Welcome to my very first guide (please be nice) - a laning guide for Hecarim, the Shadow of War.

Hecarim a fun, fast moving ganker and I play him not too dissimilarly from how I play Nocturne. As Hecarim (at time of writing this) has only been out from all of 3 days, please don't been too harsh - a man has to sleep, eat and take care of his wife, which means exhaustive play testing will take some time. Constructive feedback is welcome, as like everyone else, I want to get better at playing this wonderful game.

Thanks for taking the time to read my guide and big thanks to jhoijhoi for her excellent guide-building guide. If you like this guide, please vote for it!

Pros Fast moving ganks Excellent mobility due to Warpath Great in lane or jungling Good harasser early game Three AoE abilities Looks badass Fun to play (and that's what it is about isn't it?)

SPACE

Cons Easily run out mana early game A little squishy Long cooldown on Devastating Charge CC hits him hard as mobility is his primary strength

The runes I have chosen for Hecarim are a pretty standard set up for melee fighters.


Greater Mark of Attack Speed
The emphasis of this build is fast moving attacks so a high attack speed is essential and this rune feeds into the item build well.

Greater Seal of Armor
Hecarim can be a bit squishy early on so flat armour seals help in the earlier stages of the game.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist
This glyph helps a lot in the later game when team fights are a confusing mess of spell effects.

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed
Hecarim is all about movement speed and these double as a handy boost to AD as well.

Alternative runes
Marks
Greater Mark of Desolation
Greater Mark of Attack Damage
Both of these help with any melee fighter type character.

Greater Mark of Critical Damage
Greater Mark of Critical Chance
Because this build leads towards dealing more damage through crits, these runes would feed into more powerful crits.

Seals
Greater Seal of Health - flat
Greater Seal of Vitality - scaling
If you're looking for more health, these will give you a boost

Glyphs
Greater Glyph of Mana
If you really want more mana early game, this would be your glyph of choice.

Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction - flat
Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction - scaling
If the cooldown for Rampage is still too slow for you (and when running down a squishy, it can seem like that), these glyphs will help out some more.

In my mastery selection, I have emphasised a Offensive heavy selection, with a view to hitting hard and fast.
Key masteries
Sorcery
You really want your cooldowns as low as possible so you can smack others around with Rampage as much as possible.

Lethality
By the end of the item build, you will have a very high crit chance so this mastery, alongside Infinity Edge will mean you will be doing some serious damage in a crit.

Alacrity
What is better than doing heaps of damage in a crit? Hitting them 2 times a second with said crits.

Swiftness
As I have previously said, Hecarim is all about movement speed so Swiftness is a must.

In my mind, these two are generally the no brainers for melee fighter types.

Ignite is best used in two ways: stopping an enemy heal up during a fight ( Warwick and Sion are two good examples); or to secure a kill that is slipping away ( Tryndamere using Undying Rage is a good example).

You may ask though: if Hecarim gets a boost to AD from movement because of Warpath, why not take Ghost?

Simple: Ghost adds nothing to Hecarim that Flash does better. What does Ghost give you? Faster movement speed and no unit collision. What does Hecarim have already? Fast movement and no unit collision.

What does Flash give you that Ghost doesn't? LOTS! The uses of Flash are many and varied. Some include:

• You can use it to escape though walls (the most important use of it in my mind)
• It can get you out of reach of a turret after ganking someone, where as you will still get tracked with Ghost.
• You can use it to position yourself much more quickly and unexpectedly than Ghost, where your movement can be preempted.

In every case, you'd be better off taking Flash over Ghost. Ghost is probably not the worst spell to take but Flash is better in almost every way.


- Great for slowing down your intended kill or a quick moving pursuer.

- Hecarim is fast but sometimes not fast enough to defend a turret or assist for that perfect gank. Teleport can help with that, especially if you have wards in bushes around the map. Teleport onto the Sight Ward/ Vision Ward/ Noxious Trap in the bush and voilà, perfect gank! Your foe won't even realise that the fight has now swung in your favour - Devastating Charge from behind and then let the slaughter begin!

