So, let's start with the reason you're reading this particular guide.
I'm not a Challenger player. I'll most likely never reach these upper echelons of League. I'm not some 6000 LP Peak 3.2M GOD OTP Evelynn. My peak probably lies somewhere in Plat and I'm honestly okay with that.

You'll find plenty of high-elo guides and clickbaited YouTube videos with flashy thumbnails. I have nothing against them personally - I mean it's good content to watch to dinner or something - but how relevant are those to the experience of the average League player? Even if they're smurfing in low-elo, they're still thinking like a Challenger and have so much experience and high-elo habits that won't really work for you.

No, you're here for a mix of degenerate comedy and down-to-earth low-to-mid elo advice. You're here to listen to a random chick (you can call me Panther or Jay) ramble about her beloved onetrick while she's being an egirl online so ***** guys buy her skins. So let's get on with that ****.

She's the Queen, the icon, the moment.



Evelynn is an insane burst AP assassin entirely designed around her passive Demon Shade which gives her permanent out-of-combat camouflage from level 6. She doesn't have any crazy mechanics (she literally has one combo) so her skill expression lies entirely in pathing and positioning. Stalking your prey, finding the most advantageous angle to pounce from is the essence of playing Evelynn.

This champion is for psychopaths. I am not okay. Making enemies very miserable very fast has been the most fun I've had in League ever since I came back to it in Season 8 (my initial contact was in December 2010). The nature of the champion brings out the worst stalker tendencies in her player. Soon enough you become addicted to seeing healthbars disappear (lower burst champs just doesn't feel the same anymore) and getting flamed in allchat (RIP my sweet prince), later you subscribe to r/QueensOfLeague and discover your closeted sexuality make like-minded friends there. Evelynn is a very unique champion in League of Legends and, I'd go as far as to say, pretty balanced on the design front. She's the lowest range assassin in the game due to her passive; she's extremely squishy but her passive HP regen makes up for that out-of-combat; half her damage (E Empowered Whiplash and R Last Caress) disappears if she's so much as grounded/rooted; a 75g item Control Ward in the shop counters her completely.

Passive - Demon Shade

When out of combat for a few seconds, you start regenerating your health based on level and AP - it starts from 40% HP but can get you anywhere from 70% to 100% HP if you're fed enough. (The regen rate has been doubled in lategame, but it speaks volumes of how **** it was that I can barely tell the difference.) After 6, you gain her infamous camouflage, which is the main reason we're playing this champion. You get to ignore yellow and blue wards completely and are revealed only by red wards (considerably longer range than the circle; you get a red shimmer) and champion vision in a radius conveniently slightly smaller than your Q dart range. Whenever you're not on the map, it instills your enemies with that sense of sweet, sweet dread which will persist throughout the entire time you're fed and will probably make them PSTD ban Eve after or make a rage post on r/leagueoflegends. Your R also resets the cooldown to 1.25 seconds, meaning you stealth 0.75s after blinking back.

Q - Hate Spike

Evelynn throws a dart in a target direction, dealing magic damage and granting extra magic damage on 3 next attacks on the struck target. Evelynn can then recast Q for up to three times toward, in order: enemy champions, recent targets, other enemies.

This is your ranged damage tool, farming tool and charm-popping tool. Landing the first dart is the more important the less fed you are; missing it removes about 30% of your damage. The recasts are slightly shorter range and, unfortunately, you can't aim them yourself (Riot pls make it prioritize Allured champions tysm). You can't Q-Flash though - the dart fires from the start of the cast time. You're going to give your ring finger/pinky quite the exercise while clearing the jungle. Good move, fun to spam.

W - Allure (used to be called Lust Dust wtf riot)

Evelynn curses the target for 5 seconds. Expunging the mark with attacks or abilities slows for 0.75 seconds. If the mark stayed for at least 2.5 seconds (the heart forms), the target is charmed instead and its magic resistance shredded.

This is the bulk of Evelynn's skill expression right here. It's your mind-game move - whoever you blow your kiss towards, gets about 2.5 seconds of preparation before you come barreling down on them. Target selection is extremely important - so is knowing your damage so you can choose whether you can afford letting the charm charge or using it instantly for the slow and just going in immediately. The more fed you are, the less you need this skill. Mobile characters will do everything in their power to prevent you from charming them, so make sure to account for that. Most enemies will start to immediately back off when you place this, so use your passive to position behind them so they walk right into your eager, loving arms.

E - Whiplash (the virgin one)

Evelynn whips her target, dealing a bit of max health magic damage and gaining 30% move speed for 2 seconds.

This move is honestly ****. You use it either to run away or to last hit camps while moving to the next one. Still applies on-hits, if that's ever useful in context.

Empowered Whiplash (the chad one)

After gaining Demon Shade (even before 6), Evelynn can dash a short distance (210 units) into her target, dealing better max health magic damage to them and all enemies she passes through (on a pretty wide hitbox). This also grants the bonus move speed and applies on-hit effects, which simply means Lich Bane makes this deal Tons of Damage.

This is your melee range damage tool. If they get in range of this, they're pretty much dead. It also follows flashes, which is REALLY neat for pesky Ezreals or Zeds trying to time their escape with the charm charging. The timing on your actual dash distance is VERY tight (you travel more the earlier they dashed/blinked), but the damage will land no matter what, even if you've lost vision as long as you've started the cast. The move speed is underrated for either sticking to your target for Q recasts or peeling off (sometimes, if you can't kill them outright you have to hit-and-run to soften them up). It can be blocked but NOT dodged or blinded , which is handy for the recent Teemo buffs.

