With 5.10 hitting the live servers and Ekko being introduced onto the Rift I want to look at where this utility assassin is going to fit into the current meta. I will be referencing a lot of his moves as their key bindings so if you don't know what they are check out his spotlight here:

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Ekko has been dubbed as a utility assassin and has a unique kit to League of Legends. A lot of utility with the potential to do massive damage and outplay opponents make him an interesting new champion, but in the current meta I think he will struggle.

1. His kit revolves around his passive.

As a melee champion who does large amounts of burst damage based on an auto-attack proc, Ekko needs time to build up the stacks against a target. You need hit a Q perfectly to proc his passive twice and dive in using his E it is very unlikely that you will be able to burst the target down unless you are incredibly fed. This means that he has a reliance on being able to hit his Q, not necessarily a weakness but just making him harder to play. The other main issue of being a bursty champion that needs to auto attack is that you need to dive into the middle of the enemy team during a fight to pick off the carry. In the current tank meta, assassins are having an incredibly hard time being relevant because after around 25-30 minutes they fall off unless extremely fed due to the fact that they have trouble getting to the back line. Ekko's mid ranged Q will be hard to hit twice in any sort of team fight scenario, negating his burst damage as it will be extremely hard to proc his passive on squishy targets.

2. His W's cast time of three seconds.

Ekko's W is extremely unique to League of Legends. I like the idea of being able to slow enemies and have the option to dive back in to stun them whilst granting yourself a shield, it allows for a lot of out play scenarios. The problem with this is that it is Ekko's only hard CC. His W has a very long cast time that is easily avoidable, this means that often times it'll be used as a counter engage or secondary engage rather than a way to pick off targets making him more team orientated, taking away from his assassin style.

3. Ult is his most damage, but also his only escape.

The last and biggest issue I think Ekko and Ekko players will have is using the ult. It has a massive AP ratio which means that he will do tons of damage if he is able to hit it, but if he goes in he has no way to escape unless he has flash. Which means that, if you want to use his ult offensively, you will have to build Zhonya's as one of your first items, delaying his power spike. The other problem with his ult is that, as an auto attack based assassin, in this current meta, diving into a team to get off a great ult means diving into a bunch of tanks with a lot of CC which, for an assasin, means an almost certain death. On the other hand, if you aren't using his ult for the damage then you are missing out on a huge amount of burst which means you are relying even more on his passive to kill carries.

On the other hand Ekko's kit has incredible outplay potential. His ability to do large amounts of damage on a single target as well as give himself a massive heal and become invulnerable are incredible. Whilst I think he has some issues with the current meta I think that Ekko has awesome potential due to his high amounts of utility but will be very difficult to play and due to his long cast times and unique CC and ult. I still think that in the current tank meta he will take a lot of skill to play at a high level.

He looks really fun to play, and as a top lane man with a certain affinity for out of the meta picks, I'd love to see how he would do as a off-tank top laner with a BOTRK and Trinity Force. I think the proc of his passive plus Botrk could be fun, giving massive slows and doing awesome sheen damage with his E. It'll be very interesting to see how he fits into the current meta, either as a dominating mid laner or, if some of the potential faults I've pointed out turn out to be true, an average solo queue pick.