Can I get tips on Assassin/AP Ekko

XeroKimo·Mar 13, 2016·2 votes·1,818 views

I always find ekko as an odd assassin, super unreliable to get his damage out, and whenever I'm against them they only feel like a threat if the ekko get's fed. Can I get any tips when playing him in mid

6 Comments

PhantomGGMar 13, 20162 votes

Silver 2 former gold 5 Top 3 mid laners Ahri/Ekko/Zed

SO LETS START WITH THE BASICS

MASTERIES Ekko has many possibilities in what he can run but personally I find these routes to be the best

Offensive Lane bully/high kill pressure https://gyazo.com/0df5074f788aaa89dd05cff2c45d820a

Pros -guarentee kill pressure in mid lane

cons -no sustain -squishy in team fights from double edge sword

However frankly I dislike not having sustain in lane and prefer to spam my spells, so I PREFER the next page

Offensive Lane Bully/sustain https://gyazo.com/a63310e38885690dbebe208010a04eca

pros -Great sustain -Still have kill pressure

cons -not as much damage?

However if you prefer to be fast and nimble

CDR assassination ekko https://gyazo.com/e9333ba3214a0cc6fdaa5fb6b469dce3

Ekko is one of the few champions in the game who can effectively abuse cdr and stormraiders surge, with this page you are able to spam your spells and effectively assasinate people and get out instantly, the goal of this mastery page is to fight as a pick makeing assassin while haveing the safety of storm to get you out of tight places, the con is you lack kill pressure in lane now.

FOR RUNES

Honestly ekko can run any standard mage ap rune page however you have two ways you can somewhat customize him

1-replace your penetration reds with attack speed reds so you can easily abuse your autos and passive, however this may be very risky if they have MR runes

2-replace 5 of your MR blues with CDR FLATS so that way you have 5 percent cdr (only do this if you are useing the 45 percent cdr page, this way you you can perfectly and evenly max out your cdr without going over the cap)

For Lane Phase

Realize Ekko despite being mellee is a LANE BULLY and a big one

for level 1- just safe farm and try to poke here and their with your q time winder, if you land it onto the opponent and if they are in melle range, give them a auto so you can proc your passive, you won't always be able to do this in level one, but if you can, that is a good chunk of health gone, don't do anything to crazy, just farm and poke with q, maybe proc your passive, but don't go suicide at level one

For level 2- So unless your opponent has a big minion wave rocking against you, assuming you didn't royally screw up level one, you should be even in health or ahead in health. Ekkos level two power spike is quite honestly disgusting, especially if you have ignite and thunderlords, when the minion wave is in your favor just insta E onto them then insta cast your q, pop your passive, pop your thunder lords and throw down the ignite. Easy kill, however don't just blindly waste your ignite, if you cant kill them yet at level two you will more then likely be able to at level 3

Level 3- purely play style, if you are super good at landing your W Parrell convergence, get the W so you can stun and kill, if you don't think you can land it, just put a second point in your q so you can get more poke down

4- If you did not get your w yet, do so, for levels 4 and 5 focus on bullying with your kill pressure E/Q auto combo, your opponent will never be able to out trade you

So how does lane phase work? Let's recap

When you are not feeling safe or confident you just poke and farm with your q, when you are feeling confident convert your play style into a lane bully who uses E as a inatiating tool to combo into a q then auto to proc your passive

Small tips W-Realize your opponent does not see it untill the last second, if you are trying to land it, plan where they are going to run away and throw it at that spot, another thing you can against melle mid laners is that sometimes people underestimate how fast it can go off and try to do a one v one melle range fight with u, when they do this, punish hard, put the w ontop of them, and you will more then likely land your stun.

