We should revive the Donger/leona bot lane. Those were the days Thunder.

But on a more serious note Heimer is pretty bad right now. Easily countered by syndra, orianna, ziggs, and gragas who have all become enourmously popular the last few weeks. Heimer doesn't push or farm well when he can't keep up his turrets and all of those champions make very short work of Heimer turrets.

In general he usually holds his own in lane but wont outrightly win it (he can hold on vs the mention champs if you max rockets first) even against favorable match ups. If you draw jungler aggro before you have zhonya's (which usually happens atleast once) you are a sitting duck. Rushing zhonya's is a risky move because it leaves you slightly mana starved (hes not as mana problimatic as he used to be but still important to have blue buff if you skip athene's which I do) in lane so if you are getting push on say vs an orianna you will start to lose farm once your mana is depleted from wave clearing with rockets.

Late game Heimer is a monster. His team fighting is very good to almost unmatched (giving you stay in the turret range and don't stretch to far from it, similar to karthus) the longevity he has in fights if you can use zhonya's before dying and let the turrets do there job is amazing. Hes very hard to kill with his stun and teammates CC. If you buy banner of command on him his turrets basically have a buff equivalent to DFG at all times (not to mention the huge cannon minion and the buff to super minions). He has decent utility with his ult if necessary to slow/cc there team with his grenade ult.

The main problem is getting heimer to late game but if you do you shouldn't lose.

I see you have some thoughts there hedgie.    skimmed it, I'm going to bed - reads tom.  I got wrecked quite a bit tonight in team builder going that tank rango build.  1 game, easy win.  I'm like full build with stupid amts of ff stacks.  Adc leaves.  I'm left with this dumb arse build with no dmg.   Loss.  Other games, I just get wrecked.  It seems like a pick and playstyle you only want in certain comps.

1st - the pros - this guy can initiate.  It's not a malphite initate, mind you, but its an initiate.  Also, great clear options as well w/ nice jungle clear (worse after patch and fix for ff item).  Pretty decent early dragon clear solo actually. 

downsides - weak arse ganks pre 6 unless lane ganks doable.  He's a ff jungler w/ this build. That's nice late game because that's his only dmg item and he goes full tank/support tank.  That's awful because he needs to farm out that ff. 

He's someone I would very much consider picking if there were 2 lanes w/o escapes/mobility.  He goes really good with teammates that can gap close.

The main thing he has over ww is his initate.  So much easier to initiate.  Stack your abilities.  Ping, Ult, go in.  Instant fight. The question is, is that worth it in most comps?  Prob nots

Nice vid dr dan!

Going back and reading through your post now.  Mostly it [rango] is worse.  IMO - pretty much any champ that requires team adaptation outside of the meta is generally a bad pick for solo queue unless you are going for a specific comp, etc.  So, all junglers that have weak ganks pre 6 are worse than other junglers that can pre 6.  Comparing ww directly to rango pre 6, rango is actually better because he has gank potential along with a slow and snare.  Additionally, junglers that, at best, can go and clean up farm pre 6 if a lane gets wrecked are weaker than junglers that have kill potential. 

But then you get into the "what do you get at level 6" question.  Well, with ww, you get an ult that's on a low cool down, so you generally get a gank bot for the team.  But he has limitations on how he can gank.  Rango, on the the other hand, has gank potential go through the roof at level 6.  I'm trying to think of someone with higher gank potential at level 6 and I'm drawing a blank - vi's pretty good I think with dash/ult - not as good, but close.

Late game, at least with the tanky rango build, they generally fall into the same category (though ww can often slowly solo baron), but I'd argue that rango full tank + ult is a stronger initiator than ww as he does not require flash to be successful.  It's very important to note, though, that ww's ult is superior in that it requires a lower skill cap and that there is generally no escape from the initiate.  With rango, you have to ult and make sure you land your root, which is not a guaranteed thing due to flash + escapes.  So, while rango has greater potential for those intiations imo, if ww gets into range, you are going to be suppressed. W/ rango, you will probably be rooted and killed, but not for sure. 

Anyway, I think I may have gotten this jangle rango out of my system.  Still really digging full jungle support nunu.  Finding that to be really strong. Trying to think what jungler I want to work on next. 

RE: Tank CDR jungle Rengar

Rengar has been played a few times now in the NA LCS seen. I have watched several of the games with the Tank CDR Rengar build and have been completely underwhelmed. Early to mid game he does fine but nothing the big 3 (eve, lee, spider lady) can't do the same or better. Late game I have seen him become completely useless. His initiation onto a squishy target late game basically does nothing. The amount of peel teams have at that point make rengar's initiation kind of a joke. He does literally zero damage with the full tank build so jumping onto that squishy ADC doesn't really matter because the squish ADC gets tickled by your damage and instantly cleansed by crucible/QSS sword thing, they have a banshees vail or you miss your shit completely. I have really only seen him picked up when better options are not available. 

Well that is the LCS but for us little people I feel like jungle rengar has more of an impact when built glass cannon. On that note I hate glass cannon - melee range champions as they are not safe picks ever. I would much rather have almost any other jungler (except maybe shaco, yi) then rengar at the skill level we play at. They are more reliable and WAY more relivant if they get shut down early game than rengar. Who cares about an 0-6 rengar at 20 minutes? I would much rather have an 0-6 Vi, WW, amumu, Mao kai, Nautilus, Udyr, Xin, Chogath, fiddle sticks, you get the idea type of champion where there ults/skills will ALWAYS be useful regardless of how poorly they started the match.   

