Talk:Heimerdinger/@comment-66.112.230.80-20120828062137/@comment-5052127-20120829020204

It's a not-so-well disguised nerf designed to hit him early by making him more harassable and forcing him to be vulnerable if he uses a lot of mana being aggressive... It might change, but he needs something to counter the innate power of his kit in lane. If they don't have some kind of crappy passive, he will be REALLY godly in lane just because of his abilities (and that passive there may still not stop him from dominating hardcore...)

A lot of champs have passives that are really nerfs (Heimer's current ult passive for example was designed to counter his kit early by making him have even longer cooldowns early...) it could just as easily have said "Heimer gets a passive increase of 20% to all cooldowns; At rank 1, the increase is reduced to 10%, and rank 2, it is reduced to 5%, and then at rank 3, the increase is reduced to 0%..."

The new champion coming out, Syndra, has a passive that gives her abilities extra strength at rank 5... that extra strength could have been built in... all that means is that it's really a nerf designed to punish her for mixing and matching abilities, making her specialize more. Probably something about her having a mixed set of abilities earlier was too strong, they may synergize too well with each other.

But that ult passive, and his low base abilities and survivability, were still not enough to stop him from breaking the game in lane, because he has extremely reliable long range harass from rockets, and is nearly impossible to harass back because he can be almost totally safe up close with his turrets and grenades, and of course, just to ice the cake, they gave this champion who is already nearly impossible to ever trade damage with in lane, a HEALING passive... which is WAY too strong with his kit in lane.