Proposed Kindred Passive Changes

Kindred at her current state is not a very healthy champion. Despite the changes that reverted her from being a pick/ban powerhouse into something more humble, she now exists as an extremely feast/famine champion that either thrives in early game, or is completely useless late game. This pattern often manifests in games where kindred feels excessively powerful and frustrating to play against after acquiring her passive stacks, or completely useless and frustrating for the kindred player if she is denied stacks.

The identity of kindred as a champion is defined by growing more powerful as the game progresses. Opponents have the ability to slow down her progression by preventing her from taking her passive stacks. This in theory sounds good. Identifiable power curve with clear counter play. The problem with this lies in the fact that there is rarely a middle ground between shutting her down and leaving her to become a monster. If you deny her stacks, she hardly worth noticing, and if you don't deny her stacks, you're dealing with a monster that can shred through anyone on your team in a heartbeat, while getting even stronger due to the exponential growth potential of her passive.

Despite the clear character identity of "Death Collecting its Victims" the "Bounty Hunter" does not do kindred any good in terms of balance and creates unhealthy play pattern that can be very hard to deal with. In my opinion there are many other ways to elaborate of the concept of "Death Incarnate" without a bounty hunter attribute. I believe that a change to her passive is necessary to make her play pattern more healthy and make the champion all around more fun to play and play against. While still retaining he identity of the character.

Proposed passive changes: Kindred auto attacks deal 80% of her AD. (Similar to Kalista) Kindred auto attacks additionally deal 2-10% current health (based on level)

Proposed changes to R: Whenever a enemy near kindred dies she gains an additional 1% current health damage to her passive for 10 seconds. Refreshes upon additional deaths.

In my opinion these changes would retain her power curve with her being weaker early game and stronger late game. While at the same time defining how strong her passive can be late game by not allowing growth past 10%. Additionally slowing kindred down now would be the same as slowing down any other champion. Killing her, invading her jungle, anything that will get her behind in levels slow her down. This also would retain her utility of being a tank shredder.

The proposed changes to R (which could also be added to her passive instead) were intended to firstly solidify her identity as "she gets stronger when enemies die" without making her permanently overpowered as a result. And also was indented to give her more clear counter play. With this change she would be forced to choose between potentially saving herself and allies, or potentially saving enemies that would have otherwise died, thus losing a potential damage buff.

Overall theses changes I believe would benefit kindred's play dramatically, allowing for a healthy overall play pattern, while also allowing for her Q to have normal base damage without relying on passive stacks for it to be useful. I'm aware of the passion behind the "Bounty Hunter" passive as a fantasy Riot wanted to bring to league (I read the Jhin blog), however I do not think that it is practically a healthy system to have in the game, and that these changes would do wonders both kindred and the game as a result.

Just my two cents :]