R - Last Caress (The Fool Destroyer)

This is it, this is the climax. Evelynn annihilates all enemies in a cone in front of her, dealing high magic damage (increased to 240% total damage for targets below 30% HP) before blinking back a large distance (almost two Flashes).
The hitbox is a bit bigger than the VFX (and wider than the indicator), but don't try to clip people with the edge without sufficient mastery cause you will just disengage yourself and look like LeBlanc still without any legendary or ASU - a total clown. You can be pretty insanely snazzy by ulting backwards to gapclose; just make sure you have enough damage to kill them safely. A big part of Evelynn mastery is knowing your damage as to know when exactly to press R to get the execute damage - it's so high it will most likely ignore any shields and damage reductions (with the exception of new and ) put on top of it as long as the underlying healthbar is 30% or lower. Sidenote on Cringebow and similar shielding items proccing on 30% HP - ****'s bugged, of course it's bugged. It's a complete coinflip whether you get the extra damage and punch through anyway or not - I've gone back to multiple replays, whipped out the calculator and targets with 31%, 32% HP on the frame of the damage landing would still get executed, but only sometimes.

I told you it's a very simple kit. She literally has ONE combo ((W)QEQQQ(R)). This frees your mind to focus on the battlefield and your positioning - waiting for the perfect angle to go in and obliterate a priority target in about 0.69 seconds. You get addicted to it almost as fast as your enemies' tormented souls leave the Rift.

Let's move on to the slightly spicier part, which is your runes. The situation evolved a bit and now we've got a choice!



Electrocute is the most reliable and consistent choice - high base damage, solid scaling and gives you what you need most, which is moar daymage. Dark Harvest is a consideration, however you're going to need at least 16 stacks to outdamage Elec with an inferior cooldown, unless you get a kill. Only ever good if you can proc it multiple times in succession, such as getting a double kill botlane. I've had a brief fling with her and she's been fun, but I prefer consistency.

Predator is spicy new tech that arose in 11.22 with the massive buffs to Ingenious Hunter. Basically, you prioritize backing after crab ASAP and getting Boots and then some AP. I've tested it in a significant number of ranked games and while it does make her pre-6 ganks splendid comparatively, you quickly start missing the Electrocute damage as the game progresses, not to mention the tech is virtually useless with any other Hunter rune. Synergizes well with items with cooldowns, though, so test at your own preference.

Sudden Impact is the best by a mile. You don't even need 6 so proc it since your empowered E is a dash and Cheap Shot is laughable in comparison. Taste of Blood is never used on junglers.

In the stacking runes row, take Eyeball Collection. Ghost Poro is weird and I don't know how to use it and Zombie Ward is completely useless since you won't be clearing wards at all as Evelynn.

In Hunter, we actually have a choice! My premiere pick is Relentless Hunter since Evelynn needs move speed for rotations and better ganks, but if you love using your ultimate very often, you can choose Ultimate Hunter. After the massive R cooldown buff in 11.17, though, I feel like this rune has a bit of diminishing returns. You will find zealous acolytes of both sides and both of them have their merit.
11.21 introduced quite the massive buff to Ingenious Hunter, you could consider that as well. Personally, I'm against it since I don't need the mythic cooldowns more often than 30 seconds and you'd have to go for Zhonyas to make it really worth.

SECONDARY TREE

Here we have two viable secondary trees. Go Sorcery for the standard Absolute Focus and Gathering Storm, which is about the only strong picks you have there (since Nimbus Cloak and Celery were nerfed to the ground) or be a 5Head chad and go Inspiration for Cosmic Insight(more Smites and Flashes - a must on any jungler) and then either Magical Footwear if you're boring or Future's Market if you wanna have your itemspikes before anyone else.
Actually, I'll take a moment out to mention - do you KNOW just how broken FM is? I'll link the full explanation on how to use it correctly here (cause it takes like three paragraphs lol) but basically, you get to buy your important items up to a couple times even though you didn't get that kill or been farming that well, which is just perfect for us.
Oh, I guess you can go Perfect Timing if you want an early Stopwatch and/or are buying Zhonya's Hourglass 2nd item by just LOOKING at the enemy full AD comp, we all know those.

First Strike is here and I'm iffy about it. Ideally, it has the potential to give you even more damage than Electrocute while also affording you a new shiny bag. Practically, it lands somewhat inferior of Elec (even more so with the nerf to 9%) while also potentially robbing you of a keystone altogether if you take any damage whatsoever beforehand ( Teemo shrooms? random Luden's Tempest procs, anyone?], so while it is fun to experiment with it and see the damage and gold amounts for different early-to-midgame scenarios, I think the reliability of Electrocute still goes unmatched. On average, FS would give me less than half of Elec's damage and about that much gold plus +-150g. FYI, an average Elec game is 1.5-2k, with the really good ones capping out at 3k damage throughout a 35 minute game. That being said, it's fun to experiment with it, precisely why I include things like inspiration secondary and off-meta **** in my guide. Ranked is fine, but it's virtually useless if you don't have any fun playing the actual game ;3

If you're gonna run it, though, Domination secondary is going to be mandatory. Unfortunately, we have to pick just 2 out of the 3 minor runes, so take either Sudden Impact and Eyeball Collection for straight damage or a Hunter rune for utility. I'm afraid the standard Sorcery secondary would never give comparable damage, since First Strike is best utilized to get you your midgame powerspikes faster, and Sudden Impact's just been buffed. On that note, though, we're now able to take Magical Footwear/ Perfect Timing, Future's Market AND Cosmic Insight all at the same time, which is pretty enjoyable.

MYTHIC CHOICE

Evelynn has a mythic choice, but it's not what you think.
The obvious one is Hextech Rocketbelt. Solid AP, token health and good Mpen on both the item and the mythic passive and on top of all that, a free dash with damage - who wouldn't want that? Then why, please enlighten me, do so many people still insist on Night Harvester?! Its effect is exactly as much damage as Rocketbelt, less move speed than your E (KEKW) and you get Ability Haste instead of Mpen, which is just completely useless on Evelynn since she exists to get in, deal her entire rotation and then get out immediately. Yes, it was broken for like 2 weeks in Preseason 11, but its pickrate until literally Worlds was proof to me many adult people fundamentally lose to kindergarten level maths. I've heard that it's stronger when you're snowballing cause you get to W and R more often to close out the game fast, but as a character that gets outscaled in late anyway, do we really want to put ourselves on a timer like that? Whatever the reasons for it having 10% of the pickrate but a higher winrate still on stat sites (and me getting dabbed on in reddit threads), I strongly don't recommend this item. In Ranked, at least, otherwise you can do whatever you want, honey.