Well, keep in mind the big bonus with him is the 1.75 + 1.75 of snare + the invis initiate.  Most games even with bonetooth + ff stacks its not good enough imo.  Feel like its too niche

Hmmm, not sure if i agree with you there.

What you're doing is saying "if you enjoy a champion enough to play 100 games with them, it doesn't matter if they are B or A- tier if you go play them in ranked". i agree with that sentiment. However, there's a few things you're neglecting:

1. Besides the GP discussion, we've been talking about "learning" new champions (more specifically: pacov learning champs). You can no longer appeal to having 100+ games of experience. If there is a B-tier champ and an S-tier champ that does the exact same thing (but better... like say Quinn/Ez versus Lucian), and you want to maximize your success, you should just learn Lucian and not waste your time with Quinn (and if you do decide to fuck around with Quinn, that you realize you'll lose some games because of it).

2. You're talking from the soloqueue perspective. If pacov wants to become a jungle Rengar main and climb to Diamond with him, that's his choice and all the more power to him. More likely, he is just going to play it with us. Until he achieves proficiency, we, as a group, have to deal with some of the weaknesses that Rengar has because whoever is learning the champ is going to be making more errors than normal, or misunderstand timings.

It's important to talk about weaknesses of particular champs (such as GP or Rengar), especially if we plan on bringing those choices into Ranked 5s. Pacov mentioned on his stream that he was actually considering playing jungle Rengar in one of those tournaments that Dan talked about.

Ah, well that's a horse of a different color.  I keep forgetting that you guys are playing Ranked 5's more often, I was thinking more along the lines of our normal games.

But... I mean, when's the last time any one of us changed someone else's mind about a champ's strength?  I remember back when Karl tried to explain a long time ago about how Jayce was so great and should be played every game top lane if possible.  And I told him that he was a win lane lose game type of champ who was hard to fit on a team.

Karl just had to learn the hard way when failing at Ranked games with a good KDA over and over before he finally admitted "Thunder, you were right all along!  And totally not fat at all!"

Karl is right that everyone goes off their "internal tier lists" way too vehemently and its hilarious how perceived strength is so different from actual strength of champions in this game, and not just in the Smurf games I've been playing in.  Thank god I've finally gotten out of the "Ban Amumu!!!" MMR...

However, if someone has had a frustrating night with people trolling (I've played many a game with MadCasters, I can relate very well to this feeling.) I am all for them letting me know that I not only should play a champ that I feel good about, but one that they approve of as well.  But they better not be playing with a champ that the rest of us don't feel is strong (but they for whatever reason think is solid) when calling in Tryhard Mode.  Fair enough?

As far as Play Something Strong Cause I'm Doing Something Weird Mode... I don't know.  If Cow tells me that he's got this awesome AP Gangplank build he wants to try, I think I'm already being a good sport playing in the game as is.   Not sure how much I want him telling me what I should pick that game, y'know?

dan - well, the rango build in specific I was trying out was literally monster tank with ff as only offensive item.  And all games on team builder where at least I have been getting a very unique mixing of skill levels.  I'm primarily addressing the specific build/playstyle - specifically Diamondprox's build - example:  http://www.probuilds.net/guide/EUW/1548974906/20234739

The primarily failing for me in solo queue with that build is with having less burst, but enabling me to initiate and serve less of a straight up assassin role and more of a tank initiator as needed.  I actually play the build reasonably well, but its has its shortcomings based on what's happening in game and its really difficult to say if the style will work consistently (like 50/50 of 40/60). 

I ban Rengar in fear of Jungle, and like 90% of the ones I see Jungle instead of Top.

gave the dmg hybrid a try.  same ff low to no gank weakness in place (eg pressure for enemy jungler when I put out zero). 

The dmg build is delightful IF the game goes to late game.  I chose to gank for the wrong lane when my 1st ult was up (guy watched me gank and did nothing).  Bit of a setback.  Enemy team also had good drag control.

ADC was made a complete nonfactor though on enemy team.  strong for what it is..  game 2 now

game 2 - kinda got wrecked.  so so mid making poor decisions here and there.  I messed up a smidge.  Really behind as a whole.  Should have been an easy game imo.  Nasus jung on enemy team.  Also, I hate that I keep getting put into teams that are working together so much.  I'm seeing 4 man early ganks and roams often on the other teams lately. 

I have to do late night work so staying up a bit longer and playing

I agree solo queue its best just to play what you are good at even if it is not currently a highly sought after champion in any role. Unless its an extremely obvious hard counter (vayne into a caitlyn, brand into a fizz, nasus into a teemo, etc......) then its time to bust out your next safest pick that wont lose you the lane just by locking the champion in.

Last game of the night I decided to play as naut in team builder and was stuck against a lee.  Got super counter jungled as well and I blew a few smites that would have secured by buffs during the pressure.  Thankfully, the lee was just ridiculously greedy which ended up costing him quite a bit.  I did get to troll my diamond 2 nasus teammate out of top lane that was a being an arse to me, so that was nice anyway.  It's always nice when you can visit retribution on someone immediately.  In his instance, he knew I was way behind, would see me working on a jungle camp, walk to it and q.  I, in turn, ended his laning phase and forced him to go to another lane for being an arse. 

I'm going to start a series called 2AM justice.  In this series, pacov will go on tilt and seek "justice."  hue.  Anyway, was a rough game and some forever farm teammate decided to troll me.  So, I happily made his game as much fun as he made mine.