My Thoughts on the Kindred Update (It's Bad)

I don't like Kindred post update, which is a shame considering they (she) have the most xp out of any champ I play (I'd say my most played champ of all time but I know I played a ton of every other jungler before the Mastery System was released.) They have been my favorite character since the day they came out and I got them to 7 within like two weeks when they first came out, I didn't get tired of spamming them at all like I do when I only play one of other champions. They were my official ranked champion for season 6 and I've played them a few times this season before their update as well. With that background set up, let me get into why I don't like them with the rework a couple patches ago, it hurts that as a Kindred main my favorite champion just feels so bad now.

This paragraph is mostly going to be an explainer for those who don't play Kindred so if you know what changed with the update and were relatively familiar with them pre and post update, you can probably skip this one. Firstly and most importantly, the new stack rewards don't encourage snowballing. I know there are lots of people out there that hate snowball champions, they prefer to play more linearly scaling characters that are kind of the classic curve into late game power and even when they get extremely shut down in lane they can come back with a little team play. The old Kindred rewarded you for getting marks wherever and whenever you could in the most efficient way. If you went super ham on the jungle camps that are hunted as well as ganked wherever you could you could easily get between 6 and 8 stacks by 10-12 minutes into the game, giving you a nice early advantage with a 10% current health shred. Of course, Wolf's damage scaled a bit as well and she got Q damage, but the important part was that nice health shred. By this point in the game you probably had your Bloodrazor and perhaps had a BotRK as well, giving you 21% shred early in the game. No one at this point has armor at this point and you could use this advantage to help snowball your other lanes and get dragons and an early baron. With new Kindred you still have % current health on W, but it is no longer on your attacks. Instead you gain attack speed for your Q, execute power for E, that W damage scales, and perhaps the most important part is that Lamb gains attack range every 3 stacks after the first 4.

On paper it looks like the new Kindred should be way better than the old Kindred, and in fact when I have vocalized my concerns about the rework to randoms in the game and sometimes even my friends I got the typical response of someone who has never played your main who you know all the ins and outs of usually in the vein of "lol retard it was a super high buff dummy lul lel kek stoopid." That's just not the case. The new Kindred is way easier to learn so most of the playerbase does better than they used to post update, but those of us who know how to play them really well basically got slapped in the face. The Q attack speed does not make up for the fact that Kindred's autos do basically no damage early game now, just like other characters, and it feels HORRIBLE that you have to build Warrior enchantment now. Think of it this way, most of the traditional bottom lane ADCs in the game right now build a Zeal and BF sword before finishing one of the two items, starting the game with Attack Speed, Crit, Damage, as well as burst if they go Statikk or Firecannon. By contrast, Kindred gets AD exclusively and the attack speed is usually too low so they have to go a Zeal before they can go IE. That's 4 items including boots before they hit a pretty good stride. I admit that late game they can be pretty good once they are fully built, but the cost of that is playing so far behind in the mid game that you are basically useless to the team besides maybe some ult plays and the slow with your E. The E execute amp is nice with stacks but doesn't matter a massive amount, the wolf W damage amp is honestly pretty bad because Wolf focuses who you are, so squishies don't get chipped that much and if you're focusing a tank in a teamfight AND he/she is staying inside the circle, you also have to be in the circle or Wolf disappears so if you try to use Wolf for damage you just end up getting CC'd and killed because of bad positioning. The Attack Range is pretty nice late in the game but like I said before, mid game you just aren't a significant damage threat unless you are ungodly amounts of fed. Q Attack speed is good late game but again, same issue.

This goes into the problem I see with what Riot has done with the redesign. I have seen on the forums that they wanted to make Kindred strong early game, weak mid game, then strong late game. For a character who stacks the way Kindred does, this is just trash design and honestly most power graphs of champions go from strong to weak or weak to strong over the course of the game, the strong early and mid and weak late is pretty unique. She is just as good if not slightly better because of the E execute early game but her mid game is so abysmal that it makes you not want to play them because mid game is often when the game is decided. If you make it to late game you are strong, don't get me wrong, but nowhere near as good as you were pre-rework. Kindred is a champion who needs stacks to succeed, and always has been, but the reward for getting stacks before the update was immediate and visceral. You felt good in the mid game for getting stacks, being able to help snowball your lanes and get ahead in the game. Before the update if you didn't get enough stacks early game, you were bad in the mid game and lucky if you made it to the late game but when a good Kindred player succeeded in getting stacks you knew you would be strong from there out, only getting better over time. Post update you are like "aww hell yeah I'm getting some stacks, getting some gold" and then your damage falls off a cliff and the 4 stack attack range buff can't save you from feeling literally completely useless unless your teammates shut down all of their opponents.

