First of all, a big shout out to Searz, as I am using his guide template, located here.

Legend

(Also borrowed from Searz, a link to a LoL terminology guide. Helpful for those newer to the game.)

Greetings and salutations! My name is SirBroad and this is my build for Hecarim, the Shadow of War. I've been playing League for about a year and a half now on the NA server and gotten a fair amount of experience with the game in general. Though I don't pretend to be an expert, I still feel that I have some valid points to make in terms of champion building and thus, I have decided to post a guide. Hopefully this is a fairly valid look at the newest champion to join the League, and I plan to be updating this as much as possible. Hope you enjoy it!


Hecarim, at first glance, appears to be a fairly typical solo top, and this is one of his best roles. He can technically be built as a glass cannon suited for hit and run attacks (assisted by his passive which encourages stacking movement speed), but as a melee champion, this is nowhere near viable. At base he has a health of ~2000, so he'll melt if you build pure damage. You're not a ranged carry, you have to get right in there to fight, and moment you get slapped with any sort of CC and focused, you'll disintegrate before you even get a chance to blink. This is obviously suboptimal, so if you want to build for damage and survivability, Hecarim is a good option. However, he truly shines as almost a pure tank. All of his abilities are perfect for teamfighting, and a good tanky build costs even less than a tanky DPS build while keeping similar stats.

Mostly reserved for future use with patch notes pertaining to Hecarim and the items used in this build.

April 19th, 2012

• Guide released!

April 20th, 2012

• Updated with more in-depth description of jungling versus laning.

April 22nd, 2012

• Made a change regarding an error I had made with the functionality of Spirit of Dread, added Sunfire Aegis into items section in place of Bloodthirster.

April 30th, 2012

• Major changes to the item path, after some more games and theorycrafting with a friend of mine. Tanking is the new purpose of this guide. Final build is less expensive, and he fulfills his role far better.

Pros:

• Will almost always be faster than most other champions if you're itemizing to make the best of his passive.
• Decent AOE skills (Q, E, and W) one of which has a very short cooldown (Q just 2 seconds) and synergizes well with Sheen and similar items.
• Has some small amount of built-in sustain with W, though he needs to be in the thick of the fighting to benefit most from it.
• Can chase right through minions due to passive.
• Obvious appeal to those members of the LoL community who fancy diminutive equines of the possessive persuasion.

Cons:

• Easy to get fooled by his passive; he still needs AD items, the movespeed > AD conversion is just a nice plus.
• Hit harder by CC than other champs - even movement slows cut into his overall DPS because of his passive.
• Full build is expensive, though this is more of a con of this guide overall - core alone remains viable though.
• Jungling is also much more team-oriented, and is difficult to pull off without assistance from your lane (hard CC).

g Resistance and Hardiness for flat stats, especially in laning. Continue up the defensive tree, maxing Durability and Veteran's Scars for a touch more survivability late game and early game respectively, along with Vigor for a dash of extra sustain, as well as unlocking the next tier, though Enlightenment may have some limited use. Initiator gives you even more movespeed, which helps with chases and escapes and even gives you a very small amount of extra AD with your passive (1 or 2 tops though, don't get too excited.), then Honor Guard and Juggernaut just help with general survivability, plus the extra Tenacity from the latter helps with inevitable CC. With Mercury's Treads, this brings you to about 40% Tenacity, important for a champ that relies on speed.

I chose to take Utility over Offense because overall you get better benefits from it. Swiftness is nice for the extra movespeed, Good Hands can save the game once respawn timers get large enough, and Summoner's Insight gives you shorter cooldown on Flash. At this point it's a choice between Runic Affinity or Summoner's Wrath in the Offense tree. I chose the latter for another kick of movespeed on Ghost, as well as if I take Ignite. Take the buff duration though if you prefer it.

My preferences are Ghost > Flash > Teleport > Smite, though Ignite and Heal are worthy of mention too. Let me know in the comments as well if you have success with other spells like Cleanse.

Like I've said, Hecarim has plenty of potential as either a laner (ideally solo top) or a jungler, and which of the two paths you take is almost entirely up to you. I'll give a brief rundown here, and go into more detail below that.

