Ekko honestly reminds me of an AP Kha'Zix

Now hear me out on this. And just so you know, I will be referring to pre-4.10 Kha'Zix, so this will be when he had his execute, damage reduc, etc, however for a majority of the thread I will compare him to current Kha'Zix

Now let's see. Firstly, they're both melee assassins. The primary difference being Kha'Zix is AD, whereas Ekko is AP.

Passive gives extra damage and a slow on a basic attack (or multiple).

Q is the primary source of damage. Major difference is Kha'Zix's requires the target to be alone, whereas Ekko's is a ranged skillshot. Alright, seems fine.

W is primary CC (Slow in K6's case, 2 second stun in Ekko's) and also provides some sort of sustain (slight heal on Kha, big ass shield on Ekko).

E is their primary mobility. After level 6 (although it is more likely to be 11) Kha'Zix will have farther range and a reset upon kill. Ekko from level 1 has access, first giving a small dash (which can go through most walls) followed by a blink on the next auto attack. Ekko has 2 good forms of mobility on a single ability.

R is where things get a little different. Both could be considered the primary escape tool outside of their mobility. Kha'Zix, in his broken state, received damage reduction on top of his invisibility. Ekko receives untargetability and invulnerability while also going to where he was 4 seconds ago. Additionally his ult heals him and does damage in the area he arrives after using his ult.

So how exactly is this fully linked together to why Ekko is OP? Well, simply put, there's a reason Riot took away Kha'Zix's execute and his durability from his ultimate. No assassin, under any circumstance should be able to simply ignore damage. An assassin's purpose is to kill the carry, and either get out barely or die trying to kill the carry. Many assassins do not fail at killing a carry but still escape. Because your job is to kill them, and failure is punished by death.

This is true for Talon. This is true for Rengar. This is true for Nocturne. Thanks to nerfs, this is partially true for Zed. This is true for Akali. This is true for Master Yi. This is true for nearly every assassin.

You either kill the carry, or die. You can't fail your job and escape like nothing happened.

This is not true for Ekko. He presses his "I fucked up" button, for no mana, and goes back 4 seconds. And seeing as how he is a burst based assassin, 4 seconds is more than enough to kill someone, or to fail at doing so and deciding it's time to leave.

Additionally, Ekko has an execute. This has proven time and time again to not be very balanced on assassins. Riven got ultimate nerfed because it has an execute. Kha'Zix got his Q execute taken away completely, because it gave him reliability to kill even if not isolated (which is his entire theme). Garen's ult has a metric fuckton of cooldown because it's an execute. Fizz W got nerfed because it is an execute.

Riot, when will you learn, every time you put an execute on a champion, it goes bad. And you just put one on a champions auto attacks. At least Riven had to ult. At least Kha'Zix had to evolve Q.

Ekko has an extremely unhealthy design. It seems as if Riot looked at every champion and took the most bullshit part of them and made this cluster fuck. Ability to run if you fuck up ? Check. More damage based on the enemy being low HP ? Check. Slows on slows? Check. Hard CC? Check. Ability to get into fights relatively easy and kill your carry, then get out with the carry doing almost nothing to save themselves? If I recall correctly has Kassadin not been nerfed over 9000 times for this reason? Maybe I just made all those patches up.

And last, but not least, my favorite part about this champion. He's melee, right? So he get's kited, right? And he can't kite other melees, right? Right? Except he can blink to people, dodge skillshots with his Vayne Q that goes through almost every wall and has a decently spammable zoning slow. Riot might as well have made him ranged.

To make it even better, Riot knew all of this. On the PBE feedback basically everybody thought he should get nerfed. And Riot just said fuck it, and released him anyways. Good job Riot, yet another champion since that was either completely broken, or absolute garbage . Seriously, over a year and you've managed to release a SINGLE CHAMPION that was well rounded. One. Just one. That's it. One god damn champion. And to add to it, basically every champion in the last 2 years has some sort of mobility, and all of them in the last few months either have sustained decent mobility or a metric fuckton of bullshit mobility .

I don't even think Riot's trying to make balanced champs anymore, I think the 'balance' team is just trying to see who can make the most absurd design without being fired.

So far it's a tie between Kalista and Ekko. (Azir is a close 3rd, as he was buggy as shit. Additionally, they designed a lane bully that scaled hard as shit into late game. Hell, if he wasn't buggy as shit he would've been an absolute monster from the start).