Honest thoughts on Ekko

I love Ekko's design. He's my favorite champ in League and I love his design implementation in LOR.

That said, I feel like Ekko's strength as a card feels a bit weak due to the lack of aggressive predict cards in PnZ, especially when played outside of Shurima, which already is an awkward fit for him (not a lot of protection). After playing with him for a few hours, I feel like he is amazing in design but lackluster as a card. Ekko has waaay too low health for him to strike very often, even going on the offensive is super risky because of his low health and even relatively low damage that can't kill many beefier units by turn 4/5. So relying on his strikes generating cards to level him through predict is not an effective strategy most of the time. To be honest, the 5 predictions level condition feels like too much. It rarely levels by turn 7 or 8 because you are better off predicting into better options for better board presence and saving your units, rather than spend mana chain predicting in order to turbo level him and doing nothing for a whole turn.

Even when you level him, his win-con is not guaranteed. He still needs to strike to get off a valuable 0 mana time trick, hope it gets you a chronobreak or parallel convergence (if you shuffled it in), or that it draws you into another time trick.

I played him with Karma, and built into my deck a few alt wincons. Ekko was mainly just a value engine, keeping you alive with valuable draws until Karma levels and predict spams into a hexite crystal. I have not once won with parallel convergence or chronobreak. Kind of goes to show how much they are "win more" cards, by the time you are drawing them the enemy is already dead. It also shows how slow Ekko is compared to the tempo and relies on champions like Karma to speed him up. Karma.)

Ekko is not like other champions, and you can't and shouldn't all in with him. Doing so has a ridiculous deckbuilding cost, forcing you to clog your deck with predicts that don't draw if ran in shurima. Predicts are meant to happen from time to time, to strengthen your curve, or in critical moments when you need to find a certain card. But the units strength and mana cost that these predict cards come with is immense. You can't expect to do well in a deck full of low health, low damage units and do nothing spells that only stall for Ekko, and by the time you have leveled him he can't do much if the enemy has a ton of tricks in their hand. And all you likely have in response in your hand are predict cards.

My take:

Ekko needs

A) more PnZ predict support cards that help him either build the beefy board he needs for value or can deal with a beefy enemy board (1/3s and 4/2s are not gonna cut it).

B) Better stats or a faster level overall. The way he tries to close out the game is just too slow. Ekko has success with other champs that carry him, it feels like he can never be the carry though, which makes me question why I even put him in my deck.

Yes, I know he was just released and there is a lot of the meta to get used to. But after watching streamers try their best to build Ekko decks and fail over and over yesterday and playing my own versions today, I just felt this needed to be addressed. I think Ekko really deserves to shine as a card, especially with the abilities the devs worked so hard to design and flesh out. But if he never even gets to use these abilities to win, what is the point?

P.S. Ekko and Shurima is just awful. The two were supposed too be paired, but the pairing is so clunky, especially with Zilean and Ekko. Zilean does nothing to support Ekko except predict more, and also clogs up Ekko's wincons/protection in the deck with his time bombs. Also his champ spell just sucks. "But they both predict so they MUST have synergy"... No. Just no.