The Donger, Heimerdinger needs some love!!!
Hey everyone out there I've played league for several years now, nothing too serious mainly just for fun.
One of my favourite champions is the donger 
however he's having a really hard time and what I consider the core of his kit has become far from optimal to use.
To start out the defining feature of the donger's kit and gameplay are his turrets which would require you to out play you're opponent by thinking ahead of time. In the old good days you could even win a 1vs2 gank in top lane under the right conditions.
TLDR The Donger's turrets used to be the bread and butter of his kit and what he was originally designed around. Right now in 90% of the games they have become his secondary or tertiary ability. This is because of the game has changed and evolved overtime. His turrets implied his gamestyle and character, a champion which would defeat his opponents by planning ahead and pushing hard. This element has been mostly destroyed in The Donger unfortunately. I think his turrets need some decent love and especially considering he's low mobility champion he could use a power boost. Right now his rockets (and ult) take all the glory and have removed most of the elements that used to be core to Heimerdinger.
(for specific arguments read below, please give constructive feedback)
What has happened to his turrets Now over time it has become harder to use his turrets properly and outplay people this has been due to a number of reasons but let's take a view at some of these.
* Blinks/dashes/displacements have become more common and accesible since he was first introduced a lot of the old champions like tryndamere , nunu , nasus  and (old) gangplanck  who used to play (and one of them making their return) top didn't have those kind of things. Even the movement speed buffs this champions had were relatively weaker than what is seen today. This would give your turrets the time to hit those champions before they would be right on top of you. For midlane it was the same thing look at champions that used to be quite common very early in the game malzahar  , veigar  , anivia  and ryze . Now some of these are back and it's quite doable to play against these in several cases.
* To follow up the removal of the slow and increased attack speed on his turrets with the use of his old ult, yes the new ult is much better but this removed the strong guaranteed slow which helped incredibly well when kiting people around your turrets.
* Range has increased or and become more common. A lot of champions that are played at the moment have often greater range than they used to have early on in the game. Also ranged champions have become more common or champions have gotten reworks that have given them more range. This is something that has luckily been adressed a bit with the rework of the juggernauts however all of these have gotten things that make it fairly easy to close a gap except for mordekaiser. Champions that have got a lot of range are champions like azir  (which we will come back to later) and . Which are two of the very common picks. Often this brings a lot of poke which means that if you put the turrets down they will either be poked down before the fight even starts.
* In accordance with the previous point more area of effect damage has become available, think about the new items that were introduced and the barrels introduced in gangplancks rework. The reason why this is an easy is because of the often generally large areas. Heimerdinger is slow and can only place turrets within a very limited range of himself. This makes it very hard for Heimer to place the turrets just before or during a teamfight. If they are placed even sligthly too close they will be blown up by AoE damage.
* The removal of the turrets always being active. Now don't get me wrong I understand that you removed this to give him power in other places and that this is indeed an extremely powerfull mechanism. Nonetheless this completed annihilated the split pushing potential heimerdinger had. This way he was able to defend one lane while pushing another one.
* The updated turret targeting system, this one screwed over heimerdinger in a big way. A year or so ago you changed it so that turrets would target pets over minions meaning you couldn't fast push that effectively anymore with heimerdinger.
* The better versions. Right now there are actually TWO champions that have better turret like abilities than the donger has these are Zyra  and  (I'm talking about the turret like abilities not champions as a whole). Why are theirs better well let's start with the obvious one Azir. His soldiers can not be killed at all and will last 9 seconds (or 4.5) this is longer than one of the donger's turrets will ever survive in a teamfight (late game the donger's won't even last 4.5 seconds), this is a huge advantage. They can not be displaced either (I'm looking at you syndra  ) which gives much more zoning potential, on top of that he has an ability that let's him displace them should the target/teamfight move. Now they're two more things, the recharge time is much higher making it less painfull to misplace them and Rylai's Crystal Scepter  slows for 40% while on for 20% with the donger. It's looks pretty obvious to me that these are all substantial benefits. Now let's take a quick look at zyra, again she has a recharge rate which is substantially better than the donger's. Also since you made heimer more or less impractical to play in the top lane with the rework we can focus on midlane. Now most midlaners have either slow ranged auto-attacks (accept for azir, again) or melee auto-attacks (meaning they have to get close). Now Zyra's turret plants can be destroyed but instead of having health it takes 3 auto-attacks or 10 seconds. In the game this translates to Zyra's plants generally outlasting the donger's turrets apart from he's between level 11 to 14/15, meaning that most of the game her plants actually have more survivability. Why is that, well during the early to begin mid-game the opposite midlaner can not take them out that easily with AoE or even spells making it very inconvenient to take them out. Late game those auto-attacks often have to be spend elsewhere because having to use 9 auto-attacks on a non-priority target takes to long. On top of that she can also place the plants at a much greater ranger than the donger can.
