According to the latest information released by Riot Games, the Yordles tribe will be removed in the upcoming Teamfight Tactics patch 9.5. This seems to be a “tradition” of Riot as they previously removed a tribe that could upgrade champions to 4 stars, the Lunar tribe in season 4. Therefore, Riot’s decision to remove Yordles does not surprise the community.
What’s noteworthy here is that even though the Yordles tribe is being removed, a champion can still be upgraded to 4 stars in the upcoming patch 9.5. Specifically, a streamer named GrappLr recently successfully upgraded Heimerdinger to 4 stars while testing patch 9.5 on the PBE server. The strange thing is that he only bought enough champions to upgrade Heimerdinger to 3 stars, but the game upgraded this character directly to 4 stars.
After that, GrappLr’s 4-star Heimerdinger completely annihilated opponents with this unit’s overwhelming power. Not only does it deal significant damage with its abilities, but the turret of Heimerdinger at 4 stars also possesses immense strength. Therefore, this player won easily afterwards.
According to the community’s findings, it is highly likely that this phenomenon is related to a special interaction that Riot secretly implemented. Simply put, Riot did not remove the feature to upgrade Heimerdinger to 4 stars in patch 9.5 along with the Yordles tribe. You will always receive this unit at 4 stars if you have 2 other champions at 3 stars on the battlefield.
Basically, upgrading a 5-cost champion to 3 stars is extremely difficult as they have a fairly low appearance rate. Therefore, Riot often creates special effects for 3-star 5-cost champions to increase the interest in their game. Perhaps, the ability for Heimerdinger to reach 4 stars despite the removal of Yordles is the special effect that Riot has granted to this champion.