Evelynn Build Guide by thepope289

Intro to Evelynn on Dominion!

Evelynn (Eve from now on) is one of my favorite characters in all of League of Legends. Despite her huge nerfs a few patches ago, I still continue to play her often with marginal success on Summoner's Rift despite my team's constant whining about her. As soon as the Dominion beta was released, I knew I would play Eve as my first character on The Crystal Scar. To my surprise, Eve completely dominated the other team with her ability to slip away and her overall mobility thanks to her ultimate. In this guide, I will go over the general strategy Eve will use to backdoor the enemy and how she can do much more than capture a point and run away.

If you are looking for a more general guide on Eve, I would suggest Evelynn, Still Viable, Still Deadly as a good build to take a look at. It helps to explain how Eve should be handled by the player after her big nerf.

The Different Builds (And you!)

I am starting to add a few more builds to this guide to show all of the roles that Eve is capable of playing on Dominion. Playing Eve as a character that does not do anything but capture points and run away is detrimental to your team, but playing her as an assassin who tips the scales of teamfights and backdoors at opportune moments makes her a force to be reckoned with. While you should be capable of performing all of Eve's necessary Dominion roles (Capturer, Assassin, Roamer) with any of the builds, these will help to emphasize different roles based on what your team needs or what you feel like playing.

Most of the playstyle notes will revolve around the first build, since it is a bit more different than the usual Evelynn tactics used on Summoner's Rift. If you want play tips for these types of Evelynn, then I would suggest for you to take a look at the guide I posted in the last section. I will provide item and skill analysis for the other builds though.

Build 1,Backdoor Annoyance Eve

This build emphasizes on backdooring points and preventing the enemy from gaining them back easily or quickly to allow your team more time to do what is needed. This is the main strategy outlined later on in the build, because it is what I enjoy doing most as Eve in Dominion. The main items that make this build work are early Boots of Mobility and a Priscilla's Blessing.

Build 2, Jungly Assassiny Eve

This build attempts to make Eve into an invisible killer who excels at destroying unprepared opponents in the jungle or between points. Starting with a Sheen allows Eve to do significant damage earlier on in the game and letting her participate in the Windmill fight more effectively. If an Eve gets fed building like this, the other team will be hard pressed to find answers for her.

Build 3, AP Nuke Eve

When you see that the enemy team is comprised of 2 or more squishy characters, I would highly recommend to use this build! Apart from destroying squishies, it is also extremely effective at harming others, so I can't really make a recommendation between this and the 2nd build!

Pros / Cons to Evelynn (Noooo, invisibilty detection!)

Pros
+ Eve is a very mobile stealther, allowing her to get in an out of any area quickly
+ You will help to fill the role of main ninja capper or assassin for the team
+ Rewards playing intelligently and is more strategically oriented than other roles on Dominion
+ You ensure that the enemy shouldn't control much more than 3 points at a time, keeping the game closer
+ You will attract the attention of the enemies and distract them from what they should be paying attention to
+ It's a different strategy than just beating in faces all game with Akali!

Cons
- Can be countered to an extent by good positioning of the other team
- The stealth detection in Dominion is ridiculous, so stealth in general is pretty tough on it
-Twisted Fate ;_;
-You must pick your fights very carefully and know your damage output well
-You might be blamed for your team's loss if you don't know your teammates since you are Evelynn, the Master Scapegoat
-Very team oriented, your team must understand your role and be able to take advantage of the opportunities you are making for them

Summoner Spells (FLASH 2 GOOD)

Ghost. Ghost. GHOST. GHOST.

Take Ghost, it is so good on Dominion due to the massive mobility boost and the options it opens up for harassing points with Evelynn.

As far as the other spells go:
Ignite-I like ignite, it helps pick up tough kills and it can be cast while invisible!

Exhaust-Helpful, take it if you like it.

Flash-Mixed feelings on flash, I haven't tried it recently, but I'm sure it is as good as always. I don't like to take it, because I would rather my enemies chase me than just give up because I flashed over a wall. Don't hesitate to grab it though, it is very powerful.

Garrison-I'm not the biggest fan of Garrison as Eve, since you won't be diving or defending as much as others who would want it.

Promote-I find it to be a bit underwhelming personally.

Cleanse-Helps you get away, but dying isn't really the biggest problem. Could be argued for, definitely okay to take if you like it.

