Well same here M7, with 500k+ invested into him. I chose him 'cuz he was a champion that was fun, in the assassin class & at the end of the day no one could really at me saying he was broken when I did well in games, because he's balanced. I never even jumped on the broken tank Ekko hype train because it was a distasteful way to win imo, but it highlighted the fact that he wasn't pulling his weight as an assassin even when ahead, which till this day feels awful to play as.
I can tell you for a fact, even with a relatively low amount of mastery points into Ekko that he has glaring problems with his kit, which pretty much every champion in his class deals with more effectively & better. Even as a Skirmisher, that people are so adament on labelling him as (which is true), he fails in that aspect; being less effective than other Skirmishers that include Yasuo, Kayn, Jax & Riven. I could really go on forever about all the problems he has, bear in mind it's not like I don't want him to be a nightmare with no counterplay, I just want him to be viable & not to be thinking everytime I play him that 'assassin X could've done so much more'...
The only reason people are saying he is perfectly balanced is because he doesn't have an impact on games & people can deal with him in almost every scenario. I'd say a good indication or threshold of balanced is Katarina or I'd go as far to even say Zed even though a lot of people would disagree, (confining it to asassins). They have their ways to get ahead of the game mostly based on skill rather than being broken & other players can mitigate that lead by capatalising on the weaknesses of their champions rather than the players themselves making mistakes. On Ekko, it's just he's good when you're opponent is bad, even though there is a skill gap when playing him, at the end of the day he cannot pull is weight or rather, it is very hard to & almost not worth playing to make a noticeable impact in games being an AP-Assassin/Skirmisher, with his current kit.
