'This is utter incompetence': League of Legends fans react to Hecarim changes at 12.17
Hecarim is a champion who has always been quite strong in League of Legends. However, the buffs he received in patch 12.17 took him to the skies.
Hecarim is now a champion who can play the role of a tank, as well as knock down enemies and cut them with one blow. This made him one of the most feared champions in the world. Summoner's Gorge as of patch 12.17, and also led to fans lashing out at Riot Games for these changes.
One such critique came from a popular content creator IWDominatewhen he tweeted the following:
Hecarim has so blatantly topped the OP's top since the changes that I'm struggling to figure out how someone could even touch or play the champion test before sending the changes to life. This is, at best, extreme incompetence, and at worst, pure laziness.
IWDominate's comments were echoed by many, as fans feel that Riot Games has often been lazy when testing champions. They believe that releasing overly broken units is what affects the game for everyone and pushes people away from playing League of Legends more often.
League of Legends fans want Riot Games to fix Hecarim ASAP
League of Legends, along with patch 12.17, released a small overhaul for Hecarim to bring the champion back into the meta. This was also done taking into account Worlds 2022, as the jungler meta is now a little dated and the devs wanted to add some variety.
However, the mini-rework that was done to Hecarim left him overly broken. The champion is currently rated S+ and is at around 51% win rate in the Master rankings and above. In short, he currently dominates the high elo singles meta.
The Champion has become sort of a versatile unit, where he can tank hit, move excessively fast, and slash enemies without shedding a sweat. It takes almost no effort to dominate Hecarim right now, and no jungler can stand up to him in his current state.
As a result, League of Legends fans angrily asked Riot Games to fix the champion. They want a major change where he is toned down to the level of the current foresters.
It so happened that the developers responded to the demands of the fans, although the decision was not instant. Several minor nerfs to Hecarim will be released with patch 12.18, which will be released on September 21, 2022.
It's hard to say what impact these nerfs will have when they come out, but at the moment fans aren't entirely sure about the numbers. They feel like they're more like placebo nerfs, although some feel that his dominance will be toned down a bit, which is still better than nothing.
What League of Legends fans fear most is Hecarim's dominance on World Cup 2022 of the year. They feel that if it is not time-balanced, it could have a similar impact to the Pantheon, where Hecarim will become an automatic win condition if he is selected, or he will simply remain sidelined from the entire tournament.
In short, Hecarim at Worlds 2022 in an unbalanced state will be a disaster and both League of Legends players and fans want to avoid it at all costs.