Heal, Clarity, Smite, Clairvoyance- These are all rather bad in Dominion. Heal could be argued for as a trick, but as Eve, it isn't necessary.

Build 1, Backdooring with a side of Gank

Runes

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration is helpful, greater seal of defense is helpful, any tanky runes you might have are helpful. Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction ensures a shorter cooldown for Agony's Embrace.

Masteries

I go 0/9/21 for this build to focus on mobility with a little bit of tankiness added on since you shouldn't be out for blood at all times. Haste , Quickness , Intelligence , and Presence of the Master are what we want out of utility mostly. This maximizes our usage of Eve's ultimate, Agony's Embrace and Ghost. Alternatively, you can go into offense for magic pen and reduced cooldowns. Both options are helpful.

Items

Core

Boots of Mobility
Starting of with Boots of Mobility is a no-brainer for this strategy. You need to be fast, and these are the fastest boots available.

Priscilla's Blessing
This should also come as no surprise. Movement speed and increased capture rate are invaluable to this strategy. If you ever find yourself with enough gold to buy this and no available points to capture, go ahead and recall for it.

Sheen / Trinity Force
Trinity Force on Eve is very powerful due to her Hate Spike, which is why we put one point in it early on. If you don't have enough gold for it all at once, then buy Sheen as the first component. The other two don't matter as much as far as order goes.

Regarding the order of Trinity Force, and Priscilla's
If you are playing against a lot of popular squishy characters (Ranged Carries, Casters, some Assassins) then it can be very helpful to rush a Sheen after your boots and finish into a Trinity Force. If you are playing against tanky dps champs and tanks, then just go for the Priscilla's Blessing, since you won't be able to kill them all too easily.

This is a great example of Eve's flexibility regarding her build order. If you start off with an early Trinity and become the main killer on your team, you can just transition into the Assassin / Gank build and carry that way.


Non-Core

Warmog's Armor
Yes, I know Warmog's is bad on Dominion, but it gives a huge chunk of health and regen which help Eve to harass the enemy often with less fear of death. (More on this later)

Force of Nature / Atma's Impaler
If against a lot of AP, build Force next. If against a bunch of AD (or a mix of both, since Atma's gives more damage) then build Atma's. After these, the game should be over anyway.

Skills

I max Shadow Walk whenever possible, since it adds to your mobility overall. 1 point in Ravage to help in fights at the beginning if you need to, but you will probably be level 4 by the time you have to fight anyone anyway. 1 point in Hate Spike to ensure you have it when you get a Sheen since it makes proc-ing Sheen exceptionally easy and increases your damage potential by a lot. This skill build basically promotes mobility, then burst.

Build 2, AD is 4 Winners

Runes

greater mark of desolation is crucial to AD Eve! As far as seals and glyphs go, greater seal of defense and Greater Seal of Scaling Magic Resist are good to help you become tanky. Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction is helpful for your ultimate still.

Masteries

Since we still want a lot of the stuff in the utility tree, I like going 0/9/21 as opposed to 9/0/21 since nothing early on in the offense tree is that helpful to AD.

Items

Core

Sheen
Starting with a Sheen allows you to participate in the level 3 teamfight at Windmill more effectively than any other starting item for her. This is the reason you skill Hate Spike at the beginning.

Boots of Mobility
Buy these when you can, I believe that mobility is very key to this map and Eve's playstyle no matter the build you are using.

Trinity Force
Now you finish your Trinity Force and proceed to gank hard and wreck faces.


Non-Core

Hexdrinker, Atma's Impaler, Hextech Gunblade, Frozen Mallet
These are just examples of items to get for more damage and survivability. You should be basing the rest of your core based on the enemy team. IF there are a lot of enemy AP users, then Hexdrinker is great! If they have a lot of tanky dps, then Thornmail, health, and Atma's are nice! If you're feeling crazy and want to increase your damage output and surprise the enemy, Gunblade is great on Eve.

Whatever you pick, just adapt your damage and survivability for the situation!

Skills

Starting with 1 point in Shadow Walk, Hate Spike, and Ravage allows you to stealth up to windmill after capturing middle, ravage to initiate, then spam hate spike to proc Sheen and to do great dps. Maxing Hate Spike greatly increases your dps as opposed to the burst you get from upgrading Ravage. Skilling Shadow Walk every once in a while allows you more options while invisible and let's you wait for the most opportune moment to strike

Build 3, Why Play Casters When I can be a Smurf?