Once you are level six

You have one of the best escape tools in the game that can also be used as a burst tool, after you are level six you want to constantly shub your lane, and start looking for roams, place your W under enemy turrets and dive, if you land the stun, someone is gonna die, if it gets to risky, you can simply ult out, Ekko roams are quite honestly disgusting for they are super safe for you basically have a "oh i fucked up button, time to get out"

Small tips with your ult -You can throw down your W when someone is chasing you and ALWAYS at a certain moment your warning signal for your ult will eventually walk ontop of the W, if their is a enemy ontop of it, insta ult and you will proc both the burst, and the stun, guarantee kill.

Once towers are down and the game is about Picks and sieging

Now you have many ways to play Ekko, but you want to know about Assassin AP ekko, so I will only give tips on that

By now you should have a build that looks like this

item 3285 item 3009 item 3100 or a item 3157 or a item 3135 point is at this point you should have two completed items and your boots of choice completed, with those items you now have a lot of burst and nuke potential, a big problem with AP Ekko is that most people assume that the ult will always save them, this is bad thinking

Why?

Because no one can use escape/relocation abilities if they get snared or stunned, that means if morgana lands her Q on you, it doesn't matter if you aren't stunned, you still can't press R for it is a relocation ability, it's how riot designed the game. You have a amazeing ultimate, however you should not go in blindly assuming it will always save you, think about the team comp you are against and play accordingly.

How should you be playing? You should be a pick maker or a safe play maker, if you catch someone wondering away from the team and if it is the squishy adc, nuke them, you just made the fight a four v five, if you see the enemy team bunching together not considering the fact you can stun them, plan out where they are going to be, and flash ontop of them to get a multi man stun. Do not use your E, because this gives them time to react, just go for the flash play.

In team fights? Kite, kite for your life, you are no longer built to be the front liner, when you are AP ekko it is gorrilla war tactics time, you throw down your W, you E Q in hopeing to get a stun or a kill, and if you don't you back out, let your tanks tank, wait for your cooldowns to get back up and then you jump back in, the ideal scenario is to get your ult warning (the second you) to walk ontop of a large group of people, so that way you can use your ult offensively and nuke the enemy team.

Hope this helps ;D I won't talk about build pathing though, that much should be obvious

Ekko

ElikainMar 13, 20162 votes

Ekko works best when he's fighting in a 3 hit window. His Q should his waveclear and an engage tool. Try to predict his Convergence where you'd make a fight out of or predict when you'd get focused to negate damage and possibly stun the attackers, Assassin Ekko is pretty potent with Luden's and Lich Bane as his abilities and passive have quite a punch. You can go toe to toe with a lot of assassins and burst people quite easily.

Using his ult is pretty hard but you can combo it with a Convergence. Convergence has a 3 second cast time and ult has 4 second image delay. Try to predict the exact path where they will meet so you can ult the moment the Convergence falls to burst someone, stun them and combo with other skills for a 100-0 kill. Can be easy to use if the enemy is not looking or you're being chased.

Ekko has a nice damage output and even if you're going full AP, you can afford a Zhonya and GA + ult to be very hard to kill.

The RewrittenMar 13, 20161 votes

You MUST land W to be very effective. You can only do well without your W if you are fed, and you won't get fed without using your W.

My build path. item 2033 item 3165 item 3020 item 3157 item 3285 item 3100 item 3089

Corrupting Potion start because Ekko's early damage is pretty good, he just needs health and mana to apply it and survive trades.
Morellonomicon for the CDR. That's about it. AP CDR itemization is shit, so this is your best bet. Gives 20 more AP compared to Athene's.
Build your Sorcerer's Boots at some point in the early-mid game. Nothing is worse than not being able to catch up to your opponent for the passive proc.
The final 4 items, Zhonya's, Luden's, Lich Bane, and Rabadon's, in this order. I like this order because it is ranked in order of AP scaling. Zhonya's is perfect item for going right into the middle of a team (under your W) and waiting for the 3 second delay. Luden's helps your damage output overall, Lich Bane improves your burst, and Rabadon puts your damage over the top.