- Ok early game, especially if you're still new to the game but not great overall.

- the essential jungling spell. If you love getting them buffs, this spell will help you clear those camps quicker.

- keep getting pinged by nasty slows/stuns? Clease can help you ride away, though again, other spells are more helpful.


Just don't bother. You can but why would you?

Rampage should be mastered first, followed closely by Spirit of Dread, then Onslaught of Shadows and finally Devastating Charge.



Warpath is Hecarim's passive and is what enables Hecarim to be a fast moving beast. Firsly, it allows Hecarim to ignore unit collision, which when invading enemy territory should never be underestimated. See those pesky minions blocking your advance or retreat? Is your prey blocking your intended path? Don't worry about them! You can fly right through them.

Secondly, it allows you to focus on building up those speed items without worrying about picking up plenty of Attack Damage items, as a proportion of your bonus movement speed is converted to Attack Damage. Combined with the crit chance and Attack Speed boosts that come with most of the movement enhancing items, you can deal out some serious damage without having to pick up Bloodthirster or Black Cleaver to compete with other AD fighters.



Rampage is your bread and butter skill. You want to spam the hell out of when in the thick of combat, not only because it is an AoE ability and is great for farming minions AND hitting nearby enemy champs, each time you damage an enemy unit with it, you gain a stack (up to a max of 2) that reduces its cooldown by a second.

Not only that but there is no casting time associated with the use of Rampage - unlike most abilities, it instantaneously goes off. The most important thing about that is it allows you to run along side a fleeing champ and continue to pump out damaged to him. Given that you can keep pace with any champion in the game (sans Rammus using Powerball or similar), you can really cause some pain and they would have to stop to hit you but you can merrily keep running on ahead.

This can also be useful when charging past a turret to guarantee a kill, as you don't need to hesitate to keep hitting your target, meaning the turret has less of a chance to kill you.

It should also be said that I'm pretty sure you can use this against turrets (a bit like Talon's Noxian Diplomacy, though I am happy to be corrected. If I am right (and I am sure I am), it allows to really work away those turrets. If you stand on the far side of the turret, you can also wear away the coming minion creeps with Rampage and Spirit of Dread, freeing your minions from the distraction of the coming creeps. You farm more enemy minions, your minions keep taking more hits from the turret instead of you and all of you keep hacking away at that turret. Pretty good combo!



Spirit of Dread is a handy AoE spell. It deals some damage within a reasonable radius and you get a percentage of any damage dealt within that area back to you as health. Early game, this is a handy farming tool, and when combined with Rampage, you can really sweep away those minion creeps. Later in the game, it gives you more sustainability in team fights because health gained from damage caused to champions isn't capped (unlike health gained from damaging minions). So when your Vayne is blowing away everyone and Annie is nuking the **** out of them all, you are getting a slice of their into your health.

It is also quite useful later in the game when you have taken a bit of damage and there are some creeps building up and need to be cleared away. Trigger Spirit of Dread and Rampage and your health will look surprisingly nice before running away from a potential gank.



Devastating Charge is probably the most difficult skill for you to master with Hecarim. Its cooldown is relatively long (starting at 20+ secs) and because it deals more damage the further you travel once activated before hitting the enemy, you have to learn how far is long enough to deal max damage before it runs out. However, you pull it off, you do quite a nice chunk of damage and more importantly, you knockback the enemy.

Firstly, it is a great escape mechanism and even when slowed, you're still quite fast with it activated. Later in the game, you can move out to a lane by yourself to support a minion attack on a turret before racing away when the team comes to gank you.

Secondly, if you can position yourself between an enemy champ and their exit route and then charge out, you will probably catch them off guard and you substantially increase their run back to safety.

Finally the other great trick with Devastating Charge is to run past a fleeing champ (hitting them with Rampage and Spirit of Dread as you go) before knocking them back towards your team, allowing them to catch up and clearing them off.



Hecarim's ultimate is the mighty Onslaught of Shadows. It is a potent ability - charging forward with a spectral army, Hecarim scatters his enemies! There are two components to the effect: firstly, there are Hecarim's spectral allies who charge forward, dealing damage to all in their path; secondly, there is an AoE effect that can be triggered anywhere along the path of of Hecarim's spectres.

