Hecarim/Strategy

		"Some things must remain buried." Strategy is highly subjective and may become outdated without any notice. Because of this, the League of Legends Wiki has decided to retire strategy pages and would recommend using other platforms (such as YouTube) to find guides. For more information visit this thread. This page continues to exist for archive purposes.

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Tips

Playing As Hecarim

• Spirit of Dread restores Health when nearby enemies take damage, including damage dealt by allies. Cast this during a large fight to maximize Hecarim's survivability.
• Devastating Charge deals more damage based on the distance traveled. Try using Onslaught of Shadows or Summoner Spells such as Ghost or Flash to maximize this damage.

Playing Against Hecarim

• Hecarim gains life from nearby enemies with Spirit of Dread but lacks durability, use burst damage.
• Hecarim's ultimate causes opponents to flee in terror. Spread out to reduce his power in fights.

Tricks

• Hecarim is a champion with strong defensive stats, good base damage, and average AD ratios, which means he doesn't benefit very much from items that provide raw AD. Because of this, he is most of time played as an off-tank, with armor penetration and Spellblade items as his offensive options.
• Hecarim can be played as a full-tank, but this is usually not recommended, as he doesn't have enough disruption on his kit. Also, it wastes the damage potential from his skills, mainly Rampage.
• Hecarim is often played in the jungle, due to his ganking potential with Devastating Charge, which increases dramatically after he obtains Onslaught of Shadows. Also, Hecarim has the sustain and mobility needed to effectively clear jungle camps and gank when needed. Because Hecarim is somewhat mana hungry, having easy access to the blue buff is an strong asset for him.
  • He is also played at top lane. Hecarim should be careful with mana usage until he obtains items like Sheen and/or Glacial Shroud, otherwise he is at risk of being out of mana quickly. While he loses some of his ganking potential by going top lane, he can still make surprise ganks at mid lane with his strong mobility. Also, thanks to his Devastating Charge and Onslaught of Shadows, Hecarim isn't easy to gank despite often not running Flash. His late-game is mostly the same regardless of whether he goes top or jungle.
• It is important to note that independent from whether Hecarim chooses to go top or jungle, he is one of the few bruisers that doesn't fall off late game. In fact, Hecarim has amazing teamfighting potential.

Ability Usage

• Warpath benefits from all movement speed bonuses, including those provided by boots, Ghost (+27%), and Devastating Charge (up to +75%)
  • Devastating Charge deals more damage based on the distance traveled. Try using Onslaught of Shadows or summoner spells such as Ghost or Flash to maximize this damage.
  • However raw movement speed in the range of 415-490 suffers an 80% multiplier, and raw movement speed beyond 490 suffers a 50% multiplier. See Movement speed for further information.
    • Therefore, it is probably better to simply build AD instead of getting movement speed buffs, simply for the better AD per gold ratio(s). As a rule of thumb, having at least one movement speed item would be very efficient, two is optional and any above is considered cost inefficient.
• Hecarim can cast Rampage while moving, making it good for harassing melee champions, chasing enemies, and hit-and-run tactics.
  • Be sure to use Rampage at least once before ending Devastating Charge, since the bonus movement speed gives you more damage.
• Spirit of Dread restores health when nearby enemies take damage, including damage dealt by allies. Cast this during a large fight to maximize Hecarim's survivability.
• When jungling as Hecarim, be sure to use Smite while Spirit of Dread is active to gain a small burst of healing.
• Slow effects significantly reduce Hecarim's damage output if you build him with high movement speed. Cleanse and Tenacity help to combat this.
• Devastating Charge applies on-hit effects and also damages turrets, try to combine it with Sheen or Trinity Force to maximize its damage.
• Be sure to activate Devastating Charge just before using Onslaught of Shadows whenever possible:
  • Devastating Charge gains bonus damage from the distance traveled during Onslaught of Shadows.
  • Hecarim can use Devastating Charge's knockback immediately after the forced flee from Onslaught of Shadows to knock an enemy even closer to or farther away from his team.
• Onslaught of Shadows can be used for avoiding many skillshots with disables, like Ashe's Enchanted Crystal Arrow, with the right timing.
  • You should do this carefully as Onslaught of Shadows has a high cooldown.
• In team fights, try to use Spirit of Dread when your teammates use their high-damage abilities on enemy champions. In this case, Hecarim can be almost unkillable during the 4 second duration.
  • Note that the trick cannot be applied on team pushes as the healing is capped against minions.

