LoL devs finally planning Hecarim nerfs as jungler hits monster 70% ban rate

Hecarim is finally set to cop a bundle of much-needed League of Legends nerfs next update, patch 11.9. ⁠The Riot Games developers are targeting the Shadow of War’s clear speed in Season 11, as well as his new “unkillable” builds.

The Shadow of War has been one of the biggest winners early in Season 11, alongside shock “king of the jungle” Udyr, appearing in a whopping 72.1% of ranked League of Legends lobbies.

Of that number, 58.33% include champion bans.

The biggest problem with these “presence” numbers is Hecarim’s overall win rate isn’t dropping either. So far in Season 11, the speedy jungler has won 53.53% of all his solo queue games, behind only Annie (54.51% with a 2.77% pick rate). He’s also appeared in 887 matches in pro play, winning a hefty 454 this year.

This week, Hecarim did cop a small hit; LoL patch 11.8 delivered him a 10% bonus move speed drop. Unfortunately, it barely managed to move the dial.

Thankfully, the League balance team has finally taken notice.

Lead designer developer Jeevun ‘Jag’ Sidhu has confirmed that the “out of control” Shadow of War is finally getting reined in ahead of the next LoL update.

The plan, the LoL dev revealed, is to “push power away from Hecarim’s tank build, and into fighter builds”. This move should ⁠— in theory, at least ⁠— make him into more of a ‘glass cannon’ character, if the LoL patch 11.9 nerfs go through.

“We’re currently testing these Hecarim changes,” Sidhu said.

There’s also a chance, he continued, they may simply have to “adjust Chemtank”. The Season 11 mythic, “Turbo Chemtank,” is at the heart of Hecarim’s power.

Hecarim already boasts a lot of speed in his versatile ability kit. He also takes “Ghost” over the more conventional “Flash” summoner spell, in a bid to add more pace to his engage. The “Chemtank” mythic helps with that, granting him 60% bonus move speed whenever he is moving towards an enemy champs.

To put it simply: he’s “way too fast.”

“The problem,” Sidhu continued, “is Chemtank is a pretty reasonable option on a lot of champions. It’s an extremely powerful one only on a handful heavily driving the meta (Udyr, Hecarim), so nerfs would have pretty major costs.”

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The Riot devs admitted targeting the mythic item itself will be a “last resort”. It’s not outside the realms of possibility though, if Hecarim stays dominant.

Riot will also be hoping their bold new jungle buffs for several lane champions shake up the roaming meta enough for Hecarim and Udyr to fall away.

The League of Legends balance team made the shock decision to bring “another round of new champs to the jungle pool,” including Darius, Mordekaiser, and Morgana, as well as usual mid lane stars like Diana and Zed. These were shipped in April 14’s patch, which is now live.

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League’s latest champion, Gwen, was also released in LoL patch 11.8. Tanky jungler Rammus also received his expected VGU rework in the April 14 update.