My nerdrage aside then, what's the other Mythic? Well, my dear god-forsaken reader, I am a filthy Everfrost enjoyer. Let me explain myself.
Yes, you buy mana on jungle Eve, which is a bummer. Yes, you lose out on the Mpen and the mythic passive only makes up for it a little bit. In exchange, you get to lock down almost anyone in the game for your full charm with no counterplay. It goes like this:
1. You place your charm.
2. About 1 second later, you hit them with the middle of the active. If you've missed (like I often do), don't worry - the 1s 65% slow is still crippling.
3. You time popping the charm with the end of the root.
It's completely disgusting and the perfect answer to overwhelming mobility creep in the game right now. I suggest you try it out yourself, cause with the right angle, nobody can escape your grasp. (i've had to edit this since the duration got nerfed so it's not as reliable anymore, but it's still worth your attention imo)

Friendship ended with Shadowflame

The item I was literally creaming my pants about, the AP shieldreaver, the "magic lethality" execute item complete with a sick-*** name and icon.... is komplet trash. Biggest red herring of the entire patch. I mean utterly, utterly useless compared to literally any other AP item in the patch, but to understand why, we need to whip out the math.

Gold efficiency ain't bad on its own, but the gooch punch is in the unique passive. 10-20 Mpen sounds nice, but when you actually compare it to the realistic amounts of MR at relevant gametimes (so when you buy this 2nd with a standard amount of income), it's like paying 3x as much for inferior Sorcerer's Shoes. It's only acceptable into full squishy teams with Eclipse abusers, but honestly, Lich Bane will give you more bang for your buck since it also improves your clear speed and waveclear (time your third Q recast to get another proc on cannons/towers). 10 flat Mpen has AT MOST the potential to reduce mitigation by 10%, but that's ONLY if the remaining MR were 10, and that's obviously unrealistic. More likely, you're shredding them by about 5% (up to around double that if they were shielded or low enough) buuuuut you know what other item gives a juicy % amp in damage?

Horizon Focus is niche no more.

Riot fundamentally doesn't understand the concept of a niche item. Hullbreaker was in a fine spot so it was hotfix buffed and then buffed again and now it's OP but STILL picked seldomly because THAT'S THE POINT. Same could be said for Horizon Focus - a decently niche stat stick that gave long range mages a massive boost in damage and nothing else because that's the design. Now, they've slapped HEALTH (yes, health on a glass-cannon item) on Hextech Alternator (I broke down laugh-crying when I first read this), slapped ABILITY HASTE (15) and reduced the AP some to "compensate". The stats aren't amazing anymore if you can't proc the Hypershot, right? Well the thing is that basically everyone can proc Hypershot now, since it procs with slows, too. That enables Evelynn to quickly tap W for that juicy 10% damage amp. Missed Everfrost like the boosted ape I am? Well, you're saved too, because they're gonna be dead before they realize you've missed it! The item has genuinely become a VIABLE 2nd pickup in Season 12 if you're not a fan of Lich Bane. I'm already upset and we haven't gotten to the most ******** one yet.


Lich Bane is very sad. On the one hand, the synergy with Evelynn is literally perfect. AP, no mana anymore, move speed and the spellblade effect is applied by your E Empowered Whiplash making them do incredible, incredible damage. Rushing it in Preseason 11 felt so nice for clear speed, too. The minirework didn't favor Eve's use case at all since you don't want to proc it more than once. Currently it's just better to buy Rabadon's Deathcap 2nd. I'm not kidding, LB's gold efficiency is so ****... but we still go this item into 4+ squishy teams because Shadowflame makes me wanna kick a turtle.

Rabadon's Deathcap is the obligatory 3rd item. I sometimes slip up and buy other items before it and end up getting it 4th, but you can't go a single game without it. Absolutely pivotal.

Sorcerer's Shoes is the only boot choice you'll ever have that you should get somewhere between 1st and 2nd item. Don't go Mobility Boots, you'll severely miss the whopping 18 flat Mpen it gives. I've heard some people say go for defensive boots or 6th item in the very late game when you have Void Staff, but eh, test at your own recognizance.

The aforementioned Void Staff is the go-to when there's 2 and more durable carries stacking MR (a single tank Nunu & Willump is not worth it). The lower elo you are, the less this happens, and I personally end up buying it in about 30% of my games. Still, it's a stellar item just for gold efficiency. Pairing it up with Rabadon's Deathcap makes for a devastating combo.

For 5th item, I'd go with a defensive choice - Banshee's Veil against magic damage or pivotal CC you need to protect yourself from (while still buying a lot of AP), or Zhonya's Hourglass into full AD teams where you can stand your ground and your team will back you up when you thaw out of stasis. Take those 3rd item instead if you need the survivability more than straight damage from Deathcap.

Speaking of damage, Dark Seal is your best friend. Even after the nerfs, the value is just too good. It's a must buy in 99% of your games. For just 350 gold you get 123.69% of the value right away plus a promise of potentially reaching 372% efficiecy at 55 AP in one slot if you clap cheeks correctly. It's a no-brainer for me, however... upgrading to her big sis, Mejai's, is where it gets tricky. IF you're confident the game is going well enough for you to keep stacking then be my guest. I, however, have been cursed for calling KingStix a phony that one time and whenever I upgrade it, the game instantly turns to ****. I lose my stacks by dying twice without achieving anything, the game slips out of my grasp (44% efficiency poggers) and I start depending on my Yasuo's 0/10 powerspike to bring me back into the game. It's not a good time.

Oblivion Orb is a tough one to crack. Yes, the gold efficiency is good, and it obviously helps against characters like Sylas and Irelia, but in my head it's in contention with just buying more damage so they can get oneshot before they even know what's happening. It depends on your personal opinion on that matter, I personally dislike buying it since it puts my completed items 800 gold behind and takes up the slot. Morellonomicon is almost never worth it, by the way.

