I first want to say how glad I am I finally found a good working build on this champion. I purchased him straight away, and after having some bad games (especially in the jungle), I almost lost interest. One game however, I decided (with a little advice from a friend on runes) how I should be this champion, and this is what worked really well for me!

I'll hopefully be updating this guide a fair amount, providing screenshots, jungle routes, videos and maybe more. For now I just want to keep it short, and I hope my brief introduction will help enough :)

Yes, Hecarim is best played as a tank, you may class this as off-tanking, but he's more or less a tank. Despite this, he can still do a lot of damage, control team fights well and a lot of the time, be a big contributing factor to your teams victory. I really hope this guide works as well for everyone reading it, and good luck; it's a jungle out there!

For starters, Hecarim is a very effective, fast, mobile and an extremely versatile jungler; due to his passive "Warpath". This will allow you to move through units, making chasing enemies and fleeing much easier, it also grants attack damage equal to a percentage of your bonus movement speed which is always handy.

Early Game
Hecarim is one of the best early game junglers I've seen or played. His fast jungle completion allows him to initiate ganks a lot sooner than other champions. Grabbing the correct skills is always important, so that you can set up the lane you've chosen to gank for kill, and deal a decent amount of damage. Having your armour penetration runes is essential for smooth, fast and successful jungling... trust me. Getting the 4th point in "Devastating Charge" should make for some easy nice kills for you and you're team.

Mid Game
Fortunately, Hecarim's effectiveness doesn't drop off at all mid game, that's for sure. When you begin to grow more tanky, you'll be initiating fights more often, dealing a nice bit of damage and really contributing to you're team. Hecarim looks like the type of champion which racks up all the kills, well, in this instance, he is and he isn't. Working well with your team (even to get assists) is still very useful to you're team, especially when you're allowing the AD Carry to get a nice bit of money. Because his Ulti "Onslaught of Shadows), you can gank pretty much anyone as long as you have clear vision of where they are: hitting your Ulti is key to maximize it's effects.

Late Game
You'll notice that late game, Hecarim is the one to start the majority of you're team fights, this is completely fine, good even. Your tanky build, sustain with "Spirit of the Dread" and ulti will leave the other team in pieces, granted your team are helping too. During this period of the game, almost no one should be able to kill you. With your high Armour and Magic resist, along with you're "Devastating Charge", you're completely safe! He is a very nice late game champion, especially in team fights. You can tank for good amount of time, whilst still dealing damage and protecting you're team. Zoning out other champions (like the enemies AD Carry for instance) with "Devastating Charge" is really nice, this can also help you're team focus and lock down a strong enemy by knocking them into you're team.

Tips:

-Because you have more movement speed when you're health is above 70%, try to use your health pots to maintain your health above 70%, this will simply make jungling a little faster-

-When using smite, try to use it while your "W" is up, this will still count as damage to minions and provide you with health-

Grab your jungling gear (seen at the top) and whack a point in you're "Q", the jungle is magic! Head straight for blue. At 1:55 he will spawn, and by this point you should have asked mid and/or possibly top lane to help you 'pull' blue (which in effect, does some damage to him, taking the aggro leaving you with more HP) DON'T FORGET TO SMITE HIM :)

Upon killing blue, get a point in "W", this is just for good sustain in the jungle as it provides you with a nice bit of health. Continue to Wolves, spamming "Q" whenever you can.

Go to wraiths, kill them (focusing the blue one at the back); spamming "Q" whenever you can, and keeping "W" when it's off CD for HP

Next head for golums, focus the biggest one, once again spamming "Q" and keeping "W" up if you can. Put a point in your "Q" upon levelling to 3.

Almost done: now go to red, killing him by maintaining "W" when you can, spamming the hell out of "Q" and smiting like you did with blue (remembering to do it when "W" is up)

Finish the starter jungle with wraiths, same as before. Putting this point into your "E" (Devastating Charge" - You're now ready to gank!

For ganking, ping who you are attacking, whether it be mid lane, top or whatever. If your mid can stun, allow them to stun first before you move in to knock them close to your side. If not, just lead in yourself and you should manage to knock them closer to your team mates. Your "E" is your bread and butter of jungling, it's what you want to do when initiating.