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An Ekko main's take on balancing Ekko

Heliabot·8/20/2016, 6:37:24 PM·7 votes·1,277 views

Hey Everyone,

I've mained Ekko ever since he came to the rift. He just sticks to my skin in terms of gameplay, personality, looks. He's just the perfect champion for me. I've always played him in mid lane, played a few games top when it was broken but I didn't like it, and played a few games jungle.

I'm a diamond 5 player on EUW. My English ain't perfect so forgive me.

**A quick recap on ekko : **

Ekko's been nerfed several times since release, as of late he's been okay as a mid laner with pretty nice waveclear, a bit of escape, pretty weak in 1v1 and trading but scales pretty good into mid game altho he falls off later compared to mages. He's definitely on the weaker side of assassins and has bad matchups against most of them. He's pretty good at "outplaying" bad players who stand on top of his ult.

The problem with Ekko stems from bruiserish builds that are pretty strong in top lane. Bruiser Ekko is not necessarly a bad thing for the game, but I'm sure that with a few number changes things could be a bit more balanced making AP ekko a little more prevalent and tank Ekko a niche/situationnal pick as it should be.

To me the balancing issues come from two things that riot have partially adressed in the past :

  • He is a very mobile champion and he provides utility making him efficient as a diver/disrupter in the back lines. His ult makes him safe while diving and soaking dmg.

  • His AP kit is balanced around lack of reliability. He has strong abilities (namely W and R) which are hard to hit, so a lot of power has been stacked into them, also his Q and E are close ranged, putting ekko in a risky position.

Building ekko tanky removes this lack of reliability as he's able to land most of his dmg all of the time, and he still provides a good amount of utility for his team and a lot of disruption. By being able to stay in the tick of things he can get better stuns off etc.

It is clear to me that two things need to change for ekko to be what he was supposed to be, and that is making his W and R more reliable and make some of his utility scale with AP.

The scaling utility part would also fit ekko's theme since his utility is time based. More power (AP) boosting his utility wouldn't be too far fetched.

Here we go :

Z-DRIVE RESONANCE

Z-drive marks enemy champions for 6 Seconds (instead of 4) Time breaker : (4 Second cooldown on same target) 20 - 190 (based on level) (+ 80% AP) 4 Second cooldown magic damage Hypercharge : (8 Second cooldown on same target) 30 / 35 / 40% +1% per 10 AP up to 60% slow for 2/2.5/3 seconds - at lvl 1/6/11 50 / 55 / 60% +1% per 10 AP up to 80% bonus movement speed for 2/2.5/3 seconds at level 1/6/11

  • Killing an enemy champion grants 50% of hypercharge's movespeed bonus.

Logic behind the changes :

  • The marking duration increase makes AP ekko's window of opportunity a bit larger which provides him with a stronger laning phase and stronger team fights.

  • Make his slow and movement speed scale faster with levels at base but giving them AP scaling that even out with current live values at 200 AP.

  • The dmg portion of the passive can be procced sooner than live, but the utility portion can only be procced every 2 passive procs - it doesn't change much for AP ekko coz second passive proc is sure kill on a squishy target (which also procs movespeed due to newly added kill trigger), it improves tank ekko's DPS a little but we're hitting his utility so it's fine.

  • The base dmg remains unchanged coz it doesn't seem to be a problem on live.

TIMEWINDER :

Dmg : 60/75/90/105/120 (+20% Ability Power) + 40/65/90/115/140 (+60% Ability Power) ~~Slow : 32/39/46/53/60% ~~

Dmg :
Outgoing 70/80/95/105/120 (+20% Ability Power) + Return 50/70/95/115/140 (+60% Ability Power) Slow 30/35/40/45/50 +1% per 10 AP maxed 60%

Logic behind the changes :

  • Fine tuning the Q dmg because it is a bit lackluster from levels 1 to 5 since last set of nerfs

  • Making the slow scale with AP to hit live values at 100 AP. It's a small number but it could help getting the 0 AP builds out of dominance.

**PARALLEL CONVERGENCE : **

Passive : Stays the same

Active: Delay reduced to 2.5 s from 3s (cooldown also reduced by 0.5s to even out the down time) Stun duration 1.5s + 0.1s for every 100 AP up to 2s Shield duration 2.25s at all ranks.

