Ekko has mostly found himself restricted to the mid lane recently, but the League of Legends time-manipulator will likely find himself clearing monster camps and ganking soon thanks to a jungle-specific buff.
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Following the most recent set of balance changes in Wednesday’s Patch 7.20, a new PBE cycle has begun with several nerfs and buffs added for champions and items. Ekko finds himself on that list along with countless others as base stat changes are tested ahead of the new runes, but one change to his passive ability stands out among the rest.
Dan Hardison, a playtest analyst for Riot Games who tests League’s balance changes, elaborated on the buff for Ekko that hadn’t been noticed yet in the PBE.
“Z-Drive Resonance – P Damage to monsters: 100% >>> 200%” a tweet from Hardison read.
The doubling of the damage done to monsters through Ekko’s passive is a pretty significant change and one that definitely points to his jungling return. When asked to clarify if that was the intent for the change, Riot Meddler briefly responded and confirmed the goal of the change was to make Ekko a more viable jungler.
When the news that Ekko might be returning to the jungle was quickly noticed and discussed on Reddit, Riot Games’ TheEntropist elaborated on the changes to clarify that Ekko should hopefully be viable in both mid and the jungle soon.
“One of the goals here is to be able to put in a lever that enables us to balance Jungle Ekko without overly affecting lane Ekko,” TheEntropist said. “We’ll see if that goal is met but that is part of the intention.
Beyond this buff, there’s also an alternative change that’s going to be tested soon. TheEntropist added that another buff would be tested soon in place of the current one on the PBE to see which one works better.
“You’ll see a change on the PBE tomorrow with 0s cooldown on minions and monsters,” the Rioter continued. “Going to be testing both and trying to decide which direction makes more sense.”
Whatever change is decided upon for Ekko won’t ship until the next patch, so players still have time to either brace themselves for jungle Ekko or practice your ganks ahead of the patch depending on how you feel about him.
