The Rise And Fall of Tank Top Ekko

Approaching the EU LCS 2016 Spring Split Finals, we saw a sharp change in the meta. Harkening back to the 2015 Summer Split, tanks were becoming more favourable picks, particularly for top laners. The usual subjects joined the fray, with your Maokais and Malphites, but we also saw the rise of a less likely top lane hero in the time travelling Ekko.

Ekko's kit, coupled with the Grasp of the Undying keystone mastery and an item build centered around Iceborn Gauntlet, made him a formidable foe, even against other top lane tanks. "Ekko is really good in lane against tank match-ups and melee match-ups because he can actually harass from lane," Richard "Pulse" Kam tells us. "He can dance around them with his abilities and they’re very slow so it’s easy to catch them with Parallel Convergence. The tanks can't really kill him, so he has like complete freedom in the top lane."

His reign of top lane terror continued into the Finals, where he was picked or banned in every single game and had a very strong showing in the hands of Gamsu, Kikis and sOAZ. So how do you counter him? "It’s hard right now, because Ekko is considered to be one of the strongest, if not the strongest top laner [at the finals]," Pulse says. "So the counter in competitive, at least, is you pick a tank and then you have to try and go for team fights. You have to accept you’re not going to win the one on one with Ekko." Instead of beating Ekko in lane, countering him with TP plays and forcing him into teamfights, where he's less useful than a Maokai, for example, who can point-and-click CC and then stick around thanks to his AOE damage-reduction ulti.

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Ekko has a harder time dealing with teamfights. "With Ekko you’ve got to TP into a fight, somehow get to a carry and that’s all situational based on wards. Even if you do get that, you might have to immediately pop ultimate and risk flying back to where you TP’d from if it’s within four seconds. Or just get out of the fight. So it’s harder for Ekko to actually get into these fights," Pulse says. The good news is that in solo queue the team co-ordination is likely to be lacking, compared to competitive play, so it's a lot easier to take Ekko on a one-vs-one rampage around the map and carry the game. That is, of course, if you're still playing him after the release of patch 6.8.

Martin "Deficio" Lynge still feels like Ekko has a place in the meta, even after a lot of his damage got nerfed in the latest patch. "It's definitely still a tank meta up top lane, which means Ekko still does have a lot of value," he explains. "Yes okay he lost a bit of damage here and there. I don't think that's enough to make him a bad pick by any means, because everything he did that was so good is about being a tank, having fairly low cooldowns and an insane amount of slows and mobility in his kit." The nerfs to Ekko aren't preventing him from sticking to his opponents like he used to. He's still going to be on you constantly, it's just going to be harder for him to kill you.

Ekko's biggest problem isn't with his own nerfs, but in the changes made to Iceborn Gauntlet. The de facto top lane tank item now deals out less damage, compounding the damage loss given to Ekko's kit. "What Ekko offered that other tanks didn't was that Ekko had more damage than most of the tanks," Deficio says. "I still think he has enough damage to take down an AD Carry, which means he still has a role." The changes to Grasp of the Undying won't have a huge effect on Ekko in particular, because it will affect all tanks equally, but some top laners never included the Iceborn Gauntlet in their kit and so they will not be influenced by the change.

One of these top laners is Maokai, who Deficio predicts could take Ekko's throne as king of the top lane. "Maokai already had sustain from his own passive, so the Grasp of the Undying was just an added bonus. Also, he didn't have to build Iceborn Gauntlet. You could just go Frozen Heart and go full tank."

All eyes are on the Mid Season Invitational which kicks off next week. Teams will have only had a few scant weeks to prepare on the new patch, and it's anybody's guess what the meta will look like. Deficio's money is on Maokai being the power pick in the top lane, but the door is open for other champs to make a comeback, like Rumble. His buffs in 6.8 are positioning him to become a contested pick at MSI, but this will also depend on how teams fare with him in scrims. And what meta fits best with their players.

"So for the teams going to MSI... If you look at G2, tank top laners for Kikis," Deficio says. "They would probably prefer it to be a tank meta. Then a team like CLG, who has Darshan, they'll say 'Come on, let's get some carry top laners in here'." He expects teams to experiment in scrims to find what works best for them in the run up to MSI. Will they discover a new pick to replace Ekko, or will they settle back into the now familiar tank meta? We're only a week away from finding out as the teams take to the stage in Shanghai.