Logic behind the changes :

  • The passive has never been an issue and mainly serves as a last hitting tool and for finishing off ppl who have 10% hp or so.

  • Reducing the delay to 2.5 from 3s keeps Ekko's skirmishing/predicting assassin identity but makes the tool a bit more reliable in situations where ekko is seen when the ability is casted.

  • Stun duration now scales with AP in the same vain as the other changes, hits live values for 250 AP but scales up to 2s. Bringing back the high reward stun for AP users.

  • The shield duration has been reverted to original values (shout of the ekko jgl players) also helping out with lategame ap ekko's main problem : surviving. It's also a little buff to Ekko's trading potential in lane since the shield lasts long enough to actually tank some damage.

PHASE DIVE Unchanged

CHRONOBREAK : Revert the change to AOE from 350 back to 400.

Logic behind the changes :

  • The AOE change on his ult was one of the first nerfs that hit him, and imo with people knowing how to play vs Ekko better now compared to release this nerf seems a bit unecessary. Making him able to hit his ult more reliably would definitely promote playing him AP so it would be a nice little buff to AP ekko without impacting too much tankko.
  • Since the dmg nerfs I think it wouldn't make his ultimate chronobroken

This was my attempt at balancing ekko with only number changes. I'm not a game designer so a lot of these could be really stupid or not interesting/not viable changes.

Ekko will be part of the assassin rework and i'm really looking forwards to see what riot will do with him. This is just to put some ideas out there and mostly so I can stop thinking about it hehe xd.

Thanks for reading !

20 Comments

Dominick Destine8/20/2016, 6:52:08 PM5 votes

Or just do what people have been asking since the beginning... jack up his mana costs so he actually has to make decisions rather than spam away with minimal consequence and maximum safety.

THE RlVER KlNG8/20/2016, 10:20:33 PM4 votes

I should have stopped reading when you said Ekko has bad trades and is short-ranged, but your post got more and more ridiculous as I went on. Calling AP Ekko unreliable when Q-E is one of the easiest things to land in the entire game for massive damage and movement speed, and saying he falls off with a reset and some of the highest scalings in the game? You give him all his early game damage back BY RAISING Q BASES (the whole problem with tanksassins in the first place) buffs to ultimate, buffs to W, didnt remove the %damage that is half the reason for his tank build, and to top it all off give him movement speed after champion kills that will only further incentivize Triforce builds? This change list buffs both tank AND AP Ekko......not surprised that you're an Ekko main.

Seenan8/20/2016, 8:00:47 PM2 votes

I'm almost positive the damage his bruiser self can exist cause his passive is strong. It's basically a thunderlord's with a higher scaling and lower cd.

Arakadia8/20/2016, 11:53:26 PM2 votes

Increasing his ult size isn't my favorite of changes. Maybe its a good one but I don't like it at all, that ult is already pretty big for the great mobility, healing, and damage it gives.

MunchCrunchLunch8/21/2016, 5:54:25 AM2 votes

i personally think ap bruiser ekko is the best ekko now.

Ekko Builds item 3742 or item 3068 then item 3100 item 3111 item 3001 item 3030 item 3165

u can build more defensive with an item like rylais instead of the cdr if u have cdr runes. or even zhonyas but i don't like zhonyas in general and i nearly never build it.

MunchCrunchLunch8/20/2016, 9:16:26 PM1 votes

that will just make him very clunky.

ekko is a skirmisher. according to riot. i see nothing wrong in trinity force bruiser builds.

even tho i don't think thats a good build on him and i never do it. i go ap bruiser now days full tank is kinda weak on him after the damage nerfs

Rain NT8/21/2016, 6:19:56 AM1 votes

You cant increase the base damage on his Q, because the whole reason tank ekko is strong is because his base damage is decent, so theres no reason to go ap ekko cause you can be tanky but still do damage with tank ekko, need to reduce his base damage even more and increase ap ratio about 2-5%. And reduce slow to 45% at level 5 that is increase by 1.5 per 10 AP max up to 65.

Then shorten his passive mark duration and increase it by the amount of AP he has. OR his ult doesnt get reduce cd by CDR anymore by but AP up to 40% but also increase his ult cd slightly late game.

Then reduce sunfire damage, cause thats broken.