In recent years, the Teleport spell in League of Legends has received numerous nerfs from Riot Games. From eliminating the ability to use it on minions before minute 14 to removing the feature to cancel Teleport actively, these nerfs stem from Riot’s belief that Teleport is too strong and needs to be weakened.
However, in recent comments from the head of champion design for League of Legends – Riot August, he still expressed dissatisfaction with the current Teleport spell. “I feel that using Teleport as a defensive summoner spell is too strong. You can be taken down early but still Teleport back to lane easily and not lose too much in terms of experience or gold. This makes players using Ignite to kill you seem almost meaningless,” Riot August shared.
Agreeing with this perspective, the head of gameplay design for League of Legends – Riot Phroxzon also wants to revamp the Teleport spell. “We’ve been considering changing Teleport for a long time, especially to address its effectiveness in clearing minions in solo lanes. However, the current modification plans are not good and make Teleport lack the necessary interactivity. We are working hard to change this summoner spell.”
Nevertheless, the League of Legends community is opposing Riot Games’ plans to change the Teleport spell. Many players believe the real mistake of Riot lies in reducing the death timer of champions before level 9 too much. Therefore, even if Riot revamps the Teleport spell, this issue will still not be resolved.
According to Riot’s comments, they believe that the Teleport spell is too strong in the laning phase. The reason is that players can utilize this summoner spell to return to lane quickly after being taken down without suffering experience or gold loss. Riot believes players should not have this ability easily with Teleport, and they consider it too powerful.
However, the issue that Riot fails to realize is that players can do this because the countdown for deaths has been reduced too much. Currently, the death timers for champions at levels 1/2/3/4/5/6 are only 6/6/10/10/12 seconds. Clearly, in the early game, players can’t quickly clear waves, push towers, and eliminate opponents’ experience in such a short time. The consequence is the aforementioned ‘toxic’ usage of Teleport.
Therefore, Riot Games needs to make certain adjustments to the way death timers are calculated to effectively resolve the issue. If not, the Teleport spell will continue to remain unbalanced in some way, even if Riot Games revamps it in the future.