Riot, Hecarim is an Unhealthy Champion. How to fix him?

I believe anyone who has mained Hecarim since Season 5 or before can agree that Hecarim is not the champion he was before in terms of playstyle. I am here after talking to challenger/master former Hecarim mains in KR (both jungle mains and top mains), to give some insight on how we feel Hecarim's playstyle was destroyed. This is because he has not been able to function since the end of Season 6, through the entirety of Season 7, and is even worse with Runes Reforged.

I hope a Riot member can talk to the balance team, or the champion design team - because this change was from balance, yet greatly affected the champion's identity and playstyle. He's still a horse, but instead of being a brave warrior who will fight enemies, he is a cowardly assassin that relies on one-shots and running away.

In Season 6, Hecarim was quite strong and received a number of changes.

v5.24 - Ghost on passive removed, base HP nerfed, ghost effect moved to E. Back when this was nerfed, the minion blocking was egregiously awful. They fixed minion collision issues later, but never rolled back this change. And a base health nerf is just an easy way to weaken a champ, that's ok since he was strong. I don't think it's really as relevant now, so I think it would be fine to give him his passive ghost back since Kassadin and Fizz also have it. It would help his laning, which was constantly gutted because of jungle Hecarim. This one is just a side note, not a major discussion point.

v6.5 - The really big change that changed Hecarim completely, though many people still don't realize it. E range, knockback, and dash distance scales on distance traveled.

This range increase is so big that it has been extremely misleading for many players on the receiving side (you can slam from the range of Caitlyn auto, and the damage is guaranteed). It was 'good' for Jungle Hecarim, because it greatly increased the damage output of his ganks, and guaranteed large E damages. Basically a raw buff that enabled him to one shot people far more easily, while keeping his bruiser capabilities as well.

The bad points of the change: For Top hecarim, it made chasing enemy laners far more difficult as you would easily end up dashing into the enemy turret, where you wouldn't even be close before. For jungle hecarim, this change made most ganks all-or-nothing, where an enemy with a dash/flash is now almost guaranteed to live (you cannot E them on their movement or you will run into their turret), while an enemy without a dash/flash will most likely be killed by the flanking E push. Your E is also far more telegraphed, and they have a much longer time to react with a CC ability as your dash is longer (ex: jinx E self when dash begins for guaranteed root). On the old E, if you had enough HP you would be able to poke them for some damage and walk out, but the new E pushes both you and the enemy in so deep that there is no way out. Sure, having ghost makes ganks easy and disengagement safe. But the point is that it is an all-or-nothing ability now.

This new E is far more clunky than the previous one, and the way it deals guaranteed damage from a deceptively far range made MANY players hate playing against Hecarim. At this time, this new power was not an issue for Hecarim players, but an issue for people playing against him. I mained Hecarim since Season 5 when only Hecarim lovers played him, but since this change his playrate started climbing.

So with this new E, Hecarim's burst potential was increased quite a bit. This became a problem when Hecarims started to run around nearly one shotting people with a 600 range, guaranteed damage ability from a champion with a constant movement speed advantage.

Since he received no nerfs, he was a very overtuned champion who could farm decently, gank with a ridiculous E that has a huge chase/knockback from 600 units range, and have bruiser power to 1v1 most champions in the game at the same level. (except champions like nasus/trundle who are supposed to specialize in bruiser 1v1s, who you would still beat 1v1 with fervor of battle)

Soon enough, he began becoming permabanned in queues. Within a few patches, he was always in the Top 5 banned champions, and claimed a top 10 banned slot for nearly a year (after he got nerfed, he would stay top 10 banned for months).

v6.15 - Base attack damage nerfed by 3.37. Q damage nerfed. Small Raptors now need 4 Q instead of 2 to clear. Clear/farm speed and stability drastically reduced. Now he takes forever to farm up, which was the point of the nerf. But we believe the point did not hit the correct mark.

After a while, the balancing team decided Hecarim was indeed overtuned. But instead of changing his ridiculous E, they nerfed his base damage (=sheen/trinity damage), and base ability damages. Most importantly this nerfed his jungle farming, by a crazy amount. Farming became so much slower on every camp, so your resources would drop dramatically during clears. Take more damage, spend more mana, spend more time. With farming nerfs, Bruiser item trees became hard to even build without getting a huge lead from successful ganks. Even if you did, his Sheen/Trinity damage was nerfed with the base AD making it less effective.

Soon enough, this forced Hecarim players to build at least one full damage item, and hope you were strong enough to one shot at least one person so that you could beat the weakened enemy team. Otherwise, the bruiser builds now had minimal game impact because you are a poor tank with low damage output. This also had a devastating impact on Top Hecarim, who became unplayable as he wasn't in that good of a spot in the first place. Base damage nerf lowered his Sheen damage, and from this point on nobody ever plays Top Hecarim.