And that's about it! Other than the fact that your 6th item slot should always be occupied by 1 Control Ward for the majority of the game. Buy a control ward every time you you back and have the spare 75g, and CERTAINLY make sure to have one before objectives, as you can't trust the SoloQ autofilled support to sweep properly and have pinks ready themselves. I feel scared ****less as if raw-dogging in the girl's danger period when doing an objective without a pink in the pit, and so should you.


OH, I'D ALMOST FORGET. I bet you wanna hear about the ****ed-up off-meta **** I've got festering in my head.

Nashor's Tooth for split-pushing when your team doesn't have literally anyone else better qualified for the job. All the straight nuclear glass-cannon-that-fires-cannons damage you've been building, when coupled with 50% extra attack speed, will melt towers in about 5 seconds or your money back.
This one is an actually viable strategy I'd use in ranked as a last resort (Evelynn backdoors are nasty). Plus it's a fun meme as a 1st item for powerfarming since Lich's wig got snatched. You could even make an argument about the scaling component on its passive. Just make sure to autoattack the monsters.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter for infinite Q slows. Also synergizes well with Top Evelynn, which we will talk about later.

I've heard some people unironically say go Cosmic Drive for the move speed and health, but I personally can't see it. Ability Haste is totally useless, 200 health doesn't do **** in the current state of damage in the game and 20 move speed is a massive waste of the slot. Overall, it's a luxury item for all but like 3 characters and you're not one of them.

Demonic Embrace is getting changed yet again and this time, it's actually going to be a worthwhile, well-designed item! It also opens up the path to some cheeky AP Bruiser Evelynn gameplay that I miiiiight expand upon as the season progresses, but for now, know that you're gonna want tank items suited for the enemy comp, preferably with as much health as possible. (tradtionally - Sunfire Aegis into Frozen Heart or Randuin's Omen is hilarious for absolutely tilting Rengar mains thinking they can oneshot you. Also a unique way to make AD carries cry, since we're all about that. Force of Nature has been made into an MR Dead Man's Plate, which is about 6 seasons too late. Abyssal Mask sounds pog in theory, but in practice the numbers aren't quite there yet.) Hell, with how they're slapping HP on LITERALLY ANYTHING AP right now, just try buying it on your normal buildpath and see how it goes! That's the spirit of the preseason, after all. I'm just gonna say though, Fimbulwinter is not that strong for this since you're gonna have to bother with stacking tear on the comparatively useless Winter's Approach for a long time. You'd probably have to even bother with Rylai's Crystal Scepter to reliably proc the shield often, at which point your build becomes way too expensive for what it gives and just play Singed instead.

SO! Jungle rework. An almost annual time in every jungler's life where they need to whip out the new edition textbooks and relearn what they do for a living. So what's changed? Almost everything.

I'm not going to waste my time detailing the basics, you've got everyone under the sun shoving you clickbait videos about that. You know we have pokemon now; you know they deleted invading and kiting from the game*, you know they changed the Smite upgrade mechanic yet again so nobody's sure how it works anymore.
Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm going to proceed to a short summary of the results of all the changes.

Quick context: I quit league for over a month right as the preseason hit. I know, I know, right? So I'll be supplementing my limited experience (only like a dozen games on Bel'Veth and Evelynn) with friends' anectodes who are roughly my elo or like Diamond. Again, no Chally takes here.

The overwhelming sentiment is that it's more flexible and enjoyable than before. That was the intent, so i'm glad that's mostly nailed. Almost every change leans toward low elo:
farm heavy junglers are more favored;
invading is barely stronger than just farming your own jungle now while considerably more risky;
the Smite upgrade mechanic doesn't even depend on smiting often stares at Cosmic Insight and just farming the jungle more instead;
farming speeds are smoothed out across the board so that people are spamming Sylas jungle now.

Are you, the good player, the temporarily embarrassed Master player, at a disadvantage here? Not at all. The systemic advantages have been sanded off, sure, but nothing changed that would prevent you from beating a rookie in the macro game. In fact, all the new pings aid you in that! You can still outpace their pathing; you can still outgank and outvision them while keeping up in gold because of those changes; your experience will still clearly show through. And BECAUSE there are so many rookies now trying out the role or simply not dodging when they get filled, it is just as possible to jungle diff the opponent. It just doesn't feel as uniquely unfair as it used to, you're not choking out the opponent and removing them from the game, you're just beating them instead. And you know what? Good for them. Life's unfair as it is, nobody needs League dragging them through the mud.

Where does Evelynn fit in this then? I hope you can answer this one yourself already - really good. She's naturally a farm-until-6 jungler who benefitted heavily from the devaluing of Rift Scuttler last season, so since now you don't even have to leave the jungle, she's even more happy. Obviously, my advice about getting a gank in before you back still stands, now that you've got 15 more seconds to do it, but don't fret it too hard. Start top or bottom however you want; Krugs are so much easier now that you just need to hold 1 Q recast for the end and they don't murder you at lv2 anymore. I'm gonna post a clear video once i get round to it since i'm writing this in my bed.
Play Video Play Video
Camp kiting is nerfed, but since they've buffed it back a bit in the second patch it's not stupid anymore. The Patience changes are REALLY good; I have no idea why we haven't gotten those like 5 seasons ago. It directly buffs me since I've always been **** at that.

What item are we going? Scorchclaw Pup, of course. Evelynn's theme of DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE continues and you can't convince me Gustwalker Hatchling is worth it if you can just go Relentless Hunter. Unless you feel you really really lack that little bit of survivability and Tenacity, then experiment with Mosstomper Seedling I guess. You won't catch me stopping you from having a good time.

I thought I'd dedicate a separate section because they're just so good. They're the second, imho, direct change that massively lowers the skill floor to jungling - since The Muteall Life is our game, having over double the pings to communicate wordlessly is a godsend. I still don't see them used enough, so be the change you want to see on the Rift. I'm going to list them all, that's right, we're doing this. Y'all need to learn.


God, she's such a beauty.


