it being the old school two bush top map but I was lazy and couldn’t find a good pic of the three bush top map. In this diagram shroom placement is as follows broke down into three categories: Pushing, Stalling/Trading and Hugging. The most likely starting point at your level 6 will be the stall and trade part of lane. Depending on which side of the map you are playing from will determine proper placement but lets just say we are playing from blue side(I’m terribly color blind). Which is bot-left right?lol.

So, at this point you may have been ganked already in an early attempt to slow down your progress but hopefully you were smart and didnt over extend too far after lvl 3 unless you had wards up appropriately. If you arent behind too much and feel comfortable pushing your lane you will first need to ward tri-bush and place a shroom in the #1 yellow star spot right at the entrance of the river bush. A common mistake I see other players making is when placing a shroom against the wall they make the possibility of a hit so much smaller when they don’t capitalize on the area of a champion that is extruding off the wall while running along side it. For this reason I place my shrooms directly on the edge of the champion hit box from the wall. NEVER DIRECTLY TOUCHING OR IN THE WALL..

Back to the top lane discussion. Depending on who you are going against and how comfortable you are with Teemo the lane may have you hugging turret or pushing turret but most likely stalling and trading. In the unlikely chance that you will be facing a hard hitting mage in the top lane as this is counter meta ;P you will find yourself hugging turret and will want to shroom the blue star # 3 and the other blue positions to prevent a dive from being completely successful. Champions such as Jax or Wukong may give you considerable opposition and can be tricky. Ryze and Lissandra are also very tough opponents for Teemo. The only stupid hard match-up I can think of is a good Yorick its pretty much impossible to win that lane if they have any grain of what his abilities do. The best way to defeat pre 6 yorick is to start corrupting potion and bait him into overextending and possibly taking a few turret shots before you flash and ignite with a q and auto-attack combo.

There comes a time in Teemo’s life when he likes to push tower and deny the enemy any farm with hard harass. This is a great idea against mega big late game champs such as Nasus or Tryndamere who need the advantage of farm to really make a difference. There is a pretty high possibility that during a push like this that your enemy will try to organize a gank. In which case we are gonna make sure that just doesnt work out so well. The yellow and blue star #2 and all other yellow and blue stars are prime placement against ganks while pushing lane. If you notice there are no shrooms in tri-bush. IMO tri-bush is optional. In laning phase I dont like to shroom here bc this is usually where they pink or sweep before a gank. This is my usual trinket ward placement. Its not advisable to 1v2 anyone who has any type of CC but if you have good shroom placement its very possible to get 2 kills when the enemy gank attempts start. With all that being said as Teemo your laning phase usually doesnt last as long as you would like either losing to a counter pick or winning extremely fast.

I would just like to note that Teemo has many different roles he can play in all positions. By ROLE I mean a specific job that he performs outside of his positioning in the laning phase. I believe Teemo to be one of the best split push assassins in game and would really like to share my experience with his late game playstyle bc a lot of ppl believe he is irrelevant late game and its simply not true. I will be sharing many more strategies including a full blown map of seriousness with shroom and ward placements also baiting techniques and team fight setups and positioning.

League of Legends Warding: How To Win Based On Map Awareness

After carefully analyzing over 100 games of my own elo I have come to the conclusion that the number one reason for loss is the lack of map awareness. Many newer players may not see the value in warding as they have been given the free trinket that came out in season four. This trinket CAN and SHOULD be upgraded at level nine EVERY game.

The worst thing you can do in a game is walk past or into a blind bush without warding first. This is reckless and is the most common noob mistake players at lower elo make. I remind my team just about every game to upgrade trinkets but rarely does anyone ever do it. I am perplexed at how players can get by thinking that something like map awareness could come second to their own personal power.

The job of warding is simply put: EVERYONES JOB. Everyone is given a free ward trinket which allows one ward on the map until you upgrade whereas you can have three wards on the map. Please I implore those of you who do not check and watch the minimap, DO SO. Paying attention to minimap is the most important thing you can do after warding. A good rule of thumb is every five seconds but even this is not enough. You need to constantly be checking that thing if you are serious about playing this game.

Am I trying to hard to play a video game? I really dont feel that way since Im not making millions of dollars and playing in some giant stadium for millions of viewers. There is a casual progression rate and I can understand that but how can you expect to make any progression if you dont even learn tactical advantage. The art of war is by deception. When you know your enemy and know yourself you will win the war.

What are your top three places to ward?

Sejuani 75% Ban Rate

Played a few games this week noticing that Sej my favorite jungle is now extremely OP and is holding the top position in ban rates. Is she OP? YES! It’s hilarious the only way i can get away with playing her is to Q up in team build as her. Every draft pick I go into insta-bans her and every blind Q I just pretty much bank on having to support. Her popularity has risen quite a bit as well and her win rate is also top position. I have to wonder what rito will do about this. I hope they dont take away from her functionality. Maybe a damage nerf would even the playing field. She is really not that strong as far as damage but I’m typically building full tank as she exceeds so well at soaking up damage and disrupting team fights. As predicted in my Cinderhulk Sejuani post she is top tier meta and will be until rito decides a nerf is in order. Other Junglers to look out for are Amumu, Hecarim, and Shyvana all of which should be played full blown tank or off tank depending on the top lane.

What are you watching: Vikings

So ive been wanting to start a TV Show/Anime and Movie section of my blog possibly even some vlogs and other blogs. This is pretty much going to be my first little rendezvous into that type of area outside of video gaming. IMO all of these artistic outlets can inspire video gaming and have inspired it vice-versa. I find myself currently enthralled on the show Vikings.

The accents are pretty discern-able yet foreign. The time period is well represented and believable. The characters are human and distantly familiar. I’m new to the series, only seven episodes in, and I already want to be a Viking 😛 I really enjoy this series and would recommend anyone who loves good storytelling and action/adventure to check it out. My personal favorite character so far is Floki. Assume the worst when he gets a scene as insanity ensues.

So what are you watching?