Early thoughts on the stealth re-worked champions

We’ve all had a chance now to digest the current changes to the stealth gameplay, with reworks that came in for both Eve and Twitch (along with Xin but that’s another story). Some twitch players are against the changes, saying they “nerfed” their favorite plague rat, while others are welcoming the change mainly due to the increase in his autoattack range (500->550), which allows twitch to function better as an AD carry. Eve got a whole new kit as well, with her passive now granting her stealth but she gets revealed any time she takes damage, does damage or casts an ability.

How does this change our current meta?

On the surface, it won’t. We’ll continue to see the same team compositions and the same lane presences in major tournaments. But when we explore deeper what the stealth re-works can offer us (especially Eve) we see the possibility for major experimentation within the current meta.

Eve should ideally be used as a jungler, due to her stealth mechanic and high ganking potential. But I believe she can also fulfill the role of double jungler quite efficiently. What this would involve is a double jungler team composition, with bot being left to its own devices, but constant ganking and pressure would cripple the opposing team’s jungler, and if done correctly, bottom lane as well.

Unfortunately this would take a tremendous amount of teamwork, or individual player skill. So it might not be the normal occurrence especially in tournament games where so much is on the line. But if executed correctly against a slow level 1 jungler (take your pick), you not only take half of your enemies jungle, but you BOTH gank top immediately after blue and red respectively, hopefully accomplishing first blood and snowballing top lane enough to divert your attention to shutting down bottom lane.

I would argue that this strategy would not work against fast junglers, but in reality Eve clears all camps pretty fast so it just might. But as soon as your opponents see that you are taking double smite, (they should) be extremely wary of Eve invading their jungle, and wards should be placed to avoid said invasion, so it might prove incredibly difficult to accomplish this feat.  But what about if Eve takes ignite? Or the other person jungling does? This isn’t the most efficient way to jungle, but it would offer the element of surprise at least. Again this is speculation on my part, but it sounds game breaking if accomplished correctly.

With Twitch we have a couple of issues. Riot made him more of a traditional AD carry rather than a stealthy assassin coming from the jungle due to the duration of his stealth, but he can still be utilized as one. Twitch would need to level up his ambush first in order to accomplish more ganks from the jungle, and forego leveling up some of his damage spells. He could theoretically level up his cask first for the slow, but I just don’t see that happening. And with a very mediocre CC (with a small AOE), he needs a support with some good CC or a top laner with decent CC in order to pull his ganks off with precision. His other option is stealthing into top or bot brush (hopefully it isn’t warded), then wait for his stealth to come up again, in order to gank… This seems like an awful lot of time to be wasting for a jungler.

This is all in the early stages of being tested obviously, and I guarantee players will find a way to jungle twitch efficiently in the future. But right now I would like to see him evolve as the AD carry Riot is envisioning him as. Twitch would probably need to level up Expunge first, for max damage, and venoms cask second for the stacks of venom and having both a follow up to the jungler’s initiation and having a second escape tool (1 level in ambush being the first). That 1 level in ambush is for getting away from those early ganks, seeing as it provides a movement speed boost and 4 seconds of stealth so you can’t be targeted by your enemies, and I would level it last.

All this would depend on your style of gameplay of course. If you’re an aggressive player who likes to go balls deep, then by all means max ambush and expunge first and go nuts. But the AD carry is supposed to go for late game items, and not lose farm by dying twice in the first 10 minutes of play.

By all means discuss how YOU plan to utilize this stealth re-work… as theorizing is what makes our current meta evolve.