Turrets will now prioritize champion minions first. Heim hasn't had a really good indirect nerf since you prevented dragon and baron from having armor and MR lowered, so it's really good that you've kept him in check.
I love that my favorite champ and lane has already become so thoroughly unenjoyable that I would much rather take any other position.
By the way, don't ever release QoL updates for him, like giving him a timer on his turret cd like everyone else has for stackable abilities. Really, we enjoy living on the edge of our seats spamming in vain.
Off to play the bruisers and AD casters you so clearly want me to be playing.
/rant
EDIT: Thanks Statikk and Xypherous for your replies, and everyone else for showing some love for Heim. A Heimerdinger thread going beyond two pages of bumps and "Didn't you see that rework dude", didn't think I'd live to see the day.
New patch worked exactly as advertised, his turrets are targetted post haste now. Not touching my yordle friend until Riot decides to show him some love.
Tossing gasoline and explosive jet fuel onto the incendiary fireball that is this thread here - why exactly do you think Heimerdinger has been nerfed all these years?
This isn't an excuse for the lack of Heimerdinger QoL or whatever fixes or additions that people have requested - clearly we haven't done enough for Heimerdinger fixes or changes and you're probably completely right that he needs someone to at least polish him in the interim.
The question, however, as to why he's actually in this state is an interesting one to ponder - Why was Heimerdinger nerfed repeatedly? What was his actual abuse strength that needed to be constrained?
It's because whatever gameplay style he has is completely undermined by the fact that his optimal use case is to dismantle enemy towers with as many (Q turrets / E grenades / yadda yadda) as possible and leave - Time and again, this has always been the root cause of Heimerdinger nerfs - his kit absolutely dismantles Towers when left alone.
The implications for having this being one of Heimerdinger's core "strength" for example, is actually fairly constricting for his actual gameplay overall. For example, what happens if Heimerdinger is a decent laner? It means that whenever the opponent has to back, the tower is gone. The penalty for being pushed out of lane is enormous - thus the actual probability of success for that character has to be diminished.
That is, because leaving your lane once causes you to automatically lose the tower - that character's laning potential has to, essentially, be awful. This particular change has been needed for a very long time in order to ensure that Heimerdinger can have something resembilng a laning phase to begin with.
As for "hustle and bustle" regarding Heimerdinger changes - I'll tell you that mine were pretty much killed or stalled for quite a while after that leak floated about - It pretty much stalled everything for months until S3 rolled about and by that time priorities shifted into - well.. other stuff. Reality is one of my least favorite happenstances.
You really shouldn't thank me on this - mostly because I'm the one made the call to prioritize items over him at some point.
In some alternate universe, I suppose, we'd have the old items and Heimerdinger's rework would be done - and I actually think there would be quite a decent population of people that would prefer that universe.
Reality sucks because you always sacrifice some player's interest whenever you choose to work on something else. It sucks because no matter who I choose to focus on, that leaves 105 champions that I'm not.
How can you defend your blatant ignorance towards other champions like karma, poppy, trynd, urgot?
Actually, Urgot was one of the champions I focused on in the item reworks - because my gut feeling on Urgot was that he was overcompensating in lane obnoxiousness because he didn't actually have items with decent synergy to be good late game. That is, he was a lane bully because no matter what, he was going to be bad late.
This is actually a large reason why Muramana, for example, works with single target spells and that Black Cleaver works particularly well with Damage over Time effects.
We can afford to make Urgot not as big of a lane bully, as long as we ensure his itemization lets him fit nicely into the late game. Hopefully he's actually doing a lot better now.
Trynd, on the other hand, has almost always been decent in solo queue up to the highest of ELO. In fact, our highest rated player (2600-esque) mains Tryndamere - With any hypercarry, Trynd wins or loses based on whether or not he can farm. You don't need to beat lane. You don't need to kill the opposing laner. You can be 0/7/0 by 15 minutes in and it doesn't really matter. Hit some magical gold count and the universe explodes around you.
(Although, we did try to help him out too with Furor/SoTD and Mercurial.)
So what you are saying is that you would prefer every champion to be about the same? Ok. Heimer has a unique playstyle. He can siege or turtle. If you back vs Heimer perhaps a jungler or support comes to cover for a short time.. something. Wait, why don't we just give everyone a dash and a shield and... nvm you guys are already doing that. It's nice to have different types of champions. Some should be good at taking down towers, others at utility, damage, and others for healing. Variety is the spice of life.
Actually - this change helps keep that playstyle intact as much as possible - by creating more space for that playstyle to exist because the tower is much smarter about helping you fight against it when he's truly ahead.
True, in some ways we are reducing the payoff for the style but in many ways, I don't think payoffs create interesting styles - interesting styles tend to create hard to control payoffs.
So let me get this straight, you screw an an entire champion the was already not viable in sense of the word MORE because he actually performed well at something?
Most definitely.
The key to determining whether these changes are good or not is identifying whether that thing in which he performs well is helping the character or ultimately holding him back from being a decent character. Heimerdinger's kit interactions with towers, I've generally found to be the thing holding him back from his kit being a versatile area controller - because ultimately - you don't want to control an area with turrets, you just down their towers.
A character being viable is something that you can twist and bend a lot of ways to do so - being overpowered, for example, usually makes you viable regardless of what else. However, is there a way you can preserve what makes Heimerdinger interesting or his style unique and how do you create space for that change?
