Evelynn is a Toxic Champion Who Needs to be Fixed

Let me preface this post with a few things. I have been playing Eve consistently as one of my mains. I played her a bit before her rework, and I loved the stealth playstyle but thought she just too blatently undertuned to really work as a champion. I played her a ton after the rework, through the brief period of time where she was considered underpowered and then through the long, long stream of OP. I've played her mid, top and jungle, and I always have thought her kit was fantastic. I'm not writing this because I've been facerolled by Eves, or because I think she's stupid op, nor am I writing because I want Eve to be buffed. I am writing this because as an Eve player, I acknowledge that she is broken and needs to be fixed.

One of Riot's main strategies in maintaining balance is giving champions "Windows of oppertunity" to play against and balancing out their power curve so that they don't have feast or famine type playstyles. A champion who is unstoppable when fed and useless otherwise is unhealthy for the game for several principle reasons, but essentially, because in both scenarios it's a bad situation for most people. Being face-roll fed doesn't provide diversity for you or your team, nor does it give the enemy team much ground. Being useless offers the same conundrum, just reversed.

Unfortunately, Eve has these problems. Her kit has low base damages and low utility with high scaling. This means that if she's fed, she blows people up, but if she's not, she tickles them. The fact that she's extremely squishy doesn't help the issue. To add to that, the windows of oppertunity to play against her are unclear, as are her strong and weak points. Against most junglers, you ward to keep vision of them and you take care, keeping track of where they are on the map. Eve's passive makes this impossible. That in of itself is huge in terms of counterplay, but the real issue is her design as a jungler.

Junglers can function on several levels of diversity. Some, like Warwick, function because they have a sustained clear which gives them clear advantages. Some like Amumu function with high cc which gives them superior ganking capacity and teamfight presence. Some function with fast clear times, like Shyvanna, who can get ahead of other junglers by means of better farm. The issue with Eve is that she has little functionality in clearing the jungle. Her ganking operates on surprise and damage. This is problematic for several reasons. High-damage gankers are traditionally hard to balance because they lack in counterplay; jungler comes into lane, blows you up with the assistence of laner, gets fed, etc. The surprise factor of her passive takes even more counterplay away. And because she's weak at clearing the jungle, she doesn't have much of a fallback in case things go badly for her.

The result is a kit that blows people up when strong, and that dies uselessly when weak. No one wants a return of the DFG eve nightmare who could blow up a fed Mundo in 1 second flat. But at the same time, if she is transitioned to "damage over time" it doesn't work either, because her kit is built around assassination, and lacks tankiness and cc to accomidate less damage. In her current incarnation, the exp/gold disadvantage of junglers mixed with horrible base damages and no sustain/defensive steriods means that if she ganks, the laner can generally focus her down and kill her before they die, making it a 1 for 1 trade where Eve loses a buff.

TL;DREve is statistically weak and feels weak when played. But if she's buffed, it's just going to cause her to feel toxic, lacking in counterplay or windows of oppertunity. Eve needs to be given a fallback pattern and a clear direction. If she's meant to be a fighter, give her the tools to do so. If she's meant to be an assassin, give her an assassination pattern that has clear counterplay and weaknesses so she's allowed to be strong. Eve is broken, and needs to be fixed.

Thank you for your time, please upvote/bump if you agree.