Heimerdinger

Heimerdinger is the only champion on this roster who turns a patch of map into private property. His H-28G Evolution Turrets farm for him, punish every approach and hold the wave while he backs off. On top of that base he brings two very different tools: micro-rockets that fire from a long way out at whatever stands closest to him, and a grenade that stuns whatever it lands on directly while blinding everything around it.

The cost is brutal. He is slow, he has no escape whatsoever, and his power is immobile by definition: outside the zone he has built, he is a small fragile mage again. His ultimate, UPGRADE!!!, does not fix that either, it reinforces the setup instead of making him mobile. You play him well if you accept that your game is objectives and chokepoints, not open duels.

His control of terrain has no equivalent. Two turrets covering a river bush, a jungle entrance or a tower wall make aggression suicidal, junglers included. He farms without risk, shoves permanently, and his grenade is one of the few control tools on the roster that blinds: dropped on a marksman or any auto-attack champion, it deletes their entire damage output for the window that decides the fight. The cooldown reduction he carries passively on his ultimate lets him rebuild his setup far faster than the enemy expects.

Against all that, anything that leaps over the turrets ends him. A mobile assassin does not play against the installation, he plays against the body behind it. Turrets are expensive on an early mana bar and get flattened in a handful of hits by anyone willing to attack them. And a Heimerdinger dragged into a fight on neutral ground, with nothing built, is barely worth more than a minion.

Place a turret behind your wave, never in front of it. In front it dies, behind it turns the minion line into a wall nobody wants to cross. The standard placement covers whichever side of the river the enemy jungler has to walk through. Once the setup is live you stop playing the lane as a trading contest and start playing it as an occupation: he is the one who has to come into your zone for his farm.

Your micro-rockets seek whatever is closest to you, so they will slam into the front minion if you fire early. Wait for the enemy to step up if you want an execution, or clear the front line first. Keep the grenade in hand: it is your only defensive button. Throwing it for chip damage is handing out a free gank. Use it either to stun the diver at the moment he commits, or to blind the jungler who arrives expecting to auto-attack you down.

The first spike is not an item, it is the moment you can keep two turrets alive permanently without draining your mana bar. From there the lane becomes unlivable and you start shoving into the enemy tower every wave. It is also the point where you should start covering river bushes rather than only your own ground.

The second spike is the ultimate. UPGRADE!!! is not a teamfight button you hoard: it heals a damaged setup in the middle of a siege and adds a slow that makes disengaging impossible, which is exactly what taking a tower or holding an objective needs. Paired with its passive cooldown reduction it changes your whole rebuild tempo. After that, your scaling follows your first large ability power item, because the turrets inherit your power and hit accordingly.

Never run toward a fight that has already started. Heimerdinger wins the fights he prepared in advance: baron, dragon, the mouth of a lane. Build your turrets before the fight exists, at an angle the enemy team has to walk alongside, then stand behind them instead of among them. Your body is worth nothing in a scrum, your installation is worth a great deal.

In the fight itself the grenade has two completely separate jobs. On a diver you want the direct hit, stunning him before he reaches your carry. On an enemy attack-damage carry you want to land it beside him, blinding him out of the fight without ever needing to hit him. Decide which of the two you are doing before the engage, because you will not have time to hesitate.