Onslaught deals quite a bit of damage, firstly from the riders and secondarily to anyone caught in the AoE effect. After you've dealth damage, anyone in the AoE is feared for a second. This mneans that a team in a cluster is scattered like a bowling bowl hitting the pins.

There are three great uses I have encountered so far for this ability:

A) Use it to initiate a team fight
If the other team are in a cluster, you can hit them with this to firstly cover your allies approach towards the team through the fear effect (giving you an early advantage in the team fight); secondly to break up the cluster; and thridly, do a decent amount of damage to everyone.

B) To secure a kill/rescue an ally
Despite your speed, there will be times when a champ might look like getting away or you need to polish them off before the rest of their team reaches you. The reasonable damage is enough to kill a badly damaged champ but the fear also allows you to halt their retreat, allowing you to hit them again with Rampage or score a few basic hits on them.

Alternatively, you can use the fear to stop the enemy from taking out one of your allies, giving them a chance to get away.

C) To make a hasty escape
I'm yet to really test this out but I'm pretty sure you can move though a wall with this ability, allowing to to make a hasty escape not unlike Flash. Given the cooldown on Onslaught of Shadows is substantially lower than Flash, this is a use worth considering. So for example, you're chasing an enemy into their base area and you kill them. Now you haven't got enough health to risk going past the turret again so you move to the wall, use Onslaught to get through the wall and away from the rest of the team.

You are also immune to disables while this is active so if you think you are about to get ganked or you can't avoid some sort of trap laid for you (like Yordle Snap Trap, Noxious Trap, Gravity Field or Event Horizon), trigger this and spoil an team gank aimed for you. Then use Devastating Charge and you are off and away, leaving the other team both looking foolish and totally out of position with nothing to show for it.

Boots are an obvious first choice - enhances movement for good early harass and improves AD. Health Potion are to give you a bit of staying power until your first visit back to base.


Why so early? First, increased movement (and therefore increased Attack Damage). Second, anything that reduces your mobility is going reduce your effectiveness. Hecarim isn't as tough as other melee fighters so staying mobile is a good way of staying out of trouble.


An alternative to Mercury's Treads if there are no enemy champs with CC (unlikely as it is) are Ionian Boots of Lucidity, with their helpful Cooldown Reduction. Berzerker's Greaves is also a pretty nice pick up if fast Attack Speed is never fast enough.


Next will be Zeal , which will start you on path of the fast moving, head chopping legend Hecarim should be.


These two items will help counter two of Hecarim's early game weaknesses - low mana and reasonably low health.


I would consider The Brutalizer at this stage to be somewhat optional - I like CDR so I take it here but it isn't cheap so you could save it for later.


Here is where Hecarim starts getting scary - Phage moving into the mighty Trinity Force. Trinity Force offers everything Hecarim could really want - Attack Power, Attack Speed, Ability Power (which Spirit of Dread and Onslaught of Shadows both make use of), movement speed, crit chance, health and mana. The Phage component of Trinity Force helps with your ganks by slowing those you hit with basic attacks. The Sheen component is activated after you use Spirit of Dread, meaning you do more damage with your next basic attack.


After another Zeal, Force of Nature gives you a handy boost to your survivability and to your movement. By now you're going to be rocking some serious Attack Damage!


I love this fantastic item and it gives a real bump to your Attack Speed.


This item in and of itself is good but it's the active you're after - a moderate bump to movement speed and a big boost to Attack Speed. I always forget to use the active though :(


The stats on Infinity Edge should round out your build but the passive on this item is truly scary - a substantial increase on your crit damage. This should allow you to rip apart your enemies in a very quick fashion.

I hope that gives you an idea of some of the many ways that Hecarim is fun to play. As I continue to play him I hope to update this guide. Please also leave your feedback. If you liked my guide, please vote for it!

And remember, good luck and most importantly:

Have fun!!!!!

It's just a game so relax, prepared to have good games and bad and just give it a shot.

Happy hunting!