Counter Guide

How to Beat Ekko

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Ekko doesn't have to be right. He gets to try the fight, and if it goes badly he takes the last few seconds back.

He's an assassin who commits for free. Every other champion in his class has to be sure before jumping in, because being wrong about it is how they die, and the calculation of whether the jump is worth it is most of what makes them hard to play. He skips that. Chronobreak [R] puts him back where he was, at the health he had, and tops him up on the way. So forget "don't let him kill you." The plan is "make him spend the button, then start the fight." Everything below is a way of doing that.

Matchup Snapshot Ekko, the Boy Who Shattered Time

Where You Meet Him Mid lane and the jungle

Damage Type Magic, in one burst

Why He Is Frustrating He gets to lose the fight once

Mobility Blinks in, rewinds out

Biggest Threat Chronobreak [R]

Hardest Counter Lissandra

What a Counter Needs

Lockdown he can't cast his way out of
Enough early pressure to matter before the ultimate exists
The patience to make him use it on nothing

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Ekko on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Ekko

Lissandra1,122 games52.7%
Aurora518 games52.3%
Anivia536 games52.2%
Vex1,206 games50.7%

Picks Ekko Beats

Irelia713 games44.0%
Orianna891 games44.6%
Hwei983 games45.5%
Veigar1,553 games46.0%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Ekko. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 50,284 Ekko games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Ekko Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He's allowed to be wrong. Chronobreak [R] undoes a commit that didn't work and heals him for having tried, so he takes fights nobody else in his class would touch.
He picks the ground. Parallel Convergence [W] turns a choke point into somewhere you can't walk, and he sets it before the fight rather than during it.
His burst arrives all at once. Three hits is the whole combo, and a squishy target who takes all three is usually already dead.
He's a genuine threat on the map. A champion who can enter a lane, be wrong about it, and leave anyway is one your side lanes have to respect permanently.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The rewind goes somewhere you already saw. It's a return to a spot that was on your screen a few seconds ago, and a team that watched him walk in knows exactly where to stand.
The first five levels are borrowed. Until the ultimate is up he's a fragile melee mage with a short blink, and that's a very different champion from the one people are scared of.
He needs to touch you three times. Deny the third hit and the burst turns into chip damage.
The stun zone announces itself. It takes time to arm and it sits there glowing. Walking around it costs a couple of seconds and nothing else.
Once he's spent it, he's an assassin with no exit. The cooldown is long, he has no second escape, and the version of him that's standing in front of you afterwards is very killable.

Countering Ekko

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Ekko comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Hold him still. A root, a suppression or a knock up beats a rewind, because the rewind is a cast and a cast can be interrupted before it starts.
Beat him early. His scariest tool doesn't exist for the first five levels, and a lane that ends before it shows up never becomes the matchup he wants.
Bait the button. A fight he escapes from is fine if the next one starts thirty seconds later and he has nothing left.
Cover the return. He rewinds to a fixed place. Somebody standing on that place turns his best defensive tool into a second engage for your team.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Ekko Matchup

Don't burn your own escape on the opening. His first move is the cheap one and he'd love to have it back before the expensive part arrives.

Watch where he entered from. That's the return address, and it's usually the same bush your ward is already covering.

Track the cooldown rather than his health bar. An Ekko who has recently used the rewind is playing a completely different game from one who hasn't, and it's the single most useful thing to know about him at any given moment.

Best Ekko Counters

Stop the cast, win before it's learned, or make him waste it.

Vex Punishes Every Dash

Every way Ekko gets in or out of a fight moves him, and Doom 'n Gloom [Passive] marks any nearby enemy champion who dashes or blinks. Phase Dive [E] dashes and then blinks, Chronobreak [R] dashes him back to his afterimage, and each one hands Vex a mark that her next attack or ability cashes in for bonus damage.

The same passive periodically empowers an ability to fear whoever it hits, and a feared Ekko can't cast anything at all. Personal Space [W] shields her against the dive itself (its scream reaches slightly further against enemies who are dashing).

Pantheon Wins The First Five Levels

Pantheon does his best work in exactly the window where Ekko has no ultimate. If the lane is decided by level six, the rewind arrives to a game that's already gone.

He also has a stun, which matters more here than the damage.

Lissandra Answers The All-In

Weirdly, she's the rare mage who wants to be jumped on. Her root doesn't need to be aimed, her own stasis eats the burst, and both of those answers are available on the same beat that he commits.

Trading a rewind for a self-stasis is a trade she wins, because hers comes back sooner and his was the only thing keeping him alive.

Itemizing Against Ekko

His damage is magic and it lands in one lump, so the buys are about surviving a single window and shortening what he gets out of leaving it:

Banshee's Veil is the one that changes the shape of the fight rather than the numbers in it (a spell shield eating his opener costs him the whole sequence). Zhonya's Hourglass answers the other half: he can commit onto a target who simply isn't there for two seconds, and by the time it ends his window has closed and yours hasn't. Mercury's Treads is aimed at the stun, the part of his combo that actually decides whether the rest of it happens. Grievous Wounds belongs somewhere on your team as well, and Morellonomicon is the convenient home for it on an AP mid. Cutting the heal on the rewind turns a full escape into a limp.