This is embarrassing. We've been sitting here for months living with an underwhelming champion that's incredibly unhealthily balanced. We got teased with PBE buffs and had them pulled time and time again, after our champion got dumpstered consistently to the point of being deemed "unplayable", "troll" and "awful" by the general population I play with.
As a Kindred enthusiast that has dumped literally every single second of time on Kindred the moment they got released, I'm incredibly keen on seeing this data that suggests Kindred has a strong early game. It's obviously internal, but if this internal data is the same data that suggests Kha'Zix deserves a slap on the wrist albeit his ability to delete pretty much any solo target with absolutely zero counter play whatsoever, Camille takes patch upon patch to be tackled in a way that doesn't even solve her lingering issues, and Lee Sin gets hit on his ult, which has nothing to do with his unbelievably stupid ability to snowball a game ridiculously out of control with braindead effort pre-6, then I don't know what to think of you guys.
It's hard to believe any of you play at a high level if you believe these current meta champions get slaps on the wrist when Kindred got completely pounded over and over and now they're "acceptable" when just about every champion in the jungle meta beats them in almost every way. When you pick Kindred, you doom yourself to playing a game of chess just to make sure you come out of the early game anywhere near relevant while everyone else in the game is playing checkers, requiring way less risk for way more reward. Kindred doesn't have a chance toe to toe with the meta, and even junglers outside of the meta, their gank presence is squat without red buff (hence why I popularized ghost + stormraider's surge, to counter these issues, hell, I made Moon do it in LCS), and they only become relevant 25 minutes on when they actually have Hurricane complimented by a second item.
Every other jungler doesn't need items to have effective pressure in duels and skirmishes, so I don't understand why Kindred has to be absolutely paper thin with zero combat power until they have Bloodrazor. You created a marksman jungler, and guess what? Not every marksman in the game has to scale into oblivion like a traditional AD Carry. Just look at Lucian, Urgot, and Graves, they're Marksmen that are played with a more armor penetration style build, which falls off a bit more later on than a traditionally crit-based Marksman. Why can't Kindred have this similar power curve? Every Rioter comment points at Early Game being stronger and Late Game being weaker, which could not be any more of the opposite. The funniest part is that in the Kindred vs Graves matchup, Graves outmatches Kindred in the early game and in the late game, so this in itself is a hilarious statement against this perceived notion that Kindred has a "stronger" early game.
Honestly, you guys at Riot have literally no idea what you're doing with Kindred. You can't change your statement over and over because you don't know what to do, just admit it. I'd be a lot happier knowing you can't balance Kindred properly than seeing you pussyfoot around the actual issue, taunting Kindred players with your ineptitude to find the right answers to the right problem.
Edit for more statements I want to make
Heck, you even have players like Valkrin that decided to go with a Redemption + Locket build on Kindred because they could work well enough with their marks to utilize this combo. This is a spit in the face for not only Kindred's identity, but for Marksmen as a whole. It's an honest joke that even Kindred even find themselves desiring such a ridiculous build over building traditional power, because they can't do anything with it. I remember back in the day, you made an argument for Kindred's defenses being too high. If that's the case, why does Graves still get to be as durable as he is? The comparison between Kindred and Graves gets brought up a lot because you managed to hit Graves right in the sweet spot for a Marksman jungler, but for some reason you guys have found yourselves completely lost and clueless with Kindred. Something needs to change, because they simply cannot work the way they are right now.
Don't take this as if I'm trying to flame you. I'm just sick of seeing my favorite character go completely neglected because you guys just don't care enough to tackle their issues intelligently instead of consistently talking about it and doing nothing.
Malzahat
