Why has ekko not been nerfed?

Ôrîon·1/25/2020, 6:14:52 AM·60 votes·16,161 views

Ekko as of patch 10.2 has been a top tier jungler, high and low elo. I do not mean he has just been barely edging out the competition, he has been completely blowing them out of the water!

According to Champion.gg Ekko is the second most played jungler at 9% and has a win rate of 52%, the Champions kit and base damage has even allowed him to get away with running dark Harvest as the meta rune, which up until recently was always viewed as an iffy rune because it's sacrifices significant base damage for potential scaling. Due to the nature of Ekkos kit and consistently he can gain dark Harvest Stacks at virtually no risk, turning potential scaling into guaranteed scaling, with no real sacrifice because Ekkos base damage is so high.

However the biggest problem with Ekko is the Champions kit in general, because of Ekkos Ultimate Echo players can have a zero consequence play style. There are numerous champions in the game that are rewards for making the right decision my favorite example of this is Aurelion Sol. Aurelion Sol is fundamentally balanced upon making the right decision for your team, and the champion has a little mechanical difficulty to counteract that. A lot of the counter play is game knowledge and understanding how the Aurelion Sol is going to play out the game.

Because of this when a superior player plays Aurelion Sol it feels very overwhelming, for there is little room for mechanical out play when you're constantly getting out macroed.

However the champion is not without causality. For example if the Aurelion Sol roams bot and it goes bad, there is a serious negative consequence for that, or just roaming In general when the champion leaves Lane they give plates and pressure.

However due to the nature of jungle in low ELO there is very little consequence for having poor positioning, at worst you lose a dragon if you show top at the wrong time.

So for example if an Ekko randomly decides to gank top even though dragon is spawning and bot lane is winning, he will still get a dark Harvest stack or a kill, even if he's ganking a full health Renekton who has been winning lane all game, because there's no possible way for the Renekton to actually kill him or punish him for his mistake. If the Ekko takes too much damage he will just use his ultimate to regen and reposition, if the Renekton hard commits there's a decent chance that he ends up going 1 for 1 or 1 for 0. And yea maybe your team gets dragon, but so what. Its 1 dragon. Unless its a water dragon it will not impact that lane phase significantly.

Even if you counter gank an Ekko it doesn't matter the second he realizes he's out of position he will just ult. And yeah it's like as an Ekko that's frustrating to not get anything but as the entire enemy team it's it's frustrating to not get anything, but the real problem is that any champion in the game other than Ekko would have been dead for making the poor choices, Ekko kit has created a champion that has virtually no consequences for his actions, even the most idiotic jungler will go even because it's impossible to go negative on Ekko.

It's like bad Ekkos don't get punished for being bad they just don't get rewarded for being good.

If I was playing Lee Sin and I got counter ganked after committing to a gank I would be dead. if I was playing Olaf and I Tower dived and they used barrier I would be dead. if I was playing kha'zix and I jumped over the wall into the entire enemy team, dead. if I was playing Rengar and I jumped into the Baron pit with flash down, dead.

But if I was playing Ekko in any of these situations I would be just fine.

So whats the trade off?... Exactly

The base cooldown for Ekko ult is 110 seconds, which means approximately 1 and a half clear in between each ult, The jungle item will give him 10% cooldown reduction so his ult is normal base 99 seconds, because he will have runic Echoes by the time he hits level 6 or 7. So Ekkos ultimate is approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds, Gromp spawns every 1 minute and 40 seconds, so an Ekko that understands his pathing will have his ultimate Almost 100% of the ganks he makes, making it to where there's no compounding interest for screwing up over and over again. On any other Champion if you go into a lane and just int you have to flash or die, which makes it to where going into another Lane and screwing up again means you die. Ekko does not have this problem.

The worst part about all of this is the only part about Ekko that takes skill is the one part that doesn't really matter, that is his W because he is being played as a jungle right now he doesn't actually have to land a W in order to a ensure kill, as a mid lane Ekko it's important to land your w else you'll just get cc'd and the person will combo you and walk away, and you hard lose the trade.

