Talk:Heimerdinger/@comment-72.253.3.24-20120620080353/@comment-5052127-20120620170822

I agree, glass cannon just doesn't work for him to be the most effective, he DOES need to get pretty close to the fray to use all of his abilities effectively, if you are afraid to get close to the fight you may still be good at getting their team with at least the damage from grenade, but you will hit less people with rockets and your turrets will be practically useless in team fights.

So... to really use all his abilities well and do his job, he needs to be fairly close (and stay fairly close). When I am doing my job, I don't want to be so squishy that one champion can just burst me down by themselves practically instantly as soon as I come in range, without me or my team having any time to even react before I'm dead.. so I go for some tankiness.. like RoA or Rylais for health, Zhonya's Hourglass or Frozen Heart for armor, and Abyssal Scepter or Banshees for MR.

As far as offensive stats, Magic penetration is hands down better for him for the cost than AP until you have enough to reduce the enemy's MR to 0. Early game it will really increase your damage much more quickly than anything else. Getting Sorc shoes as a first item is quite viable on him as it will increase all his abilities damages by about the same amount a large rod would AND makes him better at chasing and getting away early on. Always get enough MPen. His abilities scale with MPen MUCH better than with AP thanks to them all having high base damages and relatively low contribution from AP ratio (he needs 400 AP or so just for the damage contribution from AP to equal his abilities' base damages).