@Riot, Kindred's state is a result of your failure on the design and balance of the champ.

> "The ranged champs we’ve seen appear in the jungle - most recently Twisted Fate and Twitch - have been really gimmicky, and either dominate a game or do absolutely nothing. Their early ganks are often devastating (not many can survive invisible red buff ganks or TF’s guaranteed stun), but they’re pretty much useless if they fall behind, and absolutely need kill or assist money to keep up."

Lets look at the first point you tried to fix with you creation of creating a champ that is less useless when put behind and can be a more reliable contribution even with less gold. Kindred NEEDS marks to not fall behind and become a squishy low damage liability to their team. Even if they are ahead and are farther along with their build, if they haven't been able to collect marks then they are only delaying the fall off that will happen to them come late game. Putting most of their build in damage power budget into the marks mean that they will have the most extreme case of feast or famine of any jungler and even compared to the other infinitely scaling champ the famine hits much harder and the feast is hardly comparable.

You have failed in your attempt to alleviate the issue of the high level of predictability of the clear and pathing of kindred. In fact you created a jungler with the most predictable pathing in the game thanks to again the extreme budgeting you forced around their marks.

> "What’s more, anyone familiar with either of their super predictable jungle paths will know where they need to be to kill or maim them, and because they were designed for life in lane, there’s very little they can do against strong counter-junglers like Lee Sin or Rek’Sai. These were all issues we had in mind when we started working on Kindred, and issues we hoped to address while creating the champ."

You failed on giving kindred the power to have a fighting chance against the strong counter junglers most specifically because of the overzealous approach to the nerfs to the champ. All damage kindred deals from early to mid were stripped away to the point that not only do they lack the power to directly challenge most champs in a duel both without marks and pre level 9, but it also took away the ability for kindred to have a competitive clear speed compared to most other junglers, so they are vulnerable to being invaded and counterjungled. You took away kindred's early mobility which was was directly tied to the stripping of the early game damage but it also affected kindreds change to fight back against invades and completely took away their ability to have a chance to escape with their very low base movement speed. You stripped away kindred's ability to mitigate damage threats with the armor and heal nerf and removal making the champ equally as vulnerable as lane marksman.

> "First off, we knew that we wanted Kindred to offer their team reasonable ganks - attacks that, if timed and coordinated well, could result in a kill, but weren’t guaranteed successes. By reducing the power of their ganks - specifically compared to Twitch or Twisted Fate - we were able to add power to areas where they both struggle. We made Kindred less reliant on money, so while they obviously benefit from items as the game progresses, they aren’t anything like as useless as the Plague Rat when he falls the wrong side of the feast/famine divide."

This is the only place that was put in line, and pretty early on in the line of nerfs. But again the overzealous nature of the nerfing of the champ left them in a state of being a liability for ganks for the previously pointed out reasons.

Although twisted fate doesn't have any life in the jungle anymore twitch does, and graves has become a bit of a meme for what he offers (ranged, bursty, tanky, mobile, bruiser). Why should kindred be picked over these marksman who can function in lane and both can do much better than kindred in so many ways. They are both much better options for being damage threats from items alone, both have much faster and healthier jungle farming, less of a liability if set behind, and minimally equal in reliability if not more reliable than kindred in both damage and utility when ahead. Not even compared to the other top end junglers, why should kindred be considered compared to the other marksman junglers.