So, in a seemingly continual effort to let players get used to a style of playing Evelynn well before completely remaking the champion, Riot is yet again redesigning her to be “the best assassin.”
Evelynn is the first of two top-down remakes Riot plans to do. The Plague Rat, Twitch, is also set to be redesigned as Riot continues to work on a way to have stealth be viable in the game without it being a dominating factor of fights (Hint: Stealth will always be sweet by being too strong or near useless from being too weak). The current complaint Riot had with Evelynn came from the late game duration of her stealth; as it made the opposing team play “too defensively” when Riot wants the game to be a “fun and fluid experience throughout the match.” I suppose as long as players pretend that Riot means this - despite releasing champs such as Darius and Jayce – everyone will win.
Back to the subject of Evelyn however: Riot wants to preserve the sense of bloodlust a player has while stalking prey as a cloaked assassin, so they are changing the way players use this assassin again (I’m too busy laughing at killing a squishy to feel this “bloodlust” usually).
In an effort to represent the amount of stealth Riot wants Eve to have, her Shadow Walk is being changed from active stealth generator to one that provides a form of passive stealth when out of combat (assuming this is similar to how Teemo’s stealth works.) I use the phrase ‘form of’ because this stealth does not render her invisible (at least, not in the wording riot provided).
Shadow Walk (Passive) While out of combat, Evelynn enters stealth causing her to be detectable only by nearby champions, or true sight. Additionally, Evelynn rapidly regenerates Mana while in stealth.
So it will be interesting to see just how short of a range the vision is reduced to, and whether it is comparable to full stealth in the game. Eve is being changed to be more of an initiator, as the Dark Frenzy remake is being changed to give her a huge chunk of movement speed to close in on prey.
Dark Frenzy:
- Passive: Evelynn’s spell hits grant her a stacking Movement Speed buff.
- Active: Evelynn breaks free from any slows affecting her and gains a massive Movement Speed boost for a short duration.
- Champion kills and assists refresh Dark Frenzy’s cool-down.
Riot is also changing the way Ravage works, with the objective to be used in tandem with Dark Frenzy better.
Ravage: Evelynn slashes her target twice, dealing magic damage with each strike and gaining a massive Attack Speed boost for a short duration thereafter.
Ideally, this will be pair extremely well with the movement speed increase she gets from each auto-attack, and depending on the exact amount of speed she gains - makes it impossible for enemies to escape. Hopefully at least.
Hate Spike is also getting a remake to be a line-of-fire attack to hit everything on that line each cast. This will be beneficial to those Eve players who liked to mash the Hate Spike key until something died, as now the hate will be affecting every enemy in front of her. This seems like it would be great it allows Eve to hit the entire enemy team in a fight, instead of the previous playstyle of being in the middle of the enemy team and praying the Hate Spike hits the enemy they wanted.
And what would any champion redesign be without a new ult?
Agony’s Embrace: Evelynn impales all enemies in a target area, dealing magic damage based on their maximum health and slowing them. She then gains a shield based on how many enemy champions she hit. SWEET.
This ult seems to play into the Eve style I was just mentioning, as Eve players will now get huge sustain in the form of a shield simply by being in the middle of the group of enemies and fighting – just like they normally would. Anytime Riot redesigns an ability to benefit the champion more for doing what players already did with it, I am a happy player.
All in all, I think this update to Eve looks promising. Passive stealth with inherent mana regen will make for an Eve that can at least have multiple fights without having to return to base. The combination of stacking movespeed and attack speed from two abilities in unison, plus the increased range and amount of targets hit from hate spike, seems like it will make for a sweet Eve.
Clearly Dragon did not know who it was Tangoing with…
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Dyann Callahan
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