League of Legends developer Riot Games announced new playable character Ekko earlier this week. Now they've followed up on that reveal by explaining the new Champion's abilities and general strategy.
Here are Ekko's full set of abilities. As the teaser trailer implied, his power stems mainly from his ability to manipulate time:
Z-Drive Resonance (passive) - Ekko's damaging spells and attacks build up Resonance stacks on his enemies. Every third attack against the same target triggers Ekko’s passive, dealing bonus damage and slowing his enemy. If he triggers his passive on an enemy champion, Ekko also gains a strong movement speed buff.
Timewinder (Q) - Ekko throws a device in a target direction, damaging all enemies along its path. Once it reaches max distance or hits an enemy champion, the device expands, creating a field that slows all enemy and neutral units. After a moment, the device contracts and rushes back to Ekko, dealing extra damage to all enemies in its path.
Parallel Convergence (W) - Passive: Ekko’s basic attacks deal bonus damage to low health targets. Active: Ekko opens a time rift, creating an alternate reality copy of him that tosses a device to a target location. After a delay, the device expands into a broad slowing zone. If Ekko enters the sphere, it detonates, granting him a shield while stunning all enemies inside.
Phase Dive (E) - Ekko dashes a fixed distance towards a target area. Once his initial dash has ended, Ekko gains greatly increased range on his next basic attack, and blinks to his target to deal damage and apply on-hit and spell effects.
Chronobreak (R) - Ekko rewinds time, briefly turning untargetable and invulnerable before reappearing wherever he was a few seconds ago. Once he reappears, Ekko recovers a portion of the health he lost over those few seconds while dealing tons of damage to all nearby enemies.
During the laning phase, Ekko is nimble enough to poke his opponent without taking damage. The stun and shield from Parallel Convergence is effective for trading blows. In teamfights, he can initiate with Timewinder and then use Parallel Convergence to stun multiple enemies.
Chronobreak can be very versatile if used by an experienced player. It can help him avoid ganks, cause huge damage in a teamfight, or simply return to lane quickly after recalling..
While Ekko is technically an assassin, he doesn't have as much burst damage as Zed or Kha'Zix. Instead, he's a "utility assassin" in the same way that Ashe is a "utility marksman." They don't get as many kills as other characters of their type but they have plenty of CC to compensate.
"Basically, if Zed can’t kill Anivia, he can’t kill Anivia - he doesn’t provide much else to his team," explains designer August Browning. "But if Ekko can’t kill Anivia, he can at least try to lock her (and maybe her team) down so people like Jinx can clean up. Thanks to Chronobreak and Phase Dive, he’s still very good at taking risks, and is heavily encouraged to take multiple passes at a fight if things don’t go perfectly the first time."
Riot has added Ekko to the Public Beta Environment in case you want to try him out.
