What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Various champions in League of Legends are pretty flexible when it comes to how you can
play and build them while still being pretty effective in game, so we’ve decided to try
something new and talk about a particular champion and all the different ways you can
play them, maybe trying to figure out which is best in the process.
Ekko is a really interesting one because he went from being a flexible pick between assassin
and tank to being pretty much only playable as a Tank.
At the same time, he was being picked every game because of how OP Tank Ekko was, so Riot
targeted him with a bunch of nerfs over the last few patches to tone down Tank Ekko and
introduce Carry Ekko back into the meta.
It’s hard to say if he’s in the best spot or not right now, but he can definitely be
played in either style again so we’re going to break down the different options.
Please keep in mind that this is an overview of Ekko’s role in the meta and shouldn’t
be relied on as much for learning how to play him like you would with a guide, although
hopefully you can still find it useful.
This is a new idea we’ve had so please let us know what you think of it or what we can
improve on.
If you enjoy the video make sure to hit that like button, and if you don’t hit the dislike.
The three Ekko styles and builds we’re gonna talk about are Tank Ekko, Assassin or ‘Carry’
Ekko and AP Bruiser Ekko.
The Tank build will be assuming he’s playing top lane, assassin will be playing as a carry
in mid and the AP bruiser style will be for Jungle Ekko.
Tank Ekko is probably the most familiar because it’s been so powerful for the last few seasons.
The Tank build became a must pick or ban in ranked, along with seeing play in the majority
of competitive games, so we’re gonna start with that.
The general masteries for it are magic penetration reds to get maximum benefit from his early
power, armor yellows and MR blues for tankiness along with ap quints to punch through more
damage and help with waveclearing.
These are pretty standard Ekko runes for all roles, but things really change in the masteries.
12-0-18 has been the standard masteries for Tank Ekko because of the crazy sustain that
Grasp of the Undying gives, and Ekko can pretty much trigger it whenever he wants with E.
The meta really favored tanks and defensive items overall, and Ekko was one of the picks
that really took advantage of it because of his amazing mobility and base damage.
Tank items are always going to be a good idea to pick up because they are far cheaper to
build, meaning you can get a defensive item online way before you would reach a power
spike through offensive items.
Pre-nerf Ekko had these crazy high base damages that allowed him to do pretty much everything
well.
Things are a little more balanced now, but Ekko’s Q is still a powerful poke and waveclearing
tool, and it allows him to zone people away from CS and build up big advantages from early
on.
Usually this would have drawbacks because you’d be pushing to the enemy side of the
map, but Ekko’s mobility means he can harass and back out before the enemy jungler can
even start heading up top to help.
There’s two big perks to playing Tank Ekko.
The first is pretty simple, because you’re itemising for defense you don’t have to
worry so much about getting caught or making mistakes.
That added survivability makes it way easier to play, making it both ideal for new Ekko
players but also making it really scary for those with a lot of practice on Ekko.
The other major benefit to Tank Ekko is that cheap defensive items means you aren’t particularly
dependant on having a high income.
You could dedicate so much time to roaming mid or teleporting to bot lane and still end
up even on item numbers as an enemy laner who was farming for damage items.
This meant Tank Ekko was being insanely impactful because he could constantly generate a numbers
advantage for his friendly lanes.
It translates really well to late game too, because that early pressure he could provide
would put lanes ahead while he became unkillable, and at that point teamfights are pretty much
unwinnable for enemies because of his staying power.
Carry Ekko is a really cool way to play him though, and really it’s what Riot wanted
to see as we can tell from the changes.
His kit isn’t quite assassin-tier as full AP and it’s a bit riskier to play, but it
does give you way more chance to carry if you pull it off.
It’s better to take Thunderlord’s or Stormraider’s for this style because you are so reliant
on your mobility and damage, which one to pick seems to be mostly based on where you
feel you need the help.
The big pitfall really is that the changes made him more dependant on his AP ratios than
base damage, so AP Ekko is gonna be weaker early and need to scale up.
Unfortunately you can’t force the advantages early in mid lane like you can top because
the lane is shorter and tends to be host to a lot more early power.
You gotta pick your fights a lot more as AP Ekko for these reasons, you can’t afford
to throw your weight around and risk getting behind because offensive items are just too
expensive.This makes it harder to play, but a lot more fun and rewarding for skilled players.
With the buffs to his ratios AP Ekko is quite strong if you survive laning phase, so you
do have the power to snowball which is something Tank Ekko couldn’t really do.
If you get stacked enough with AP you can pretty much delete people from the game, and
you Ult become a disgustingly strong tool for damage.
