Heimerdinger is one of the most annoying champions to play against in League of Legends. All he has to do is place a few of his tiny turrets and it’s “Goodbye, fun!” for the rest of the game. Laning against him is infuriating whether you win or lose, but after Riot released details of his upcoming rework yesterday, it’s possible that those horrible, nightmarish games will soon be behind us.
His turrets should be much less irritating, and he might actually be a fun champion to play—a foreign concept to the three people in the entire world that actually play him.
Those damn turrets
Heimerdindong’s laning phase is much too oppressive for any players who might hope to challenge him. If Riot ever wanted the Donger to be in a healthy state, those little bastard turrets needed to be gutted, and that’s exactly what we’re getting.
In fact, the main focus of his update revolves around fixing the turret problem. They are now going to deal much less damage with their standard attacks (their beam attacks will deal the same amount), and the beam attacks will charge at a much slower rate. This means that, as a melee top laner (like most of the pool of possible top laners in the game), you won’t get pub-stomped just because a certain Dinger decided to press Q a few times in random places throughout the lane.
One-way ticket to Skillshot City
Don’t worry though, Dingding fans, because he isn’t just getting nerfed into the ground with no remorse. The beam attacks from his turrets, though they will charge slower, will now instantly fire if Heimer hits an enemy with his grenade (E). This promotes actually having to land skillshots, as well as giving opponents the opportunity to counter him by dodging skills. The grenade is also getting a wider hitbox and a lower cooldown, so there’s more grenades and they’re easier to land. That’s not all, either. Landing his rockets (W) will also partially charge up the beam attack of all turrets nearby.
Heimerheimerdingding is also getting a new passive. He’ll now power-walk when he’s around his little turrets. In other words, he gets a 20 percent movement speed buff when he’s nearby, so he can shuffle around the lane at turbo speed chucking skillshots over and around minions while his turrets fire beam after beam.
Landing skillshots = more turret beams = damage.
That’s not an ultimate, this is an ultimate
Heimerdonger’s ultimate ability is a special, unique little snowflake, and therefore it’s not worth changing up entirely—but it’s a little weak, so it’s worth buffing it up. There’s one part of it specifically that’s considerably weak. Since the first two options of Heimer’s ult are looking decent enough (the rocket and the turret), the only thing that needs some bulking up is the empowered grenade.
It will now deal a lot more damage. That’s it. Just a ton of damage. Both the raw damage from the ability and the ability power scaling are being considerably hiked up. Combined with the widened hitbox on the grenade, this just became Heimerdinger’s go-to teamfighting ability.
Whether you’re a fan of the Lord of the Dings or not, we all have to admit, he definitely needed some attention from the League design team. These changes are set to ship with the 7.10 patch, and with today being the day for Patch 7.9, it will be at least a few weeks before the update goes live.
