League Of Legends Player Hits Highest Rank With The Weirdest Character

Very few League of Legends players will ever make it to Challenger, the highest rank in the ultra-competitive multiplayer game. Fewer still will reach the upper-most echelons of League’s ranked mode by only playing as a single character. And until this morning, I didn’t think anybody would do that with Heimerdinger.

But that’s just what a North American League of Legends player who goes by the handle “Heisendong” did recently. And just in case anybody doubted him, he live-streamed his journey through the ranks of League on his Twitch channel.

You have to play a lot of games of League of Legends to make it all the way to Challenger. What makes Heisendong’s achievement particularly impressive, even in League of Legends, is that he played through every single game on his Heisondong account as a uniquely idiosyncratic champion who has close to no presence in high-level and professional League of Legends play.

One of the oldest champions in League of Legends, Heimerdinger has come to seem like more and more of a peculiar standout as Riot’s popular game has evolved and added dozens of other characters around him. What makes him so odd? He’s sort of like the closest thing League has to a techie character class…only it never ended up creating a proper techie character class. He does stuff like drop down turrets that attack enemies on their own accord and throws electrically-charged grenades to stun targets. At low levels (like the one I play League in), he’s generally know as the guy who drops down really annoying turrets. At higher levels, meanwhile, he’s not taken all that seriously.

Dedicating himself solely to Heimerdinger therefore meant that Heisendong had to play League of Legends very creatively. As he explained in a Reddit AMA he kicked off last night, he had to fill in for pretty much every position on different teams throughout his journey to Challenger, and drop out of games where other players either picked or banned the mad scientist. As he worked his way into the more tightly-knit ranks at the top of the League ladder, he even had to change his name from Heisendong to help disguise himself — the name being a play on Walter White’s famous Breaking Bad alias, which is not-so-subtly referenced with Heimerdinger’s Hazmat suit skin.

Watching Heisendong’s videos isn’t just great because he’s a silly and charismatic personality, or because it’s fun to see words that sneak “dong” into themselves. Much like seeing a professional League of Legends player like Keane use the oft-maligned champion Urgot to stage an awesome victory, it’s always cool to see talented players use an under-appreciated character in a surprising way. I mean, just watch Heisendong pull off a baron steal in this clip:

Awesome.

As you can see in that video, Heisendong celebrated his achievement by live-streaming in Heimerdinger cosplay for 24 hours. You can follow along with the guy’s continued adventures over at his Twitch channel.