Hasn't Riot Learned Anything from Evelynn?
One of the biggest problems with Evelynn's previous kit was that it was all over the place - she had no clear direction.
From the beginning, Eve was meant to be an assassin - pick a target, kill them, get out. However, especially in her most recent pre-rework kit, all of her abilities pulled her in different directions.
Passive - Camo with a large radius, but small enough to allow for maneuvering around the enemy in lane. Definitely feels like an assassin to me. Also gives mana regen. ASSASSIN
Q - Low damage, no cooldown ability for extended trades/chasing. Doesn't sound like an assassin play pattern to me BRUISER/TANK
W - Mid-low cooldown move-speed buff that removes slows and resets on takedown. Ok, so this is how she gets to her target AND out after the kill. It can also be used to stick on a target for extended trades. ASSASSIN/BRUISER
E - Single target spell that deals a lot of damage. Sounds like the perfect assassin ability. Oh right, it also has a massive attack speed steroid, meaning you would want to use your W and Q to chase down the enemy while auto attacking. ASSASSIN/BRUISER
R - AoE current-health % damage and slow that shields you based on how many enemies you catch in it. Why does an assassin have an Ult that screams "HEY! I am a strong independent initiator tank who don't need no man!"? TANK/BRUISER
This combination of abilities doesn't lend itself very well to a true assassin, but some of us still played her that way - in my case I played her as an AD assassin that built warrior/duskblade/gunblade/GA. I could run in at the speed of light with W, murder an ADC, get the reset on W, and get out of the enemy team before dying.
This rework was supposed to refine her abilities and really make her feel like an ASSASSIN. I would argue that it failed to do so, due to the fact that half of her abilities still are not assassin abilities.
Passive - Camo with an absurdly large radius (exaggeration - it's about 200 larger than previously) that doesn't kick in until level 6. New eve has an even worse base move speed than before. Combine that with a reveal radius big enough that it almost covers an entire side lane, and you lose the ability to use her passive to maneuver around opponents and set up flanks. Instead of giving mana regen, her new passive gives health regen - but only while out of combat and only while below about 1/2 hp (for most of the game - it actually has pretty good scaling, such that later in the game you do regen to almost full).
The health regen is nice, but largely useless. Early game, it barely takes you above 1/3 HP, and you wouldn't want to gank or invade on that HP anyway. Though the big problem is that, if you want to, Eve can full clear the jungle without potions and end on full health. Meaning you just don't have a passive until level 6 if you play the champion correctly. Mid game, you get to about 1/2 HP or a little higher, but that's because you're an assassin and build little to no health - meaning you get exploded from half by anyone with decent burst. Late game, it takes you to basically full. ASSASSIN
Q - Ok, this was actually changed to be more like an assassin ability. Skill shot that deals minimal damage, but marks the opponent such that they take more damage from subsequent attacks. Then three rapid-fire casts of the old style of hatespikes. ASSASSIN
W - You mark a target. They see the mark. After 2.5 seconds, the target gets an arrow showing which direction Eve is in. Then Evelynn can hit the target with an ability or basic attack to cause the mark to activate, Charming the opponent for 1-2s and shredding their MR by 25-35%.
This is where I feel like the wheels really fall off. This isn't an assassin ability. A % MR shred makes this a tank-buster ability. Combined with how MUCH warning it gives the target and their team, and you would expect this on a character that is supposed to run up and duke it out with the front line. This is a hard BRUISER.
E - Single target ability that deals a small amount of flat damage and a % of target's max HP. When your passive activates, it resets the cooldown on this ability and empowers it. The empowered version has a tiny dash toward her target, and applies it's damage in a very small radius around her target, and increases her move speed for 2 seconds after using it.
Again, we have an ability that doesn't fit an assassin. No matter how much damage your E does, it's never going to 1-shot the enemy. It doesn't matter if you're level 18 and the enemy is level 1, they're still going to live. You know who you want to hit for 4-20% of their max health on an 8 second cooldown? Especially after they lose 25-35% of their MR? Tanks. Bruisers. Divers. The frontline of the enemy team. BRUISER
R - Evelynn becomes untargetable , and deals damage in a crescent in front of her. Then she teleports back a set distance. The damage is doubled against enemies below 30% health. Not much to say here. If the entire rework had been to just replace her old ult with this one, I'd have been satisfied. ASSASSIN
I swear, it seems like Riot hasn't learned a thing from Evelynn over the years. They've put SO MUCH of her kit's power into her W and E, but neither of them work with the rest of her kit.
Her W negates the surprise of a gank or flank, which is really bad for a champion who's entire shtick is being able to sneak up on the enemy. It also shreds MR by a %, making it less effective against the targets that assassins are supposed to go after. The W has a secondary effect against monsters that causes it to deal a huge amount of damage when Eve triggers it. If that was the main effect instead of the MR shred, this would at least feel like an assassin ability - even if a bad one because of all the warning it gives.
They've made sure that she can't build as a bruiser (rightfully so - they want her as an assassin) by giving her E an 8 second cooldown (making the base damage too low to really matter) and giving it very good scaling. She has to build damage. And no matter how much damage she builds, no matter how far ahead of the enemy ADC she is, It's never going to deal enough damage to them.
She is an assassin with only 1 way to close in on her target - using her ult in the opposite direction of the enemy she wants to kill, giving up 800+ damage in the late game, and no way to stick with them once they decide to use their own escapes to get away. That damage is necessary to kill someone, because of the % damage on her E. If she doesn't have her ult, she has exactly 1 other damaging ability - which has to do 70%+ of the enemy's health. Q doesn't do that much damage. Her cooldowns are such that, if she doesn't kill her target, she's left standing around for several seconds with nothing to do.
My suggestion is to take power out of her ult and put it into her basic abilities. And yes, I know it's probably too late to see any major changes to her kit, but I'm going to throw them out there anyway to make myself feel better.
Lower the reveal range on her passive. It's insane that the radius went UP when even getting access to the passive has been moved to level 6.
Lower the execute damage on her R or remove it completely.
Make E a normal flat damage+scaling ability.
Make W...better...somehow. Give her a speed boost towards the marked target, make the range on your empowered E much farther, but only against the marked target, remove that shred entirely and make it deal damage, have it so that your target only sees the mark once it fully bakes. Something, anything to make this ability play more like an assassin ability.
I've seen the buffs that were put onto the PBE today, but simple numbers changes won't work here. You could make W completely remove MR and it still wouldn't play well on an assassin. You'll never be able to buff the flat damage portion of her E to a relevant number that isn't busted while the incredibly well-scaling % max HP portion remains.
I guess I'll end here. There's so much more to say about the rework, but I wanted to get this one point across: Riot is repeating the same mistake they made with every previous iteration of Evelynn - they've given her abilities that belong on a bruiser/tank buster, not on an assassin.