- Caution - for when you sense danger. When you're reasonably sure the enemy is about to emerge from the shadows and ruin your day. Used when the enemy jungler and/or roamer just disappeared from vision while pathing aggressively. The intention is for your teammate to either disengage or take a more defensive position.

- Push - your best friend at climbing. What's the second thing you need to do after you watch a Skillcapped video about wave management? Apply it. The third? Having your teammates comply. You Push after a successful play, fight, or objective unless the enemy is still stronger than you (as in, when you've got too much gold in your pockets and you've only killed the support). You need to get these towers or the enemy scales on your *** and they push all the way your nexus after one mistake. If you keep shoving waves constantly, they're stuck catching them, losing CS to the tower and being in vision. I'd spam it in tandem with targeting the enemy tower so that everyone gets the message.

- On My Way - this ping used to carry a loooot on its shoulders before Bait, All-In and Push were introduced. Nowadays, you use it to literally convey your physical arrival - or your intent at it. Use it as precisely as possible to communicate your positioning. Not much more to say; way less ambiguity now.

- All-In - the red cape on the bull that are your teammates - you signal to go IMMEDIATELY, to fight, to murderize and take those objectives. Use when confident you have high chances of winning or you want to convince your mates to commit to the bit. Ping a specific opponent to highlight priority. In general, you want to fight when you just got an important powerspike and/or an opponent just blew an important cooldown.

- Assist Me - another ping whose responsibilities have been helped out by the new ones. Use it for everything unhandled by Hold or All-In - like help with an uncontested objective, when giving a buff (ping Assist Me on a teammate and then ping kill the buff) or anything else you can come up with.

- Hold - extremely useful for Hold Your Ground comps. When you want the enemy to come to you and smash their faces against your walls. Defend towers, defend high ground (not literally) around objectives, defend against splitpushers and assassins. You can't be everywhere, so you need to conscript the help of a teammate or two.

- Enemy Is Missing - they are, and so are my braincells. Actually use it to ping a general area where you expect the enemy to be but aren't sure - great in tandem with a single caution ping (don't spam!) to warn a specific teammate. Ironically use it to compliment an outplay, spot a bug, or tease a friend (or if you wanna be a *******. Don't recommend though.)
I am going to be dead serious with you here - using the '?' ping for unintended purposes is extremely important for your rapport with your teammates. We're pack animals; we like to have a sense of community and we like to be respected. Even in ranked games, doing a bit of ****ing around can go a long way. A midlaner you've ganked once or twice and threw a few compliments their way will jump into literal fire for you later when you need them. As a jungler, you're the glue that gels your team together. Take it a step further and be the catalyst for your players' excellence, too. I'm dead serious. I'm tired of the apathetic, defeatist, individualist and ultimately toxic attitude that's festered for a decade.
Or maybe I've just played too many premades lately. Sue me.

- Bait - used to be communicated by OMW - now you can communicate that you're not actually an idiot, just baiting instead with way less ambiguity. Baiting your enemy perfidly into bad decisions is an easily applicable way of swinging the percentages in your favor. Play on your enemies' impulsivity and step in as soon as they overcommit to murdering your ally. Doubly important for Evelynn as a positioning-based character - though your towerdiving is great, leading them away from safety is never bad.
Also... also used to hatecrime your teammates, but I don't condone it for reasons mentioned above. Just scream at your monitor instead (I do).


And lastly, we've got a much-needed rework to the Vision Pings as well:



- Enemy Vision - ping on a ward you either suspect is there or just saw placed. Now that you get an actual accurate permanent timer (banger change!), even more important. Further diminishes the importance of Oracle Lens in my view - if you can just walk around a ward, do you really need to clear it?... Let your support handle it, since you can now ping:

- Need Vision - a literal godsend I use almost every minute, whether to communicate with the support or another teammate. It's a whip you slap their VS straight - you only have one Stealth Ward trinket and only two wards at a time. You hate dark spots on the map - there could be a Control Ward there!! Especially needed in low elo where people just don't ward enough, which is unfortunately also true for your team. I'd even spam it if the situation is dire enough.

- Vision Cleared - this one is mainly for supports, I don't seem to find a use for it too much in my case. It's to prevent for multiple Oracle Lenses from being used in the same area or from wasteful Control Wards.


And that's about it! Please Please Please, use them. The meta is still forming so you won't see them at all if you don't lead by example. And I've just given you ALL the examples. So go out there and communicate. Applicable to all areas of life, honestly.

Now onto the best part, the saucy ****. Honestly the most important part, you can disregard everything I've written so far and you still could find great success playing Evelynn. I'm going to divide it into three parts.

EARLY GAME

I'll get the part that tilts me the most out of the way first. NEVER EVER go for that Chally trick where you recall in a bush, place a Stealth Ward at the last second and swap to Oracle Lens. I mean you can do the first part, but Sweeper is a massive lie. Sweeping for ganks is never useful since they can see the ward being disabled anyway and then you're revealed as you destroy it. Soon enough, you gain 6 and you're going to simply walk past less wards than you think, because PEOPLE IN LOW ELO DON'T WARD ENOUGH. Your support will do enough ward-destroying for you, your top/mid are likely to take Oracle Lens too if they think they're chally and you'd be missing out on placing vision yourself, which you're best qualified for since your job is literally to constantly move around the map, more than even roaming supports. You're guaranteed to have the highest vision score before supports get their item upgrade, and you will continue to be way more useful than the enemy jungler in this department. You can consider swapping to Farsight Alteration in the late game if your ADC is not using it, for extra safety.
Where to place said wards then? Almost any spot is better than Oracle Lens, but here is a comprehensive map. (this image is pretty old so it lacks the so-called "banana bush" at the entrace to both blues. it's a good defensive warding spot.) Learn even a quarter of this and you're already miles ahead of your competition. Evelynn is a positioning-based assassin so this is doubly important on her.

I have nowhere else to put this so - ALWAYS ALWAYS run Flash and Smite, no exceptions. Flash is just way too good for all situations - defensive and offensive. Evelynn has actually very little range so Flash is so much more irreplaceable on her than on someone like Zed and Talon. You wanna know what happens when you run Ignite? This is what happens when you run Ignite.

