@Meddler and/or Heimerdinger team for 7.10.

Disclaimer: I know it's your jobs to balance and tweak things as needed. I understand you do your jobs extremely well. I just think that unless you are talking to a Heimerdinger main (or enthusiast if you will) that he will get messed up.

1. Heimerdinger's core identity is his turrets. (This was discussed during his last rework around 3.13 patch)

• His turrets take 50% more damage from melee auto attacks. (This was to make it so he didn't absolutely destroy every melee match-up).
• Turrets have 150 health that scale: +25 per champion level + (5% ability power from levels 1-8, increasing 3.5% from 9-18 to end with .4 AP scaling) (IE 0 AP Heimer turrets have 600 health at 18. 500ap Heimer turrets have 800 health).
• The scaling on Heimerdinger's turrets is fine. Early on his turrets die extremely fast and have a really long cooldown to get another. (24 -> 20 upgrade scaling no CDR). Late game an 800 health turret will still die as most ADC's outrange the AA range (and the basic attacks from tuurrets only do 34 + 15% AP scaling level 9) or a few spells will kill them off.
• The proper counterplay to early Heimerdinger is killing his turrets. He's pretty much neutered. Melee champions again get 50% bonus damage (100~ minimum). So two auto attacks or 1 auto after minions hit or even a spell and minions. Adding sheen (which is to say that most champions that play INTO Heimerdinger have sheen or simple ways to kill his turrets early) and his turrets die in a single hit.
• A second and tertiary counterplay to Heimerdinger turrets is Banner/ZZ'Rot.

2. If Heimerdinger is to be made so that he can play mid lane more than top lane, then vast changes have to happen.

• With the core of Heimer being turrets (and his power tied into his turrets) he is too easily countered midlane.
  • Syndra, #1 Hard Counter, if she's meta then Heimerdinger cannot be played mid.
  • Other notables that kill his power very easily - Ahri, Anivia, Annie, Aurelion Sol, Azir, Brand, Ekko, Gangplank, Jayce, Karma, Karthus, Katarina, LeBlanc, Lissandra, Lux, Lulu, Malzahar, Morgana, Orianna, Ryze, Talon, Twisted Fate, Veigar, Vel'Koz, Xerath, Yasuo, Ziggs, Zilean. (Bolded champions have special interactions to include extra gold or ability procs)
  • His ultimate turret can be smited or bursted down very easily thus negating a bulk of his power. (One of the weakest ultimates in a teamfight in all of League of Legends.) VERY rarely in a teamfight do you drop your ult turret (that's for 1v2 top lane early usually). Most of the time you are using your ultimate grenade for mass AOE slow + stun.
  • If the desire is to get Heimer TO play in midlane then he actually needs a buff as he is countered by damn near every meta we've had.

3 . How to shift Heimerdinger's power.

If we are actually wanting to change Heimerdinger to be more mid centric then we have to do things that are buffs (and possibly slight nerfs) to make him viable without making him destroy top lane.

• The first thing that comes to mind is lowering Heimerdinger's turret recharge rate (I'm thinking something similar to Gangplank where his turrets recharge rates go down as he levels up) while keeping everything the same.

  • This is keeping the power in his turrets and while it will not be fun to play him mid, atleast it's more viable to play him if your turrets recharge fast enough instead of every 20 seconds where most match-ups you play can do two full combos during that time.

  • If the power of having his turrets to often up then put flat scaling on them instead of AP scaling so that they are able to be killed whilst maintianing the ability to place them down.

• Alternatively if we remove some power from his turrets then his other abilities HAVE to be buffed in time reduction and damage increase. I can count on one hand over thousands of Heimerdinger game's where I played without using my turrets as my core and the only reason those games were winnable was because A) I'm a great Heimerdinger player B) They didn't know how to play versus Heimerdinger and C) They were not that good of players.

The Tl;dr of this: Heimerdinger is in a fine spot for enthusiasts. If we want to make him more viable he needs to be BUFFED. By Meddler talking about making it so melee champions can kill his turrets EASIER, I have no faith in any changes as Heimerdinger is obviously misunderstood in terms of power and gameplay. I welcome discourse about Heimerdinger whether through the forums or other venues as I truly do not desire for Heimerdinger to be butchered as I fear.