Skip forward a year: v7.17 E doesn't tick during ult, ult changed from 1sec to 0.75-1.5s fear on distance traveled. E not ticking during ult isn't relevant in most situations, but it is a buff nevertheless. The Ult fear duration change however is quite questionable, as you use minimum range ult a great amount of the time. As a result, this change wasn't a buff or a nerf, just a random change that had minimal impact on him. The max duration increase is counteracted by the minimum duration nerf, as a max range Hecarim ult is quite difficult to land. Previously, the main way to force movement spells was Eing and bruising them for damage, and then using R as a chase+cc move. With the new E, this max duration increase is even more difficult to use as it is only really viable to aim for 1 shots and most of the time run away if it doesn't succeed.

Ignoring the fact he gets 1 change a year, the issues really began when they changed his E. People began complaining, and in a short while he was permanently banned. Old E was a highly maneuverable skill that could be used for many situations. Here is a comparison of how it functions now compared to before.

Situation: Need to lightly peel an enemy from a teammate, both you and teammate are running away close to each other. Old E: Push an enemy away from a teammate at melee range New E: Hecarim's slam completely follows the pushed target a large distance, putting you in extreme danger if you use it to push away (but not fight) an enemy.

Situation: Enemy laner is running away at a decent distance (long enough you can't E to his back within the 4 seconds). Old E: Run at him, and slam him in the same direction without putting self in turret range. Get some damage in with auto Q New E: Try that and you'll push them right into their turret, and you will end up inside their turret. Only option is to cancel the E and go hit minions.

Situation: Want to 1 shot someone Old E: E at them, and keep hitting them. One shots mostly difficult unless you build damage. New E: E them from 600 range.

Situation: Don't want to 1 shot someone Old E: Use it any way you want, reposition the enemy, run in and fight, etc New E: If you use E you are committing to a full-on fight.

Basically, the new E only facilitates a completely different playstyle that isn't fun for the player or the enemy. The enemy sees a hecarim charging, expect them to hit at 325 range, then receive a fat hit and knockback from 600 units away. They proceed to say hecarim is bull%^&*.

This will never change as long as the E doesn't change. If Hecarim is ever in a decent spot, he WILL get constantly banned because the new E doesn't make sense for the enemies receiving it. Even after Hecarim was nerfed and mediocre, he stayed in top 10 bans for more than 4 months, until people realized nobody is playing him. I would know, because I was always banned out, stopped playing him, and checked the top bans every month to always see hecarim there even though his performance wasn't good.

His E needs to be reverted in some form to function as a healthy champion. You can't buff his bruiser aspect without making him busted, because of how ridiculous his E is now.

Look at all the people who used to love Hecarim, and look at them now. People who used to main Hecarim since Season 5 completely stopped playing him, because his E was completely changed, his stats were gutted, everyone hated playing against his E, his new E has a low skill ceiling, and he was constantly banned even after being nerfed because everyone hated his new E. http://www.op.gg/summoner/champions/userName=이차가식기전에 This guy loved Hecarim since release, and continued to play thousands of Hecarim games every year. He was Masters 3 seasons, and Challenger in S7. Then Hecarim's E got reworked, it was a pure buff in terms of winrate, so they gutted his stats and force people to play Hecarim with a reworked ability that feels like garbage and that nobody wants to play against ever.

OP.gg reset for the new season, but the same pattern happens with almost EVERY Hecarim main who have mained him since Season 5 or before, and not just playing him because meta. He literally is a different champion now.

The reason is because the new E is an EXTREMELY HIGH RISK/HIGH REWARD ABILITY. That isn't the type of ability you want on a bruiser champion, that's an assassin move. Hecarim used to be a balanced champion that was okay at all trades (semitank bruiser initiator aoe-cc situationalburst) and a master of none, but since the 「E change -> then nerf everything except E」 his powers have been skewed all into his E and makes him very unfun to play against and to play as.

tl;dr People don't want to play against a one shot champion with 1000 move speed that can one shot you from an actual Caitlyn's auto range (650). Changing his E into a high risk, high reward ability and then nerfing his health, base AD (-sheen/trinity damage), base skill damages makes his playstyle quite different. And as a result, he was permabanned for a year. Check it with some riot tool, his ban rates since the E change never dropped until people realized he is a bad champion after all the nerfs.

Please ask the staff if they will consider reverting the E change, or make a compromise and halve the range increase etc. Then give him some stats back, and I guarantee that even if he performs decently, people won't complain because his old E doesn't feel like absolute bull on the receiving end. It was a prodding stick that needed to be used skillfully in an vast amount of situations. Now it's an unmovable pool cue that you can only slam in.

Thanks for reading, I hope my message at least reaches the proper team.