Black Lamb, White Wolf; A ramble about Kindred's identity crisis

Kindred is the literal Avatar of death. Of course, translating that directly in-game would be an issue. But, that is no excuse for their abilities to not feel like so. Let me just summarize their current kit:

• P: Marks something and if it dies to Kindred they get stronger.

• Q: Kindred's Lamb's gap-closer and kiting ability.

• W: Wolf is let out of the playpen, and Lamb becomes stronger.

• E: Lamb marks a target for Wolf to try and finish off.

• F: Kindred cheats itself?

There are some things I find to be off-putting in their kit, even if it functions gameplay-wise. But I'm not going to be focusing game balance, as it's the design of the champion feeling plain off. Here, I'll only my problems with their kit, and list possible cosmetic changes to make the abilities feel better. Currently, they just don't feel like the reapers of souls. Kindred is unique, as a designated jungle marksman and a two-in-one champion.

You'll notice that these are basically trying to put Wolf into them. My justification is this: You play as Lamb, not the Kindred. She gets the AAs, she moves around, she dies. As the player is already Lamb, having the abilities then be Wolf assisting her would help with the latter's current irrelevance.

• Their P: Thematically is makes sense, it makes Kindred want to go and kill what has been designated to die, being the reaper and all. But in-game, it just sucks. Kindred is much too reliant on such a gamble of a passive. It's an arrow to their knees (if Wolf even has them) against any competent team, as they could just just gank Kindred or rush the mark themselves. Sure, it scales infinitely and can make Kindred melt anything in sight. However, that's if early-game the enemy jungler just lets you have those camps.

  • Just having Wolf howl once a mark is claimed is a step in the right direction, really.

• Their Q: It's the gap-closer, and Kindred's Lamb's bread-and-butter kiting attack by design. However, Wolf is completely non-present in any part of this ability. Lamb jumps, Lamb shoots, and Wolf just hovers around her awkwardly like a more-useless Aurelion's passive.

  • A simple and easy solution would be to make Lamb leap, then have Wolf leap forth to bite the targets.

• Their W: It's pretty much the only thing Wolf gets to do. He is leashed to an area and attacks whatever Lamb does. Lamb also gets a CDR on Q. Passively, Lamb gets lifesteal every fully-stacked Frenzy. I have two gripes with this: Wolf is again not very useful as he is relegated to being a DoT, while Lamb is leaping around with Q. That, and the passive heal is quite out of the blue. This ability is named after Wolf, it should be focused on him.

  • Instead of Lamb shooting a target and getting her heal, it could come not from an arrow, but Wolf tearing flesh off a target.
  • The active, however, can't really be improved on with just aesthetics alone. It's already the best he gets with being represented in the kit.

• Their E: It's a good aka 3-hit proc ability. With an initial slow to land the hits, then %missingHP burst from Wolf, the ability works just fine. It just does not say hunter, but assassin -- Which is their designated role in-game, but still.

  • This can be changed by letting AAs on the target be by Wolf, instead of Lamb.

• Their F: This seems to get everybody's kickers in a twist. The avatar of Death, the grandest executioners... stop everything from dying. Maybe the name "Lamb's Respite" is an allusion on the fact that Death takes a break to sip some coffee, I don't know. If I grasp hard enough, it makes sense that this ability is named after Lamb -- Enemies and allies can choose to leave the area and die, after all. Don't lie this is what happens whenever you cast this for your teammates.

  • There's literally nothing that can be changed about this ability.

Now, for the way I think that Kindred's abilities could be changed, to better reflect the duo-champion. I'll try and keep the general idea of each ability. Though, this is the part where it could be of great controversy. I'm not too familiar with how League's kits should function, so just ignore this section if you want to.

• Their P: Just increasing the amount it scales by would not work, neither will increasing the duration, or any silly fix like making enemies deal less damage. As a passive global-affect, it has to keep the stakes somewhat even for both Kindred and their rival jungler. After all, having Kindred affect the game while doing literally noting is a terrible idea. At the same time, there needs to be something that Kindred has to (at least deter) enemies to clear their marked camps. So, the ability would have to be a compromise of some sort, a choice for the enemy. My idea was have the idea of the passive be as so: Wolf/Kindred marks a target for death. If it is killed in any way, Kindred doesn't have to go there to benefit, but Kindred benefits more if cleared by themselves. It still leaves the counter of ganking Kindred once they come by, but at least slightly relieves the feast-or-famine struggle faced by them, as this is basically another way to level. That said, the Mark of the Kindred does nothing combat-wise, too. It allows mind games, sure, but wastes Kindred's opportunity to get a stack. Maybe, then, it could function similarly to Garen's villain system?

