Tank Ekko beats the clock in pro play

[Editor's note] Many of you may be saying to yourself, "Hey Rito, tank Ekko's no longer a thing!" Well, that's sort of true. Playoffs for many regions will be played on Patch 5.14, prior to the recent tweak to his kit. So keep an eye out for tank Ekko on the Rift in pro play, and let us know how you think his changes could shift things in the future.

Picking a brawling tank jungler isn't unexpected of China's LoL Pro League. Their famously frenetic metagame, dominated by brawling, sprawling teamfights across most of the map, encourages champions that can match that aggression with good mobility and lockdown effects. But nobody quite expected scrawny Zaun scrapper Ekko to be among the most popular and successful of such champions across pretty much every team in the LPL circuit.

At first glance, Ekko looks like a melee mid lane assassin not unlike Kassadin. The combination of his passive Z-Drive Resonance and Phase Drive (E) suggested a champion oriented around building Sheen, then Lich Bane. The Spellblade procs on those items complemented the rest of the bonus damage his kit applied to his autoattacks, making for a champion that was supposed to get in, hit hard, and get out quick with Chronobreak (R).

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Maybe in a different timeline, he's still stuck in that mid lane role. In this one? Not so much. Teams like NA LCS’ Team Liquid have discovered that all that damage is a red herring; the real value in his kit isn't in how hard he hits, but how badly his time travel disorients the opposition. To get a good idea of why he's become so popular around the world, we sat down with Liquid's jungler Christian "IWillDominate" Riviera.

Reference Frame

"Ekko is just really annoying to deal with," said IWillDominate. “He can absorb a lot of damage because of [Chronobreak]. He also has a lot of utility. He's got two slows, a gap closer, a stun: that's enough for him to have pressure early game."

Each half of the Z-Drive Resonance passive is critical to Ekko's jungle success. The bonus damage after every three auto attacks makes for effective, if not necessarily quick, work of jungle camps.

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But it's the second half that makes him scary. Ekko's passive steals movement speed: upon a confirmed hit on an enemy champion, it slows them for 30-60% while speeding Ekko up. Not only does that make it easier for him to stick to a target, but he’s able to effectively keep them permanently slowed. While Resonance does take some time before it can slow the same target, tossing out Timewinder (Q) pins them down while his passive refreshes, giving Ekko and his lane partner time to spare to finish them off.

Sometimes, though, Ekko doesn't even need to be on screen to put a player on a deadline.

"He's a really scary jungler," said IWillDominate. "I remember there was a fight against Cloud9 when I threw a [Parallel Convergence (W)] near the Azir, and he Flashed away immediately. People are so scared of getting locked down by Ekko. [Parallel Convergence] is really hard to hit, but it's a really long stun. Throwing it from a bush gives you a lot of advantages, because you can potentially line it up."

Parallel Convergence sets up opponents for a finishing blow, casting a sphere on the ground that deploys after three seconds. Champions caught in it are slowed, and if Ekko joins them (either hopping in with Phase Dive or just straight-up running into it) it stuns enemies for over two seconds. To rub salt in the wound, Parallel Convergence's passive also adds another layer of damage to his auto attacks, ripping out a percent of his victim's health if they're already low, and grants Ekko a shield when he enters the field himself. On top of that, enemy players don't even get to see the field of effect until just before it snaps them up.

In short, as a ganker, Ekko is nearly peerless. The raw threat of just Parallel Convergence alone is enough to force Flashes out of enemy champions -- in itself a successful gank.

Yet that doesn't explain why junglers go out of their way to ignore his damage options.

Relativity

"As a jungler, you usually want to be tanky for your team," said IWillDominate. "You still do a lot of damage if you build him tank, because [Ekko's] base damages are super high."

Because Ekko gets basic attack modifiers from his passive and two spells, encouraging him to stick to a target, he's left vulnerable to a sustained barrage of spells and attacks. "I personally like just building him tank. I've tried building him AP, but I like to get into a fight and just mess with the enemy team, rather than trying to burst someone out."

IWillDominate's preferences are reflected in LPL play, where Ekko is most popular. Cinderhulk has been the go-to build for Weeks 10 and 11 -- when Ekko was played by Snake and Invictus Gaming -- where the bonus scaling health allowed Ekko to weather the storm of retaliatory fire whenever he showed up in a fight. Furthermore, a tank-oriented build interacts better with Chronobreak: Chronobreak's self-heal is based on the damage he's taken within four seconds of the cast. Basically, the more he can take the more he can heal.

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But the best reason to jungle Ekko? Because he's just too easy to kill in the mid lane.

"[Ekko is] just more of an annoying thing to deal with than mid lane, where [the other team] can just focus [their] time around crowd-controlling the Ekko and try to kill him," said IWillDominate. "But if you're a jungler, you get to do whatever you want, essentially. If they see you and try to kill you, you're tankier and harder to kill. But if they let you do damage for free, you're super strong."

In the right hands, Ekko’s opponents will wish that four-second rewind was a 20-minute fast-forward -- and forfeit. Watch Ekko end timelines all over Summoner’s Rift here on Lolesports.

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