Is hecraim even viable.

freelo/10

Sure he is. Why wouldn't he be? He's one of the better gankers and initiators in the game. Kind of falls off late though.

Are you asking if the biggest Juggernaut meta-golem is good?

Never tried him top so can't say for there, but in the jungle?

No.

He needs gold to perform well and doesn't really have the ganking tools necessary to earn it. He is by far one of the worst duelist in the game since his W heal is team reliant and needs to survive long enough to get his Q ramping up enough (no-one invading cares about time since they burst you). He has surprisingly abysmmal sustain since his W is capped and Q consumes tonnes of mana. His CC is sub-par, a single knock back (which in the wrong position knocks back the enemy away from the team) and a 1 second fear on his ult (which badly cast actually pushes the enemy away).

He only deals damage when ahead and desperately requires a Spellblade item like Triforce or Frozen Fist. If you're unable to afford either of them you might as well have picked a different champion.

Hecarim is good at ganking mid from behind the river walls and MAYBE fullspeed down either lane, but his ganks are predictable and straight forward.

Despite because a 'team fight monster' Hecarim cannot apply any pressure if he's not ahead. He needs to be able to burst down important targets because he has no way of keeping them 'stuck'. He has horrendous kiting issues since he has a combined CC time of 1.25 seconds and ZERO slows. He is required to burst down targets despite being a 'sustain dps' fighter and initiator. Similar to when you play Malphite and the target doesn't dies, this is Hecarim except he has less utility.

More or less, he is a selfish champion. You actively want to take kills from your laners so you can be efficient when in the end, if you chose Malphite, you'd do the same but your whole team would be doing the damage instead.

At the moment I wouldn't recommend him in the jungle but I can't deny that he is a tonne of fun.