Why Take Away Ekko's AD???!!!

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The passive and delayed damage are there to delay Ekko's ability to kill targets, giving them chances to respond to him. We're fairly happy with how that works when Ekko isn't building tanky, so see the issue there as the defensive builds not that his damage isn't all front loaded.

Removing the damage from the ult means that he's always got it up as an escape (never puts it on CD in a riskier way) and that damage on the rest of his kit needs to be higher. Given the ult's unreliable, with decent counterplay against the damage, would be concerned about that approach as a result.

the problem is that his ult is rarely useable for damage. it makes no sense to have something so rare in usage. just put some power somwhere else. also removing or changes his passive. would absolutely. destroy his tank builds for good

Hey bud whats your thoughts on perma slows?

Eg: Cassio with Rylais, Azir with Rylais, or Gnar / ekko / fizz /yasuo with a mallet.

I personally feel very powerless as a fighter with no gap closer vs a cassio. She can just perma slow me with her E spam and I cannot get close.

Will you ever consider a Protobelt type item for these characters? A gap closer to help me catch that damn Cassio, or at least run away.

It seems like all those champion examples I gave can just run you down and you have no hope of escaping.

I dislike perma slows or perma CC's. Whats your opinion on it?

When people say passive, I think they mean the slow he has, not the MS boost. The slow seems to be what makes tank builds viable without trade offs.

Meddler, if Ekko never seems to stop building tanky, would you guys take a riskier approach? say give him the Kalista treatment of having only 90% AD available but with defenses? Imagine if you made Ekko receive only 75% of defense stats from items O.o

Sorry if i kinda hijack this thread, but there's a thing I think is interesting to talk about: over the last months we had a lot of skirmisher/assasin champs who became popular with a tank build (akali, fizz, ekko, more recently yasuo). What do you think the root problem is here? One would think the champion's kits are the culprits, but wouldn't the fact that it happend on 4-5 champs already point to the fact that maybe the tanky builds are too strong? Kinda like a few seasons ago, where everyone could jungle not because of their kits, but because of jungle items beeing too good?

While I understand why Ekko's ult has damage, I don't think that the counterplay that it has is adequate, particularly for melee champions. The way Ekko's ult currently is, with the absolutely ridiculous ratio it has, Ekko's ult might as well read "If you fight Ekko in melee range for more than four seconds, die".

Of course, this hasn't been an issue when he's been building tanky, but back when he was first released and people played him normally, playing against Ekko as a melee was hell.

Thanks I really appreciate the feedback.[slayer-jinx-wink]

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The passive and delayed damage are there to delay Ekko's ability to kill targets, giving them chances to respond to him. We're fairly happy with how that works when Ekko isn't building tanky, so see the issue there as the defensive builds not that his damage isn't all front loaded.

Removing the damage from the ult means that he's always got it up as an escape (never puts it on CD in a riskier way) and that damage on the rest of his kit needs to be higher. Given the ult's unreliable, with decent counterplay against the damage, would be concerned about that approach as a result.

I would rather his ult had the Rengar treatment with his roar, he could get the damage or he could get the heal but not both at the same time so he would actually have to manage his ghost image and get some decision, should I ult early for hugh burst but lose my heal or save it in case things go south. Currently there is no drawback for saving his ult, he goes in, figth someone and then ult when is low, ether his ult will take him away safety or the burst from his ult will finish off whoever he was dueling.

please don't nerf tank ekko so hard where its not playable i'm fine with tank ekko nerf i just dont like it if you guys nerf him so hard i cant play him top lane he was the champ who got me plat and is now my favorite champ it will be sad for me to be forced to play him ap mid carry. Also i like to add that the champions itself ins't that overpowered it is the new triforce if you haven't realized a lot of champions who weren't really that great in the meta became a lot stronger for example hecarim and irelia and jax and of course ekko, so i dont really think the champions are the root of the problem the new triforce is.

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The passive and delayed damage are there to delay Ekko's ability to kill targets, giving them chances to respond to him. We're fairly happy with how that works when Ekko isn't building tanky, so see the issue there as the defensive builds not that his damage isn't all front loaded.

Removing the damage from the ult means that he's always got it up as an escape (never puts it on CD in a riskier way) and that damage on the rest of his kit needs to be higher. Given the ult's unreliable, with decent counterplay against the damage, would be concerned about that approach as a result.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I realized as I started writing this how passionately I felt about it. Skip past the tldr section below to get to the meat of this.

I'd like to start by saying 3 things:

First, that I am not an ekko player. I don't know the precise ins and outs of his kit well enough to say for certain where his strengths and weaknesses lie. However, I do know his kit on paper, and I've played a lot of games against and with ekko players. I've also watched high-ELO players play him, have seen him in many competitive games, and I can certainly say that I understand where frustration stems from when playing against him.

