Hecarim Build Guide by Cakefirst

Introduction

Thanks to jhoijhoi for some templates, and SilverSeer for the inspiration of using Hecarim images!

Pros / Cons

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Pros + Good mobility + Can chase people down easily + Great escape capabilities + Can start dealing good damage once he gets Sheen + Ultimate that can disorientate a whole enemy team + Lane sustain with Spirit of Dread

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Cons - Preferably needs a laning partner with good CC - Squishy early game, more then you think - Going solo against a ranged can be hard spaaaaaaace spaaaaaaaace no space here

Runes

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• greater mark of desolation: These are really good for Hecarim, because his damage in early game is not very good. So using armor penetration runes, we can deal more damage, simply put.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: This is good on most champions out there, and Hecarim is no exception. Since he takes a lot of damage early game, these flat armor runes will help him.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: Pretty much same thing as with armor. This will boost you survivability in lane. A lot of abilties deal magic damage, not only from casters but also from melee champions.
  
• greater quintessence of desolation: With extra desolation we can deal even more damage early game.
  
• Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: Having more speed on Hecarim is incredibly good. It does not boost his damage very much. But his overeall mobility will be better and catching up to enemy champions will be a lot easier.

Masteries

Here I put out two choices. The offensive choice is for players that wants to play Hecarim more aggressive. The Defensive choice is for players that want to play solo top, or simply prefer to play him more tanky.

I use these 4 masteries for both the alternatives listed below.

• Summoner's Wrath : This is needed when using Ghost and Ignite, because they get improved.
  
• Brute Force : Gives us some more attack damage, useful for doing extra damage early game.
  
• Alacrity : More attack speed, also a great addition to early game.
  
• Weapon Expertise : The 10% Armor penetration is great to punch out some extra damage with Hecarim early game.

Offensive choice

• Deadliness : Gets you more attack damage with each level (+9 attack at lvl 18).
  
• Havoc : Increase your damage dealt which is a good combination with all these choices.
  
• Lethality : Increase your critical strike chance. Gives you more chance to crit, meaning you will deal higher damage.
  
• Sunder : Further increasing our armor penetration, letting us deal more damage.
  
• Executioner : Increase damage dealt by 6% to targets blow 40% health. This will help us on killing enemy champions once they are below the given percentage.
  
  
  Utility Tree
  
  
• Good Hands : Reducing time spent dead by 4%. I rather spend the point here then using it in improved recall with 1 second. If you were to use Flash or Teleport then putting it in Summoner's Insight is a better idea.
  
  
• Expanded Mind : You will be spamming Hecarim's abilities a lot. So having a faster mana regeneration will get your mana back faster and thus allowing you to spam your abilites more.
  
• Swiftness : It's important for Hecarim to be mobile, so having more movement speed on him is ideal. The bonus damage you get from it together with your passive Warpath is just icing on the cake.
  
• Runic Affinity : Using this will let you have buffs for 30 seconds longer, which is quite a lot in LoL time. Why I pick it is because having red longer or blue, can be extremly helpful.

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Solo top/Defensive choice

• Resistance : Magic resist will boost our overall tankiness and survivability early game from casters and abilties.
  
• Hardiness : Armor will do the same as Resistance and help us out against annoying AD champions.
  
• Vigor : Health regeneration will help us get back on our feet faster and stay in lane.
  
• veteran's scar: This gives you 30 health which is not much, but early game it matters.
  
• Initiator : With this you get increased movement speed by 3% when above 70% health. This is great for Hecarim and will make him even faster and mobile.
  
• Enlightenment : His Rampage already has a short cooldown, but the rest of his abilities still has quite some time on them. So having this is really useful for Hecarim.
  
• Juggernaut : Increasing maximum health by 3% and reducing incoming disables by 10% is extremly good to add to his overall tankiness. It basicly gives Hecarim a bit more HP, and things such as slows, stuns etc disappear faster.

Summoner Spells

Flash: This is a great alternative to Ghost. It can be used to catch up to an enemy or to get away. It's best used over a wall to have a better chance of escaping.

Exhaust: When you need to shut down a AD or AP carry, or simply just escape then this is a great summoner spell. Can replace Ignite

Cleanse: This is also an alright summoner spell. Since you pretty much only use speed to escape you can get caught in exhaust or any other annoying disables. So this can be a life saver. Thanks to zeztzaugh for mentioning it.

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Heal: If you are going bot and your laning partner is not using heal, then it can be a good idea to take it. Anything might happen, and this could just save your life.

Teleport: If you are going solo top this is great. You can go away to gank or base and still quickly get back into your lane.

Clairvoyance: This is best picked by a support, but is also a good pick if no one else in your team takes it.

