Hecarim?

Depends on how you define 'viable'. He's definitely a solid fighter if you know how to consistently keep his levels up throughout the game, and his tankiness becomes insane as his items scale. A good first clear and enough wards to ward off counter jungling, and Hecarim is a perfectly solid champion to use imo.

Unless you plan on trying to do something fancy with his ult or your flash in tandem with his knock back, Hecarim doesn't require much 'practice'. What really defines good Hecarim players are the players who are really smart about him. He's a phenomenal front-line fighter in even fights and forces advantageous fights with ease. His mobility and AOE effects makes him a solid wave clearer and pseudo-splitpusher, which is especially useful when you consider that his E helps greatly at getting him out of sticky situations. Further on about his E, this means that with a few the max amount of wards and a good eye for ganks/ambushes, Hecarim alone has fantastic map-wide presence.

What defines Hecarim is that he's a sort of 'jack of all trades', able to do nearly everything relatively well but nothing in particular to an extreme degree (well, actually he can hyper tank really well if you know how to build correctly, but that's beside the point). If you learn how to correctly identify the correct move to make, Hecarim will be able to serve.

Hecarim has a really good intiation and can punish people who ward poorly.

That being said, he suffers removal of FoN. Every since that item got removed he hasn't fully recovered. Without building damage you are no threat at all unlike other junglers... But at the same time you have to significantly invest into tanky items. If you fall behind there's barely a way to catch up.

Udyr has a worse initiation, but is more mobile, can splittpush and farm safer and faster - and he remains a threat even when building full def.

I am by no means saying that Hecarim ist bad, I lvoe to jungle him. Also in ranked. His ult can win teamfights in many many cases.

That being said: There are better picks; and Hecarim WILL need buffs once the new jungle is released.

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For the moment I'ld recommand you to pick up an easier jungler, we'll soon see wether Riot will help him once the new jungle is released...

I love hec - he is pretty vulnerable to counter jungling early but if you get a couple kills/assists from some solid ganks you will snowball hard.

Late game he can be an absolute monster with a very nice balance of damage/tankiness/sustain with a fantastic initiation he's also great at starting teamfights when defending your base - remember homeguard increases your initation speed and the initial damage you do you can easily get in and hit one of their carries for 2/3 of their hp right off the bat with homegurd E + sheen proc

note you need to build a sheen item on him , both triforce and iceborn work well - best pick varies on the circumstances of the match