Buff Kindred - champ not statisfiying atm - reasons inside - give feedback pls

**EDIT: One idea to solve this problem would be, to give her passive an additional 2,5% crit for each mark she got.

at ~10 stacks thats the 25% crit she lost due to nerfs, and aswell makes up for a bad jungle item. Also this would solve the problem with different build paths, since you could go on hit and bruserish items aswell as critbuild and still have a little bit of crit to make her E viable again and open up the option to get iE as a finishing item even for bruiser or onhit builds.

Also it makes her scale progressively the longer the game goes, and the tiny amount of crit at start from 1-3 marks might give her the little buff she needs.**

Im playing kindred very much, for the last 2 years with ~800 000 mastery on her, having played her in diamond elo and ranked good in the eu rankings for that specific champ. Just telling this to prove i am not new to her and i have a lot of experience playing kindred, since shes a really hard to master champion. Also i know how the gameplay of her changed over the last months and years.

So this is my personal feedback on kindred for the actual moment. Be constructive pls, im just a human and make mistakes aswell, i wil be glad about any kind of support or criticism.

The last significant changes she received were on her W, which have been reverted pretty fast since it was too strong. Imo at the moment she could use a buff and that change on the W was pretty nice, even tough i would wish for it to come back, i think its not the right spot for the kind of buff she needs at the moment. She needs a different approach to buff her at the moment i think.

First of all... It feels like kindred has been forgotten when all those changes to balance and items were made in the recent months. Speaking of runes / masteries and especially changes to adc and crit items / atk speed or even stormrazor. Its like kindred was never taken into account when all those changes were made, mostly because shes such a niche pick whcih had good stats / data at that point which actually didnt represent the real balance state of the champion at that point because of the niche / rarity she is and because of the skill you need to really master her at full potential.

Her E does scale with %Crit and even tough, the amount of crit on items were halfed, none changes were made to her scaling on her E. (Shouldnt her E have been buffed, when crit items were nerfed?) - speaking of phantom dancer, stattiks, hurricane, infinity edge etc. The same goes for the +crit damage nerf to Infinity Edge 220% instead of 250%, which also pretty much hurt the passive effect of her E spell procc. She didnt receive any buff to make up for the nerfs on some core items.

But there is even more to it.

Am i really supposed to build 3 full crit / atk speed items in order to make her "feel" good again? even if i wanted to, with league having 28~ mins games most of the time you dont have the chance / time to do so. Also.. what if i do not want to build glass cannon? (Black cleaver, GA etc, i will come back to that argument later)

Especially when i need to build a jungle item BEFORE all those 3 other crit items + iE. The building path for kindred is absolutely a pain at the moment, and once again it feels like no one thought about her place, when all those item changes were made.

Go ahead, play through some itemization options for her and the order you want to build them. It will be unstatisfying all the time.

If i want to build Crit on her, then Infinity Edge is a core. Due to the jungle item i cant build it first. As second item, its not an option aswell since its too expensive / uncomfortable to build and does not fit after bloodrazor or warrior. So probably 3rd or 4th. Basicaly i will be useless for ages until i get iE and beeing forced to build uncomfortable paths OR the game will be over before i ever had the chance to have iE or any other useful item combo. (due to short ~ 28 mins games)

Maybe we need a jungle item with %Crit, to open up new and valid building paths for niche picks. Because neither Warrior, nor Bloodrazor is a good option to build kindred. Even skipping the jungle item hurts hard.

Bloodrazor into one of the 3 crit /speed items is not a good option. (stattiks, PD,hurricane) and iE is not an option too. Warrior into iE > nope. // Warrior into PD / stattiks / Hurricane, yes possible, but what after that? iE? another one of the 3 crit speed items? nope, both paths pretty unstatisfying. Especially because of her poor E scaling and bad performance in relation to previous states of her strenght.

Her powerspike is absolutely gone in relation to ever before. She doesnt feel healthy or allright anymore. And the only reason shes still a okay pick is due to the expertise / skill most kindred players have on her and even that is limited pretty hard due to the lack of good options.

