The way Riot describes things, the words "skirmishing" and "assassin" should never be used in conjunction. Skirmishers are people who deal sustained damage. Assassins are people who deal high amounts of burst damage. See why those shouldn't be combined? Because you get a guy who deals high amounts of sustained burst damage like Ekko. Then Ekko has a ton of CC and mobility tacked onto his kit.
Isn't zed both a burst assassin and one of the best split pushers and 1v1 duelists in league?
And yet riot thinks he's healthy?
At least Ekko isn't AD scaling so he can't wreck turrets to split push on top of skirmishing and assassinating.
Anyways, ekko is a good skirmisher it sounds because he has his shield and heal (haven't played since his release to be fair). It's a lot less concerning that he can win extended fights AND burst squishies when it's his defences that let him win the long fights.
What has skirmishing to do with sustained or burst damage? Skirmishes are small scale fights, so 2v2 orr 3v3, it doesn't matter if you deal sustained damage or burst damage, if your kit works well for small fights, your a skirmisher.
[{quoted}](name=Derek the Ferret,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p7smTwTb,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-05-30T09:59:55.557+0000)
The way Riot describes things, the words "skirmishing" and "assassin" should never be used in conjunction. Skirmishers are people who deal sustained damage. Assassins are people who deal high amounts of burst damage. See why those shouldn't be combined? Because you get a guy who deals high amounts of sustained burst damage like Ekko. Then Ekko has a ton of CC and mobility tacked onto his kit.
Riot's definition of "assassin" is mobile, agile and opportunistic. It has nothing to do with "burst", which is actually an attribute of the "mage" class (hence the large number of mage assassins - although currently mage is only used by AP champions, so Zed is an outlier).
Riot's definition of "skirmisher" (aka duelist) is someone who excels in small fights (aka skirmishes). However, skirmisher/duelist isn't actually a class. "Fighters" deal sustained damage and are often good in skirmishes but they aren't synonymous and Ekko isn't a fighter.
Ekko is an assassin (opportunistic and agile) and he is a skirmisher (he's a strong duelist), but he should be classified as an Assassin/Mage not a Assassin/Fighter.
Riot could stand to rename "assassin" to "rogue" to avoid confusions between "assassins" and "champions who can assassinate" (similar to why they renamed carry to marksman) - but as far as Riot's definitions go, Ekko is appropriately defined.
