If any champion has ever deserved a knee-jerk, it is Ekko.

Goomsayer·6/6/2015, 1:32:08 AM·43 votes·4,497 views

It really doesn't take long at all to any competent league player to see how Ekko's kit has all the benefits but none of the drawbacks.

Let's take a look at his passive... 40% slow, 40% ms buff for 2 seconds, 30ish base damage and a 70% ap ratio at level one. "But faps, Ekko has to land 3 attacks/abilities to proc it." That's true, but unfortunately, he has a boomerang ability for double procage. At level one. Completely invalidating this even being a factor. God forbid he gets past level one and it scales up to the ridiculous 80% slow/ms buff. This passive all by itself completely invalidates you if you do not have ranged abilities or some mobility available. Tryndamere without your spin? Sorry, your ults gone by the time this slow is over. Darius ever, guess you can't play him anymore. Survive a Jax jumpstun? Completely useless. This isn't even the worst part, trust.

Let's look at his q... I honestly would not have any problem with Ekko's Q at all if his passive didn't exist (except the base damage is a little high for the scaling it has). Ekko's q is pretty balanced ability, though impossible to dodge at low range. It does a little over 300 base damage with 80% ap scaling with a slow attached. Pretty generic, but hey, it's not that bad. His passive just makes it so damn frustrating just because of the sheer kiting/chasing/burst it gives. Fix the passive, fix the q :).

Let's look at his w... An aoe slow/stun field with a 3 second delay. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this ability is the lack of visibility.
Taken straight from the wiki "Enemies do not gain vision of the target area until the last 0.5 seconds." .5 seconds is hella short of a time frame. If Ekko is ganking another lane, he can dashblink directly up to someone and almost garuntee a stun, if not, a flash or some other escape. If he plans to engage, he can use his w, wait 2 seconds, then do the exact same thing. The visibility of the ability could really use some tweaking. Shaco's cloud can be seen from the fog of war, why cant Ekko's little hologram thing be the same way? Why can't the stun scale in duration? Why does Ekko get a third slow? Why does this non-ultimate, aoe cc also get an absolutely massive shield attached to it?

Oh wait, that's why it does so much, because it has a passive too. An execution that scales and has base damage. :/

Let's look at his e... Dash+additional blink if needed. Applies spell effects and on-hit effects. Non-existent cool down at later ranks. More mobility creep in the league of mobility. Hopefully dashblink speaks for itself cuz I wanna wrap this up.

And his ultimate... A gapcloser that renders Ekko invulnerable, untargetable, does arguably the most damage of any ability in the game that doesn't have a channel linked to it thanks to its 130% ap scaling and considerable base damage, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand heals. Way to once again stuff an ability with everything you can think of that works in its scenario. I recall some rioter in the patch notes making a remark justifying the olafing of veigar saying something along the lines of: "We don't like it when a character makes a player say 'oh, I'm dead' instantly with no counter play." Well now it's aoe and a heal on top of that. Oh and no mana cost, for no reason at all. Let's make more characters that use mana as a resource, except don't actually use it. The Fog of War once again hides his ultimate (which is understandable in one way, since showing the path you took to escape could be fatal), standing near him as an immobile melee for too long enables him to use it to blink 0 distance and hit you, and he has the means of keeping you where he wants when you're an immobile melee due to his ridiculous passive. The zoning potential on this ultimate is massive, and even then the zone isn't easy to follow, making enemies have to consider the zone larger than it is in case they lost track of how fast he was moving or whether he dashed.

An assassin, of the most basic standards, blows his or her cooldowns to get in and kill someone, and leaves. Bad play leads to their certain death, caught without abilities to use, and good plays may get them another kill on top of their main target. They tend to be good at picking people off, or zoning/killing "important" figures in teamfights with the help of his or her initiator. Ekko does all this and more; He has point and click dashing for the all-ins, decent burst, cc, shields if he played his cards right, hard cc of ridiculous proportions (meaning he can initiate in non-5v5 fights all by himself), can peel for himself, can support his allies by slowing anyone chasing them, stunning anyone chasing them, can take a hit, and can reliably escape on top of all that.

