"Experienced" Ekko player thoughts
I got my Ekko champion mastery to rank 4, and while I know that's not necessarily hard to do, it does require playing a lot of games with the champ so I just thought I'd share my thoughts and hope that my experience with him validates them. I'll jump right into my thoughts on him.
I think the overarching theme to remember when judging Ekko is that he is meant to be an assassin. That is his role on the team. His identity is that of a character who can get out of sticky situations with a redo button. If you have a problem with a champion having a redo button existing in the first place then that would be an entirely different thread. That is what Ekko is meant to do, if you don't like it, I'm sure Teemo wouldn't mind you asking for another champ to be deleted besides him for a change. Let's keep all this in mind when reviewing the following:
Passive: Possibly extend the repeated proc immunity to 4 seconds. His passive is super easy to proc and currently it's almost impossible for Ekko to not keep up with someone once he procs his passive on them once. At least give the poor guys a little bit more opportunity to run. However the move speed Ekko gains atm is a bit extreme. This really does need to be lowered at least a moderate amount. Some people might say the damage numbers are too high, but considering he is a melee champ and there is a bit of time (and danger) investment into proccing his passive I think the numbers are actually justified.
Q: Fine in my opinion. The fast traveling part of it is about 75% of the total range and actually not that far. Most of the move's damage is on the return shot and the opponent definitely has quite a bit of time to react to that so I think this is a great skill as far as outplaying/counterplaying options go.
W: Unfortunately the fact that this move has a 3 second windup almost forces it to have absurd range. What this usually ends up translating to is that it loses a huge amount of utility while the enemy has vision of you and can see it get casted, but has a dramatic power spike when cast from the fog of war. For a jungle Ekko, the shield it grants is useless on anything except baron and dragon since the stun duration is longer than the shield duration. Frankly I don't even think it makes sense for this move to grant a shield. I mean come on, it's a time distortion field. The slow and stun are fine given its insane range and the shield should actually be moved to his E imo. Personally though, I think this skill needs a minor rework. I think it would be much more interesting to have the cast location be visible immediately and for a small slow to start applying after 1 second, which works its way up to the final value over the course of 3 seconds (similar to Wither). This allows for opponents to counterplay much more when Ekko casts from the fog of war, while also giving Ekko utility while in vision of enemies since the slow can start applying after 1s. I think something like 8/11/14/17/20% to 24/33/42/51/60% min and max slow values would be solid.
E: Quite surprised this isn't the move to get the shield in all honesty. It makes much more sense for him to receive the shield on a move that puts him right in an enemy's face. I like the fact that the base damage and scaling on this move are low. This move should primarily be used for mobility. I think it would make sense for the shield portion of W to be moved to the teleporting strike of E. This way, Ekko can't take advantage of it by just dashing to run away from a gank or something and instead is given the shield only when he engages an enemy. The move's high initial cooldown also helps keep it from being abused early game in trades so that's good as well.
R: The biggest beef people have with Ekko, and rightfully so. Yeah this moves damage scaling is just flat out absurd. I don't care that it takes 4 seconds of foresight and clever positioning to land, which in all honesty just ends up being you and another character dueling for 4 seconds and then you using this to teleport nowhere but doing 500 dmg at lv 9. This move is crazy. To be honest, which I'm sure some people would disagree with, I would like to see the damage on this move be completely eliminated. This skill is supposed to be a get out of jail free card. Not a "your jungler is coming to gank me so I'll run to my tower for a little bit and then press R for a double kill" card.
I think a very interesting option for R would be to give Ekko an "Experience" benefit. It makes sense that Ekko should have learned from his mistakes after Chronobreaking. Since we are removing the damage altogether, to keep the skill still worthy of being his ult, give him an "Experienced" buff for 10s after using Chronobreak that perhaps mitigates incoming damage by 10% and/or increases dmg dealt by a similar amount. This would open some very exciting dueling options against a tanky top like Renekton for example. Ekko gets his ass beat by the giant crocodile in the first wave of trades, Chronobreaks, heals a bit of HP, learns from his mistakes, then dives back in for round 2 with his new buffs in hopes of defeating him this time around. Lastly, with the above changes, I think the cooldown should be lowered to 70s at all ranks, from 110/90/70. Sounds a bit much, but keep in mind this it's just a weaker Soraka ult with some minor dueling buffs. 110s would be way too much if it got changed to something like that.
Let me know what you guys think.
