Talk:Heimerdinger/@comment-6664150-20130518071511/@comment-5052127-20130518184909

Truthfully, he fights assassins better than almost any other mage, even with his low overall damage and squishiness... mainly because 90% of his damage could care less if you cc him, he'll keep trading damage with them in the fight even after he blows all his cooldowns, and he can greatly increase his damage in that fight with a single juke into a bush or an activation of zhonya's or something like that which lets him get off more turret damage and another activation of grenades/rockets..

The turrets, and the stun and blind when they get close, and juking, can often turn what looks like an easy kill for the assassin into a win for him. He straight up counters kassadin for example... and I've killed Zed, Kha'Zix, and Akali and several other assassins when they had full health and jumped me 1v1 with him a lot.

Probably those people play him top or support because those roles aren't expected to do as much damage, and he is pretty low damage right now, he definitely doesn't scale with gold as well as many mids as far as his damage goes. Also, both top and support roles generally want champs who get most of their power early with very little gold/items, and he is that. Still personally I prefer playing him mid. With the right runes/mastery setup he can be quite a force well into mid-game just from outleveling most of the enemy team and his base damages.