To be blunt, why would an assassin want to lock down a target instead of outright kill them? As such his whole skirmishing assassin theme with utility will flat out never work as intended. At the least it won't be the stronger option.
they are doing a mini-rework on him with the assassin update. hopefully they'll fix his problem. probably not though.
Funny how a champ that's only been out for a little over a year already needs a rework. if they don't fix him this time, they just need to Yorick him. (dumpster the champ because of toxic game play and come back to fully rework him 5 years later)
This is what happens when Riot listens to the lower elos opinions on assassins. They're always complaining about the assassin killing them with "no counterplay," because someone jumps on them and throws their burst in their face, they die, and whine about it. They don't have the capacity to realize an assassins counterplay isn't MEANT to be about after they get on top of you, it's about not letting them. Assassins counterplay is pretty much 80% positioning and 20% playmaking.
Thus, ekko was born, a champion that wasn't feast or famine because he had utility, and almost a complete lack of an ability to ACTUALLY assassinate a target. Thus, people started playing him as a tank/bruiser because an assassins JOB is to kill someone, if they can't do that effectively, then there is no point in playing them as an assassin.
To chalk it up, the boards whine about assassins being able to kill them, they complain about their feast or famine nature, Riot tries to listen, makes ekko, and SURPRISE SURPRISE, he's not played as an assassin.
am pretty sure they realize that. and why they listed him as a skirmisher last time they had a list of champion subclasses.
the thing is. hes the only ap skirmisher. means. your sustained damage. is way less. unless your enemy goes below 30% hp. and probably still bad then too. and also. since ad champs benefit from aa damage. they can build more tanky. while still building the item their abilities scale with. and that is ad.
now. if you build him the way riot intends. hes not a skirmisher. hes a shitty assassin. you have to go bruiser or tank. to make him a skirmishers. people are playing him the right way going tank. you can't really blame them.
basically. make ekko an ad champion with kit changes obviously so hes an actual skirmisher. that will make his tank builds. a lot weaker. because all champs have scaling armor. and he won't do enough damage unless he builds ap. which is why all you see is tank fizz tank akali etc because all champs have low mr.
or. make ekko an assassin. that has little or no cc. while getting that leblanc zed single target burst. burst if you know what i mean.
Now, Ekko's catch is the fact that he needs to stick with a champ in order to kill, unlike all other assassins who just combo and walk away explosion behind them style.
Making him squishier I think, but keeping his CC allows him to kinda live up to his code, so to speak, making your skills count. It'll still make him viable as a decent assassin (although if the damage on his ult goes it needs to go somewhere else, maybe in the passive or the E).
I like AP Ekko, even though it may not be the best at the moment. Hell he's not even the best assassin, he's probably the worst. But that's really how I prefer him. I hope they let him keep that image.
remove slows and make him whiter.
