Heimerdinger has always been a unique champion. His kit allows him to siege with the use of his turrets while slowly whittling down the enemy’s health with his rockets and grenade. However, because of these two aspects of his kit, balancing Heimerdinger is quite difficult. So, through this article, Heimerdinger’s identity as a champion will be analysed and we’ll go through how the recent changes affected him along with how he has changed because of it.

Heimerdinger’s Kit

In general, the kit of Heimerdinger allows him to be played in two ways. First, he can be played as a pure pusher by relying on the damage of his turrets to quickly clear minion waves along with items such as Zz’Rot Portal and Banner of Command. This was the common playstyle for Heimerdinger for the last few months due to how oppressive the pushing can become early on. But as Zz’Rot Portal began to favor tankier stats and Banner of Command became more support oriented, this playstyle became weaker. While recently this was the most popular way to play Heimerdinger, the classic playstyle of Heimerdinger after the rework allowed him to be played as a mage that relied on his rockets to poke his enemies out in lane. In this case, his turrets were used to add a consistent source of damage due to the high cooldown of his rockets. This became a problem as there was no real incentive to max his W first as the cooldown stayed the same and the damage he could get out of the turrets was much better. The recent changes to Heimerdinger in the 7.10 patch fixes this problem.

Patch 7.10
For this article, the main changes we’ll be focusing on are the following (if you’re interested in the rest of the changes refer to the official patch notes):

"Passive: NEW EFFECT: Grants 20% bonus movement speed while near allied turrets (his own and the map's) (300 range).
REMOVED: Heimerdinger grants nearby allied champions and his turrets 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 health regeneration, persisting for 5 seconds after they move out of range or his death (1000 range).

Q: Amount of turrets held increased to 3 at all ranks from 1 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 3.
Cooldown reduced to 20 seconds at all ranks from 24 / 23 / 22 / 21 / 20.
Base damage reduced to 6 / 9 / 12 / 15 / 18 from 12 / 18 / 24 / 30 / 36.
AP ratio increased to 30% AP from 15% AP.
Beam attack base damage reduced to 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 from 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 / 140.
REMOVED: Turrets no longer gain 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% beam charge for each of their basic attacks.
REMOVED: Turrets no longer spawn with 70% beam charge.

W: Mana cost reduced to 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 from 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 120.
Cooldown reduced to 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 seconds from 11 at all ranks.
NEW EFFECT: Each rocket that hits a champion grants 20% beam charge to all turrets within 1000 range of the damage, up to a maximum of 100% if all five rockets hit.

E: NEW EFFECT: If the grenade hits a champion, all turrets within 1000 range of the damage gain 100% beam charge."

Let us start by talking about the turret related changes to his abilities.

First off, the important thing to note is that Heimerdinger is now able to have three turrets out at rank one now with the stack cooldown at twenty seconds at all ranks. However, as a tradeoff, the damage of his turrets was cut in half. Along with the fact that the beam is now charged through his W and E instead of turrets auto attacks, it’s not only worth putting 1 point into his Q. Along with that the change to his passive feels underwhelming at best. While the idea of gaining movement speed around your turrets as a way to encourage playing around them is nice, the nerf to his damage makes it much less of a feasible option.

Because of this change to his turrets, along with the buffs to the cooldown and the mana cost on his W, Heimerdinger should now max his W, as it’ll allow him to charge the beam of his turrets much faster (so they’ll be able to still produce a decent amount of damage). Thanks to the changes, Heimerdinger will now be able to effectively harass and poke without relying completely on his turrets.

Heimerdinger Now

Overall, Heimerdinger is in a much stronger state than before. However, Heimerdinger loses the pushing aspect of his kit and identity as his turrets are simply too weak for that purpose. However Heimerdinger still fits well in siege comps as his turrets are still able to accelerate the destruction of towers once the team begins to siege. Ideally, Riot should balance Heimerdinger to the point in which both styles (push heavy or poke heavy) of Heimerdinger are viable options instead of the current version of Heimerdinger that’s too focused on the poking aspect of his kit.

Conclusion

While the Heimerdinger changes have made him as strong as he’s been in a while, the changes were not that welcome for his overall kit and playstyle. While the buff to his W made him a great and capable harasser, his ability to shove a lane was greatly hindered as the damage to his turrets was severely nerfed. While the ability to have all three turrets down at rank one was a nice tradeoff, the overall fragility of the turrets is still a problem. Overall, the Heimerdinger changes will help him find some relevance in solo queue but it may damage him as a champion in the long run.

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