That being said I do understand why this change would need to be made if his kit was improved, because like you said he is amazing at taking towers. However why not just wait until the re-make is ready? Why take a champion (a very FUN champion) who is barely hanging on to any form of playability and annihilate what little strengths he had left?
Remember the comment I made earlier about burning 105 champions to help one?
This is the inverse - in short, this change wasn't directed at Heimerdinger specifically - though it is required for him in the future - but streamline tower and tower play across all champions, especially for lane snowball cases.
Yes, but like you said it won't be happening for a long time............so those of us who not only enjoy playing Heimer but ALSO bought skins for him recently are just sol? I don't think that is a very fair stance to take.
We'll see about the "long time" bit - after all, the more the players care about an issue - the more.. I guess ammo? that I have about prioritizing things.
I will say that you're entirely right to feel that way - and it sucks - but bear with us and keep letting us know when we've hit something that is an issue. In any event, I certainly have more ammo to re prioritize projects, for example.
Welp, I'm done playing Heimerdinger. Thanks for another nerf, Riot.
I love that my favorite champ and lane has already become so thoroughly unenjoyable that I would much rather take any other position.
By the way, don't ever release QoL updates for him, like giving him a timer on his turret cd like everyone else has for stackable abilities. Really, we enjoy living on the edge of our seats spamming in vain.
Off to play the bruisers and AD casters you so clearly want me to be playing.
/rant
EDIT: Thanks Statikk and Xypherous for your replies, and everyone else for showing some love for Heim. A Heimerdinger thread going beyond two pages of bumps and "Didn't you see that rework dude", didn't think I'd live to see the day.
We were trying to get a universal rule set in order to make turret behavior consistent, but different champions use their minions differently.
I think it makes sense for Heimer to have his turrets de-prioritized.
This isn't an excuse for the lack of Heimerdinger QoL or whatever fixes or additions that people have requested - clearly we haven't done enough for Heimerdinger fixes or changes and you're probably completely right that he needs someone to at least polish him in the interim.
The question, however, as to why he's actually in this state is an interesting one to ponder - Why was Heimerdinger nerfed repeatedly? What was his actual abuse strength that needed to be constrained?
It's because whatever gameplay style he has is completely undermined by the fact that his optimal use case is to dismantle enemy towers with as many (Q turrets / E grenades / yadda yadda) as possible and leave - Time and again, this has always been the root cause of Heimerdinger nerfs - his kit absolutely dismantles Towers when left alone.
The implications for having this being one of Heimerdinger's core "strength" for example, is actually fairly constricting for his actual gameplay overall. For example, what happens if Heimerdinger is a decent laner? It means that whenever the opponent has to back, the tower is gone. The penalty for being pushed out of lane is enormous - thus the actual probability of success for that character has to be diminished.
That is, because leaving your lane once causes you to automatically lose the tower - that character's laning potential has to, essentially, be awful. This particular change has been needed for a very long time in order to ensure that Heimerdinger can have something resembilng a laning phase to begin with.
As for "hustle and bustle" regarding Heimerdinger changes - I'll tell you that mine were pretty much killed or stalled for quite a while after that leak floated about - It pretty much stalled everything for months until S3 rolled about and by that time priorities shifted into - well.. other stuff. Reality is one of my least favorite happenstances.
In some alternate universe, I suppose, we'd have the old items and Heimerdinger's rework would be done - and I actually think there would be quite a decent population of people that would prefer that universe.
Reality sucks because you always sacrifice some player's interest whenever you choose to work on something else. It sucks because no matter who I choose to focus on, that leaves 105 champions that I'm not.
This is actually a large reason why Muramana, for example, works with single target spells and that Black Cleaver works particularly well with Damage over Time effects.
We can afford to make Urgot not as big of a lane bully, as long as we ensure his itemization lets him fit nicely into the late game. Hopefully he's actually doing a lot better now.
Trynd, on the other hand, has almost always been decent in solo queue up to the highest of ELO. In fact, our highest rated player (2600-esque) mains Tryndamere - With any hypercarry, Trynd wins or loses based on whether or not he can farm. You don't need to beat lane. You don't need to kill the opposing laner. You can be 0/7/0 by 15 minutes in and it doesn't really matter. Hit some magical gold count and the universe explodes around you.
(Although, we did try to help him out too with Furor/SoTD and Mercurial.)
True, in some ways we are reducing the payoff for the style but in many ways, I don't think payoffs create interesting styles - interesting styles tend to create hard to control payoffs.
The key to determining whether these changes are good or not is identifying whether that thing in which he performs well is helping the character or ultimately holding him back from being a decent character. Heimerdinger's kit interactions with towers, I've generally found to be the thing holding him back from his kit being a versatile area controller - because ultimately - you don't want to control an area with turrets, you just down their towers.
A character being viable is something that you can twist and bend a lot of ways to do so - being overpowered, for example, usually makes you viable regardless of what else. However, is there a way you can preserve what makes Heimerdinger interesting or his style unique and how do you create space for that change?
This is the inverse - in short, this change wasn't directed at Heimerdinger specifically - though it is required for him in the future - but streamline tower and tower play across all champions, especially for lane snowball cases.
I will say that you're entirely right to feel that way - and it sucks - but bear with us and keep letting us know when we've hit something that is an issue. In any event, I certainly have more ammo to re prioritize projects, for example.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed - but Elise seems kind of crazy right now.