Counter Guide

How to Beat Evelynn

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Evelynn doesn't beat you in a fight. She decides in advance that you're already dead, and the fight is just the paperwork.

She's the clearest example in the game of a champion whose power is information rather than statistics. She knows where you are and you don't know where she is, and every part of her kit is built to keep that gap open until it's worth cashing in. Nothing about beating her involves out-fighting her, because by the time there's a fight the decision has been made. It involves taking the information back.

Matchup Snapshot Evelynn, Agony's Embrace

Where You Meet Her Jungle

Damage Type Magic

Why She Is Frustrating You never see the gank coming

Mobility Moderate, until her ultimate

Biggest Threat Allure [W]

Hardest Counter Rammus

What a Counter Needs

A reason to be somewhere before she is, because she can't contest an objective she arrives at second
Something that survives the opening burst (a spell shield, a health bar or a friend)
The early game to punish a jungler who's genuinely bad at the first six levels

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Evelynn on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Evelynn

Rammus424 games53.8%
Sejuani403 games53.3%
Cho'Gath882 games53.0%
Bel'Veth481 games52.0%
Sylas1,230 games51.6%

Picks Evelynn Beats

Kindred411 games44.5%
Lee Sin1,631 games46.5%
Qiyana610 games47.1%
Graves1,344 games47.6%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Evelynn. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 30,726 Evelynn games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Evelynn Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

She walks up to you unseen. Wards don't answer her once she has her stealth, and the ward you placed to feel safe is the reason you were standing still.
The setup happens before the damage. Getting marked is the moment the trade was lost (taking the hit comes after), and most people react to the hit.
She leaves after killing you. Her finisher blinks her out of the fight, so the usual punishment for an assassin diving a team never arrives.
She heals for free between camps. Poking her out of the jungle barely works, so the early pressure that beats most assassins slides off.
She chooses the target. No jungler in the game gets to pick a fight this precisely, and the pick is almost always the one person on your team who can't survive it.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

She's a passenger before level six. Her early jungle is slow, her ganks are ordinary and she loses almost every duel she gets pulled into.
Stealth isn't invisibility. Get close enough and she's simply there, which is why her whole approach depends on you not moving toward her.
The mark has a wind-up. Allure [W] takes a bit of time to arm, and walking away during it costs her the entire combo.
She's fragile and she has no answer for that. One piece of hard crowd control landing on her ends the fight she started.
She can't contest anything. A dragon she has to fight for on even terms is one she loses, so objectives on a timer are where her team gets punished for picking her.

Countering Evelynn

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Evelynn comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Sweep the ground you're about to stand on. That means the patch of lane you'll be farming in for the next thirty seconds (skip the river and the entrance).
Track her early. Demon Shade [Passive] only hides her from level six onward, so the first six levels are the window where a jungler can find her and just kill her.
Stand near somebody. She picks isolated targets because isolated targets die in one sequence, and a second body nearby usually turns that into a trade she loses.
Move the instant you're marked. The mark is the cue, well before the damage or the health bar.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies work anyway:

Playing a Bad Evelynn Matchup

Push and give up the wave rather than farm at half health in a side lane. The gold you lose is smaller than the gold she gets.

Play the map on a clock. She's on cooldown after she uses her escape, and that gap is the safest ninety seconds you'll get.

Take fights at objectives on purpose. Five people standing together is the shape she's worst against, and it's also where the game gets decided.

Best Evelynn Counters

Three ways to beat a champion whose advantage is knowing where you are: end her before she has it, blank the sequence she opens with, or be the target that doesn't die to it. One counter each.

Rammus Ends Her Before She Starts

Demon Shade [Passive] only adds camouflage from level 6 on, so Evelynn spends her first six levels without the thing that makes her frightening. Rammus uses that stretch. Powerball [Q] gets him to a lane or her side of the jungle quickly, and it stuns whoever it rolls into.

When they meet, Frenzying Taunt [E] forces her to attack him and Defensive Ball Curl [W] makes every one of those attacks hurt her. It adds magic resist too, and every damaging ability she owns deals magic damage.

Sivir Blanks The Sequence

A spell shield on the mark and the whole gank is a jungler standing next to a marksman with nothing left to press. She's the exact target Evelynn goes looking for, which is what makes this the most annoying possible answer.

Sejuani Survives It And Holds Her

She lives through the opener, and against Evelynn that's most of the job. What follows is a fragile assassin standing inside range of a champion with more crowd control than she has ways out of it.

She's also the reason the rest of the team gets to answer. A gank that stops moving stops being a gank, and Evelynn's exit only works if there's still a fight to leave.

Itemizing Against Evelynn

Half of this list isn't really items:

The Control Ward and the Oracle Lens are the two purchases that actually change the matchup, and for some reason almost nobody makes them until after the third death. Banshee's Veil eats the mark (the same trick Sivir does for free, and the only version of it available to everyone else). Mercury's Treads is there because the damage is magic and because the charm is shorter when you're wearing them, and shorter is the difference between walking out and not.