The Donger needs some well deserved love Unfortunately the donger is was played in less than 1% of all games last month and most of the games that he's being played in are either normal, bronze, silver or gold. He can still work there because a lot of people just don't know the champion and thus often don't know how to play against him. However that shouldn't be a condition for a champion to be able to win.
As said by meddler a few days ago (http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NzjhxoyR-some-gameplay-work-in-progress-general-gameplay-thoughts-10202015?comment=00520000) :
Being a low mobility champ should allow you to get access to some pretty powerful stuff that wouldn't be appropriate on champs with dashes/blinks etc. Kog'Maw and Anivia are good examples to me of where that's been done right, with both of them being options that more mobile marksmen/mages respectively don't offer.
Heimerdinger should also get acces to this more powerfull stuff.
Veigar by example has already acces to this very powerfull stuff as well, he has an immense zoning/stun tool that will help him protect himself from all the blinks and dashes in the game since they most of them can't go through. Anivia's walls is also a huge help and if that's not enough she has the slow from her ult. Azir who is slow has his ult and has actually quite a bit of mobility if he needs to with is soldiers. Cassiopeia 
is also a bit slow but has an movement speed buff in her kit and a great ult with stun/slow.
But How?
Well there's a multitude of options and I just want to present some of them here and let you guys chose what you think would be a good idea. The thing is the people at Riot are in general quite amazing and often come up with amazing solutions, so there's a good chance they might come up with something else.
Let's look at some of the possibilities
- Increase the range of the auto-attack on his turrets so that most champions can not simply sit and auto-attack out of aggro range. This would be a very heavy buff but I don't think it would necessarily break the game, setting it at 575 or 600 range still allows for most abilities user to get within range to attack the turrets without getting aggroed by the auto-attacks (not talking about lasers).
- Another option is to look at the recent teemo rework for placing his mushrooms. Giving the donger to place the turrets from further away will keep him out of harms way in the mids of teamfights and allow him to get them in the position. (doesn't necessarily need the bounce , just increased ranged per lvl would help a lot, or maybe as a passive on his ult).
- Make the turrets more durable, especially regarding AoE. Maybe even overhaul the whole health sytem that's on the turrets right now and make it something more similar to Zyra's. Or give them a few seconds of immunity upon initial placement to help out in teamfights.
- Change the passive so that the turrets can proc the slow that was on his old ult, this can be conditional proc, like upon placement of every second/third turret (every x seconds).
- Something else that would be amazing with the current double teleport is not having the turrets deactivate after 8 seconds. This would return Heimerdinge rto his old days of pushing glory instead of just using the turrets right now to block a Nidalee spear or something.
- Other options could be to give the turrets a shield based on certain condition or make it even so that when you use the summoner Barrier that it's also cast on your turrets (even if it's a toned down version).
- Furthermore the turrets could have a better recharge time.
Nonsense Heimerdinger has a 53% winrate
For everyone saying stuff like, heimerdinger is in a good spot right now or Heimerdinger is SOOOOOOOOO annoying to play against, etc. I'm sorry guys but don't base your impressions on numbers or the fact that heimerdinger just happens to be good against your champion. Heimerdinger has had a winrate of about 53% over the last month which is above average, this should mean heimer is in a good spot right? (source http://loldb.gameguyz.com/statistics/winRate) No those numbers don't say anything, he was played less than 1% of the time. If you have ever had a class in statistics you will know that the smaller the number the bigger a deviation can be. This means that this van be partially a fluke or probably 1 or 2%. Consider it like this, roll a die 6 times, did you roll every number on the die exactly once? No probably not even though the chance of rolling a number is 1/6th. meaning that all of a sudden one number has one number was rolled 0% of the time and anohter maybe 50% (3 times) while the expected numbers would 16.7% per number. Now roll that same die again but roll it 600 times and you'll get much better results. Apart from that there's another factor at work. Most people that do play Heimerdinger have been playing him for a long while and know him pretty well aming them good at him while on the other hand a lot of oppenents almost never or never encounter(ed) a heimerdinger. This can put players who play him in a very favorable spot especially at lower ranking levels of gameplay. Just because some number says heimer is winning doesn't mean he's a good champion all of a sudden.
So please if you comment bring some arguments to the discussion and please give constructive feedback.
I hope that someone from Riot (a Red) sees this post and maybe give us some more info on the current ideas about Heimer within Riot and if there are any plans.
My best regards and thanks to the amazing people at Riot and everyone who made it to the end of this long post
