Season 5 is the renaissance of the carry top laner. No longer stifled to playing tanks like Mundo or utility mages such as Lulu, professional top laners around the world are placing teams on their back. Being able to manage Gnar’s rage transformation, clog choke points with Rumble’s Equalizer, and dive the backline with Hecarim are quintessential skills for a top laner.
With strong sustain for laning, constant AOE damage, and an unrivaled power for flanking, Hecarim is a belligerent force to be reckoned with. There is but one dilemma with the champion: Smite or Ignite? The jungler’s summoner spell has been used in the top lane alongside Cinderhulk to create a scaling tank capable of objective pressure and back line assassination. At its apex Smite Top Hecarim was the definitive set-up, but does it remain so after Cinderhulk’s nerfs? By tracing through Hecarim’s competitive use in Season 5, we will discover the narrative behind this development. To end our journey we will break down the upside and downside of Hecarim using either summoner spell, and round out the analysis with statistics of his performance.
Hecarim’s return to competitive play was a slow starting freight train. After numerous nerfs in Season 3, Hecarim was kept in the stables in favor of more reliable junglers like Elise. Near the end of season 4, he received buffs to his passive and a mana cost reduction to his Rampage. At the start of Season 5, Riot gave him an additional mana cost reduction on Rampage and increased the cap on his healing from Spirit of Dread.
The two changes were sufficient enough to enable Hecarim to migrate from Jungle into the Top, a transferral which occured in a single series in the LPL. On February 13, Energy Pacemaker, having just lost with Hecarim jungle, tried to surprise Edward Gaming by switching him to top lane for Shek "AmazingJ" Wai Ho to wield, but Energy Pacemaker failed to win. This shouldn’t be blamed on Hecarim however; Energy Pacemaker was a weak team in the LPL, a fact evidenced by their 11-33 record in the regular season. However, Hecarim became a mainstay of AmazingJ’s arsenal, and he was even able to obtain at least a 40% win rate on the champion during his time with Energy Pacemaker—a remarkable feat given the teams 25% win rate.
After AmazingJ’s experiment, Hecarim began to show in the top lane throughout the world: Korean team SK Telecom T1 would try Hecarim Top against Najin e-mFire on February 25. Next, North American team Gravity would use Hecarim Top 3 days later (though they perhaps intended to use it in the Mid-Lane until it was counter-picked. Lae-Young "Keane" Jang was notorious for using it in the Challenger Series). It would take another two weeks for Hecarim Top to appear in the EU LCS through Fnatic’s Top Laner Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon. Having invaded the three other major regions and the rest of the competitive leagues in the world, Hecarim Top was now meta.
In the solo lane, Hecarim was a natural fit. His sustain, further bolstered with the purchase of Crystalline Flask, let him bully several other champions. His constant spam with Rampage gave him free harass and wave clearing power. His Devastating Charge and Onslaught of Shadows served as disengage or engage, allowing Hecarim to take Ignite rather than Flash for added kill pressure.
Hecarim still bore his trademark hard engage, but now he had consistency. As a jungler, Hecarim is expensive to build and lacks innate utility, meaning he has to snowball and take farm and kills from his team in order to be effective. By going into a solo lane, Hecarim gains more farm and experience which allows him to reach his item quotas without taking from his team. Additionally he can take teleport and flank the enemy with devastating home guard flanks. Hecarim had found his next battleground.
The addition of Cinderhulk cemented his stay. With the early aggression of bruiser junglers gone in favor of scaling tank junglers, Hecarim was harder to punish before he got his ultimate to escape ganks. Cinderhulk becoming the premiere jungle item guaranteed Hecarim’s stay, but the item had more to give Hecarim.
When Snake Top Laner Li "Flandre" Xuan-jun locked in Shyvana with Smite, most people scratched their heads. Why was a top laner running Smite? Spending most of his time farming, Flandre’s Shyvana became a monstrous tank with Cinderhulk. The extra health and Challenging Smite from Skirmishers Sabre made her unkillable, an unstoppable farming machine devouring Gamtee’s jungle. Smite Top had debuted, and it looked powerful.
Once the science checked out, the possibilities of Smite Top were explored. 4 days after Flandre’s demonstration, KT Rolster’s Kim "ssumday" Chan-ho reacquainted Hecarim with Smite. Against a struggling Jin Air Greenwings, KT Rolster executed a unique strategy. Swapping their duo laners to the mid lane and mid to bottom lane, KT took control of the center of the map and pressed into Jin Air’s jungle with wards. This let ssumday push his lane out throughout the laning phase with no retaliation. The result of KT Rolster’s swap was an astonishing gold leads over ssumday’s counterpart Yeon "TrAce" Chang-dong. At 10:00 ssumday was up 20 cs, but up 700 gold. ssumday had no kills, assists, or towers: his lead should have been within the 350-500 range. Then at twenty minutes, his lead more than doubled to 1,500 gold. He was up 44 cs with no kills or assists and the teams were even in towers. The gold lead was unusually high for a decent lead in cs.
ssumday’s gold lead grew so dramatically because he farmed jungle camps. Worth more than average minions, the camps gave him extra gold and experience. Furthermore, by buying jungle items he was able to acquire additional gold by farming them and use smite to obtain their buffs. Pushing out his lane, ssumday consistently rotated to either his blue side jungle or Jin Air’s red side. He was a second jungler with a lane to himself.
