Originally Posted by Hippybob

Alistar brings the CC with him but he has no damage output. Also I'm pretty sure that he has one of the slower clear times of the popular junglers. I could be wrong about that but I've never seen cow do any damage.

In the early game, where ganks are more prevalent, cc is what dictates the majority of fights. He doesn't NEED damage, although building so on him in the form of AP Alistar is devastating.

I feel like Hecarim's passive and E go to waste in solotop. If he's to use them to initiate a gank in his lane it will be obvious to the victim that they are about to get ganked. And the problem with Hecadoodle is he has to run past the enemy to launch them back and by the time he's going fast enough to pass the enemy you'd think they would already be at the turret. Additionally I can't think of any solotop Hecarim would be good against, I just imagine them all poking Hecarim while he's left to swing that stick.

Using that logic, a lot of champion should be jungles rather than solotops. Nasus has 14% lifesteal at level 1 because of his passive, and he has no range attacks. Using your logic, he should jungle. Yet we all know that's stupid. Nasus has other things working against him which require him to solo top, namely he has to get stacks on his q. Similarly, Hecarim is item dependant. His damage become negligible if he doesn't get his items. Jungles will either snowball amazingly, racking up a lot of gold, or be the second lowest in gold on the team, just above the support. And more often than not, the latter is what will happen. Champions that are item dependent make terrible jungles for that sole reason. In addition, any champion that just blindly runs at the enemy is of course giving away the fact a gank is coming. Smart players bait the enemy in, or position themselves so that such initiation is effective short of the opponent flashing. Heck, I've gotten people to flash prematurely just from feinting a gank starting.

As a jungler when he ganks he can pass through the obstacles to B-line straight for the target. And unless your opponent flashes you're pretty much guaranteed to knock them a direction away from your turret. If they're pushed up enough you can just follow them and spam Q. I'm not sure about his jungle clear time because when I experienced a Jungle Hecarim ganks weren't wide apart. The beauty of his E is he can easily move from near any neutral camp to lane quickly, and ward coverage wouldn't be able to do too much about it. Also with Hecarim in control of the blues, he'll be able to spam the Q more to keep its cooldown lower and basically his W will keep him from backing too often.

Except hecarim has little control over his own buffs, let alone the enemy team's. His clear time is too slow to be an effective counter-jungler, and it puts him severally behind other jungles because he's taking so long to reach effective ganking potential. He's only effective as a gank once he has his E. However, getting his E early at 2 severally inhibits his jungling potential, so he's reliant on ganks to make up for this. And even the best junglers should be having only about 10-20% complete success rate against a competent team. This is putting way too much chance into hecarim's scaling. If he fails the gank, he's now wasting time he could of spent clearing the jungle, which he's already terrible at, and he's falling further behind in gold and xp. Early gankers have to be able to salvage themselves from a failed early gank, but because of hecarim's item dependancy, he can't afford to fail it. This makes him horrible as an early level 2 ganker. Conversely, if he tries to clear the jungle until level 4 ganking, which makes his jungling decent, he's already out of pots and low on health, so his ganking is further inhibited, and it puts him further behind, as he's forced to b. Level 3 ganking is the inbetween that's really the only effective balance between jungling and ganking that hecarim has without wasting time, but it normally requires not having red to do this, which means you're almost entirely reliant on your team for cc. Unfortunately, by this time, the average jungle will have either already performed a gank or two, hit level 4, or both.

tl;dr: He's too item dependant, and too slow, to be an effective jungle.

Originally Posted by Fivah

Hecarim is the first new champ that isn't op, but doesn't need buffed.
Good job Riot. o7