As a character, his early damage is obnoxious. He can easily jump in on a Mordekaiser and fight him outright at low levels, face tanking damage and making Mordekaiser unable to walk away due to the ridiculous slow. The only characters that can face him are the already-problematic ones like Leblanc and characters that can out-stat him. Many say that all you need is to do more burst than he can, but that's a silly proposal in and of itself and is not counterplay, it's just out-statting a character. Mid and late game, most of his damage is front-loaded onto point-and-click, much like how TF puts all of his damage onto this yellow-carded right click to do nearly his entire burst. It's not easy to dodge, I'll tell ya that much. While Ekko's click-to-kill combo isn't strong, it's still all loaded onto a click. Mid and late game, burst characters also get up to snuff and are able to combo people to death from a CC move. Ekko invalidates them by making it so that if they fail to kill him instantly enough, he R's away, and his R most likely has a lower cooldown than yours mid-to-late game.

I make this post in hopes that some people (including you, Ekko spammers) will come to realize just how frustrating Ekko is to play against. No character should have this much in one kit. No character should have that ultimate. I don't care how high the skillcap is, but this champion, and champions like Ekko, are making this game increasingly difficult to want to play for fun.

I have no idea how one can go about reworking this. The easiest fix would be just deleting him, but I don't think Riot likes to admit they make mistakes, so that's not gonna happen.

tl;dr Ekko has so much that makes him unfun to play against and has all the benefits with no drawbacks. Just in general needs some serious attention.

94 Comments

Dark Nephthys6/6/2015, 2:50:53 AM15 votes

You got to like how Ekko has more slows then the majority of champions from the Frejlord. The only 2 champions that can even match those amount of slows are Anivia Ashe . Also that Ekko has so much potential CC (if we count his insane amount of slows) that he has more to offer then most supports. Sure, his stun isn't completely reliable but to even have it, plus insane AOE damage on top of the strongest non-max hp% based Shield in the game?

Can't forget the incredibly low to almost non-existent mana costs. Don't you miss when Riot made champions that has their strong damage spells gated by high mana cost? At least then they wouldn't be able to spam so freely.

The Whamboozler6/6/2015, 4:10:23 AM10 votes

If they're going to keep the heal on his ult they need to remove the damage. Yes, all of it. Have it reset his cooldowns or something so he can "restart" the fight or something, but it nukes almost as hard as Viegar's or Syndra's do, heals him more than Soraka's Wish and does it in an AoE. Tricky to land or not that is complete bull. It's already a free, nearly foolproof escape it doesn't need to ALSO be a huge nuke and ALSO the best heal in the game. The jerk already has a huge shield, he doesn't need MORE durability!

ProfDrDeath6/6/2015, 7:26:43 AM10 votes

My opinion for Ekko:

  • Passive: Either slow or speedboost. Not both.
  • W: Possibly, increase the time where the enemy can see the field's outline by .5 seconds.
  • Ult: Mana cost. And a high one at that, too (100/150/200 mana)
Podji6/6/2015, 5:56:07 AM9 votes

Here is everything Ekko can do.

Two dashes (one of which deals damage), a self-heal, a self-shield, an AoE slow, an AoE slow attached to a skillshot projectile, a movespeed steal passive (which also counts as a slow, and deals damage), a teleport ability, an AoE long duration stun, an AA execution passive, a moderately painful boomerang projectile, and an AoE high-burst damage ability.

So to add it all up:

Total CCs: 4 (1 stun, 3 slows, 3 AoEs)

Total damaging abilities: 5 (1 extremely damaging, 2 AoEs - including the extremely damaging one)

Total durability and sustain abilities: 3 (1** invulnerability**, 1 shield, 1 heal)

Total mobility abilities: 4 (1 teleport, 2 dashes, 1 +movespeed)

Yeah, that sounds TOTALLY fair. Not overloaded AT ALL. Clearly the epitome of a balanced champion.