However as of late playing Ekko as a jungler has completely remove the skill expression. All he has to do is W in the general vicinity to get it big ass Shield, and then if the enemy chooses to CC Ekko it doesn't matter because he has a huge Shield and he still has a laner to keep doing damage to punish them for choosing to CC the jungler. In addition to that there's no reason to set up a big Womb ults where you kill the entire enemy team, because presumably you have a mid laner that's doing decent. Hoe is going to do that anyways. Diana Fizz Yasuo

I don't get paid to balance league, however I have thought up some ideas.

  1. His movement speed gets nerfed to make landing W more impactful. His W could even get a buff like maybe attack speed when you stun a Target, Or damage amp.
  2. His Ultimate Health gain gives significantly less health, this way when you force Ekko ult out most of the time he's also going to have to recall, if he had made a gross mistake. this will allow your team to raise Tempo and force objectives, adding slightly more consequence to Ekkos actions.

I feel like Ekko is an example of poor balance and Design he seems very out of line with the game design values specifically impactful decisions, I understand that a lot of this is what Ekko is supposed to be a champion that removes his consequence, however League of Legends is also a competitive game. At the moment it feels as if a Ekko is a champion that just rolls the dice until they win, except unlike every single Champion there's no consequence when they roll 1, they just get to reroll, and when they roll a 20 they win the game. Do you feel the same?

60 Comments

Crescent Dusk1/25/2020, 7:07:12 AM23 votes

The solution is quite simple. Make his shield stun only work on enemy champions. Disabling it from monsters will move him out of the jungle.

Śhunpo1/25/2020, 9:57:27 AM21 votes

Tbh he NEEDS to have his ultimate cooldown buff reverted. Seriously, ~60 seconds at rank 2 for an ultimate as powerful as Ekko's is ridiculous.

PhearBunny1/25/2020, 1:49:04 PM11 votes

Ekko is currently the flashiest, biggest play maker of dark skinned champions. He will remain severely broken for a while.

Trias0001/25/2020, 3:27:00 PM9 votes

Because 200 years of experience, duh

I remember when around season 3-5 Lee Sin was by far the best jungler. He was simply destroying the opposition. It took Riot a few months to finally nerf him. After that... he was still the best jungler.

Riot's "balance team" is either clueless or they do this on purpose.

Wild Geese1/25/2020, 5:39:44 PM8 votes

Ekko has been too strong for well over half a year now and haven't heard a thing. At this point I'm expecting Riot to buff him again next up.

2gudaiya1/25/2020, 9:57:33 AM7 votes

skins meta, also everyone was asking for ekko to get buffed despite him already getting buffed.

Garson2111/25/2020, 10:28:35 AM6 votes

Skins bro.

RebeccaUCuber1/25/2020, 9:23:22 AM6 votes

True dmg selling $$$

Seriously, he dominatore mid/Jung even in High elo and still he Is not touched.

They Just adjust want they WANT to adjust. Balance doesn't exist.

FrankShadoww1/25/2020, 11:39:11 AM4 votes

I agree Ekko needs some nerfs he's too safe of a character. Personally I think an interesting idea is his ult doesn't heal him and rather puts him in the exact state he was 5 seconds ago so if he was 500hp and got healed to 700 his ult would set him back to 500 again or visa versa. That way a counter to his ult would be to poke him but he still can get a free dive if he does it quick enough.

ProphetOfDraven1/25/2020, 5:37:31 PM3 votes

Ekko needs to be gutted out of the jungle, force him to play out his bad laning phase and not get free scaling from the jungle and getting to take numbers advantage fights all around the map to easily get fed.

Ahri Body Pillow1/25/2020, 5:06:21 PM3 votes

Ekko is overpowered for sure, but it's a numbers thing. This ranting about his ultimate is nonsensical. If you're using it purely as an escape tool then you're actually missing out on like half of his possible damage.

