@Riot, Heimerdinger's turret changes are counterproductive
The recent change is this: Rockets landed each charge 20% of a laser's charge bar. (5 in a wave means 100% at 20% per rocket.) Grenades landed charge a full 100% of a laser's charge bar.
This means that you have to land skillshots to charge the bar. This is fine. Sounds good. Here's the catch though. The enemy has to be in close proximity to the turret.
How does this play out? In gameplay, most enemies will avoid being in direct range of turrets, this means skirting turret range. Good, bad or otherwise players generally get the idea that turrets should hurt them. Lasers originally removed this safe-skirting tactic to a point. It made it risky to get too close. This latest change makes turrets vulnerable. With a lower dps and no lasers firing naturally, enemies simply walk up and auto-attack turrets. Generally, this is where should be able to exploit an enemy's positioning. They have no cooldowns used, you have placed turrets.
Here's where this change fails.
Ranged champions are still outside the threat radius generally, if you land a perfect grenade (a generally dodge-able skillshot to begin with) or a full 5 rockets from a W, then your laser fires. I say "laser", non-plural. Enemy placement means a single laser will likely be the only one that fires, if they're actually in range for the turret to charge on the skillshots to begin with.
Melee champions are right up there next to the turret. Congrats, you landed a skillshot on a likely stationary target. (The frames while they auto-attack.) Not only does this punish them more, this is counter-productive since the idea is to make turrets easier to handle for melee. With the current charge system, a grenade lands, up to 3 lasers fire. The enemy is now stunned after getting hit with a grenade, and double-nuked from the laser/grenade. Perfect time to fire your rockets. Stationary target and all. All 5 rockets hit, LASERS FIRE AGAIN.
The kicker of this beyond the change being exactly the opposite of the purpose intended, Heim no longer excels in the lane where he needs to. Turrets do not maintain durability for withstanding minions, much less enemy champions, which puts him at a farming disadvantage, his other high point.
Another low point: His passive. (+20% movespeed around turrets and towers.) The range doesn't benefit him. He has to be within about 200 units (2 Teemos for anyone wondering.) for it to work. Since his turrets die quite quickly, he isn't getting it reliably enough from those and allied turrets that are downed don't provide that benefit. It's primary benefit is generally playing out as a means to change positioning behind minion waves to fire rockets and catch a slower enemy off-guard. (It rarely works like that in my experience.)
TL;DR: The changes did not solve the "problem" and removed Heim's previous strengths. I think there was some notable good points to the changes, but overall, just completely gimped him.