Runes

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration is vital obviously. As in the other builds, tanky is always better in Dominion so use what you've got. Greater Quintessence of Ability Power is very nice to have since it boosts your damage early.

Masteries

Basic caster masteries focusing on mobility in utility to help you gank more often.

Items

Core

Boots of Speed + Blasting Wand
Going up to windmill with these items gives you way more damage than people expect to see out of an Evelynn. I have played many games where you just spam your 50ish damage Hate Spike all over their team as they ignore you.

Sheen
This is basically core on any damaging Eve build, it increases your damage output by so much!

Boots of Mobility
Upgrade to this soon after, because you will be able to assist your team from farther away thanks to the highly increased speed.

Rabadon's Deathcap + Lich Bane
These are what start to boost your damage significantly. With a Lich Bane after the Deathcap, you can practically insta-kill squishies without MR. You also have a very high output of dps thanks to skilling Hate Spike and Lich Bane's procs.


Non-Core

Rylai's Crystal Scepter
I like this item for AP Eve a lot! It gives you much needed health and allows you to chase or run very easily with Hate Spike since it can be cast while moving.


Games don't usually last much longer than this, but I would recommend to start building items with magic resistance or armor. Abyssal Mask is a good choice.

Playstyle Summary (How to effectively backdoor while helping the team)

Eve, as players in my past few games have called her, is a "skill-less, annoying, useless invisi*****." They probably say this, because my goal was to be an annoying invisi***** who is far from useless to the team :D

On Dominion, the goal is to hold more active points than your opponents at any given time. You don't win with kills. You don't win by chasing people through the forest. Eve acts as a skill-less, easy to kill, annoying scapegoat for your team to distract the enemy as your teammates roll to victory all across the map.

This strategy guide should be taken with a grain of salt. Once you understand the strategy, you must employ different tactics at different positions depending on enemy placement, death timers, current point situation, and enemy itemization. Dominion is a very fluid game, and your role should try to mesh with that, not combat it.

EARLY GAME

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Unless your team has a better idea, have 1 go bottom to capture and hold, while the other 3 go top to fight for windmill. You should go middle and capture it, then run towards their middle point. Nearly every game, the enemy goes 4 top 1 bottom and you can capture their middle point while they fight your top team. I know this disadvantages your top team, but that's just an example of Eve's weak early game. If one of their champions peels off to stop your capture, try to neutralize the point and Shadow Walk on out of there.

IF YOU NEUTRALIZE THE POINT OR CAPTURE IT:
STAY THERE. If the enemy is incapable of bursting you down at level 3 or 4, then take advantage of that and your stealth. Let them start recapping and run towards them in stealth. They will ALWAYS turn around and try to get you, thinking they can kill you in 2 seconds. They can't. As long as you don't attack, you have:

1)Stopped their recapture, wasting their team and preventing a lead from being made, causing your team to gain points
2)Not broken stealth. You can now try the same tactic again and see if they respond similarly. If they don't respond, just Ravage and run. Your slow will allow you to live and let you restealth to continue doing whatever you want.
3)Annoyed the hell out of them.

IF YOU DIDN'T NEUTRALIZE IT:
Don't worry, but go top to try and help snag a few kills since you can't really backdoor bottom. Alternatively, go bottom and gank their defender with your defender if the positioning looks reasonable to do so.

At this point, you really just look for any spare points / ganking opportunities. Get Priscilla's Blessing quickly, since it makes your backdoor effective.

MID GAME

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By this point, you should have your Sheen at least, possibly the whole Tri Force. With Tri Force, don't forget that YOU DO DAMAGE. I have seen a lot of Dominion Evelynns run around with 4 phantom dancers doing nothing but backdoor. That is useless as Eve, she isn't as fast as other characters. Basically, help out when your team is pushing or ganking someone. Backdoor when available as usual. If an enemy is at an adjacent point, you can often neutralize just before they arrive. Don't be afraid to be ballzy when you're close to neutralizing. Repeat the neutralization harassment outlined earlier, because it is fun.

By now, the enemy will be expecting you at all of their points all the time. Any time you can make the enemy chase you after neutralizing a point, make it happen. This will help you either maintain a lead, or give your team time to catch up to theirs. Juking in and out of bushes unstealthed will make the enemy want to continue the chase, thinking they've caught you out of stealth somehow, but you can easily re-enter it with bush physics.

