Evelynn only sporadically sees play at the professional level and is typically regarded as a weak champion overall. She lacks damage late game and can be easily kited due to the small amounts of crowd control that her kit gives her. So why does she still see play without getting any major buffs?

Stealth

Evelynn is the only champion in League of Legends who can stay in stealth for an indefinite amount of time while moving. This feature defines her playstyle, her character and allows for map movement without fear of being spotted by normal wards. A factor which is often used and abused by Evelynn players, much to the dismay of her opponents. So while her key strength is in ganks and map control early, she falls in power/relevance/significance severely when the enemy team naturally groups together.

The Ability that defines Evelynn

Her place in the meta

Evelynn is not a high damage champion. Her damage is sufficient enough for ganks in the laning phase but her damage begins to fall off once the mid game hits. She can potentially run down an AD Carry or Mid Laner but her main strength outside of the lane phase is creating picks or getting flanks onto the enemy back line with the help of her passive stealth.

As a jungler there isn’t a meta where she is particularly strong. She isn’t a great tank because she is reduced to just having an area of effect slow, but she is also a mediocre duelist when compared to the likes of Lee Sin, Jarvan and Rek’Sai. She isn’t a strong pick in any meta. However, she is an extremely influential pick in the early and mid game.

Why does she see play?

The most important thing that Evelynn does is change how the vision game is played. Opponents need to ward places where they know they can see Evelynn, usually around her camps. This makes the importance of vision control increase exponentially. This is similar to the way Nocturne changes the vision game. The normal wards aren’t going to give you the information you need to accurately make calls and safely engage fights. Evelynn’s stealth forces her opponents to play safer than Nocturne’s paranoia.

Even if her opponents are warding properly, they still need to alter their playstyle to be much safer. Placing wards on her camps to see her during the times she is visible and allows a team to know at least which side of the map she is on. However, there is only so much that can done with this information because once she leaves the camp, her opponents will lose vision of her.

A team can only have 5 pink wards out at a time, all of which would be visible to Evelynn, free for her to kill when she walks into vision of them. This means that the enemy team still won’t know exactly where an Evelynn is most of the time. The resulting change in playstyle allows Evelynn to counter jungle and pressure more safely than most junglers because her opponents would have to leave lane and give up resources to stop her.

Why isn’t she always played?

Evelynn’s biggest weakness at any point of the game is her lack of crowd control. The area of effect slow on her ultimate is the only crowd control she brings. While she’s free to get within arm’s reach of her opponents, she has to rely on her teammates to bring the lockdown. In the mid and late game she can slow a majority of the enemy team and easily get onto the back line because of the ease of which she can flank a team.

One of Evelynn's few tools in the late game

Evelynn struggled in the fighter jungle meta because the jungle picks were heavily focused on early skirmishing. Compared to Jarvan, Lee Sin, and Rek’Sai, Evelynn falls very short of useful in a 2v2 or 3v3 fight in the early game compared to the other three. She even scaled less than the other three due to her lack of crowd control. Her only real advantage was positioning potential, but that had a much lessened impact against the then-popular fighters in the other team like Jarvan and the rest. All of which could make up for those Evelynn plays with their constant teamfight presence.

The biggest reason that Evelynn's play declines is that teams learn how to play against her. They learn who to pick against her and how to play around her. Once they make these adaptations, Evelynn's effectiveness falls off significantly. This fall in effectiveness is when we see Evelynn start to fade out of the meta until someone decides to bring her back.

What situations should she be played in?

Evelynn is strong when the enemy jungler doesn’t have high early game pressure. Sejuani, for example, doesn’t have comparable pressure on the map until level 6, which gives Evelynn a brief window to snowball the rest of her team. On the other hand, a jungle such as Gragas is very effective against Evelynn as he has good skirmish (2v2, 3v3) potential and can easily countergank an Evelynn gank with devastating results for the Evelynn.

Evelynn’s stealth can be used to great effectiveness is when you have relatively weak lanes or scaling lanes. A Jinx or Vayne AD Carry would benefit greatly from the passive pressure created by Evelynn, as would an AP Kog’Maw Mid. Keeping these picks within a 10-20 cs margin with their lane opponents at the 10 minute or 20 minute mark will help the team significantly going into the later stages of the game. She also has the potential to help snowball these scaling lanes into a quicker mid game spike.

Evelynn fits very well into a mid game focused team comp. She can help her lanes to get a lead early with her pressure. Then once the mid game hits she can start team fights and run down carries while she still has the ability to. Her ability to create picks in the mid game can also snowball the game massively and should be used to get a large gold lead off of objectives.