You have some options for where to start - either go standard start with botlane for a better leash and a chance you get invaded, or go for the cheeky play I always use and start topside (leashless is a thing too), smiting the buff at 600 to get lv2 ASAP and then full clearing, which still leaves some time to either opportunistically gank or ward while I wait for crab to spawn. We can't start with a Control Ward anymore, so depending on the healthiness of your clear I'd consider skipping the Health Potion and just putting that gold aside for an item later.

This start is so reliable it's not even funny. In the last 100 games, I think I was denied both crabs one (1) time. I get double crab in about 30% of cases. It's a great counter to the prevailing Gold meta of always starting with your botlane (and low-elo players having ****ty clears.) I'll also show an example of the way I clear the camps casually, since you can already look up the pros minmaxing this **** and you're not here for that.

With how utterly useless (and thusly finally balanced) first crabs have been made in S12, I think just full clearing with both smites, recalling and doing it again is back on the menu, guys gals and other pals. A 5 camp into 1 crab doesn't give lv4 anymore. You can come to the river to see whether the crab is still there because the enemy jungler also recognizes it's meaningless to prioritize it or try to hover a gank for ~15 seconds to account for the longer respawn timer and then recall for the 2nd clear. That should give you level 6 and then you take over the game as usual.



After your guaranteed crab, you either recall immediately for Amplifying Tome and Dark Seal and then book it to Krugs to clear them before Raptors respawn or gank/counter-gank mid and continue to top crab. If you stay, make sure to second clear to keep your tempo and recall with alotta gold, which you're going to spend on a Blasting Wand, Amplifying Tome/ Dark Seal and Control Ward. From there, you're going to have a bit of time for another gank before your camps respawn again and grant you level 6.

Before I move on to Mid Game, I cannot stress this enough - being passive as Evelynn is a huge gamble. You're an assassin, after all, so powerfarming should be your plan B, not A. Farm kills and shutdowns, not raptors. Moreover, you're an assassin jungler, so your responsibility to help your team is even greater than a Talon's or Katarina's will ever be. All the time, people mistake not letting yourself be set behind for passivity. Even my toughest earlygames, I've never just stayed in my jungle all day - Lee just pulled off a double kill? fine, I'll go across the map, and if I can't, I'll enter his opposite jungle, ward and maybe steal something (they never expect Evelynn to counterjungle them, love it every time). Vi just solo'd drake? nice, now I know where she is so I can countergank mid/botlane or exert pressure top. Evelynn is, in my mind, one of the best predators in the game so you need to run around and hunt some ******* game (I expand on this a bit in Mid Game). It's that kind of "I need to have tempo, i can't stand around" hurry-up mentality you need to adopt if you want to excel at her. That can be said for all snowbally champions, honestly.

MID GAME

As soon as you unlock your ultimate , this is where the game reeeally opens up. Nobody in the entire game can match the kill pressure of a level 6 Evelynn. You can simply walk to any lane you please and they die, straight up. The amount of damage and towerdiving potential your ultimate adds is unrivaled, not to mention they can't see you anymore. If you've been farming well you can even cheekily invade the jungler and kill them on their camps since they're most likely still 5. Either way, this is where you take over the game. Get your Mythic ASAP and start stomping even more; if it's a Cloud/Ocean/Hextech (AH and AS are useless on you) Drake, go for Rift Herald instead and use that to get plates and open up one of your winning lanes. You're going to fall off in the lategame a tiny bit, so keep exerting your pressure while it's at its highest. You either make them spend all their gold on Control Wards and PTSD ban Eve afterwards or play a different champion .

I suppose this is the best place to mention a very cool thing only Twitch, Akshan and Eve can do: The Surprise 1v2. Well basically, you follow a teammate (behind pinkward reveal range if possible) as they venture into enemy territory to scout and ward. You make it seem like your mate is purposefully walking into a bad fight (bonus points for the Bait ping), only to reveal yourself and instantly turn it in your favor. For Evelynn specifically, this is a very important strategy to either keep your pressure up in the midgame or to get picks to get back into it if things have gotten hairy. It's also extremely reliable for setting up objectives (I feel like 45s before is the best time). Just make sure you're not wasting too much time on this (remember to farm your camps during downtime!!) or that the enemy isn't just gonna pull a 4v2 on you. Or, yknow, that you *can* win the 1v2/2v2. Don't do this to Mordekaiser.

Quick notes on the new Drake map: Hextech Gates reveal her during the initial cast time; stealth timer starts ticking as soon as the channel completes, so you stealth about half a second after landing. Either way, they're AMAZING for getting crafty angles on your targets, so we're all about that. Just make sure you can take them safely, plus if you've got the time, just walk around since the landing can be warded and you're visible for a short moment.

A high-elo guide would've by now told you how to prioritize lanes for ganks to get ahead. To make a rough gameplan on the loading screen and try to follow it. Tell me, dear reader, who wins the Katarina vs Yasuo matchup? If you've answered Yasuo, you're wrong - it's the better player that wins. Can you tell on the loading screen? **** no. Low-elo is such a mishmash of bad players, tilted players, good onetricks but terrible macro players, even technical problems that the gameflow is impossible to predict. I've seen Sylases go 0/4 in 5 minutes into Lux. (I wish that matchup went that way in lore honestly). ****'s ****ed beyond belief and if you think you can prepare, you're deluding yourself. However, by now you should have a vaaague idea of who deserves your kills and when you should be taking everything for yourself. The answer is take them for yourself most of the time anyway, because statistics shyly suggests during your average game of league there's exactly 1 person you can control, but whatever.
Also, since I don't have a better place to mention it - try to balance being on the map and backing at good times (not too close to objectives; 30 seconds or closer is too late) to get your items. Don't be a goblin and hoard your gold; be a queen and go shopping.

