In an effort to stop top lane being so “uninteractive” in League of Legends Season 14, the Riot Games balance team is putting its collective heads together to rework the Teleport summoner spell (again) and save the lane.
Teleport has been changed many times over its decade-long League history, and now it’s found its way onto the chopping block all over again. This time, Riot is worried about how easily good top laners can “wash” lanes with the Rift-hopping spell and wants to minimize its power and presence.
“It’s been a long time coming,” League balance boss Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison admitted on July 8, “but we’re investigating changes to Teleport.”
There’s two tricky parts to Phroxzon’s balance plan as the League team now tinkers away at Teleport in the build-up to the 2024 World Championship. Firstly, any sweeping changes made in Season 14 could easily swing the metagame right back to the “bot lane party” issue where Teleport can take tanky top laners straight into the two-vs-two lane at will—a state Riot really wants to avoid. And secondly, the team simply hasn’t been able to crack the puzzle in testing yet.
Proxzon failed to tell League fans exactly what Riot has been trying today—and likely won’t, though he did vaguely describe them as “inelegant”—but we can expect to get a better look at at least some plotted changes later this week.
Riot has famously mucked around with Teleport and its effects and stats ever since the League alpha, with the map-leaping spell having now undergone more than 100 changes in its lifetime. Major changes included it becoming uncancellable in Season Nine and then being nearly totally overhauled in Season Twelve.
Right now, the iconic Teleport summoner spell has a 360-second base cooldown and transforms into a more versatile Unleashed Teleport at the 10-minute mark.