I do not recommend any other summoner spells than these

Abilities

Warpath (Passive)

This is a really neat passive. You ignore unit collision and you get attack damage from a percentage of your movement speed. Ignoring unit collision basicly mean that you can walk right through champions and minions. This makes it even easier to escape or chase someone!

Rampage (Q)

This is the bread and butter among your abilities. Combining this with Sheen and later on Trinity Force you will deal a good amount of damage. The cooldown of the ability is 4 seconds, and if you hit a enemy unit with the ability twice it will make 2 stacks reducing the cooldown by 2 seconds. The item Sheen makes it so your next physical attack deals 100% extra base damage, when you activate an ability, with a cooldown of 2 seconds.

So when you have 2 stacks up with Rampage (getting cooldown to 2 seconds), it will make a good combo for use with Sheen.

Tips: Auto-attacking after using rampage in combination with Sheen is incredibly good, especially when you get 2 stacks up.

Spirit of Dread (W)

With this ability you will be able to stay in lane much longer. It has quite a long cooldown, it being 14 seconds. There is one bad thing about it, you can only heal for 180 health from minions at max rank. But early game it's enough to sustain and you will still be close to the enemy champions at many times. So you get a chance to heal more and harass the enemy. Because it does not only heal, it does some decent damage aswell.

Tips: In every fight, be it 1v1 or a full team fight, you should activate this. When you are escaping it's a good idea to activate it. Because if you are low on health, and the enemy is closing in on you, close enough to do damage. Then it might save you with the healing, and getting enough time to get somewhere safe.

Devastating Charge (E)

Gotta go fast, no faster! Devastating Charge will let you get around very quickly and kill people. You gain 75% movement speed over 3 seconds, now that's a lot. With it you can knock people back and do a good amount of damage. The further you travel, the more damage you do.

Tips: This ability can also deal damage to turrets, so activate this if it's safe. And always activate the ability from spawn if you are gonna run to your lane or somewhere else.

Onslaught of Shadows (R)

Hecarim's ultimate has a vast variety of use. It can disorientate a whole team fight, you can escape with it and chase a single or more enemies down. When you are using it, it will release 2 shockwaves in a straight line. The first being spectral riders doing some damage, then when you finish (circle) you deal some extra damage.

Tips: It can be used over walls, which is great for initating a fight or escaping. It's good to prioritize what you are gonna do with it since it has quite a long cooldown, being 140 seconds and at last level, 100 seconds. So, do you really wanna use your ulti to kill that person you are chasing? Or save it for a team fight that might be heading your way.

And do not forget to make use of fear, you have to hit people within the circle of your ability.

Items

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Warmog and Atma

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FoN and Frozen Heart

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If an enemy team have a lot of armor/magic penetration then having used the build with Warmog's Armor and Atma's Impaler they cannot deal as much damage as they would have using the other build. To take further advantage of Atma's Impaler I put in Infinity Edge to deal more damage. Because of the extra critical strike chance, this build will deal more damage then the other choices.

But the build with Force of Nature and Frozen Heart is a good build overall. It gives you great protection, good passives and decent damage.

The tank build will let you stay in team fights longer thanks to Sunfire Cape and Randuin's Omen, though this is very late game. With the cape we will deal AoE damage to enemies in our surrounding which is great, since after Hecarim has initiated with his ultimate he will be in the middle of the fight. Using Randuin's Omen we get more armor, health/regeneration, more cooldown reduction, 20% chance on being hit by an auto attack to slow the attacker's movement and attack speed by 35% for 3 seconds and a great activate saying the following: Slows movement speed and attack speed of surrounding units by 35% for 2 seconds + 0.5 seconds for every 100 armor and magic resistance.

If the enemy team have little or no CC, which I doubt, then you could get these boots if you want to.

If you have a hard time with AD bruisers, these boots are good temporary solution. Should still get Mercury's Treads and sell ninja tabi off late game.

It's late game and you are being focused and can't stay alive? Then this item should make them think twice before focusing you.

If the enemy is very tanky this item will do great to penetrate all their armor.

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Gameplay

Here is me and my friend Astoon, my favorite laning partner right now is Ashe and there is a good reason for it, let me show you how it looks.



Even though the enemy team have what some would call a proper setup, a support and AD carry, me and my friend is dominating them. When both of them got their ultimates, we still was able to push the lane and eventually win the game.

The reason that I like having Ashe beside me, is her incredibly good ulti and that she is ranged. Combining both Onslaught of Shadows and Enchanted Crystal Arrow it is pretty much a kill right down your pocket.

But there are of course other choices of a laning partner then Ashe, such as anyone that have a good stun/snare or another good CC. I have played a few games with Ryze beside me, and I can say that he is a really good laning partner for Hecarim.

Laning with for example Tryndamere is terrible for the most part, unless the enemy team is really bad or have a similar setup. He can slow the enemy, but that is sometimes not enough to secure a kill.