LATE GAME

It's past 30 minutes. Both teams have some dragons under their belts and it's time for Baron Nashor throws dances. You or your team have failed to end the game quickly with the leads you've been gifting them, the enemy has secured some random towers and the Bounties on them have made your lead meaningless, everyone's at 4+ items and one fight could lose you the game regardless of how you did earlier because League has a massive problem with fighting being everything right now. You might've even gotten dragon soul but now Elder Drake is coming up and you're ****ping your pants fearing the throw instead of enjoying the soul. What do we do to win?

You can't teamfight as Evelynn, that's a given. Instead, your only hope is to IMMEDIATELY take out a priority target or two, live and PRAY your team do the rest. The priority target is the biggest threat you can reliably erase from existence. Picks on supports are usually not worth it unless literally free. If the threat is Irelia or Jarvan IV, you're kind of ****ed. Yasuo and Yone are fine except for that Cringebow bug I mentioned earlier. I'd honestly be banning the biggest currently meta threat you can't easily stop (so bruisers/tanks) instead of your jungle matchup. Just make sure to hover your bans for a while so you don't accidentally take them away from your team.

Don't forget Elixirs, I do every time. Either Elixir of Sorcery if you feel you need that tiny bit of extra damage or Elixir of Iron for more survivability. Oh and bigger mommy Evelynn.

Congrats on making it to the end of my guide! This is the second time I've written it, cause unfortunately the first attempt was lost in the bowels of Mobafire as I got unexpectedly logged out. This time I've learned my lesson by writing it in a txt file with Visual Studio Code as my word processor and 10m autosave enabled. As far as I'm concerned, it's not finished yet - I've still got things left to write like essential synergies (there's an excellent guide with literally EVERY hostile matchup out there already, go give it a gander), Toplane Evelynn, maybe a cheeky skin review! So do make sure to let me know if you'd like to see that and more in the near future. Tell me anything in the comments, really. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'd also like to use this place to give a HUUUGE shoutout to Rek's Coaching and his Community. This man taught me everything I still don't know about League of Legends. He bullied me into compulsively buying Control Wards (yeeeeeeeeaaaahhhh), he's analyzed a dozen of my VODs in a very brave endeavor of improving my gameplay, and is the reason I've finally hit Plat for the first time in my life. You can regard him as the spiritual co-writer of this guide, since without him I'd never have the confidence to actually pretend I'm good at Evelynn nor the freedom in being so passionate about her (toxic masculinity oof). Finally, his community became the place I could be myself, in more ways than this one, among other great people.
I cannot even begin to describe how overqualified he is for his job, so it's best you just join his Discord and learn from there. The main thing is that HE NEEDS MORE STUDENTS. If you don't want to spend money yet, you're sure to enjoy the free VOD review show called The Roast. That's how this journey started.

Since I wrote this guide last year, I've become a staple member of another place - the Wholesome Gwen community! You might have heard of Eve (the name coincidence is totally not confusing at all) if you're at all interested in high elo Gwen, jungle Gwen and high elo jungle Gwen (pretty sure she's the top player of the latter on NA). She streams quite often at www.twitch.tv/wholesomegwen , but I'd rather you joined the Discord at https://discord.gg/ERk9EY8X . It's where all the wholesome magic (and headpats!) happen ;3

I even did my own free VOD review for a friend of mine! You might find something there that I haven't explained here. As a sidenote, if you sub to my youtube channel you'll most likely get some random League clips sometimes. Proceed with caution.
Play Video

I also have a stream, though it's paused until at least July 2023 due to technical reasons. You can find me at www.twitch.tv/jaypantheruwu , where I try to keep a chill tone as I play Eve/Diana in jungle and Anivia/Akali in mid. Come say hi in the server!

Aight, here we go.
Prestige is the best, that's a given. I love gold and it's an upgrade above KDA 1.0 in every retrospect. The new exclusive version (with more pink and the stellar headpiece thingy) gets an S+ rating from me, too. Too bad I can't have it since I started maining Evelynn after it left the shop those years ago.

KDA 2.0 comes ex aequo. For the hype before the release; for the skin itself, meaning the Q recasts being ******ic, for the W chargeup being a bit more subtle than 1.0; for the R sound effect which I literally listened to for an hour on repeat in the pre-release Skin Spotlight; and finally, for Villain. It came out in October and it still came 1st in my most listened songs on my Spotify account, which doesn't count the loops on youtube. (and the rewatches of TB Skyen's music video analysis).
Even the chromas i've warmed up to over time.

Shadow is S tier for the best ugly duckling to stunning swan story in terms of VGU'd champs' old skins. It's so frickin good, it's honestly a steal for its full price (all the extra effects on her abilities, the model, the splashart, the perfect use of the color pallette...) and I got it for 290 in My Shop! Honestly, if you're not really well off, this is the only skin you'll ever need in your career since playing Classic is pretty dreadful.

Moving on to A, a pretty controversial pick: Coven. Don't get me wrong, I'll make sure to mention the mind-shattering hype I experienced when it was offi confirmed. I'll tell you how I spent the whole afternoon telling everyone how excited I was, to the point of being muted lmfao. I won't forget how I literally camped the client at 10pm for when it would be finally available, and thus bought it within the hour, and then how I pulled an all nighter on a workday playing it. That's a given.
My problem is that it's just not that clean for competitive. The Q is offly quiet; the W sprite animation makes me miss the charm timing more often than I'd like to admit; the E feels wonky in both its versions and again, the R is too quiet and unsatisfying. The model slaps, the animations slap, the chromas are good and the voice gives me LIFE (Maria Junot could make me her slave). However, it just never lives up to KDA or Shadow in terms of gameplay clarity.

KDA 1.0 comes in in the same tier not because it wasn't her best skin when it was released (if we include the out of game stuff), but because so much better stuff was somehow released since. It's still a fair choice if you don't/can't have the others - however, it shares the SFX with Prestige, and since i'm preparing to get that one with the Mythic Overhaul (PRAISE THE GREAT HARRIER), I don't want to get desensitized. This is also Evelynn in the middle of her journey described in THE image (https://imgur.com/OdmncI4), punishing people with beauty as her razor.

