Heimer Rework Ideas

Here's a few ideas I had about how to make Heimerdinger less impactful and make it possible for Heimer to survive multiple turns without the opponent immediately losing:

Version 1 (Round Start Heimer):

This version of Heimerdinger would motivate players to cast only high cost spells for Heimer, instead of just spamming cheap spells like currently. Since Heimer can only summon 1 turret per round, this also prevents the spamming of 3 cost elusive turrets. This might seem like a heavy nerf, which is why I gave Heimer more stats to compensate. Also, players can summon cheap turrets from hand so that Heimer summons bigger turrets, if they cast low cost spells that turn.

Version 2 (Attack):

This version of Heimerdinger requires you to attack to get free turrets, which allows the opponent to block heimer and damage him (similar to Shen). However, with 6 Health Heimer will likely survive the first attack. This would probably be the lowest powerlevel version of Heimerdinger, but with Synergy like Sumpworks Map I think he'd still be viable.

Version 3 (Transformation):

This is probably my favorite rework of Heimerdinger since it completely changes how you play the card. By requiring an ally to get the support effect to work, this version of Heimerdinger would require actually having minions in your deck (or spells like Scrapdash Assembly). Also, because the Turret is based on the total cost of the spells you cast, it opens up interesting plays about which spells to cast to get different turrets. The versions' level up is also the most interruptible, through killing, frostbiting, or stunning the turrets. Because it also lasts across the game, it makes later Heimerdingers more likely to be able to attack as the level two version. Once Heimerdinger levels up, he becomes much more powerful and lets you make the turrets have higher stats than they would normally have. Quick Attack both reflects one of Heimerdinger's LoL abilities and makes Heimerdinger more difficult to kill while he's attacking. The stats could definitely be adjusted to make it more balanced, but I think this version of Heimerdinger is very interesting and very disruptable.

Which version of Heimerdinger do you think would be best? Are there other reworks you've thought of? 

Only the 3 mana cost the ''elusive'' turrets are a big problem, a 8-8 t-hex robot dinosaur you can block with chump blockers but 4 times 3-1 elusives becomes to difficult for a majority of decks.

Quote From FrostyFeet

Is Heimerdinger so problematic at the moment that it needs a change? I don't really play Ranked that much. Haven't seen awfully lot of him in Normal mode. I know Riot plans to change some of the Turrets, and I'm curious what they'll end up doing.

Anyway, for me the last one is overly complicated. The second one would be very frustrating for the Heimerdinger player, and for example the Barrier Turret would rarely get any value of its Barrier (as I can't really see anyone playing it from hand with its real cost). The first one is closest to my liking but I'm still not a fan of disincentivizing playing almost any cheap spells, which are the thing that make combat phases so interesting for me. I also feel that these changes would make Heimer really slow. Therefore, I'd argue that you'd need to change the Health of some of the Turrets to compensate if you'd like to make him playable.

If I'd were tasked with toning down the token spam, I'd just go with something simple like "The first Turret you play each round costs (0)." You could still play a lot of them in one round but only if you have the mana, and it would definitely encourage casting at least one high cost spell per round. While his current Health is a big weakness, I think it's very much needed to stay like that or he'd be really frustrating to face against. I don't play LoL so I can't say anything about the true flavor, but for me a weak statline seems to fit him better than a big bulky unit stats.

"Problematic" is mostly a subjective term, but there is general sentiment that his current behavior provides so more value than it ought and that he is over-represented in the meta.

Personally, I would make it even simpler: "The first time you cast a spell each round, create a fleeting Turret".  That would limit his ability to pop-off and also discourage against that extremely frustrating Round 5 Heimer -> Flash of Brilliance -> Twin Disciplines -> double elusive turret tempo swing.