Mastery Usage

Item Usage

• Buying an Elixir of Iron will save another option for your boots. The 25% bonus size will increase your auto attack range in 43, and giving bonus range for your Devastating Charge too, totaling 406 attack range. This will make you a bigger threat in teamfights, as you can jump in your enemies from afar, as well making easier for you to jump walls.
• Because Hecarim is weak against high sustained damage, consider a Warden's Mail against sustained autoattack damage or a Negatron Cloak against sustained magic damage.
• While defensive boots may be necessary for Hecarim in most games, being a melee AD character, in games where Hecarim can afford to build more offensively, his Warpath passive makes Boots of Swiftness an offensive alternative to Berserker's Greaves or Ionian Boots of Lucidity.
  • Boots of Mobility has more limited usefulness because Hecarim can use Devastating Charge to effectively traverse the map without them and entering combat nullifies their bonus movement speed; however, they can still provide an extra burst of damage on your first attack.
  • Boots of Swiftness can be all the speed increase Hecarim needs to nearly maximize Warpath by increasing his base speed from 345 to 405, 10 points under the first soft cap. They also reduce the effectiveness of slows and allow for a more versatile itemization. A single Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed can be used to bring it to 411 movement speed, without using masteries.
• Youmuu's Ghostblade synergizes with Warpath and Hecarim's burst damage tendencies in general.
• The Black Cleaver provides many useful stats for Hecarim: health, attack damage and cooldown reduction
  • Additionally, The Black Cleaver's passive synergizes well with Hecarim's Rampage. With its short cooldown, it allows Hecarim to apply the armor reduction stacks and increase movement speed in quick succession.
• Despite the virtues of building bonus movement speed on Hecarim, it isn't necessary to stack movement speed on him. Even with only a couple bonus movement speed items, Hecarim can get a large Warpath bonus from runes, masteries, Ghost, and support champions with haste abilities such as Time Warp or anyone holding Talisman of Ascension.
• Spirit of Dread heals Hecarim based on all damage dealt to enemies from any source. Spirit Visage boosts this healing. It is also a very useful item for Hecarim in general, granting magic resistance, health, health regeneration/5 seconds, and cooldown reduction, all of which are useful for Hecarim's common role as a tank.
• Since Spirit of Dread returns health from any damage done to enemies while it is active, Sunfire Cape makes a better-than-usual item, essentially granting up to a bonus 52.5 health regeneration/5 seconds for each nearby enemy champion (with enemy minion health drained being capped) for 4 seconds, in addition to the bonus armor and health.
  • If the enemy team has many basic attack users, a Thornmail will also have a good synergy with Spirit of Dread, as they would receive damage within the zone.
• Sheen and Iceborn Gauntlet synergize particularly well with Rampage, as its low cooldown allows you to proc the bonus damage and slow approximately every other autoattack.
  • Alternatively, Trinity Force can be a useful offensive item for Hecarim. The bonus movement speed from Zeal helps his roaming and gives bonus damage due to Warpath, and Phage grants bonus movement speed on-hit, improving his already potent chasing ability. However, unlike Iceborn Gauntlet, it does not provide armor or the slow, both of which are very useful for Hecarim.
• Frozen Heart is an excellent mid game item for Hecarim, as all the stats it provides are greatly beneficial to him, making it very cost effective.
  • Getting an early Glacial Shroud is a common build path on Hecarim.
  • This is particularly useful if you are building Trinity Force instead of Iceborn Gauntlet, as Frozen Heart fills in for the armor you would be missing from Trinity Force.
  • Ravenous Hydra is somewhat of an underdog item to purchase for Hecarim and in situations would be a very good choice. The cleave and the massive AD bonus helps Hecarim very much with additional AOE and waveclear and Hecarim can perform a massive burst combo by implementing Crescent into the attacks. For example: Attack-Q-Attack-Crescent; this can create quick damage through animation cancelling and raw damage.
• Righteous Glory is an amazing item for Hecarim, as it gives him health, the mana sustain he desperately needs and most importantly it gives him a strong speed boost for deadly initiations and ganks.
• Dead Man's Plate also synergizes exceptionally well, as it makes him tanky, gives him a nearly constant speedboost and empowers his basic attack, which works extremely well with Warpath and Devastating Charge.
• Sterak's Gage is a good choice as well, as Trinity Force is a core item on him and Sterak's Gage increases base damage, which in turn increases the damage from Spellblade. Additionally, it makes Hecarim more tanky, which he greatly benefits from.

Countering

• Hecarim is a powerful AoE threat, especially in the later stages of the game. Spreading out will reduce his effectiveness by preventing him from terrifying your team with Onslaught of Shadows, mitigating the constant AoE damage Hecarim can deal with Rampage, and decreasing the amount of sustain he can gain from Spirit of Dread.
• Spirit of Dread grants Hecarim very high sustainability, but has a fairly lengthy cooldown and a short duration. Consider using burst damage or waiting for Spirit of Dread to time out before targeting him.
• Hecarim may attempt to land behind you with Onslaught of Shadows and/or Devastating Charge to push you towards the rest of his team. Try to Flash away or position yourself so that this is not a possibility.
• Powerful slows, such as Nasus' Wither, Singed's Mega Adhesive, Rumble's Electro Harpoon or Lulu's Glitterlance can completely nullify the damage bonus from Warpath and prevent Hecarim from engaging with Devastating Charge.
• A jungling Hecarim is exceptionally weak at dueling against most champions early game, so he is susceptible to early invades from the opposing jungler. He is also incredibly reliant on the Crest of Insight buff, which can especially hinder his clear times should he lose the buff.
• While Hecarim seems to be oppressive during early game when laning against certain champions, he is actually easy to counter on top lane (most ranged champions will give him a hard time). Examples include Kennen, who has his own movement speed boost and can harass Hecarim from a safe distance; and Lissandra, who has powerful slows and can prevent Hecarim from ever being able to engage.
  • Other champions who can beat Hecarim on laning are duelists, as Hecarim is a poor duelist by himself. Irelia, Jax, and AD Fizz are examples of duelists who are capable of beating Hecarim during the laning phase and are able to 1v1 him at most stages of the game.
  • Malphite can beat Hecarim fairly well due to his Seismic Shard which is a powerful slow. Malphite also stacks a lot of armor, which will give Hecarim a very hard time. Malphite also has his own engage ultimate to counter Hecarim. However, keep in mind that Hecarim is immune to CC during Onslaught of Shadows.
• Kha'Zix can both slow Hecarim with his Void Spike and has better 1v1 potential with his isolated Taste Their Fear. He can also dodge Onslaught of Shadows by using Leap.