So I recommend having a laning partner you can rely on.

Good

Playing with ranged AD carries is good, but Ashe is by far the best of them.
Having someone with a good stun/snare such as Sion Taric Ryze Udyr Leona is also really good. And Blitzcrank is nice with his grab. There is also champions such as Alistar that has good enough CC for it to work.

Bad

Playing with supports such as Soraka and Sona does work, but they do best with an AD carry.
Then we have champions such as... Tryndamere Twitch Zilean Urgot Talon I cannot mention everyone but this gives a general idea.

Note

I am not to say who is really bad, because the right players with good skills can make a big difference.

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Hecarim is a really good champion to initiate team fights with. And if the battle heats up and he takes way too much aggro, he can quickly escape and let your team finish up.

Almost every team fight with Hecarim will begin with his ultimate Onslaught of Shadows or atleast short after if the fight has already started. Since his ultimate allows you to fly over walls, you can take good advantage of that. Let me show you an example.



Now doing it beside a turret can be risky, especially if that Morgana would stun me and I could start taking turret hits. But in this situation I am confident, we are some levels above them and we have been dominating the game. Shortly after the picture was taken I initiated, we killed four of them and they surrendered.

But this should give you an idea of how Hecarim's ultimate can be used. This can be done on several locations such as the middle bushes, wraiths and so on. I will include more pictures soon showing these examples.

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It has a cooldown of 4 seconds. If Hecarim damages at least one enemy unit with this attack, he gains a stack of Rampage, reducing the base cooldown of this skill by 1 second for a short duration. This effect can stack up to 2 times. With a low mana cost of 25¤, it will be the ability you use the most. It is not a good ability to use early game to get minion kills, use it to harass enemy champions instead. In mid to late game it's great to quicky kill off minions.

It deals physical damage with the following:

50/85/120/155/190 (+0.6 per bonus attack damage)

You will spam this ability whenever you are in a fight. It does not deal tons of damage, but thanks to a low cooldown we can make use of Sheen to deal more damage. It's important to know that you don't have to face enemy units to deal damage with it. As long as anything is close to your body it will deal damage all around.

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It has a cooldown of 14 seconds. You will use this mainly for healing yourself in lane and team fights, in terms of damage it doesn't deal that much considering the cooldown aswell. Mana cost 50/60/70/80/90, it goes higher the more points you put in it.

It deals magic damage with the following:

Per Second: 20/31.25/42.5/53.75/65(+0.2 per ability power)

Maximum Damage: 80/125/170/215/260 (+0.8 per ability power)

How much you will heal:

Damage to Heal Ratio: 10/15/20/25/30%

Minions Healing Cap: 60/90/120/150/180

You will use this ability to heal and harass the enemy, it should always be used in team fights. Be careful activating it too much early game because it will use up your mana fast. If you start with 3 health pots, then start with using them, from time to time to not waste all mana.

Do not think it's useless in lane because it heals so little from minions. It does make a big difference and will let you stay in lane much longer.

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It has a a cooldown of 24/22/20/18/16 seconds, getting reduced with every point you put it in it. With a mana cost of 60¤ at all ranks.

It deals physical damage with the following:

Minimum Damage: 40/75/110/145/180 (+0.5 per bonus attack damage)

Maximum Damage: 80/150/220/290/360 (+1.0 per bonus attack damage)

When you chase or gank people, the way you preferably wanna use it is to knock them back towards your lane or team mates. You do this by getting infront of them and quickly turn around and knock them back. If you cannot gain enough speed to outrun your enemy, you can instead try to knock the person into a wall. (video coming soon)

It is also a great ability to use when you are escaping. Simply just activate and run.

Other then that, it can also be used to deal damage to turrets.

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It has a cooldown of 140/120/100 seconds, getting reduced with every point you put in it.
With a mana cost of 100¤ at all ranks.

It deals magic damage with the following:

Initial Damage: 100/200/300 (+0.8 per ability power)

Shockwave Damage: 50/125/200 (+0.4 per ability power)

This ability is best used in team fights explained in " Hecarim's role in a team fight". So go there for more information on using it.

When not using it for a team fight it is a great chase and escape tool.

When chasing someone and using it, take into account how fast they are running so you can try and match where you are gonna land(circle). It's important because you will fear them where you land, the shockwave afterwards only deal additional damage.

If you are escaping with it, you should not activate Devastating Charge at the same time, because then you would lose 2 great escape abilities. Flying over walls can secure your safety even further, and hope they will not follow you with a Flash

More pics, videos, tips and tricks is coming soon.

Results

Here is my own victories as of recent. Feel free to PM me with your own results if you want it put up here.

Here we have the player Felideus who have done great!

Summary

To be updated.