Second, that I am not a professional game designer. Balance in games should absolutely be left to the professionals (and I think that the vast majority of the playerbase of ANY game typically overvalues their own input), but I often find myself talking to my friends about balance changes needed to champions and then I end up seeing what I've discussed end up happening weeks or months later. That isn't to toot my own horn, but just to say that I often seem to think along the same lines as your balance teams (or so it seems).

And third, that my below thoughts and suggestions come from feeling that, although Ekko's kit is very cool, he is overloaded and I've never felt like Riot's and my vision of his character design ever melded in terms of what I feel like he should do thematically. Difference of opinion, maybe.

tldr; I'm not a professional game designer, nor an ekko player. Take this with a grain of salt.

HERE IS WHERE MY SUGGESTION AND THOUGHTS BEGIN:

Since the moment I saw Ekko's pre-release video of him going back in time (multiple times) to recover his wounds and attack anew, I NEVER thought of him as an assassin. I don't honestly know where this image of him stems from, because I immediately thought of him as more of a skirmisher. When I read this red-post on Surrender@20, I flashed back to my own initial thoughts on him as a champion, before we had a spotlight or official skill list, and felt like I should pipe up with my own voice.

One of the biggest frustrations of my own when playing against Ekko is how safe he is while doing consistent damage, and I feel like this is the consensus from a lot of people. He dives in, does a ton of damage, and then pops out. In a one-vs-one, this is even more irritating because he has burst, two slows, a stun, and his own movement speed increaser ON TOP of an escape with his ult. While almost all of that is situational, it's nearly impossible to catch him off-guard. And that's the mark of a skirmisher more than an assassin in my opinion. If you want him to get in, use a few abilities and proc his passive, and get out, why should his ult have damage tied into it as well, even if he ends up using it to re-engage? It already heals...

I'll restate that I'm not a game designer. I don't know how you'd tweak his numbers to make sense of this, and I agree with a lot of other people that maybe his passive does too much and needs to be changed. How, exactly, I don't know, but what I'd rather see is him doing overall less burst damage, and force him to use his ult more frequently.

My thoughts, specific to his ult? Give his ult a charge system, and reduce his effective burst. Remove the damage on his ult to boot. Make it so that he goes in for trades, and then has to ult out. While I know that this might make him even more frustrating to play against because he'd be even more slippery, thematically this would mesh with what he's supposed to be doing. If he wasn't able to stick onto and kill targets in one rotation of skills and a few autoattacks, so much the better. Make him scrappier, not burstier. That way, if he wants to go hard in a longer teamfight, he'll be moving around a lot more, but not necessarily just diving one person, making them blow CD's, and then he gets away with a kill scott free.

I feel like he'd be the melee equivalent of a poke-champ. I'd think of him kind of like Kassadin (but with less total burst unless he went full AP and it was late game), where he throws out his Q, dives in for a couple of hits, and then gets out really quick before he gets wrecked.

But considering him an assassin is a mistake, and with so much loaded into his kit it doesn't make sense to me to even put him in the same group as Rengar, Kha, Eve, et. al.

I'm genuinely interested in hearing from a rioter as to their thoughts on why he's thought of this way (and why one of the safest champions in the game has this much burst), but also from the boards community at large. Would this be a good way to adjust him?

P.S. I didn't touch on his tank-build, as that's currently being addressed in this patch as it is and is hopefully resolved with the pending changes.

EDIT(s) for punctuation, grammar, and clarity.

Removing damage from the ult is probably the worst idea I've ever heard to deal with Ekko in any capacity. Glad you guys aren't doing this and I respect your mental fortitude in... having to explain that.

It would probably be better to do more AP utility scaling. Unfortunately that would kill Tank Ekko and I personally like seeing off-builds, but I understand in this case it's no longer the off-build as it is the main build and we want AP Ekko to be the main build and Tank viable, but not always built.

I would think there should maybe be a reward system for making his targets stand and fight him for tank build and a reward system for outplaying his opponents in an AP build. The Tank build first arose because "high base damage, stats, and utility" but also because it was much easier to get multiple procs off and W especially, and making people stand there and eventually eat his ult while also healing most of that damage.

There's definitely a way to keep both here. I think looking at more AP scaling (and removing a touch of the base utility off) is going in the right direction.

I really appreciate your time dude, thanks!

I wasn't sure who's attention I should try and grab, and I know you have solid opinions on recent game changes so naturally I respect your input. My main hope is for Master players to be recognized for their achievements within the tier.

Again, thank you for passing the thread along.

Any plans for final point mastery changes? If a lot of champions are being balanced around the current tree, what if the masteries like Fervor, grasp, and thunderlord are drastically changed?