Note: turrets are not present.

This is a guide to the method I've been playing Heimerdinger with. At 1750 ELO, I've found good success using this build. Basically, common sense will help you understand the build and reasoning behind it.

This is an off-tank Heimerdinger build.

I'm not expecting you to understand it, and you'll probably downvote it because I don't max turrets first, but oh well. I'm just putting something that worked for me in high play out there.

I'm going to update this over time, it will be short and to the point, really. Let me show you.

Simple 9/0/21 setup, masteries aimed towards maximizing summoners potential and damage output for Heimerdinger.

See how short and to the point it was?

Runes are aimed to optimize:

• Magic Penetration in the Marks.
• Health for late-game and early game with Seals and Quintessences due to general squishiness.
• Mana Regen on Glyphs because I've used Seals for Health.

It's up to preference, I just prefer getting the most HP possible while getting nice Mana Regen.

In this Off-Tank heimerdinger build, these are the pros and cons of playing him like this:

PROS:

• Good sustainability in lane, lots of health early.
• When you hit level 5, you can place a turret in a brush in your lane to prevent river ganks and give you awareness.
• Allows you to roam at level 10 while keeping minions off turret effectively to assist team.
• Becomes very beefy while being able to deal large nukes and completely disable melee opponents with turrets in team and randuin active, along with concussion, makes it a cakewalk.
• Exhaust makes you basically ungankable and unable to be killed 1 v 1.

CONS:

• Regarded as a **** champion, people have very negative views of him mid ELO and below.
• Not newbie friendly - you do not use turret to farm or push your lane.
• Need to be able to use your concussion grenade effectively and must know the missle time with upgrade buff and without.
• Requires good awareness and split second decisions - mastering smartcast grenade and turrets makes it extremely easy to completely turn around any melee encounter or close combat teamfight (i.e at baron).
• Has to understand mini camp spawns in jungle to maximize farm without hurting your jungler too much.

For level 1 teamfights, I take Concussion Grenade. It's a must have if you need to level 1 while you're Heimerdinger. Additionally, if you're doing a level 1 gank, it's very easy to get a kill if they have CC so you can stun with grenade too.

I only use melee hits to last hit, while throwing grenades to zone the enemy and if one lands, throw auto attacks at the enemy to harass and rockets if I know I can hit them.

Once I hit level 5 I put my turret in a brush that goes to river or if I'm middle, at the path inbetween the turret and brush, to cut off a path for the enemy to gank me, making my laning a lot safer. When I hit 10, I use my second turret to cut off another path or put it down the river in a brush to give coverage for my team mates. Alternatively, you can put a turret or two in minion range to let it farm while you go to base, roam to other lanes to help or kill jungle monsters for extra gold income.

In teamfights, I throw an initial grenade and rockets, then once cooldowns are off I pop upgrade, grenade, rockets, move forward and place turrets, move in with grenades and rockets to finish them off. If they have melee people, I put the turrets in our team to prevent them getting in without them getting killed in the process by using exhaust and/or Randuins. If I'm moving forward I try to catch as many people in Randuins active as possible to make it so my team can easily push in with me and wipe them quickly.

I normally carry Oracles on me so I'm a target and I can take out wards for the team.

Lategame I'll make sure I have one turret protecting a turret while I have the other saved, and can easily spawn another if neccessary. However, keeping one turret protecting your turrets stops minion pushes, increases your gold and can make backdooring that particular lane slightly harder when the minions are dead.

I'll update the guide more by including things like a map with turret + ward combinations, adding in other build and purchase orders and adding in specific tactics in special situations.

However, I did say it was going to be quick and to the point.

Hopefully you understand the information, if not, oh well.