Further experimentation showed additional strengths of Smite Top Hecarim. With the summoner spell Hecarim can easily farm the jungle if he was in a lane swap situation. This made him more resilient to the strategy and less reliant on standard lanes to farm. The scaling health passive on the item gave Hecarim additional health—a valuable bonus as Hecarim builds lack health since he builds Trinity Force for damage and prefers Frozen Heart over Randuins Omen. The addition of another Smite gives the team extra objective control—the enemy jungler now has to out smite two enemy players on Dragons and Barons.
While Hecarim does sacrifice lane pressure without Ignite and delays building his Trinity Force in favor of Cinderhulk, he gains additional late game tankiness and becomes a must focus target with Challenging Smite. One could summarize the difference in summoner spells as thus: Ignite Top is easier to snowball, but Smite Top snowballs harder.
Regardless of the apparent strength of Smite Top Hecarim, professional teams in North America, Europe, and Korea didn’t embrace it. Some players, such as CJ Entus’ Park "Shy" Sang-myeo, would use it as a pocket pick, but it was rarely used.
It was all the rage in China. Once playoffs began, Smite Top Hecarim was used in all but one of the eleven games he appeared in. That instance was game one of Oh My God and LGD’s quarterfinal match up. LGD had done fairly well in the spring season, ending in 6th place. OMG, meanwhile, had surprisingly struggled through the regular season despite acquiring the infamous Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao for their adc, but managed to claim third place.
The series went 3-0 to LGD’s favor due to a combination of poor drafting from OMG, LGD severely punishing over aggressive plays, strong ADC play from Gu "imp" Seung-bin, and OMG’s mismanagement of the Hecarim top they valued enough to pick first. OMG’s top laner Gao "Gogoing" Di-Ping locked in Hecarim Ignite top for the first game, confident in his ability to assassinate any back line now that Urgot had been banned. LGD would counter the Hecarim by locking in Gnar, whose ranged harass and slows deny Hecarim favorable trades and the ability to split push. OMG initiated a lane swap and were able to get first blood onto Gogoing by ganking bottom lane, but from there things went downhill for the top laner. He wasted his teleport at 9:50 to try and catch out Wei "GODV" Lian without getting an assist or kill. LGD would retaliate two minutes later by overwhelming OMG’s four man tower push with Choi "Acorn" Cheon-ju teleport, reversing the tide with three kills for free. As his teammates fell, Gogoing merely trotted into the midlane.
Gogoing's Hecarim was shut down: his split pushing was contained by Acorn’s Gnar, his few teleport flanks were denied by GODV’s zoning with Orianna’s ball. Zhu "TBQ" Yong-Quan’s Nunu could simply slow him in fights with a snowball. The final nail in the coffin was OMG’s sloppy team fighting—Yin "LoveLing" Le and Gogoing were never on the same page with their engages, and that allowed Imp to kite out the fights. Factor in the split focus of OMG's comp with diving the enemy backline and peeling for their backline, and you had defeat.
As Gogoing sat the next game out while OMG fielded Guo “san” Jun-Liang, LGD demonstrated how to use Hecarim. They locked him in after OMG had grabbed Maokai for the top lane, avoiding the Gnar counterpick. LGD surrounded Hecarim with back up on his dives via Kassadin in the mid lane and Rek'Sai jungle. Their Bard support could set the engages up from long distances with Tempered Fate while Sivir allowed the team to then reach the stasis targets with On the Hunt—the perfect calvary to follow Hecarim into battle.
Acorn was given a solo lane against san’s Maokai, but OMG tossed him more advantages by giving a kill with a dive gone wrong early on. Wielding Smite, Acorn was given the Krugs to farm after he pushed out his lane while vision was laid down for him to do so safely. With Kassadin and Hecarim LGD could split push the sidelines, dragging on the game so Hecarim could farm up more items to scale with Cinderhulk. Acorn’s teleports, unlike Gogoing’s, were on point as they bisected OMG so his team could isolate targets. LGD knew how to play with a Hecarim.