It’s kinda hard to line it up to use aggressively because the clone is quite easy to watch out
for, but when you land it you’ll do some crazy damage.
This does mean using your escape as a pretty unreliable damage tool though, but that’s
the risk for reward you have to aim for when playing Carry Ekko.
Bruiser Ekko lies somewhere between the two.
This also was nerfed as collateral when the Tank Ekko nerfs went through and knocked down
his base damage, making things harder for Ekko when it comes to that all important first
jungle clear.You can’t gank as early as you used to be able because of this, but this
does give you time to stack up the Strength of the Ages mastery which is pretty crucial
to playing Bruiser Ekko because it offsets your damage item rush with a bit of health
as a safety barrier.
Using your W properly to gank lanes is the main focus on this build, and you do benefit
from slightly stronger shields thanks to the added AP compared to Tank Ekko.
A mix of offensive and defensive items needs more gold, so you really should take kills
in ganks where you can, to make up for the time you lost farming jungle.
Learning when to balance farming and ganking is quite difficult and it’s probably a sub-optimal
way to play Ekko so it’s equally difficult to Assassin Ekko when it comes to pulling
it off.
Itemising is quite simple though, essentially you just want to rush your damage like Runic
Echoes & Abyssal while you have high gold income in the early game, then get your tanky
items as you start earning less gold in the mid game.
That pretty much covers the overall playstyle of each role, so now let’s lay out each
style and compare them directly.
Ekko’s power level during a game depends hugely on his item choices.
Cheap defensive items means Tank Ekko is by far the most powerful early game.
Rushing tank items has little to no drawback because you can outtrade most people in the
top lane thanks to the bonus damage from your passive and the shield from your W proc.
Paired with his pretty spammable gap closer this means that enemies don’t really have
much choice about when to fight against Ekko, he can always decide when a trade is going
to happen and this really gives him a chance to get ahead.
Carry Ekko really needs a Rod of Ages to give him some sustain, meaning he’s quite slow
to get going, whereas Bruiser Ekko can get Runic Echoes quite fast for a reasonably early
power spike.
In the mid game, the jungle Bruiser Ekko build really shines because his early damage items
are quite cheap compared to full AP.
As the game progresses though, Carry Ekko starts to scale super hard and becomes a real
threat.
Tank Ekko is still pretty valuable for his frontlining at this point, but Bruiser Ekko
can find the late game really hard to be useful.
As teamfighters, Bruiser Ekko is again the weakest of the bunch.
The problem with being a jack of all trades is that you’re a master of none, and he’s
definitely better suited to finding single targets and picking them off.
Tank Ekko is the easiest way to teamfight, you can just damage soak and nibble away at
health bars while your team cleans up.
Tank Ekko always wants to be the frontline, and a good W pretty much carries a teamfight
by itself with it’s huge AoE stun.
It takes too long to use as peel so it’s always best used to distract the enemy team
or lock them up.
Tank Ekko’s Ult really wants to be used as a survival tool rather than a damage ability,
so it’s best used to stick in a fight longer or escape after a tower dive.
The heal is pretty obnoxious when you’re tanky, especially if you have a Spirit Visage,
making it core in most Tank Ekko builds alongside Sunfire and Iceborn.
Carry Ekko really wants to land a good stun so that he can lock targets down, burst them
out and escape before he has time to get blown up, so it’s pretty hard but deadly powerful.
Working around your Ult is really good here, so you should always aim to get in the middle
during a stun to set up a follow up Ult for big AoE damage.
Zhonya’s is core on Carry Ekko because it lets you do this without needing to make an
escape first.
Iceborn is pretty ridiculous value with Tank Ekko especially because it turns you into
a tower shredder with Sheen procs, so it opens up the opportunity to splitpush.
A good split pusher needs to be able to both 1v1 and take towers fast, which forces the
enemy team to send a champion or two to deal with you.
If you can get back to your team fast as they shove another lane this can put you at a serious
advantage, and it’s one of Tank Ekko’s specialities.
Carry Ekko can copy this quite well too, by picking up Lich Bane rather than Luden’s
Echo or Rabadon’s.
This does give you less power in team fights, but in certain games the added single target
power seems to really help out.
Bruiser Ekko on the other hand should probably never be building a Sheen item, so he has
to stick with his team to be useful.
So that pretty much covers the core differences between Tank, Carry and Bruiser Ekko in top
mid and jungle!
This was a pretty fun video to make, but your feedback will go a long way to helping us
improve it if we do this kinda thing more in the future, so please let us know what
you thought in the comments.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!