Onto B tier now. Blood Moon is Wasted Potential, The Skin. Someone get NickyBoi on the line, I can't even chile. Even the splash is a bit disappointing, but eh, it's got the nice detail of her nails digging deep into this person's skin. In game, it's just a worse Tango though... The only cool things about it are the W sprite, the stealthing sfx and mayybe the recall. It's almost double the price of Shadow for LESS value. I got it in My Shop three times by now and never bought it.

Speaking of! Tango's splash-to-model translation is pretty poor. The dress lashers ended up lacking and I'm sure 2022 Riot would've done them much better, even on a non-legendary (though they do look 10% better in stealth). The SFX and ability VFX is the same as base, since this is a legacy-tier skin and they already expended all their effort on Shadow. Take it for the splash and whenever there's a Twisted Fate in the game.

Let's go down to the below-average skins. I'm really mixed on Masquerade. On the one hand, it does more with its theme than Tango and even Blood Moon. On the other, it's still wasted potential, plus the lashers look really weird to me. I don't even remember how I got it (maybe from a shard), but I only end up running it when i'm feeling funky. I legitimately don't have more to say about it - I'm that apathetic toward it.

I don't own Safecracker either, therefore my opinion is limited. Watching the Skin Spotlight now, it's better than I remembered. She shares the theme with Twitch (wtf why Twitch?...) and even gets lil sparkly effects on the Q orbs! The white lashers look nice, too. It's even better if you've got a thing for latex as well. You know what, damn - I want this skin now. I'm getting 310 RP and buying it as we speak. It's certainly not C tier... you know what, i'm moving it up a tier. I'm not gonna edit the text review now though, I'm chaotic lazy like that. Safecracker is B tier.

And finally, the cesspool. Starting with Classic - man that is such a skin-seller it's not even funny. She's soooo mediocre. I get that the theme was kinda hard to implement because she's just a naked body wrapped in shadow, but come on, man! Extra ****tiness points for playing below Very High video settings (which I do). Also an easy way to spot a smurf, since you'd have to be insane to not own at least one skin.

Sugar Rush. Sugar Rush Evelynn. Man, I can't even utter the words without getting angry. The W SFX gives me a headache. The Q recasts actually make me wanna vomit with some weird case of trypophobia, which is automatically a dealbreaker since you use those around 69 thousand times in one match. The theme all around doesn't fit her, and I HATE the Sugar Rush theme (SR Zilean is the most surefire way to tilt me into hell) . The lashers weird me out. She looks weirdly childish, which SUPER freaks me out. The chromas sort of make up for that (orange-skinned Eve are you kidding me??), but I'd advise going that far only if you've got them for free on the PBE or something. The skin isn't without positives, though. The E VFX is the juiciest of all skins and you can actually see the R mark being expunged as the target dies, which is a thing on all skins btw, you just never notice it.

That's it for the skin review! Feel free to disagree :evesmug:
(Neon Inferno Eve leaked pog pog???)

Upcoming: better formatting, Synergies, and whatever you suggest in the comments! As of August, I'm officially putting this guide on Low Priority, at least compared to other things in my life. This means I will basically update it whenever I feel like it, and months will pass between revisions. To be perfectly honest with you, it's been like this since May, but I just decided to state it out loud here.

23 october 2021 - initial release and then immediate fixes to the image embed and icon BBCode.
24 october 2021 - minor adjustments based on Rek's free feedback. Thanks for the votes!
14 november 2021 - updated prologue to include me getting to Plat IV 29 hours before season end. season 12 madness coming soon - stay tuned for that!
17 november 2021 - added the most relevant bits of Season 12. I'm not done with it yet, though! And neither is Riot.
18 november 2021 - updated the Gameplay section with the new drakes and scuttle changes. Duh.
19 november 2021 - Added an expandable spoiler with lore!
8 december 2021 - added thoughts on 11.24 changes.
13 december 2021 - added a little cheeky section about non-Flash summoner spells after meeting the best Ignite Evelynn prodigy EUNE. Moved the thoughts on 11.24 changes to a better place. Also changed that paragraph that showed my identity. Things have changed.
19th january 2022 - added thoughts on 12.2. Sorry for missing 12.1 lmao, though i didn't think it was big enough to bother honestly.
3rd february 2022 - added thoughts on 12.3.
3rd march 2022 - removed the preseason underscores since well, it's been 7 patches since. Also clickbaited the guide to make it appear as if 12.5 is in any way relevant to Evelynn.
23rd march 2022 - made some cosmetic changes like typo fixes and rephrasing, plus a tentative section about Treasure Hunter. Not changing the title to 12.6 UPDATED yet since I don't know whether that isn't against Mobafire rules KEKW
30th march 2022 - used the mental health day off work to write the Skin Tierlist. An hour later I also realized 12.6 is out and updated accordingly.
2nd april 2022 - changed Omnistone to First Strike in its rune page, pepelaugh it took me so long. also shame i haven't played Omni on her at least once!
14 april 2022 - Believe me, I tried. I really tried to find something directly relevant to Evelynn in patch 12.7. Nevertheless, I gotta update the title.
29th april 2022 - Get Sun-Eater Kayle if you praise, Praise, PRAISE the Sun. Don't if you're a heretic and wish to perish. That is all.
I updated something in May 30th, I've added like 500 characters compared to April. I absolutely don't remember what, though. Sorry KEKW
9th august 2022 - FINALLY updated for Eve's QOL changes (two patches late, whoops), due in part to two different people pestering me to do it (unironically thanks, guys!), added an extra strategy in the Mid Game section and many smol fixes here and there. Added the Low Priority notification up top and a new shoutout to a dear friend of mine. also, if you're reading this, say it with me right now: "Thank you Neestz for teaching Jay how to do zooms in DaVinci Resolve", so I can finally start tentatively looking at making a video version of this guide! It's been my dream for the longest while.
29 december 2022 - been a long while! updated for Season 13 as all the changes are really pertinent to the role. cleaned up a bunch of stuff that's no longer relevant due to those, and outdated stuff.