Evelynn Needs A Redesign

Riot has stated won't be allowed to be good until she's redesigned. That redesign has taken like 2+ years now. If it's a problem of labor resources, I will donate the design work:

• All abilities now scale from Ability Power ratios. Evelynn is magic, AD Evelynn is dead.
• Shadow Walk (Passive) removed.
• New Passive: Vicious: "Evelynn gains 1 Ability Power per 1 Attack Damage. Her basic attacks are magical, scaling from a portion of her Ability Power ." (0.5 AP per auto attack? Not Attack Damage).
• Hate Spike (Q) unchanged (apart from AP ratios, and interaction with Agony's Embrace (R))
• Dark Frenzy (W) changed to "Evelynn instantly enters Stealth and removes Slows. For the next 2 seconds she gains 175% movement speed and immunity to AOE effects. Cooldown resets on kill or assist."
• Ravage (E) changed to_ "Evelynn claws her target twice, dealing magical damage, and gaining bonus attack speed for 3 seconds. Evelynn siphons her victim's pain, gaining a shield for 5 seconds."_
• Agony's Embrace (R) changed to "Evelynn impales enemies in target area, dealing (% current health) magic damage, and slowing them over 3 seconds." No longer shields. Hate Spike (Q) refreshes the duration of the magic damage (but not the slow).

Explanation:

Stealth, Dark Frenzy (W), and Core Concept So she no longer has permanent stealth. She is now free to be balanced like every other champion. Hurrah!

She still retains Stealth as the keystone of her kit, she can either use Dark Frenzy (W) to run right up to enemies in lane and engage, or she can save it to disengage if things go poorly. Dark Frenzy gives her very powerful ganks, but leaves her unable to disengage if things don't go as planned. Alternately, she can save Dark Frenzy for disengage - giving people fair warning that she's walking up on them, but also enabling Evelynn an amazing disengage from virtually any situation (Shaco-esque, even).

This is an interesting trade-off - if she knows the enemy jungler isn't nearby, and she's feeling confident she can 1v1, she can use Dark Frenzy to get right in their face without warning, open fast and violent with Ravage (E), and run them down with Hate Spike (Q). If her target dies, Dark Frenzy (W) resets, and she can instantly vanish back into the shadows, and back to her jungle - in seconds. She shouldn't use Dark Frenzy (W) every engage though, because if she doesn't land the kill (Flash, CC, under turret, another enemy appears), she doesn't get her Dark Frenzy (W) back - and now she's a visible and squishy assassin with no other mobility or CC with which to escape. In general, wards now work against her because she'll still need to come to your bushes before she Stealth+Sprints into melee.

Conceptually this matches her class fantasy better than her current Shadow Walk (Passive) stealth. She can aggressively engage like Twitch's Ambush (Q), or she can defensively disengage like Shaco's Deceive (Q), but importantly she cannot do both in the same engagement. If she lands a kill, her Dark Frenzy (W) resets, allowing her to leave the crime scene with style and speed. An elusive murderess, where any sweet silence may seem the prelude to her cacophony of claws and chaos, and just as quickly - the chirping of songbirds and the dripping of fresh blood on wet grass. Gone as quickly as she came.

In a late game teamfight, she still initiates the fight with her powerful AoE slow (Agony's Embrace (R)) and % current health damage, but then she skirts the sides of the melee - running in to refresh her Agony's Embrace DoT with Hate Spike (Q) before moving out of the damage again - and when her team lands a kill, she presses Dark Frenzy (W), vanishes and appears in their backline - if they land another kill she vanishes again, and again, and again (think Vayne with her Ultimate Tumbles). She's still got a strong initiate, but like the rest of the assassins she's not effective in the ball of tanks and bruisers - she's opportunistic, choosing Ravage (E) targets carefully, getting on them with Dark Frenzy (W), and running them down with Hate Spike (Q). Very different than her current strategy of pressing Agony's Embrace (R), before soaking damage and DPSing with Hate Spike on the front line (often with a near full-tank build).

