FOTM Report: Thoughts on Heimerdinger

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?!

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.

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!