Watched the Video of Faker meets Ekko.

13:36 into the video

"Really explosive damage, with W or his ult, plus now he has huge survivability which has always been a weak point for assassins."

"So basically, all the advantages of an assassin, without any of the drawbacks of an assassin."

(Subtitles translations)

I think for me this sums up my frustration with Ekko and I'm gonna assume for many others as well, this is just an honest question I have, why is an assassin allowed to have such an incredibly high level of survivability?

Nevermind the ult cost. Nevermind the massive damage it does. Nevermind the insane AP ratio he has. I can accept that, he is an assassin, assassins are suppose to make quick work of his enemies, I can get behind that no problem.

But why on top of that is he capable of innate healing with the ultimate (On top of an AoE nuke) and a shield which correct me if I'm wrong, but has the highest AP scaling for a shield in the game now? It just seems you took the frustration of playing against a Zed and LeBlanc with their extended level of safety and twisted it into a new type of champion.

Despite that however, I can say I can get behind healing aspect of the ultimate, he goes back in time and thus reverses some of the damage done to him, thematically, it does make sense...but that in combination with an AoE nuke and no mana cost?

So why is it in the midst of discussion about the unhealthy level of safety that Zed and LeBlanc have (granted Zed's got knocked down a peg effectively and LeBlanc is the next target), you release another champion that essentially exemplifies this problem?

I'm not mad, I'm not raging, I've seen both good Ekko's and bad Ekko's. I will digress, I've yet to play as him, and usually when I do start playing a champion, that's how I usually start to understand how to play against them.

But its just an observation I have noticed playing against/for Ekko that he just exemplifies some of the biggest problems as far as player interaction goes...but yet he was released as so anyways.

Honest question, does the champion development team pay attention to the board in their decision making for champion development?

Not trying to be insulting... I'm just trying to get a bearing as to how this champion came about despite all this discussion we've seen on the board about safety in relationship to damage output and it seems Ekko is on the rather overbearing side and falls more in line with the likes of LeBlanc and Zed before his 1 second delay added onto his nerf. I know boards are only considered to be a very high minority of the population of LoL, but nonetheless, the discussion should be taken into consideration.

Hell, I was watching an LCS, I can't remember what interview or what Riot employee interviewer said it, but Ekko came up in the discussion and even the Riot employee hinted rather strongly he thinks Ekko is currently in an over tuned state.

For me though this led to some thinking about champion design, I'm curious to know how some of the process of champion ability selection takes place with those that have intensive survivability. When I thought about it, I realized that there exists champions which had some level of invincibility/massive healing built into their kit, are further complemented by healing from other sources, specifically Kayle and Tryndmere.

For me, I'm just curious, is the pairing of invincibility/survivability with healing something that is seen as a healthy mechanic? I guess at first glance to me, if a champion has some form of intensive survivability, whatever it is, trades it off for little healing in other abilities, but this doesn't necessary seem to be the case for some champion. And funny enough Tryndmere and Kayle have also been deemed as being frustrating to play against at time.

I'm heading to bed now, so I won't be responding until morning, I would appreciate it being civilized in the meantime.