You can play like a psychopath early but after buying Hubris and especially later on having more uptime on it by not risking your life much (since it turns off when you die) can be better than taking risks and such for an extra 3 AD. You can probably, however, look to risk your teammates lives for it.


The idea for the main build started when I wanted to build Hubris and play for it like mentioned because I think it's one of the few mythic era level items left. Same with Endless Hunger more or less and they generally work well together, which is why I wanted it third after Shojin over Seryldas, since that's how people usually build with Hubris.

Because I wanted Endless Hunger as my 3rd item I'd have to push my Armor Pen for 4th, but at that point I'd rather have another bruiser item with good damage, which is usually Deaths Dance. So to fix that I replaced Shojin with Cleaver, however Shojin is still one of the best 4th item options when you dont specifically need Armor or MR. Since Hecarim has built in resistances on his W, building HP generally makes him tankier overall anyway.

Other than that, Cleaver second arguably helps Hecarim snowball faster, since compared to Shojin you give up 5 Haste on your basic abilities for 20 Haste on Ult, which is usually what Hecarim plays around to snowball early. That's why Axiom Arc has been such a good first item on him for like 2 years, even though they've tried to make it worse when it's the only lethality item built a couple times.

Cleaver is also 100 gold cheaper with a slightly better build path (Ruby Crystal into Kindlegem over just Ruby Crystal) and it doesnt really lower your damage in the 1v1, plus the early Armor Pen can work well if not better when paired with Lethality first item against even just Plated but more so against early Deaths Dance and Zhonyas.