Your ideas for "balancing" Ekko's ultimate are laughably bad.

On My Kill List1/26/2020, 2:23:47 AM3 votes

why'd ekko need a nerf? he's only a problem in lower level play. ekko has almost no influence the higher up the skill ladder you go. he's become a low elo pub stomp champ nowadays. he's annoying but he's always been annoying so thats nothing new. until he becomes a problem in pro play ekko won't need any nerfs. there'll always be champs like ekko who'll always have high numbers due to the nature of their kit.(punishing those make mistakes heavily) it'd be a waste of riots resources to nerf him. plus i believe ekko is healthier in the jungle then mid. if only because whenever he's viable mid that means he's oppressive on a base line level right now his mid is OK not 100% viable while his jungle is where most of his power is at. ekko mid has resource/sustain issues and if ganked/camped early becomes an impossible to win lane for the ekko player as he'll just continue feeding again and again;leading to a demoralizing situation where the ekko player feels like killing himself;ekko jungle also has this problem too;whenever an ekko jungle fails at his job it feels like a 4vs5. if anything riot will end up buffing mid ekko if you do get that jungle ekko nerf. the main reason ekko went to the jungle is the previous nerf to his passive(removal of its slowing component) that while needed since it made him oppressive also kinda screwed his mid lane trade patterns. the only things i could see riot buffing on ekko are his q1 his ult (not the cd but the health return) and his passive. not to mention ekko can actually be outplayed. you can dodge ekkos q and his w.

The thigh guy1/25/2020, 9:36:09 PM2 votes

Because riot wants the flashy champions to be played in the lc$. And ekko is the starting point of champions all going to shit and being overloaded out their asses.

Kadexe1/26/2020, 4:50:44 PM2 votes

I think there's someone on the balance team that direly wants to see Ekko played in LCS.

Lippoutou Club1/25/2020, 9:47:11 PM2 votes

Riot don't want balance, stop dreaming. Same heads are top tiers since the last 31th February.

Morgana Yasuo MasterYi Darius et caetera. How can you believe they want balance ?

LoL erased Karma. Two months later they'll rebuff her so they'll buy her skins.

Vanic9981/25/2020, 8:01:27 PM2 votes

The stupid part is, he should have never existed. He has a cricket bat as a weapon, generic boomerang ability #3598, generic 3 hit passive #2947, a slow/stun/shield ability for idk why, and an op ult. The only thing unique about him is his E.

Jack Eron1/25/2020, 3:50:33 PM1 votes

Can people every stop crying about winrates? Always around 50%, you rather win or lose, you have bad team or good. You can be the best with the highest winrate champ and still can lose easily. Stop this nonsense. Ekko shows where will he land, his Q is easy to dodge. Every champions has counters, you can play safe, ward more. Nothing is wrong with ekko.

Infernape1/25/2020, 8:28:50 PM1 votes

Revert the W buff and lower his passive damage bonus on monsters. He was perfectly fine before Riot buffed the shit out of his W.

Mizuno1/27/2020, 9:38:08 PM1 votes

I propose the following nerfs for Ekko :

  • Passive changed from 50-80% ms for 2-3 sec to 50% ms for 2 sec.
  • Q slow changed from 32-60% to 30-50%.
  • W stun duration reduced from 2.25 sec to 2 sec.
  • Ult CD reverted from 110-50 sec to 110-70 sec and AP ratio reduced from 150% to 100%.
TheGreatNinx1/26/2020, 9:23:21 PM1 votes

This is what happens when you get a champion buff on every patch to eventually push him to OP. Like before I would struggle as mid Ekko with the laning phase and now its so easy to win lane and when I get auto-filled Jungle I pick ekko and do better then someone who actually plays the role because he wins so early and his base damage is just too high. I remember when it used to take more skill to play him then what his current is. It's a joke but when then again the balance team has always been a joke.