Ravage (E) and Survivability My interpretation of Evelynn is actually a survivability nerf in the traditional ways, but it's a shift of her current survivability strengths to where she actually needs it. Currently, Evelynn's powerful Agony's Embrace (R) shield is the key to her late game survivability - and she bizarrely transitions from being the frailest jungler and most vulnerable assassin in early and mid game, to a late game team-fighting tank. None of that is consistent with her character fantasy. Removing the shield from Agony's Embrace removes this quixotic connection. She should still feel like an assassin in late game, and this leaves her still somewhat vulnerable in late teamfights. Her other source of current survivability comes from near constant Dark Frenzy uptime during a fight, due to the cooldown reduction on hit: survivability through being decent at running away.

Evelynn's early jungle clears can be fairly fast, but involve the most backing of any jungler - because she has no sustain in her kit: no shields, healing, armor, or lifesteal. By removing the shield from Agony's Embrace (R) and adding a reasonable shield to Ravage (E), Evelynn would have access to jungle sustain from Level 1: bringing her to par with every other Jungler. Similarly, during lane ganks and 1v1's, Evelynn's kit isn't consistent with other assassins - she does best in 5v5 teamfights (due again to Agony's Embrace (R) shield). By putting her shield on her Ravage (E), maybe she'd stand a prayer of a chance versus her common jungle invaders like Udyr, Lee Sin, Kha'zix, and Elise. Suddenly standing toe-to-toe with, in Jax's own words -_ "the perfect predator" _- may actually be dangerous. If she gets invaded, gets ganked, and can't win (and she should still be a weaker duelist than her common invaders, just not free kills) - her true survivability still fits her core concept: she presses Dark Frenzy (W), instantly vanishes into the shadows, and runs home to plot revenge.

**Vicious (New Passive) ** Of all the changes I propose, this is the one I'm least confident on - but I'll explain the thinking:

Evelynn has two major balance problems which keep her from being allowed to flourish.

1. Permanent Stealth is fundamentally problematic. The solution to (1) is simple - get rid of it - while finding a different way reflect her class fantasy / core concept (which is good!).

2. As an old school AD+AP Hybrid, her builds are hard to balance because they alternate to abuse either AP or AD or both, in novel ways from which other characters cannot simultaneously benefit. The solution to (2) seems simple - make her stat interaction consistent. How to do this, I'm less certain of in detail. However, by making all her ratios be AP - like many other mages - she is consistently countered by Magic Resist. This resolves the problem of AD Evelynn. Instead, due to Vicious (Passive), even if she builds AD and focuses on her Ravage (E) initiates, both her abilities and auto attacks all deal magical damage.

She still scales with Attack Damage though, and this still encourages her to build the AD+AP items: like Guinsoo's Rageblade, and Hextech Gunblade. However, since she's dealing magical damage, Lifesteal and the physical on-hit items aren't effective for her - no Bloodthirster, and probably not even Blade of the Ruined King: she still needs to rely on tanky items and Ravage (E) shield for survivability. Some of the less used items like Nashor's Tooth and Wit's End become ideal for her in repeated 1v1 engagements, while full AP builds are still best for overall maximizing her Agony's Embrace teamfighting, and new interaction with Hate Spike (Q) refreshing Agony's Embrace (as a current health DoT effect).

I hope this gives the devs some idea of what she could be, and encourages them to not be afraid to break her Shadow Walk (Passive) for fear that it breaks her core concept. Stealth is a key part of her fantasy, it's the font of her power, and Dark Frenzy (W) above reflects that power better than Shadow Walk (Passive). She's a magical assassin, and a jungler, with shocking engages (both 1v1 and 5v5). She shouldn't be permanently invisible, she shouldn't be a late game tank, she's sneaky and fast, she takes what she wants - and then she's gone... Into The Night.