State of the League

He's a man-horse.

Like, what else do I need to say? If you're going off looks alone, you're the type of player gravitating towards two champion types:

1. The attractive champions
2. The bad-ass champions

This just in: This guy falls into that second category.

But bad-assery aside, this is a sharp-looking champion. And while I suppose that's a pun given the myriad blades attached all over the man-horse's body, he still looks really, really good. Animations are all quite smooth and feel pretty natural. Standard attacks work the way you want them to, and are surprisingly quick considering both the size of this champ and the girth of his weapon. His movement feels appropriate, responsive and, I don't know, right (well, except for the lack of galloping noises, which would've vaulted this champ to best EVER). I can't speak for other people, but for me movement animation is actually super important. Leona, for example, feels slow regardless of how much MS you build. It's the only thing I don't like about her.

If you're not as shallow as I am (how dare you!) and you're looking for more than just cosmetics, I suppose you actually want to know what this champion does. You're frugal, after all. You need to make sure your money is well spent. I hear you; I'm getting there.

The CliffsNotes: He's another bruiser. He looks like he's geared toward mobility, and he can do so if needed, but at the end of the day his job is to get in there and make everybody else miserable without actually dying himself. You'll do this by building some movement speed, but the catch here is that you have to prioritize properly. Too many players will think "MS IS DAMAGE SO I BUY DAT" without looking at the underlying numbers.

See, Hecarim's passive, Warpath, ignores unit collision and gives him bonus attack damage based on his bonus movement speed (10 to 25 percent, depending on his level).  On the surface, it sounds like one of the most no-brainer passives in the game; build MS, win games. It's a tarp! If you do it wrong you end up wasting money on movement speed and sacrificing actual damage and (or maybe or!) defenses in favor of theater stats (y'know, stats that make you look cool but don't actually provide you anything of merit).

Example: Boots of Swiftness give you 90 bonus MS. At Warpath's first rank, that's nine bonus AD, or two more AD than any other upgraded boots. Rank seven gives you 22.5 bonus AD, or five more AD than any other upgraded boots. Congratulations; you spent 1000 gold to make yourself a bit faster and get yourself five more AD than you could've gotten otherwise. But don't worry! That movement speed and extra damage will totally save you when you get snared or stunned.

You're laughing right now, probably at me. Don't; I've already seen people buy Boots of Swiftness on Hecarim, and it just hasn't been effective. I can only assume they read the champ's passive description but didn't look at his most intriguing ability, Devastating Charge. It's probably the most accurate ability name in the game: ala Rammus, you start slow and gain up to 75 percent movement speed over  three seconds, building up to a knockback that smashes the face of everyone that makes the mistake of being in your way. And they will make the mistake; they're not horse-people, so they'll be petrified by you.

If you were wondering, a 75 percent MS increase makes you fast. And gives you damage, because you're a monster like that. It's incredibly useful on a map like The Crystal Scar, where mobility has extreme value, and certainly helps for ganks and positioning on Summoner's Rift. Much like Vayne, Poppy and Alistar, however, coordinating the knockback is much more difficult in practice than the theory behind it. Realistically, people familiar with Poppy (so basically just Spamhappy) won't have much difficulty adjusting to this champ's kit.

Hecarim's W, Spirit of Dread, fulfills the "tanky" portion of the tanky-DPS classification. But it's not tanky like you're used to, unless you just mean "taking all of the damage and somehow not dying." Then it's totally tanky.

See, while champs like Shyvana, Lee Sin and Dr. Mundo have resistances, shields and healing built into their kits at the press of a button, Hecarim has to work to get his mojo going. Literally work, as he has to start fights in order to remotely utilize it. By pressing W, Spirit of Dread activates for four seconds, during which time he's healed for a percantage of the total damage dealt to enemies within its area. It makes him difficult to move out of lane during the early game, and it effectively makes him beefier as each of his allies gets stronger.

It all comes together into a pretty reasonable kit. You can initiate, be an annoyance and stick to opponents with little worry that you're going to go down, so long as your teammates are there to back you up. And that's pretty similar to the other bruisers you've come to know and love.

That's actually been the criticism of Hecarim, at least in the casual conversations I've had about him. It's not that anyone thinks he's explicitly bad or unusable (no, release Yorick and release Skarner will always hold those honors), it's that people look at him and think "This is every bruiser ever." He starts fight and spams one ability (Rampage, his short-AoE cleave) à la half the bruisers out there, and while doing so he uses his other abilities to augment his own survivability (Spirit of Dread), like the remaining half of the bruisers.

Which is, I suppose, why I started off talking cosmetics. I mean, if you're choosing between two otherwise equal champions, why wouldn't you go with the one that's a man-horse?