My Love Letter to Evelynn (And Why Reworks Need to Be Rethought)

After spending hours making sure that this post was written the way I wanted it, I had to come back to the beginning to write the following paragraph. This post started as me pleading with the air to give me my girl back, but now I see it more as a love letter. I doubt that this post can do anything to change the decisions at Riot that ended in Evelynn being removed and this new one put in her place. However, I hope that anyone who reads this will be able to see how much affection and love I had for this old champion of this old game, and maybe inspire someone to really push a champion they love past their limits.

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To preface this: I've been playing League of Legends for a long time now, about 7 years at this point. For about 4 of those years, I almost exclusively played Evelynn. Approximately 3 -- 3 1/2 months of in-game time as Evelynn.

TL:DR; I love Pre-Rework Evelynn to the point that I am genuinely heartbroken that I will never play her again. I feel that the rework was not needed as well as executed poorly, and I feel that reworks in general have innate issues.

I wasn't going to make a post about this, as it would most likely be lost in the sea of other posts, but I've gotten to the point where it genuinely hurts when I see the new Evelynn. Whether or not this post gets lost or down-voted to oblivion, I needed to make it to vent my frustration.

I played Evelynn to a ridiculous standard. The Ranked system of League didn't interest me, instead I had my goals set at finding the breaking point of the champion I loved. I was able to play Evelynn in Top, Mid, and Jungle. As a Diver, Bruiser (AD and AP), Assassin (AD and AP), Full tank, On-Hit, and Crit, but not just in gimmicky ways, but a powerful presence in games with many different team compositions and styles. Most of the time I spent playing was creating new paths to the end of the game. Whether it was changing the time when I finished Trinity, or if I built ROA before Archangels Staff, I was fleshing out the way I played her. It was not rare for me to do insanely well. Scores like 22/5/19 were commonplace when I did a build path/play-style that I knew well.

I have many issues with the fact that she was reworked in general, but there are also issues about the rework itself that I feel need to be addressed. Riot seems to like the quality of these posts that lay out an argument, so I am going to attempt to make myself clear about the following issues. This will be a very long post that I am writing over multiple days to make sure it comes out the way I like, so if you are interested, please read over it.

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• • • ##Lets Talk About That

• They may not have spoken up about it, but I have not seen more than a single post from people who actually play Evelynn that were excited about/like the rework (on the contrary, I have seen many negative posts from Evelynn players about the rework). On the other side, it seems like the people most excited for the rework were people that didn't play her.

• When looking at the Dev Blogs about why/how she was being changed, I saw this little piece of info, which seems to be quite off in many ways. "Expect Evelynn to be more of a “modernization” rather than a complete reboot, similar to Warwick’s VGU." - From the Champion Roadmap June 2017. This is just inaccurate. Evelynn's play-style has changed drastically from the rework, and has been closed into a small box of being an assassin -- and only an assassin.

• Evelynn at the time of being reworked was not needing a rework. She still saw quite a bit of play at higher ELOs and even made appearances at large tournaments.

• Evelynn was changed from a simple, yet versatile, champion into a complex, yet inflexible, champion. One of the big issues Riot seemed to have with the old Evelynn was that she was now a Diver subclass (Further explained a few points down). What was never talked about, was that she was still viable as an AP Assassin. As well as full tank, full AD, Crit, and on-hit to name a few. As someone who played an immense amount of Evelynn, I can tell you that these were not just gimmicky, cheesy builds. These were viable builds that could fit well with a variety of team compositions.

• I do want to talk about this last point in a couple different sub-points to make sure it is clear: the goals of the dev-team on Evelynn. There are three major goals listed for Evelynn in the Dev Blog "STATE OF CHAMPION UPDATE, JANUARY 2017". I feel that these goals where bad goals/poorly done goals, that were honestly not needed.

• The first goal was to solidify her as an Assassin she was meant to be and not the Diver she had become. Evelynn had changed from the original vision of the designers. This wasn't something new, this was happening for a long time before the rework. There was even a post a year before the rework about champion subclasses in which Evelynn was listed as a Diver, and she had already evolved substantially before that. This goal doesn't make much sense to me, considering the whole rework process -- I thought -- was supposed to be about making a champion into a healthier state while keeping them the same champion. If your goal is to specifically make a champion different than how the people who loved her played, then I feel like that goal is innately against that principle.

