Ekko's 9.16 'buffs' are misdirected

I used to main Ekko, I'm sitting at around 560k M7 roughly as it stands but I've stopped playing him because of how he is simply outclassed by other champs. Despite all the effort you take to learn him at the end of the day it is fundamentally his kit that brings the champion down, it is such a shame because I otherwise find him one of the coolest champions to play & fun but that is usually only against bad opponents. That fun however is taken away by so many inconsistencies in his kit, from his apparent lack of being able to do any one thing well, to the way his abilities interact with one another & or compliment each other. For the former I can give examples:

Wave clear - decent but hit & miss, his Q deals negligable damage on the way out, has a high mana cost, takes a noticeable while to reel back which causes you to miss out on a lot more cs than anticipated, even on the way back you'll often find that it leaves minons on a slither of HP, leaving you with two choices, those being to sacrifice a decent chunk of your HP by last hitting with AAs due to him being a melee mid laner with garbage poke & a terrible laning phase resulting in you getting zoned, missing future cs or forcing early recalls causing you to fall behind. That or you take the hit, miss the cs & guess what, fall behind yet again.

Poke - no form of poke & don't tell me his Q or even his passive is a great form of poke because as far as I can tell, the nerfs to his kit ages ago & micronerfs that affected him along the way has made his early game trading both unrewarding & useless. The Q doesn't hit on the way back most times even if you use your E to reposition, often times the slow doesn't even apply or can easily be walked out of. A lot of trades will leave you on less HP from retaliation & also with a lower mana pool resulting in you again, not being able to cs. It is just a cascading pit of attempting to cover up Ekko's shortcomings as a mid laner. I am aware of the W out of vision trick but enough games against Ekko will teach you how telegraphed this supposed trick is, the better your opponents, the more useless Ekko becomes & there is very little you can do to counter that fact. A lot of champions have work arounds to deal with differing types of play or higher skilled play, Ekko's remains the same and that is why I consider him to be a pretty shitty champion.

Damage - He is listed as an assassin but does no damage. I've heard time & time again "don't worry his late game makes up for his early" except it doesn't. Kassadin performs better late, as does Zed, same goes for fizz. When it comes down to it, they do their job, with Ekko you can land everything & still find that you fall short or doing anything meaningful. I then hear the other end of the arguement "oh but he's actually a skirmisher", but when you look at it... He really isn't. The idea of a Skirmisher is to provide consistent in & out damage over the coarse of a fight - a dip in & dip out sort of playstyle, with Ekko there is no middle ground for that sort of play; you either fully commit or do nothing because he doesn't have poke. Sure your ultimate provides some safety or even holds a candle to him being some form of a skirmisher but then you realise late game, your main target has life steal, your "skirmishing damage" has been mitigated in the time it took for you to get in & get out, except this time you are going to die because you do not have your ult. His passive proc stands at static 5 second cooldown in all stages of the game & is not influenced by cdr so there is no way in the state the game is in right now, that a 5 second passive that is a main source of damage is viable or a means or can be used for the excuse that he is a Skirmisher rather than being an Assassin. 9/10 You cannot initiate with his ult & it isn't even guaranteed to land, he has no resets like so many other champions in his archetype & other champions that have qualities of an assassin have Skirmishing traits far exceeding that of Ekko's - Yasuo, Irelia, Akali, Nidalee, Qiyana, Sylas... I for one have just made the switch to Akali & stuck with her past all the nerfs, because when I die or lose a game, I don't feel as though I've been cucked by my champion & can identify mistakes I made than can be avoided in the future; I can use my kit both reactionary & progressively when they are up, for instance I can use my W and not have to wait on anything to take affect in a game so fast paced. When I'm playing Ekko however I can be so ahead yet still lose a 1v1 after landing everything & playing it perfectly. I can only just tell myself that my mistakewas rooted in champ select.

If you're going to buff Ekko no change to numbers is going to deal the job, buffing his E will leave him either the same or broken, there will be no middle ground because it is a blink, the same goes for his R, too much scaling damage might not leave it broken but I think will make offensive plays with it more rewarding, however cdr buffs will simply make him an unfun champ to play against. Buffing his passive in terms of cdr I think would be an example of a healthy buff. Buffing his Q damage would be the worst thing to do both regarding cdr & damage. When it boils down to it though, buffing him in any which way is a dangerous gamble, because doing so pushes him over the edge too easily & can encourage cancerous builds such as Tank Ekko, which started this shit in the first place. As much as I hate to say it, there just needs to be fundamental changes to the abilities themselves, mainly his Q. That is just my input though because I want to play him again, I'm just tired of being frustrated everytime I do & think things might be different for whatever reason. Still going to leave him in the dirt past the 9.16 buffs until a meaningful change is made aside from powerhouse buffs...