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Why is Ekko's only real source of damage his passive? (Semi-Rant)

Laçez·1/14/2019, 2:47:30 AM·1 votes·1,741 views

Yo, Ekko main here , wanna have a lil discussion...

I've got a fair amount of points on Ekko, love his character & I do truly like playing as him, I would explore other champions but I have 'constrainsts'. Now before I get started I'm well aware that Ekko is in a decent spot & making changes to his kit could easily break him, to add, I'm aware that a lot of people are split on their opinions on him, either finding him fun to play againsts/balanced, where others just find him annoying.

From the title i guess it isn't hard to already know what I'm gonna be talking about & I wanna highlight areas where he falls short as a result.

Ekkos laning in my experience is a hit or miss, (not endorsed by TikTok I swear). It is usually againsts your favour due to the mid lane being full of ranged mages. In melee matchups things tend to be better if your not up against a counter, e.g Kassadin. He lacks poke as a result of everything being centred around his passive & he doesn't have early damage. Engaging on a target is fairly telegraphed since his only gap closer is his E & nothing else, this is usually the way you trade but since he's melee, in ranged matchups you tend to lose out due to creeps switching aggro, his low base damage not being worth trading for & high mana costs which leave you with little pressure for future trades. The way his trades are set up cause him to be very susceptible to CC, of which he has no form of disengage aside from his R upon hitting 6. Just for comparison I'll highlight other melee midlane assassins, so you can see what I mean. Zed: Has W & Q for poke in lane along with his E for slows providing better chances of hitting those Qs. Can use W as a gap closer & energy instead of mana. Good base damage given the poke he has. Akali: Q decent poke, makes up for the lack of damage & the melee midlane dilemma with sustain, W as broken as it is, provides her with pressure & minimises her damage taken in lane while also being used as a pseudo-engage in laning phase for trading. Passive - no cd & hybrid scaling, has two iterations of increased Ms for her & bonus + damage range on her next AA. E simple engage & disengage tool that synergises well with her passive (for the purposes of leaving the ring) & her W. Talon: Can one shot you at level 2... Where he lacks in mobility he makes up for in damage, making a trade well worth it. I'll just list the rest just for reference Yasuo Kassadin Katarina Diana Fizz

From the listed melee asassins aside from maybe Talon, Diana & Fizz they have both good engage, disengage & poke. In their cases you aren't required to engage everytime to deal damage or for Akali her shroud is what makes her trading worth it. Even so their engaging is quite versatile & not necessarily telegraphed. For the ones that do engage head on, Talon, Diana & Fizz, their damage is what gives reason for their trades & again on top of that Diana has a shield & Fizz has his E which literally dodges everything in the game (if they opt out using it for the damage). Ekko's trades play out as I've mentioned earlier, sub-par damage, telegraphged, no follow up due to his 5 second cd on his passive or decent form of disengage (of which used to be his slow). Even if you have high cdr your standalone spells have nothing going for them. The Q doesn't deal damage & even where it does the most damage (winding back to him), it rarely hits. The Same goes for the E but I'm okay with that. In lane you can hear the W being cast so you know he's going to engage & in a 1v1 scenario you either use it early for the shield or later as a stun which most people can discern where it'll land. His R can't be used as an engage tool, unless you've just traded & you're looking to go back in within 4 seconds. Why is that a bad Idea? You're passive is still on cd, you lose any form of disengage & you lose your heal. In Earlier stages of the game where scaling is low it isn't worth using because of the lack of follow up if your target isn't already low. I've found it very frustrating being ahead like 6 - 0 but being limited because my passive is my only real source of damage, a lot of the time you can get an opposing laner low, while being fed but have them just last hit stuck to their tower because of the instant pressure you lose having all your damage emphised on your passive, making Ekko unreliable at closing out kills. So you are faced with three choices:

  1. Use your Q to push in the wave and force them to not recall, losing quite a lot of mana as a result & leaving you open to ganks.
  2. Let them back, push in & roam, if roaming options are available.
  3. You dive them & you usually don't do that unless your ult is up.

I have performed really well as Ekko but I feel it is mainly due to dumb mistakes on the enemy team allowing that time & time again, I've seen with success in him in pro play, which is why I think Riot don't really want to experiment with him (along with higher priority pending updates). Listen I don't want Ekko to be broken, I just want more of a reason to feel satisfied while playing him, as in you do well, you feel rewarded. There are tanks that can achieve this without even doing anything.

I do wanna have a bit of a debate in the comments & further my reasoning on him based on what you all might have to say...

6 Comments

Infernape1/14/2019, 2:55:01 AM2 votes

Because most of Ekko's damage comes from items like Lich. He's balanced around being heavily Sheen dependant. Not to mention all of his damage outside his E, passive and maybe his Q is incredibly unreliable.

Ekko should never have been an assassin in my opinion. He functions and plays more like a skirmisher like Yasuo or Fiora. Instead of him bursting people out of existence like Talon, Zed or LeBlanc, he chunks you (his passive), whittles you down (his W passive and repeated lich procs/E), then kills you.