In Mid Game, your primary role is to be a distractor, and you can only do this if you've built up a reputation all game of being annoying, skill-less, useless. Once the enemy thinks this, they will chase you more than they should, overreact to your backdooring with 2 or more people, and just get generally frustrated by you.

END GAME

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During the last crucial moments of the game, you should be quite tanky. I often end up around 3200 health with a lot of armor or MR. The enemy will still chase you, but you can keep it up for so long due to your items. YOU ARE THE PACEMAKER OF THE GAME NOW! You are in control of where the enemy goes, when they go there, and who is coming. If there are 3-4 guys pushing somewhere, find the gap in their defenses. You can pull off some pushers, allowing your team to clean them up. Keep harassing neutral point cappers as usual, because you are a *****. The enemy team will call you a plethora of things, laugh when you win.

At the end of the game, it is easy to neutralize a point that would cost you the game, allowing you to come back and win. It has happened to me many times from both the winning and losing team's perspective. Eve is very good at helping keep games close by not relying on dominating the enemy item-wise, but strategically.


Final Playstyle Notes:
-Don't forget you do damage. Don't let a point go down you could have easily defended. Don't run by a guy with no health to backdoor.
- Hate Spike can easily hit 2 heroes capturing a point, don't forget it!
-Always be doing something, Dominion is too fast paced to merit hanging out somewhere too long.
-Don't mass up 7k gold and not spend it. That's dumb.

Shorter Playstyle Summary for Ganking (A good read for all builds)

I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail here, but I just want to stress the importance of ganking in Dominion and some effective ways to do it as Evelynn.

If you are playing AP or AD, then you should always be on the lookout to create 2v1 or 2v2 opportunities if they present themselves. If your ally is being chased by another character, stealthing up and initiating a 2v1 is often unexpected and can easily nab you the kill. This situation arises so often in Dominion that it's ridiculous.

If the enemy is 2v2 or 1v1 pushing your bottom lane, then just waltz on down there, ping the enemy to focus and just completely destroy them. Depending on who is left, it might be very easy to rush over and capture their bottom point 3v1 or 2v0 for a quick boost in points as you retreat to the jungle and your teammate(s) retreat to your bottom point.

The most important thing that Eve brings a team is the ability to be seemingly everywhere at once. An enemy will remember all the times that Eve ganked them as opposed to all of the times that you didn't and they will think twice about chasing that Ezreal on your team.

If you do get fed enough (if you can even get fed in Dominion) that you find an enemy or two that you can insta-kill (mostly happens as AP Eve) then don't be afraid to just move across the map and kill them every chance you get. The map is short enough to allow you to do this often and still defend what is necessary as long as you cooperate with your team.

Never underestimate the damage that you dish out, because the enemy probably will do that for you :D

Champions that Ruin Your Day (some guns too!)

Nocturne

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He jumps at you from pretty far away and is capable of CC-ing you long enough to kill you before stealth activates. The cooldown is pretty long, though, so you don't have to worry about it all the time.

, , , Ashe, Ezreal, Gangplank, Pantheon

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Global ults stop your capture prematurely, but these aren't too big of a deal, since the cooldowns won't always be up for these either. When they have multiples, that's where the problem begins.

Twisted Fate

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He deserves a special mention for ruining Eve. That Destiny ruins your day more than any other skill in the game, no doubt.

Kog'Maw

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His ult allows him to stop you from capturing from an extreme distance while keeping himself rather safe from you. I haven't played against any yet, but I am sure it would stop Eve pretty easily.

, Hextech Sweeper The Lightbringer, Hextech Sweeper

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These are not bought very often yet, but I don't know why. They counter stealth very well, and you should learn who has them on the other team so you know how to run from them correctly.

Summary (GG)

Overall, this style of gameplay differs drastically from what you would see on Summoner's Rift, but it works due to Dominion's unique playstyle. If you are looking for something to change up the pace of constant face bashing and teamfighting up at the windmill, then look no further than Evelynn! Leave constructive comments and vote, I would love to continue improving this guide!

:::Screenshots incoming:::

This is just one specific game where you can see how many effective neutralizations and kills I had.
I'm still working on getting a pretty page of all wins! I have a couple that have 1 or 2 losses that look ugly, so it'll be a while til you get a match history of all wins D:
Post your screenshots of dominating faces as Eve, I can put them up for you!