For eight straight seasons you could not see her coming. That was the entire point.
With League of Legends Classic bringing back old kits on July 29, we are digging up the champions whose "old kit" earns an audible groan. First up: the demon who spent nearly a decade invisible.
Formerly OP
Old Evelynn
For eight straight seasons you could not see her coming. That was the entire point.
With League of Legends Classic bringing back old kits on July 29, we are digging up the champions whose "old kit" earns an audible groan. First up: the demon who spent nearly a decade invisible.
You are laning. You have wards up, or you think you do. There is no minion wave threat on the map, no jungler on your tracker, nothing pinged. And then you are dead, because a purple imp nobody has seen since character select just walked out of a bush, deleted half your health bar, and vanished again before your team even finishes typing "where." That was Evelynn for the better part of a decade, and it is why League of Legends Classic bringing her old kit back onto the roster on July 29 is the kind of announcement that makes veteran players reach for their pink wards on reflex.
When, And For How Long
Evelynn shipped as one of League's original 40 champions in October 2009, and she stayed a permanent-invisibility jungler for essentially the entire life of that kit, all the way from Season 1 through Season 7. Riot finally ended the era with her full visual and gameplay rework in Patch 7.20, released in October 2017. That is roughly eight years of a live, unaddressed problem champion, longer than almost any other kit-defining flaw the game has ever tolerated.
The Old Kit
The Data Dragon icons below show the current versions of these ability slots, since Riot's asset pipeline does not keep a historical archive of pre-rework art. The descriptions are all the old kit.
Passive: Shadow Walk
Stand still out of combat for a little over a second and Evelynn faded into full invisibility, no level requirement, no camouflage compromise, just gone. Landing an attack or a spell broke the stealth and stunned the target for a few seconds, and then she simply faded out again a moment later. There was no counterplay to this short of a ward, a pink trinket, or an Oracle's Elixir sitting on exactly the right patch of grass.
Q: Hate Spike
A near instant bolt of magic damage at the closest enemy that could cleave onto a second target nearby for half value. It cost almost nothing to spam, which meant Evelynn could poke a lane down from stealth, fade back out, and repeat the process until someone made a mistake.
W: Dark Frenzy
The forgettable one. A low cooldown self buff that cleansed slows and added a burst of movement speed, with no damage attached and nothing flashy to show for it. Most Evelynn players from this era could not tell you its name if you asked, but it is the reason she could never simply be kited away from once she had already committed to a target.
E: Ravage
A single target hit that stripped a chunk of the target's armor and magic resistance for several seconds. Combined with a jungler suddenly appearing behind you, this was the button that turned "I can probably survive this gank" into "I cannot."
R: Agony's Embrace
A ground targeted burst that hit everyone caught in its radius and scaled up hard against low health targets, giving Evelynn a self buff on cast as well. This was the kill button at the end of an invisible approach, and against a target already whittled down by Hate Spike and stripped by Ravage, few survived to tell the tale.
Why It Was OP
Big numbers get nerfed in a patch or two. Permanent invisibility from level one is a structural problem, and that is what kept Evelynn relevant, banned, and despised for the better part of a decade even as her damage rose and fell with every balance pass. A handful of things stacked on top of each other to make her uniquely miserable:
No information, ever. Every other threat in the game gives you something to react to, a ward tick, a missing minion, a jungle timer. Evelynn gave you nothing. The only real answer was buying dedicated true sight items and consumables specifically because she existed, an ongoing gold tax that no other single champion demanded of the entire enemy team.
Two roles, one champion. In League's earliest seasons, before jungle and mid lane fully separated into their modern identities, Evelynn could go either, an invisible skirmisher in lane or an invisible skirmisher in the jungle. Later balance patches pushed her toward a jungle only identity, but that early flexibility only added to how oppressive she felt in a less specialized meta.
Inevitability, not just damage. A gank you cannot see coming is not a 50/50 you might win. It is a kill that happens on Evelynn's schedule, whenever she decides your ward coverage has a gap. Ravage's resistance shred and Agony's Embrace's execute scaling meant that once she committed, the fight was usually already decided before you knew it had started.
The Fall
Evelynn's permanent stealth survived years of smaller tuning passes, cooldown adjustments, and damage nerfs without ever fixing the actual complaint. Riot eventually concluded the identity itself needed to change and gave her a full visual and gameplay rework in Patch 7.20, released in October 2017.
What Changed
Stealth now only activates after level six, and it is camouflage rather than true invisibility, meaning nearby enemies can still spot her if they are looking. Hate Spike survived the rework in name only as her new clear and poke tool, while Allure, Whiplash, and Last Caress replaced Dark Frenzy, Ravage, and Agony's Embrace outright. It remains one of the most complete kit overhauls the game has ever shipped.
Where She Stands Now
Modern Evelynn is a jungle only assassin who spikes hard once Demon Shade unlocks at level six, chaining Allure's charm into Whiplash's execute damage and Last Caress's untargetable burst to delete a single target in one rotation. She is nowhere near the current top of the jungle tier list, more of a snowbally, high skill ceiling pick that specific players still terrorize solo queue with rather than a champion the whole roster fears on sight. The stealth is real, but it is a level six power spike now, not an eight year unsolved design flaw.
Nominate The Next One
This series actually goes all the way back to 2011, when we first wrote up old Twisted Fate and old Nidalee. Both of those posts are overdue for a proper modern rewrite, and they are next on our list once this one is out the door. Who else belongs in the Formerly OP hall of fame? Drop your nominations in the comments below, and with Classic mode about to make several of these old kits playable again on July 29, we suspect this list is only going to get longer.
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