My build is uber squishy. Make sure you get item 3363 and never get caught. summoner 12 summoner 4 are my usual summs.

Once you get max build, you will do 1.8k damage (after resistances) to squishies just by landing your ult. I wish I recorded it. One time I ulted in enemy base and accidently one shot a cloaked Shaco who was trying to finish me off right after he respawned (that 140 second death timer though)

MunchCrunchLunchMar 14, 20161 votes

you need to be either really ahead. or full build to assassinate someone. ( by that I mean 100-0 them like zed or talon or nautlius.). and you need to have the right build. that includes lichbane. you want to E and Q immediately. and then auto. you should be able to 100-0 a squishie. thunderlords. passive proc. lichbane proc. empowered auto attak with E.. a lot of damage. he isn't really an assassin. hes like diana. a fighter. that is a situational assassin but diana can do an assassin job a lot easier since she has a lot more burst and its way easier to put her damage out with a point and click ult. and shes tankier.

ekko can use ult to escape or do damage. his ult has very high scaling. a good enemy team will try to cc you in a fight. if you ult in a team fight and your team is actually following up you should win that fight. again an aoe ult with 130% ap scaling high base damage. healing. is really good. you want to land your stun and a Q before u use your ult but things aren't ideal all the time.

also in lane spam W and try to land stun if you don't then it doesn't matter the shield is good enough to go for a quick harass with E and Q. it doesn't last long .

farm with Q if u can't last hit. but a lot of people don't Q after E. they do it before and it does work sometimes but its much harder to dodge a point blank Q. also the slow lets you proc the passive much easier. or even land your stun easier.

obviously if you lane your W you can assassinate any squishy unless your behind.

Sire HippingtonMar 14, 20161 votes

Don't expect to burst like fizz or win extendet all ins like diana, but go for short trades - q+e+aa and use the passive to get away. Even later on, don't expect to just pop squishys like other assasins do if you aren't fed, go for the hit n run pattern. Ekko works best in poke/kite comps, he's really strong while running away from opponents. it's easy to land Qs on opponents that chase you, and you can easily set up the W stun. And most importantly, you can bait them into your ult. With the massive burst of the ult+q, you can actually onesht a squishy, or more than one if they are close together, as ult and bother q procs will proc your passive on aoe.

So mostly, ekko is about useing the passive for a hit n run pattern and needs to play on the edge of the fight, ideally annoying opponents with his gurillia tactivs till the chase them into a W+Ult combo. If faceing a squishy early on, belive in your early game. His lvl 2 trades are insane, his Q has a silly base damage on rank 1 if both parts hit, and his passive+E add quite a lot to it. Also, try to get cdr maxed out as soon as possible, at max cdr your Q has a low enough cd to proc the pssive from afar by landing two Qs in a row, and cdr generally helps alot at hit n run patterns. Also, don't go for ludens if your not snowballing, you want cdr, most likely from lichbane+morello asap and follow it up with Abysal and Zhonyas fro some survivabillity. Zhonyas can be particulary usefull as you can cast W on your self and then go golden, forceing your opponents to retreate from you or end up stunned by the time you get out of the stasis, which then gives enough time to land the ult on them as zhonyas+stun are 4.5sec. If your snowballing really hard, you can go for a agressive built like lichbane-ludens-rabbadons and just oneshot people with E-Q-AA, but if not fed you mostlikely won't oneshot and without cdr or tankiness, that means you won't do much at all. Spellvamp also works suprisingly well on him, as his pasive uses it and counts as single target, even if proced on multipl targets at once.

NovellaeMar 14, 20161 votes

Wow. Walls and walls of info there.

Simply Put: In the current meta, he fits both into "AP champs are bad." and "Assasin AP champs are worse." That is why in most the games you actually go even, you will lose because the champ just isn't as good as the other champ you are fighting. Sorry buddy. Now, if you aren't set on AP assassin mode:

item 3068 item 3065 item 1306 item 3025