Thinking he could learn from watching, Gogoing would return in the third game and lock in Hecarim again, but this time with Smite. Faced against a Gnar counter pick, this time manned by Lee "Flame" Ho-Jong, Gogoing’s Smite top Hecarim looked awkward. He ulted aggressively when he had no kill pressure and wasted his Challenging Smite when Flame could simply walk away. His horrible teleport use persisted, costing OMG as he wasn’t present for important fights in the early game. As Gogoing failed to support his team, so his team failed to aid him: Loveling devoured the jungle on his Maokai, leaving Gogoing with no camps to farm. OMG’s composition wanted to group with Jinx in the mid game to push down towers, not drag out the game and allow Hecarim to scale.
OMG’s failure revolved around their misuse of Hecarim top. For Hecarim, the series serves as an illustration of how teams should look to utilize him—take Smite, let him farm the jungle and side lines, and use his powerful home guards teleport flanks at every fight possible. This was Hecarim’s battle strategy as discovered by China—but did the world pay attention?
The clash of regional metas came at the 2015 Mid Seasonal Invitational. Hecarim was heavily banned in the group stages, and picked in every game available save one. At this tournament, EDG top laner Tong "Koro1" Yang represented China’s mastery of Smite Top Hecarim when available as the only player to use it at the event.
Looking at day one of group stages, both EDG and Team Solo Mid utilized Hecarim Top in similiar circumstances. both Koro1 and Marcus “Dyrus” Hill of TSM were visited early on in ganks from the enemy jungler. Both were left to their own devices as the junglers ganked bottom lane non-stop. Dyrus and Koro1 were up against the lane counter of Gnar and were constantly bullied by the prehistoric yordle. So why was it that Dyrus was slaughtered endlessly with his team while Koro1 acquired numerous multi-kills and end the game with a perfect KDA?
The analysis extends beyond Koro1 being a superior Hecarim player to Dyrus and EDG being the superior team in their matchup against AHQ to TSM’s weaker status vs SK Telecom T1. For starters, EDG set up their Hecarim for success in the draft by pairing him with the complementary Sejuani jungle rather than Gragas. Furthermore, EDG waited to see AHQ pick Kalista before securing Hecarim to avoid the Urgot counterpick, while TSM picked Hecarim into Urgot. EDG’s final composition was united in their purpose to scale into ungodly tankiness and dive power, but TSM’s was split between a solo diver and four champions trying to kite. The difference in drafting made enormous differences for the two teams.
The drafting phase was not the end all however: execution matters equally if not more. Dyrus made several overaggressive plays. He gave up first blood when he aggressively pushed in his lane as SK Telecom T1 jungler Bae "Bengi" Seong-ung arrived for his clear in the top side. He later tried to proxy farm behind T1’s top tower without vision or his jungler to support him, promptly earning another death. Again he was killed when he stayed to take top tower as Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-Hwan caved his head in. Meanwhile, TSM did little to support him. Lucas "Santorin" Tao Kilmer Larsen remained bot side while Dyrus played aggressively, an issue TSM faced all through MSI. SK Telecom T1 warded Santorin’s bottom jungle to track his movements in the area he was going to be in for most of the game—this freed up Marin to bully Dyrus harder. Furthermore, TSM’s efforts to snowball bot failed as T1 outplayed their flawed execution time and time again. Behind with no hope for scaling, Dyrus’ Hecarim was given the spade.
Meanwhile, Koro1’s Hecarim earned a glorious blue ribbon. Being the ever patient turtle to Dyrus’ overeager hare, Koro1 held the reins on Hecarim tightly through the early game. AHQ’s jungler Xue "Mountain" Zhao-Hong showed up in top lane as a surprise move, as opposed to Bengi opportunistic arrival, but Koro1 ran back when Dyrus had erred by going in. That, along with Koro1’s pick up of cloth armor as opposed to boots, saved his life.
From there, Koro1 let AHQ’s Chen "Ziv" Yi harass him, consistently being forced out of lane. Despite this, Koro1 didn't fall behind in farm. With his Smite he was able to take advantage of his jungler Ming "ClearLove" Kai’s constant presence in the bottom lane by farming the jungle ClearLove left in the top side. This kept Koro1’s item build at pace with Ziv’s, who opted for a Randuin’s Omen instead of a Frozen Mallet to suit his teams constant skirmishing around objectives.
Despite the buy, Ziv continued to outtrade Koro1, but Koro1’s teleports made the different. He always found a way to get onto Liu "Westdoor" Shu-Wei’s Karthus in fights, sending the undead mage back to his grave. Fight after fight and teleport after teleport, Koro1 managed to show up at the right place and time to secure himself multi kills left and right. After following suit with his teammates to scale by building straight tank, Koro1 managed to complete a Trinity Force at 30 minutes. Once that occurred, he truly became a mass-murderer, immediately taking a triple kill for himself. EDG outfought AHQ and took a bloody victory for Hecarim.
