Can We Give Evelynn Her Identity Back?

I find that Evelynn is currently in a bad spot right now in a lot of ways, most of them concerning what shes supposed to be good at. Her identity for a long time was a stalker in the shadows waiting for the right chance to strike, a fantasy appealing to many. I was never personally around for old, stun-on-stealth-break Evelynn that wrecked the game but I followed on the coat tails, back when she was hilariously bad and would earn you a report for simply picking her. Either way, I picked her up and had a lot of fun, her play style was really enjoyable for me, but I couldn't keep playing her due to her abysmal state.

I picked her up again after her rework when she was a godly mid laner, and I must say to this day she remains my favorite mid laner. her abilities felt wonderful and cohesive and very, very satisfying. She fit the fantasy of a shadow stalker running amok perfectly, and recently I find myself taking her mid once more because I don't enjoy jungle Evelynn nearly as much, yet once again I'm plagued by her issues.

Riot has expressed their discontent with tank Evelynn before, saying it was a bit odd for a character like her to go one damage item and then full tank, yet have done little to alleviate her issues that force her to build like that in the first place, in fact in a lot of cases they've simply made it worse.

What Riot has done for Evelynn since her rework:

Pros

• Stealth timer that scales down

Actually a very wonderful change that made your stealth feel much, much better as time went in allowing you to slip in and out of your stealth far easier that lent to her identity of shadow stalker.

• Increased slow for her ultimate

This is quite a nice change from a gameplay and identity perspective, letting you cripple your foes a bit harder.

Cons

• Removing the stacking MS off her W and replacing it with 1 second CD reduction for hitting a champ with a spell.

This was a pretty bad change from both a gameplay and identity perspective, from a gameplay perspective, this was what little sticking power she had outside of her ultimate in her kit. It felt wonderful once you put levels into it and made a noticeable difference at all points in the game, and then they replaced it with a cd reduction. Shouldn't you be encouraged to kill someone to get the reset? It feels as if you're encouraged to stick to someone over a long period of time rather get in, burst someone down, and get out, lending itself far more to tank Evelynn rather than Assassin Evelynn.

• Changing ult to % max health to % current health, reducing the cast range by 150, and increasing the cd by 30 seconds at all ranks.

Yes, these are three points but I compounded them into one for the sake of simplicity and since they all happened at once.

This, this is what really put the nail in the coffin for Assassin Evelynn in my opinion. If I remember correctly, Riots reasoning behind the % change was because they wanted it to be an initiation tool, when then it was instead a finisher. But does that really justify destroying it in any case of it NOT being an initiation? Besides that, in what case does it make sense to make an assassin that relies on lying out of sight and waiting for your time to strike have an initiation?

Increasing the cd was also a god awful nerf, the ult is NOT powerful enough in it's current state to warrant a 150/120/90 second cd, considering in terms of damage it's either "use it at the beginning or it might as well just be a shield/slow."

Reducing the cast range was a fairly alright nerf, considering that when you add the Radius it is still a fairly distant ability for what it does.

What am I suggesting be changed/added?

• Take away her AD scalings and reinforce her AP scalings.

Aside from just eating at her power budget, building AD is hardly beneficial on Evelynn due to how little they offer her over her AP ratios. Making her solely AP will help clear up how exactly shes supposed to be played, as well as free up a bit of room to work with ap rather then having to factor in both.

As a way to reinforce her ap scalings, an example I suggest that her shield on her ultimate is reduced in number, but given an ap scaling to compensate, encouraging her to build squishy and go big with those ultimates.

• Add a base damage to her ultimate.

Rito, please, we know you don't want this ultimate to be a finale but nothing feels more awful then ulting someone on ten health and having them live, I'm pretty sure in the fact that this is the only damage ultimate in the game that can not kill someone at 1 health. It doesn't have to be huge, it could be 50/100/150 and tuned from there, but it feels god awful as it is.

• Undo the W change

The bonus movement speed was as I mentioned, what little sticking power she had outside of her ultimate which is now on an incredibly high cooldown. Not only did it make her more sticky, but it also made her more slippery. It'll encourage her to kite around after going in for a kill. Also, the change in the first place felt kinda bad considering it resets on kill so if you killed someone all that power budget that went into reducing the W cd was wasted.

There are other changes I could recommend that could free up a bit more power budget such as removing her E attack speed and moving that power somewhere else, since outside of jungle evelynn you're not autoing much.

• TL;DR: Let's give Evelynn her identity of shadow stalking assassin back and take away from this unnatural tank build that shes currently played with.