Laning Much better farm, so gold flow is a lot easier. He has enough sustain to stay in lane for a while (not forever, since he doesn't have the largest mana pool), with the ability to harass the enemy while using the main sustain ability. Excellent at eluding gankers unless you're caught completely off guard, which shouldn't be a problem with good warding. Overall you're trading farm for kills, so make sure you lasthit often to justify it.

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Jungling Excellent clear time, keeps him free for ganks and assisting in other objectives, like dragon or counter-jungling. Sustain isn't perfect in jungle because of your healing cap on Spirit of Dread, but you should be able to clear fast enough to minimize the impact of this. Forced to use Smite over another spell like Flash or Ignite, but this can still be useful for objective securing. Ganks can be difficult with E, it takes some getting used to. Much easier to get fed because you're roaming and picking off stragglers, but failing to gank will leave you underpowered.

Laning: In-depth

Personally, I prefer Hecarim as a laner. This is because I'm still a subpar jungler at best, so jungling Hecarim is difficult for me. To counteract this, I just play him as a typical solo top champion. Take Devastating Charge first if you feel confident enough to push them around a little (like into your tower if they get too aggressive, this likely won't happen early on though), otherwise take Spirit of Dread for the sustain, only using it in range of your opponent or in emergencies. Rampage is your primary harassment tool, which is slightly risky because you have to be so close, so it all depends on your opponent. Don't be afraid to base if you can trust your minion wave to hold theirs away from tower; you'll stay healthy, keep your build going (and possibly gain a small item advantage if they don't base as often; all that gold is only good once they spend it) and you can come back to your lane reasonably fast, especially if you Devastating Charge from pool. The extra couple of seconds may mean a minion or two. If your jungler ganks for you, do your best to pull the enemy further from their tower with Devastating Charge's push - it's your only hard CC, and your jungler will appreciate it if they don't have very much of their own. Besides this, just play him top as you would anyone else. Because of this, there isn't nearly as much to talk about in terms of playing Hecarim as a solo top. He has a lot more mobility, take advantage of that.

Jungling: In-depth

Jungling is what separates the decent Hecarim players from the good ones. Jungling is debatably the hardest role to play on a team to begin with, and while parts of Hecarim's kit make it easier, other bits will make your job frustrating. Devastating Charge can be either your best friend or your worst enemy depending entirely on your positioning. This means that ganking bot or top needs a lot more work than with most other junglers, especially since Hecarim doesn't have much of a source of follow-up CC. Exhaust can be taken to help this, but hard CC in lane is best - talk it over with your teammates in champion select, and make them aware that they need to help. This is mostly for river ganks, which are tough to pull off unless your target is very pushed, which can be avoided. The easiest way around this is the single path above river on each lane; it's your backdoor to the lane, and lets you gank a lot easier, as long as you're willing to risk running right by their tower. Mid functions similarly, though ganks from river aren't quite as difficult. It's still optimal to gank from above river, though, this raises your chance of success.

The spots talked about are shown above for reference, though the assumption is that you understand where I'm talking about. (Red denotes prime gank spots for the bottom team, and yellow shows the ideal ones for the top team.)

These spots, as useful as they are for ganks, also have a major vulnerability, especially the side lanes; they're easily warded, with the added danger of passing right near their golems and red buff. If a ward picks you up and their jungler is nearby, you'll be in for a fight, so prepare for that possibility, to say nothing of them knowing you're on the way. This is further complicated by the fact that your lane may not be able to remove that ward - if your team is on the upper half of the map, you can probably ask your support to remove it with a pink ward or Oracle's, but if your team is on the bottom half, that duty would have to go to your solo top, who risks provoking a gank themselves for the same reason that it's dangerous for you to be there. Just be careful and coordinate with your team though, and you should be able to pull through. Hecarim's jungle is not for the faint of heart, it's high risk/high reward.

In conclusion, Hecarim is a solid DPS character with the ability to become reasonably bulky, and excels in the solo top slot, while making a viable jungler as long as your skill level allows it. I hope my insights on this champ prove to be useful to at least some of you, and if you do well with it, go ahead and send me screenshots of game stats, I just might make a section devoted to it!