In the Grand Finals of MSI, EDG and SK Telecom T1 faced off. This was the moment—we had seen Hecarim played in all sorts of matchups, but we could finally see what the best teams in the world at the time would be capable of with the centaur. Unfortunately, that was never to be seen: he was banned in four of the five games, and he wasn’t picked in the only game he was available—a missed opportunity for the rampaging beast.
Following MSI, Cinderhulk would finally receive meaningful nerfs in Patch 5.9. Immolate, the unique passive, had its damage to champions nerfed when Riot removed the stacking damage. To ensure tank junglers' clears weren't effected, they doubled the nerfed values against monster camps. This change did not apply to minions. The change took damage away from Junglers in skirmishes, but it also reduced the pushing power of Cinderhulk Top users like Hecarim. Hecarim also received nerfs to his home guard synergy in patch 5.11. Fortunately, the two nerfs were spaced out enough to get a more accurate measurement of which would affects him more. So where are we now?
We’ve collected data from the big four regions to analysis how they responded to the Cinderhulk nerfs and to determine if Smite Top has fallen beneath Ignite Top.
Click on the image to enlarge
First we’ll address the missing information. Oracles Elixer was contacted to provide data on Hecarim’s Summer Split performance in LCS and LCK. Their database was able to give us additional information to observe, such as the DPM and GPM values. However, China does not publish match data from the LPL, and so in order to collect such data each game would have to be viewed individually. Furthermore, some data simply would not be available without a published match history. As such, we will focus on the data which calculates every region.
At first it seems like Ignite Top Hecarim wins out in every region given his greater win rate and superior averages. Yet, China is a stellar outlier to the trend with their fascination and success with Smite Top Hecarim. Having over ten times Smite Top Hecarim Games as Ignite Top Hecarim, China boasts the only positive win rate with the build after the nerf to Cinderhulk. It is a shame the other statistics aren’t readily available as China offers a large sample size, and one could discern what makes the build work so well in China that other regions are not emulating.
It is also worth noting that weaker teams in the other regions use Smite Top Hecarim more than the stronger teams—Smite Top Hecarim’s win-rate is lower because the underdogs lose with it.
To explain China’s unique relationship with Smite Top Hecarim, I personally contacted Kelsey Moser. She shared my perspective on the pros and cons of Smite Top as opposed to Ignite Top, but also enlightened me as to why China both uses Smite Top Hecarim and why it is effective within the region:
"For me the biggest difference between Cinderhulk Hecarim and otherwise is that you pick Hecarim with Ignite TP to win lane, but Cinderhulk Hecarim is for scaling and team fighting. A lot of the meta in China has shifted more toward the five dragon playstyle since MSI, so we see longer games where having a really tanky scaling Hecarim ends up being really effective. And there are a lot of lane swaps, so trashing the lane 1v1 is less of a concern.
It also helps maintain control of more than one neutral objective. If you use four of your team to take Baron, you can still make a dragon risky by threatening with a smite steal from your jungler or top.
I think Cinderhulk Hecarim is safer, honestly. You can never be guaranteed to get the lane matchups you want and if a game goes longer despite your best intentions, he stays more relevant."
Based on Moser’s analysis, China’s regional meta benefits Smite Top Hecarim in a way other regions don’t. However, it is observed that while Smite Top Hecarim has performed well in China, it seems to be declining. In week 4 and 5 of LPL, Smite Top Hecarim had a 9-11 and 7-11 W/L record respectively. In week 6, it plummeted to 5-15. This is independent of the nerfs to Cinderhulk as those occurred in week 4, but Hecarim’s home guard nerfs took place in week 5. A logical explanation is that with the reintroduction of Ryze in an overpowered state and the arrival of Ekko as an occasional top laner surmounted Hecarim as nerfs finally began to placate the champion once more. That claim requires further investigation, but it is safe to say that changes impacting the entire League of Legends Meta are to blame for Hecarim’s recent struggles in LPL, not just nerfs to Cinderhulk.
Hecarim's return to professional play has illuminated changes in the top lane meta. Leading the charge, he has become the face of Smite in the top lane. Now that Cinderhulk has been nerfed, should teams go back to using Ignite for Hecarim or persist with Smite? The answer relies on the situation. If one is confident in standard lanes, than the kill pressure from Ignite can snowball Hecarim to decimate teams. If a lane swap is imminent, than taking Smite gives the top laner flexibility. He can farm the jungle easily, reaping its benefits with the summoner spell. Smite also grants the user safety—you can rely on becoming a monstrous tank in the late game, secure objectives easier, and even invade the enemy jungler. For its reliability, Smite Top Hecarim is superior to Ignite Top Hecarim if teams can wield it properly. For now it seems that few teams outside of China can, and the meta is shifting away from the spectral centaur. Regardless, Hecarim's time in the top lane has forever been marked by the magic of Smite.
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