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Dec 23, 2014

FOTM Report: Thoughts on Heimerdinger

13 comments

Introduction 

Heimerdinger, long time "troll pick" champion in ranked due to his lack of escapes, low CC, and tendency to push his lane up and get ganked by junglers, has somehow risen to the top 10 win rates with strong numbers all the way from Bronze through Diamond. What's going on?!

Analysis 

Popularity 
Usually, it's easy enough to discredit something that the general community doesn't agree with through looking at a champion's popularity. However, sitting at 4.41%, Heimerdinger's actually more popular than Kassadin, Twisted Fate, and Ryze at the moment! Albeit they've gone through some nerfs, that's still saying something.

Item Win Rate
Source: Lolking.net

Now we're starting to get somewhere! Check out the numbers on the statistics above. At a huge 81%, Zhonyas Hourglass sits at the very top of Heimerdinger's build path. Not only that, but Athene's Unholy Grail ranks very low in terms of both usage and comparative win rate compared to Morellonomicon (comparison available here). This tells us that Heimer excels as a mid game champion who is also much more about his burst damage than his poke. 

Heimerdinger's Role in the Current Meta

As a pure burst mage, Heimerdinger does well mid as a standard mage, but also excels top as a strong camper that has the ability to 1v2, playing a similar role to Teemo.

Due to his weak health pool and lack of escapes, Heimer often becomes the target of malicious jungle attacks. However, because of his insane damage output on his turrets, if he can dodge a few CCs, enemy junglers and laners are quickly wittled down once they come into range.

During a teamfight he plays a similar role, and is able to drop his ultimate-powered turret along with Zhonya's hourglass to ensure that he can jump into the middle of the fight and live to tell the tale.

Here's an example from a few months back by John BKman

Conclusions

While difficult to say he's necessarily better than a standard top laner like Malphite, Heimerdinger definitely has his perks. I'd say he currently ranks on the somewhat higher end of the spectrum at the moment. Putting his win rate aside, he does have insane amounts of damage, especially against enemy "dive" comps.

I wouldn't say he's "God Tier" material quite yet, but he does counter a lot of popular meta team strategies.

What do you think? Comment below!




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13 comments:

  1. Imo, heimer is amazing against dive comps, but struggles against poke.

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  2. Oh wow, cool. I love the Dinger DOnger Danger Denger Dongers HeimerDangers

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  3. Romao SabandarDecember 23, 2014

    That moment when 3 people try to tower dive le Heimy.....


    #EloHell

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  4. Actually yeah he looks broken, but he isnt if you know how to deal with him and you tell your jungler to not gank you(and as long as you teammates dont dive in the giant turret)

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  5. Yeah actually he is amazing against anything that needs to get near you(assasins, ryze, swain, etc

    but actually i think that if the enemy laner knows how the donger works you are kinda useless(although i cant think of any way where assasins would have their way with you

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  6. James GiordanoJanuary 17, 2015

    I main heimy and i know the biggest counter to me is yasuo and syndra.

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  7. Gzus KrizedJanuary 21, 2015

    I completely agree; against Syndra I find myself having to completely give up on my turrets and maxing grenades first, turning him into a severely underwhelming poke mage. Against Yasuo, he turns my typical turret triangle of death into a perfect dash-in-and-leave zone, forcing me to use my turrets is really awkward formations or mediocre wards, and even then his q can shred my turrets faster than I can lay them out, again, turning him into a severely underwhelming poke mage. The only caveat is that unlike syndra, you can use your ulti against yasuo without him completely negating it.

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  8. zenlyarrogantJanuary 24, 2015

    He's always been strong, but I could have sworn towers would prioritize his turrets if they were within range, now I've seen towers won't set Heimer's turrets as priority which means they go down faster.

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  9. John Stephen KelleyFebruary 03, 2015

    If they are shooting something else they will keep shooting til it is dead/out of range. so put turrets down as it targets large minion.

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  10. i think talon and zed can be devastating.

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  11. I main him as well, but more on top then on mid. If a Syndra decides to try and go fight me on top, she does not have a chance to win. Only on mid, but I max missiles and harass her as much as I can and put my trust in the jungler. Yasou is the opposite - on top he has more room to maneuver, but on mid he doesn't have much space. I poke him all the time and he has to go back / die :P
    A serious deal on top though is Nasus and Cho'gath. Nasus can Stack outside of my range, and Cho'gath will become too tanky to deal with after a while, and he can farm easily with all of his Kit (Q, W, E) outside of my turret range. If I push I become too exposed to ganks (which I love to against most other champs, if someone ganks me I will probably get a double kill) but with him, he has too much cc and I will get caught in a bad situation. The main issue for me now is that Heimerdinger no longer get the health regeneration he used to get...

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  12. Juan ManuelApril 12, 2015

    heimerdinger´s recipe to win on top lane: take tp - start with anything you like - farm like a boss DO NOT GO BACK UNLESS YOU REALLY NEED - buy zz rot, ultra push lane while covering the portal with you turrets - before you realize, you got to the inhibitor on minute 15 aprox - have fun with your free elo.

    PS: getting focused by the jungler isnt as bad as you think, simply do not push your lane to far before you get lvl 3, as soon as you get lvl 3 try to push your lane. In that way the jungler wont have another option but to gank you constantly and try(without any result, of course) to stop your pushing, gatting pressure off the other lanes and making their jungler loose exp, gold, and time. BUT MAKE SURE TO REMEMBER TO ULTRA WARD YOUR LANE, OTHERWISE LIGHT UP A CANDLE TO EACH DEITY YOU KNOW, because you are mostly fucked if you don have some MLG LCS skills.

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  13. DukeofweinbergApril 13, 2015

    Any champ that can kill your towers easily hurts him a lot. Thats why i like him better top, against bruisers and assassins who have a hard time fighting you at all. I got a ton of double kills when the bruiser meta was big because they couldnt fight me under turrets and they would underestimate the damage.

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