Also warrior isnt as good as it once was, due to all those nerfs / changes on items / runes. Even if i would go electrocute which worked a bit until that got nerfed aswell, its not a good option to pick warrior.

Atm it feels better and more valuable to pick bloodrazor. Because of the jungle XP nerfs and changes to items. It enables you a more reliable clear speed, especially on drakes etc and a more healthy "feeling" when playing her. But overall its not a good option even tough i really like the idea of playing her that way.

Buying bloodrazor means, you go for an on hit build or more bruiser like. Since you dont want to build BR into another atackspeed / crit item. (stattiks pd hurricane) and iE once again is not an option as second item for the jungle kindred. Also even if you go for iE, you do not have enough crit to play it in a healthy way. So you MUST go for bloodrazor > iE > 1-2 more speed+crit items. Which is an absolutely unreasonable and wrong build and doesnt feel healthy or good.

So you end up with bloodrazor into Black cleaver (phage), thats good and healthy, but then what? all speed+crit items are NOT an option anymore. Since you must invest into getting atleast 2-3 of them together in order to make sense due to the low crit values u gain. So all u can do is get wits end, which is utter crap for kindred. ( could be an option after next patch with the +health on hit in combo with fleet footwork and bottrk, but since that patch isnt live i cant count that). So whats 3rd? Botrk, yeah fine, works atleast some kind of... if you want to shred mundos ( or OP kleds and urgots ) and tanks... but oh wait, the meta game does not have tanks atm and even if it had, 28 mins arent enough to reach a state of game where a tank actually is tanky. So basicaly you go for an on hit build, which is kinda okay damage wise but aswell doesnt feel healthy because your E still is stuck on 15% health for activating the finishing move ( yeap because u got 0 crit items ), which makes kindred again absolutely not statisfying to play. Its anoying to run after someone without beeing able to procc your E, and you run run run run forever to bring on hits. That would be okay if you chased an amumu but not if you try to hunt down a squishy thats beeing healed or shielded or whatever. All you can do is to finish the on hit build with an iE to atleast gain a minimum amount of crit and raise the bar for your E. Or you build a guinsoos and last whisper to somehow gain the dps you would get with having crits, and even tough thats having a decent damage, it does feel awkward due to her general E spell, that doesnt feeel healthy anymore.

Aside from that, i really like going on hit and its good that this is beeing a viable path, i just wish it would feel more healthy at that point, and going crit or having a valuable E skill would be possible too. Since this on hit build doesnt feel like its absolutely round or good. Its more of a emergency solution because everything else isnt good anymore on kindred.

And now theres one more aspect. What if i am konfronted with khazix, rengo, zeds, eves etc. or generally want to go more bruiserish? I cant go iE or any of the 3 attack speed items at all. because... be realistic. I do not have the TIME, i do not have the GOLD and especially i have not a good PATH to include a Guardian Angel, Black cleaver, tabis, mercs, Frozen Mallet, or anything into that.

I really like the idea of playing on hit. and kindred could do it well. But it feels like a compromise solution and not completely healthy.

I love the option to get bruserish stuff on kindred to adapt to situations (GA, Black cleaver etc), but that feels like a compromise solution aswell and doesnt add to a crit neither to an onhit build very well due to the lack of her powerspike, E and all the nerfs you made to jungle and items.

And the same goes for the crit build. which is not health and does not feel good.

I wish, i had all of those build paths as a viable option again. Crit, On hit and bruiserish. I wish it would all synergise well. I wish i had my powerspike back and i wish i would have a good E spell once again.

But right now kindred feels like a forgotten niche that still is alive to players skill rather than because of a healthy and well thought out item and gameplay plan for her. Shes a patchwork champ that somehow struggled her way through a ton of changes and doesnt fit into any spot good anymore.

And for the round up.. please finaly give her a new skin or two.

Thats my personal view and it might be wrong. But thats why i am here. So this can be discussed and we can think about it together. I would love to hear something from a dev if someone maybe stumbles upon that post and ofc everyone else whos interested in giving his 2 cents and feedback to my post is welcome aswell. Id like to check other perspectives on that matter and see how other players feel about her.