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!