• The second goal was to add more satisfaction on ability use. This one doesn't have any issues about the goal itself, and more about the way it was executed. I feel that this goal was not reached. Maybe for people who didn't play much Evelynn, the skills feel more polished, but I feel that the skills feel more awkward from before. This goal also needs additional points for each ability, I apologize for the clutter.

• • The new Passive is very similar to before, slight changes made to make it be delayed from the beginning of the game, and give HP regeneration instead of MP regeneration. I feel that the permanent invisibility, which was supplementary on her before, is now only useful when ganking/flanking. The fact that it is permanent now, I feel is more of a gimmick. The new Evelynn could have this on an ability, and it would not change her very much. You don't have the scouting potential from before, because you have to be more careful of who you run into. You don't really have the ability to slip around enemies. Without your speed buff, if you get seen you will have to Ult/Flash or be lucky that they can't chase.

• • The extra skill-shot and change to charges for the rest of her Q makes them feel inconsistently timed, rather than the short cool-down, which made them feel more consistent and controllable.

• • Her new W feels extremely weird and awkward. A point an click debuff, that slows on the next hit, unless you wait 2.5 seconds, when it becomes a charm. If you cannot hit within 2.5 seconds after the ability to charm, then the debuff disappears with no actual effect. This is not to mention that the slow/charm only lasts for 1-2 seconds based on level, and does no damage. The old W on the other hand, while being simple was very satisfying to use. A simple movespeed buff that removed slows. This is the ability that I honestly miss the most, considering her new dash range is slightly longer than an auto attack.

• • The new E is basically the old one, except it does not give attack speed, apply double on-hit effects, and is a small dash with a movespeed boost the next time it is used out of her passive. Not quite sure why the movespeed is there, since you are an AP assassin, there is not much reason to keep chasing with your abilities down. If anything, I feel a slow here would be more appropriate.

• • Her new Ultimate I feel works with her kit. I wouldn't want to see her old Ultimate on this new kit. In terms of being satisfying to use, while it does look good visually and is fun to execute someone and escape, it is almost always a large AOE ability that you use solely for one person. Although it is satisfying when you kill multiple people with it, it is a very rare occurrence. On the other hand, her old Ultimate was also very satisfying for landing on a large group of people, and since it was a tool to lower other players HP rather than execute, it could be used in the beginning of team-fights for an amazing engage, or in a situation where you were outnumbered. I think they are similarly satisfying, I just feel that the old ability was able to get large satisfying hits more consistently.

• The third goal -- again -- I feel is a fine goal for a rework, but was executed poorly. The goal was to make her healthier in the state of the game. To this end, I again feel that the goal was not reached. Although she seems to fit in the game more now than she did before, I think she would have fit fine with just a visual update, and while I feel like the new Evelynn is not a bad champion, I feel that she is not a strong champion that contributes to the game -- League as a whole, not just the match -- more than the old one. I honestly think that the new Evelynn is redundant. While we may have plenty of other Diver subclass champions in the game, no one did it like the old Evelynn did. At this point, I can think of 3 different champions that do very close to what the new Evelynn does, and some do it much better than she does: Talon, Fizz, and Kha'zix (who now essentially also has permanent invisibility, but his doesn't have a range.

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Evelynn is a champion that I have great affection for. Not only as a Diver, but as a versatile invisible champion that can be played many ways. Even if the old Evelynn had all her AD scaling removed, and had her ability to play as a Bruiser (both AP and AD) removed, I would still play her as an AP Assassin. Evelynn had an elegant and fun, yet strange and simplistic kit that I have yet to find anything similar to in the game. I don't hate the people who changed her, but I do hate the fact that she was changed. I honestly believe that the rework design team did try their best to keep Evelynn as Evelynn

I fell in love with Evelynn, not because of how she played as a particular role, or with a particular build, but how she played with all of them. Every single one still had very similar practices that you needed to engage in. Such as: weaving around enemy champions while invisible was fun and doable, but now the build path for Evelynn is so limited that you can't build the movespeed items you would need for it.

I felt strongly enough about this that I spent multiple hours over multiple days writing this post. It is not that long, but it contains my raw emotions and hopefully relatively logical arguments to the rework of Evelynn. I've fallen so hard for this champion. I don't want all the time it took reworking this champion put to waste, but I would love if there was some way for me to play her again.

--- Sincerely -- -- -- -- A Hopeless Loverboy