Iźuku Midoriya1/14/2019, 5:08:29 AM1 votes

I mean part of the reason for his Q is that you could just Q the entire wave and it would feel horrible to lane against

LeftyRaydy1/15/2019, 7:30:15 PM1 votes

{quoted}

Yo, Ekko main here , wanna have a lil discussion...

I've got a fair amount of points on Ekko, love his character & I do truly like playing as him, I would explore other champions but I have 'constrainsts'. Now before I get started I'm well aware that Ekko is in a decent spot & making changes to his kit could easily break him, to add, I'm aware that a lot of people are split on their opinions on him, either finding him fun to play againsts/balanced, where others just find him annoying.

From the title i guess it isn't hard to already know what I'm gonna be talking about & I wanna highlight areas where he falls short as a result.

Ekkos laning in my experience is a hit or miss, (not endorsed by TikTok I swear). It is usually againsts your favour due to the mid lane being full of ranged mages. In melee matchups things tend to be better if your not up against a counter, e.g Kassadin. He lacks poke as a result of everything being centred around his passive & he doesn't have early damage. Engaging on a target is fairly telegraphed since his only gap closer is his E & nothing else, this is usually the way you trade but since he's melee, in ranged matchups you tend to lose out due to creeps switching aggro, his low base damage not being worth trading for & high mana costs which leave you with little pressure for future trades. The way his trades are set up cause him to be very susceptible to CC, of which he has no form of disengage aside from his R upon hitting 6. Just for comparison I'll highlight other melee midlane assassins, so you can see what I mean. Zed: Has W & Q for poke in lane along with his E for slows providing better chances of hitting those Qs. Can use W as a gap closer & energy instead of mana. Good base damage given the poke he has. Akali: Q decent poke, makes up for the lack of damage & the melee midlane dilemma with sustain, W as broken as it is, provides her with pressure & minimises her damage taken in lane while also being used as a pseudo-engage in laning phase for trading. Passive - no cd & hybrid scaling, has two iterations of increased Ms for her & bonus + damage range on her next AA. E simple engage & disengage tool that synergises well with her passive (for the purposes of leaving the ring) & her W. Talon: Can one shot you at level 2... Where he lacks in mobility he makes up for in damage, making a trade well worth it. I'll just list the rest just for reference Yasuo Kassadin Katarina Diana Fizz

From the listed melee asassins aside from maybe Talon, Diana & Fizz they have both good engage, disengage & poke. In their cases you aren't required to engage everytime to deal damage or for Akali her shroud is what makes her trading worth it. Even so their engaging is quite versatile & not necessarily telegraphed. For the ones that do engage head on, Talon, Diana & Fizz, their damage is what gives reason for their trades & again on top of that Diana has a shield & Fizz has his E which literally dodges everything in the game (if they opt out using it for the damage). Ekko's trades play out as I've mentioned earlier, sub-par damage, telegraphged, no follow up due to his 5 second cd on his passive or decent form of disengage (of which used to be his slow). Even if you have high cdr your standalone spells have nothing going for them. The Q doesn't deal damage & even where it does the most damage (winding back to him), it rarely hits. The Same goes for the E but I'm okay with that. In lane you can hear the W being cast so you know he's going to engage & in a 1v1 scenario you either use it early for the shield or later as a stun which most people can discern where it'll land. His R can't be used as an engage tool, unless you've just traded & you're looking to go back in within 4 seconds. Why is that a bad Idea? You're passive is still on cd, you lose any form of disengage & you lose your heal. In Earlier stages of the game where scaling is low it isn't worth using because of the lack of follow up if your target isn't already low. I've found it very frustrating being ahead like 6 - 0 but being limited because my passive is my only real source of damage, a lot of the time you can get an opposing laner low, while being fed but have them just last hit stuck to their tower because of the instant pressure you lose having all your damage emphised on your passive, making Ekko unreliable at closing out kills. So you are faced with three choices:

  1. Use your Q to push in the wave and force them to not recall, losing quite a lot of mana as a result & leaving you open to ganks.
  2. Let them back, push in & roam, if roaming options are available.
  3. You dive them & you usually don't do that unless your ult is up.

I have performed really well as Ekko but I feel it is mainly due to dumb mistakes on the enemy team allowing that time & time again, I've seen with success in him in pro play, which is why I think Riot don't really want to experiment with him (along with higher priority pending updates). Listen I don't want Ekko to be broken, I just want more of a reason to feel satisfied while playing him, as in you do well, you feel rewarded. There are tanks that can achieve this without even doing anything.

I do wanna have a bit of a debate in the comments & further my reasoning on him based on what you all might have to say...

plat 1 Ekko main here and let me tell you His passive is the one thing I love about him. His Q bothers me for offense as its distance is so heavily affected by hitting just 1 champion that even if the enemy team was standing on top of one another you might not hit all of them with it. Anyway Ekko's Fighting style is something I fell in love with a long time ago. With his passive you have the ability to go in and either A kill an Enemy or B do a good chunk of damage and then retreat (tactically of course) and wait for CD and reset on his passive to go in again. He is not someone who you can just stand there attack you have to use that movement speed from the passive and set up for your next move, and that is what makes Ekko so great if you know how to play him. Always setting up for that next move to give you or your team the best advantage to win.