Ekko, the assasin, who can't reliably assasinate.
I want to talk about Ekko. I know there are much bigger issues right now in league of legends. Mundo, Miss Fortune, Rageblade, Zed, etc. But I love Ekko. I love his Kit. I love his character. and I think his thematic is top 5 in this game. He is amazingly well designed. plenty of counterplay, difficult to use, very high skillcap.
the problem I feel when I play him is he's just not very rewarding even when you do manage to play him right. His power just feels rather skewed in ways. I understand its give him counterplay, but he could use SOME love. His passive does a ton of damage. Ok, getting 3 stacks is tricky, thats fine. but where I see the biggest issues is that his power is so front loaded into the passive, return Q, and ultimate (which are you are assuredly only going to land maybe a few times per game if you are lucky in and even less in an impactful way. The return Q is nearly impossible to land unless you have an ally CC them. So that said, the return damage should be high and probably higher than the initial Q which you throw point blank usually. but it should have somewhat more damage on the front side. no idea how someone though 0.1 on the front side is even worth anything. I understand you build lich bane, but the E feels underwhelming by itself. all in all, you aren't assasinating anyone early because you are flat out weak. hitting 6 does NOT feel like a major power spike other than you now feel safer in lane. trading is hard as ekko even after 6.
I'm ok with the difficulty of his kit, how hard it is to land the stunfield, etc. its all ok, but his damage just feels too frontloaded into the most unreliable parts of his kits. I don't think it all needs to be shifted to the easy parts, but a little bit of it needs to be reliable eitherwise he's just a very very hard to play assassin who isn't rewarding enough to justify it.
The only other idea I had besides flat out buffing the guy is making it to where you can charge the stun field up and its stun duration length is based on how long you charged it. maybe have a minimum time like 1.5 seconds minimum set up with a very short stun at that point scaling up to the full 2.25 seconds stun honestly though, I'd rather just see his damage shifted a tiny bit more to his E and initial Q/passive.
