So I finally understand the strategy behind champion pricing...

First of all, let me start by telling all of you at Riot to fuck yourselves. Seriously, fuck you for releasing Ekko in his current state. Never before in my history of playing this game, dating back to Season 2, have I ever felt like a game was completely unwinnable because a single champion went unbanned. Never, until now. This is the first time I have ever felt this was truly a pay to win game. Teambuilder is now completely out of the question as there are no bans.

Seriously, why is it ok for a single champion to have both the ability to nuke anyone (and in theory, everyone at once) on your team AND the most absurd collection of safety nets ever devised in a single kit? Jesus as frustrating as it is to play against a Leblanc, Zed, or Fizz, at least they can't UNDO what damage you DO manage to land on them! You can't fight him with sustained damage because his burst is faster, you can't kill him with burst champions unless you completely catch him off guard, since he can just heal back from your combo, or even just avoid it altogether with his invulnerability, and destroy you with his ridiculously low cooldowns, not to mention he can shield himself for more than you are ever likely to burst. And good luck ever landing a skillshot on him. Even if you somehow did manage to land abilities on a guy with a dash-blink combo, he'd just be able to reset his hp and completely invalidate the skill it takes to land those abilities in the first place. Seriously, this guy has got to be the most no-brain champion in the entire game. You have to be brain dead to miss his aoe (its huge), you literally can't miss his Q unless you shoot it in entirely the wrong direction as the hitbox is ENORMOUS, his blink attack is targeted, and his ultimate is an instant aoe. And if all of that wasn't enough, HE CAN JUST RIGHT CLICK YOU TO DEATH. He gets TWO on-hit passives, one dealing a buttload of magic damage on every third hit (also procced by Q on both hits), and the other being essentially an instant execute once you hit 30% hp. One auto, that's it. Even if he built zero damage, as long as he is alive he is a threat to anyone trying to stick out a long teamfight. I have seen this guy RUSH A NEGATRON CLOAK and still roam and destroy my team singlehandedly, as well as crushing trades with the midlaner. As in he had Negatron and Flask in his inventory, and that was it.

In all seriousness, I have not found a single midlaner who can reliably deal with this guy. Not a single one, and I've been at it all day. You have literally created the bane of solo queue, a character that simultaneously must be focused and cannot be focused, and cannot be effectively played against outside of the coordinated environment found at the competitive level. The only single way for this champion to lose is literally for him to be played badly. Really badly. And even still it's possible for the rest of his team to carry him, whereas he only has to be smarter than a potato to carry all of them. He has to lose the game for himself, it's not on anything you can do to him. This character has the least fun to play against kit perhaps in the history of the game, and that's really saying something when things like Singed, Nidalee and Teemo exist.

I just want to know who thought this was ok, and why. This game won't even be playable for me for weeks, assuming anyone at your company has the sense to balance his kit in the next patch (conveniently after his IP price drops, as per all of the previous new releases). This is the closest I've been to quitting this game, and that includes when I was maining ADC at the start of the Cinderhulk Terror, when all of my irl friends had already quit the game completely.