  • To compensate, scaling requirements are increased. Marks gained by completing bounties are increased too, but maybe not the same amount.
  • A jungle camp that is not cleared by Kindred gives them a stack anyways.
  • Marked champions take more/different damage from E and R

• Their Q: As the kiting ability cum gap-closer, it seems more fitting to give Wolf some role in it. And make it better for kiting. Also, though this is a personal thing, this ability does wet-noodle damage to single targets due to how it works. So essentially, in my version Wolf selects some targets for Lamb to barrage, instead of Lamb just leaping in with a few shots. Here, I'll use percentage to represent the damage, but the numbers are just there for a general idea.

• Lamb hops in a direction, and at the apex of their jump Wolf dashes forth as a skillshot.

  • This does 35% of the damage.

• Lamb then shoots in a cone from her new position. *Each arrow does 65% of the damage.

• Arrows' damage with %AD, but the amount is increased by (maybe) 1 per 75 AP. Arrows also slow.

• Those hit by Wolf are automatically targeted by one arrow, and arrows in excess randomly pick a target.

  • Arrow targeting prioritizes champions, and does less damage per subsequent hit on the same target. However, the slowing stacks.

• If without Wolf's side of the ability (also if there are no targets within the cone), Lamb simply fires the arrows in a cone-shaped skillshot.

• If without Lamb's side of the ability, Wolf dashes forward.

  • Can be used to get out of his limited area during W and R.

• Their W: Wolf's time to shine, right? For this, it seems more fitting if the effects of the passive and active were reversed. Also, I thought of this ability as toggling between the execution (Lamb) and chase (Wolf) idea behind Kindred's character. However, this does still have to be her sustain. Think of a single-target Fiddlesticks R, with life-steal?

• Passively, Wolf will move around in an area centralized on Lamb. He attacks those that she does.

• He deals low %currentHP. Deals more to enemies below a threshold

  • CritC and passive-stack damage scaling

• Wolf's damage has some % of life-steal.

• Activated, Kindred will not benefit from the Lamb's side of their abilities.

• Lamb gains MS, further increased if towards that who bears Mark of the Kindred.

• Wolf's attacks deal %AD and %currentHP, replacing their AA.

  • Lamb is free to move as Wolf AAs

• This cannot be used without Lamb

• Their E: I actually have quite little against Mounting Dread. It's good for chasing, and has a nice burst at the end. However, as I mentioned, it doesn't feel Kindred. Instead, this should make Kindred actually chase their E'd target.

• Kindred targets an enemy, silencing and near-sighting them but granting them a moment of being un-targetable and burst of decaying MS, becoming a slow over time.

• AAs on the target do additional %maxHP damage

• On 3 AAs, be it with W or normally, victim takes high %maxHP damage and the effect ends.

  • Targets bearing Mark of the Kindred take %missingHP instead.

• If without either side of the ability, the 3-AA burst does not happen.

• Their R: Lamb's Respite, a controversial part of their kit. Designed so that Kindred did not need to scale too well, this ability has a very odd position. It's a neutral ability that benefits both enemies and allies, similarly to Bard's. So, instead of just making everything un-killable, this should (just a bit) skew fights in Kindred's favor. By this design, the ability essentially can restart and turn around a team-fight, but have the enemies slightly weaker.

• Can only be used when dead.

• An area of sanctified ground manifests around Lamb's body, which grants invulnerability to those below 10%hp.

  • 100% damage resist to those with Mark of the Kindred. (Making them still vulnerable to true damage.)

• Wolf becomes the active character, and has some % of maxHP.

  • Wolf will not benefit from Lamb's side of their abilities
  • Wolf is also limited to the area of this ability.

• Wolf can "die" in this area.

  • Cooldown for this ability is refunded based on the % of health Wolf has when it ends.
  • If Wolf dies, Kindred for a time will not benefit from his side of the ability
  • Wolf's death also immediately ends the ultimate.

• Wolf does %currentHP true damage, scaling with AD.

  • The %currentHP damage is to keep the fact that nothing can die when within the area.

• % of damage done by Wolf is the amount that enemy and ally alike are healed by.

  • "Damage done" would count attacks on invulnerable targets.
  • This is also the amount of health that enemies and allies (and Kindred) who died within the zone are resurrected with.