Each time a patch finds itself on the League of Legends client, freshly spawned and still shaking development gloop off its wobbly patch-legs, someone will cry out in frustration. Because that wasn’t the patch that fixed Evelyn, and that wasn’t the patch that finally made stealth a viable mechanic. But no more! Riot have detailed the changes coming to stealth, and specifically Evelyn and Twitch, in a big old blog post that is putting smiles on a lot of faces. And not just those who play them; the way they’re changing it should make everyone’s life more pleasant.
Currently, stealth is an incompetent bastard, great for public matches, but terrible against anyone who had the slightest clue what they were doing, because it necessitates Oracle’s Elixir and Vision Wards to counter, and good teams buy them immediately, where inexperienced teams don’t even know what to do. It means that both Twitch and Evelyn, the two most stealthy champions in the game, never see use in pro games, but dominate in the lower levels. It’s no fun to get ganked by someone you can’t see.
So Riot are reworking both of them, extensively. Evelyn is getting a permanent stealth, however it turns off if she gets close to an enemy champion, as well as being visible to Oracle’s and Vision Wards, like before. It means she’s more of a worry in terms of map awareness than necessarily ganking out of nowhere, which should make her viable in pro games, but not frustrating in public matches.
She’s also getting some buffs to her mobility, a buffed Hate Spike and a new ultimate that is a ranged AoE that damages and slows enemies while buffing her depending on how many she hits.
Twitch, on the other hand, is having the opposite treatment, where instead of being pushed more towards the stealth, he’s being taken away from it, with his Ambush turning into more of a short term buff that gets him where he needs to be to properly stack his poison, which is itself getting a buff.
The biggest change is coming to Expunge, which now stacks much better, both with AP and AD, as well as getting a straight bonus from your AD. Along with this, his base stats are getting buffed, as well as his animations getting a slight rework to make him more easy to play.
All of this means that both champions should be much more viable across the board, pulling them off the bench and right into competitive play. Whether they’ll work as well on the field as they do on paper, however, has yet to be seen. Once they’re out and released, we’ll have a run through them detailing the changes in a more hands-on capacity.