User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Sheep are Everywhere/@comment-15244341-20130917224751/@comment-8267817-20130918030838

I just threw in the bear pun because I like Volibear and I was bored but hey, I like brownies and points are cool.

Heimerdinger built as a tank is simply a more effective way to play heimerdinger based on his abilities and their high base damage but fairly low scaling/that grenade being so slow it is impractical, it allows him to kite around his turrets for long enough to spam missles into the brain of the enemy too dumb to run while they have a chance, and let's face it, Heimerdinger is a champion that punishes stupidity, it is hard to be a "good" Heimerdinger based on his skill set being on the worse side, but it can work in situations and in certain matchups, and I was simply saying that Heimerdinger seems to function better as a top laner as opposed to a mid laner.

While yes, a champion may not have been designed for a specific role does not mean they are bad at it (again, Blitzcrank wasn't made to be a support, he was originally a bruiser, but now that is seen as a dumb plan 9/10 times) I have seen Annie jungle carry games, as well as many other unorthodox picks, and typically when someone picks a strange champion for a role, I assume either 1. They know something I don't 2. they are trying to mess with the team by showing a bad pick and switching at the last second 3. they are legitimately a troll who is trying to ruin the game. I will tend to think about a champions kit and try to determine why it might be a good plan, I know the basic functions of abilities for nearly every champion in the game (yes even Meg.... err I mean Karma) I may not know all of the subtleties but I can hazard a guess as to why, if no logical conclusion is reached, I refer to the other 2 options, and if someone on my team is legitimately trolling, I don't get mad at them, I will typically end up trying to out-troll them, it makes the game a lot more fun.

Something else to keep in mind, When I wrote this I never really specified ranked gameplay, I can understand skepticism in regards to perhaps losing rank because of a strange pick, but again this is mostly aimed at normals where this sort of thing should be acceptable.