(seriously though nerf him.)

The Whamboozler6/6/2015, 3:08:01 AM8 votes

My suggestion to fix him is simple. Remove the heal on his ult. Make his ult cost him mana, and lower the AP ratio of his shield. BOOM. Now he has a lot more risk, like an assassin should. It's utterly moronic that his ult gives him a huge heal, repositions him out of bad spots AND nukes as hard as someone like Veigar or Syndra. And in an AoE!

But assassins are meant to do damage, so keep his ult's bananas damage, just remove the heal. TADA. Now Ekko has to make the hard call of staying in a fight long enough to pop his ult for that nuke and hoping it kills you... or he has to pop away from the fight at low health and flee, losing the damage it would have dealt and not healing enough to jump right back in the fight afterwards. He can still have a ton of dashes and enough CC to make a support jealous... just take away his safety net and make him a REAL high skill champ. Cause right now, he's not.

Only Play Darius6/7/2015, 4:55:47 AM4 votes

The main problem I have with ekko is his ridiculous amount of slows, funny how Riot says they are trying to move away from permaslows, but whenever I am fighting I am pretty much moving with 100ms the entire time.

It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't also have dashes AND a mega movespeed steroid.

air tiger6/6/2015, 4:29:41 AM3 votes

My question is.. why are the nerfs for 5MS and a pitiful damage reduction on his dash/blink? I think it's beyond obvious that those nerfs are going to be ineffectual.

alfavhunter6/6/2015, 6:55:55 PM2 votes

How I would fix ekko Passive now requires 4 stacks W Enemy sight of ability increased by .5 seconds (1 second warning) but now applies one stack of his passive when it hits with the stun E Remove the next AA blink on E

Increase E range to 250% it's current range

Blocked by next enemy hit (stops his dash) the attack part of it now strikes the unit he collided with Cd doubled CD is reduced by 50% when you strike an enemy (similar to Nid mechanics)

R now costs 150/125/100 mana

bad manner kid6/6/2015, 7:31:00 AM2 votes

LeeSin I don't understand what you mean by overloaded abilities? This champion seems fun with a high skill ceiling.

straight4free6/6/2015, 4:13:29 AM2 votes

I don't think he's too bad. I think the thing you got right is that his stun really needs to scale with level. It's really silly feeling like I could take a nap at level 3 if he can land a stun.

Also his passive needs to be looked at. It needs to be made more obvious that you even have stacks, and I think the maximum number of stacks also has to be increased. 4-5 hits to proc it and I think he's perfectly fine. A really annoying champion, but not in need of hotfix nerfs.

luna is my mommy6/6/2015, 5:16:35 PM1 votes

please dont delete ekko. Kalista, leblanc maybe but this is my first godsend in many days

(this was a joke please dont downvote) but yeah they all need tweaking a.k.a maybe a nerf gameplay slight change. maybe even jinx needs a change

Killer of Poros6/6/2015, 6:58:06 AM1 votes

I hate all that he has too, but after playing him for a while I think it's difficult on both ends. Ekko is overloaded with all that he can do but relies heavily on the enemy screwing up. It puts a lot of pressure on his enemy not to step a single toe out of line, but Ekko himself has to wait for his opponents to make a mistake to create an opportune timing. Either way it isn't really that fun to play as him or against him. It might just be me being a silver baddy but just a small thought.

SoMNia6/6/2015, 11:02:07 PM1 votes

He's fine. They should nerf Lich Bane. They should have done that a long time ago. Otherwise, his damage output is greatly exaggerated, and he is NOT that tough to play against. You just have to not walk right into his plays. He puts himself at considerable risk not once but multiple times before he brings a target down, and all of his piles of CC and mobility exist only to help him survive that process. He is extremely vulnerable to hard CC, because he needs to build full AP to be competent, which makes him very squishy. Nidalee is a bigger and more consistent threat, but people aren't losing it over her because she's been around forever.