Along with the shift to the way Kindred scales with stacks comes a new playstyle that I do not like at all, even though all of their abilities are more or less the same the feel of how Kindred is might as well be a new champion. Riot always wanted Kindred to be an AD carry, which is a fantasy I love as well. I'm a jungle main and only have a single level 7 bottom lane carry out of 23 level 7 mastery champions I have, I play ADC the least of any role. However, what Kindred players found out within a few months of the release is that she isn't a carry in the traditional sense. You forego crit for attack speed, straight up damage in lieu of a way to shred your opponents health with your passive and other % health items, and generally you would pick up a skirmisher/bruiser item or two such as Frozen Mallet, Black Cleaver, Death's Dance, Maw of Malmortius, or occasionally a strictly defensive item. The new Kindred just feels like every single other ADC in the game, you build 90% of the same items and late game you wanna sell that Warrior enchantment for another carry item. Kindred was like Kog'Maw, an attack speed focused AD carry who focused on Shred but unlike Kog who has a support to help out and a steroid for range to stay safe, Kindred build some defensive items to help survive when they dive in and start shredding. Now you stay back, not using your Q resets to get into the thick of the fight but instead using them to reset your attack speed steroid and running away like every other ADC in the entire game late game. Kindred no longer feels like a unique playstyle, but like a homogenized mess of all the other ADCs in the game. The new scaling with the passive feels SO forced to try and make them feel good as an ADC, but the fact of the matter is that a jungle ADC who plays the exact same way a bottom lane ADC plays will never be successful in this game because they don't have a support and they are off on their own to get dove by assassins way more. There is also just a FEEL argument to made here as well. The cooldown resets for Q when inside W, the way Q and E help hunt people down, the way you could use your ult and then shred all of someone's current health over the duration, outplaying them when it ended was just more fun. Kindred were designed as hunters, and now they feel like they try to be as far away from people they are killing as humanely possible because of the range scaling.

A little sidenote here I thought I'd throw in at the end here, tangentially related to Kindred but not tied in so if you can go ahead and skip this paragraph, it's cool. I'm not against reworks in theory. There is a lot of room to do good both by the mains of a champion and by people who may not be drawn in by their high skill ceiling playstyle, and there will always be a small population of players who hate when their champion is updated no matter which champion it is. However, sometimes Riot just needs to learn when to undo an update when it proves to be a failure. The amount of people who would play an ADC jungler is such a small portion of the community that flipping them on their head with a new playstyle, especially when Kindred is so new, sucks. Nearly no new people would be interested if they weren't already as Kindred, and now most of us who played them don't like the essentially new character in place. Basically, without going on another rant, homogenization of roles is really hurting this game in my opinion. Having weirdo champs who don't fit into a nice neat little category like Fiddlesticks, Singed, Yorick, Mordekaiser, and the old Kindred helps the game feel less samey. It makes it feel like, sure there are classes for the average Joe, but for those of us who like to have a super unique playstyle you can't find anywhere else we have those options, and unfortunately those options are being taken away. Sure, game health is a factor for some reworks, old Sion was super fun but a man stunning you from down the lane then running up with a 2k health shield and blowing you up wasn't fun (it was for me though, the one doing it) so they took it out. However, there are champions I feel like would best just be nerfed or buffed and left alone, because reworking them into a neat little category where every single champion feels samey just makes those of us who go out of our way to find new ways to play the game feel super bad. Characters should be embraced for why they are diversed, not have alarms go off and have their uniqueness taken away. I love the game but that just sucks, and is why many of my friends have quit the game.

TL;DR for those of you who opened this post and saw giant paragraphs of the sad rambling of someone who just lost their main to a rework (again), I can summarize why I hate the Kindred update in a few succinct points.

1. Kindred's abysmal mid game (which is intentional by Riot) feels punishing if you get a ton of marks early game, rather than rewarding you with power which you could use mid game to get objectives and pull off ganks like pre-rework.
2. Kindred was originally an attack speed shred style of ADC, similar to Kog'Maw but with an extremely unique playstyle where you tried to get into the thick of it with your mobility, then kite people and use your ult to secure kills. You would usually also buy bruiser items for surviveability, whereas the new Kindred just feels like every other ADC in the game where you build crit and try to hide from the enemy team. Yes, you were always a kite champ, but old Kindred gave chase way more and could take bigger risks and was way better against tanks because of the shred you were rewarded with for playing around your passive.
3. The new passive rewards are just not as good. Wolf's Health shred is counter intuitive because if you try to use it on tanks, they will just CC you because you have to stay inside the circle. If you use it on ADCs or other squishies it doesn't do very much damage because of their low health pool and they will often just leave and kite you. On fighters and assassins you're the one who doesn't want to stay in the circle or they will kill you. The fact W still ends if you leave the circle makes it garbage with the new ultra-squishy ADC style of play. Attack Range is nice but your attacks do such little damage mid-game it doesn't matter until later on. Q Attack Speed is okay in theory but just serves as an attack speed steroid for your crits rather than a chasing tool like Q used to be.T he E execute amp is fine but barely noticeable.
4. An amalgamation of all the points, Kindred has just lost their unique flavor. They feel and play like every other ADC rather than having that unique feeling they used to bring. Kindred used to have unique traits only specific to them. They were tankier than other ADCs so you could chase, they had health shred so they were good against fighters and tanks. Yes, every champion in the game is TECHNICALLY unique and Kindred's passive stacking mechanic and ultimate are still a nice piece of spice to make them somewhat interesting. However, they took out an entirely unique style of play that no other champion can replicate and replaced it with what is basically the core gameplay loop of every other crit building ADC in the game, and that really sucks. If I wanted to play a crit and damage ADC rather than a bruiser and attack speed shred one, there are plenty of options. Removing an entire playstyle from the game is just bad, and ranged AD junglers will probably never happen again so I doubt that feeling will ever be replicated elsewhere. I really really understand that Riot originally intended for them to be a standard crit jungler, but that style of play didn't have enough surviveability so us Kindred players found a solution that felt amazing and worked well and they took it out of the game so that Kindred would appeal to more players. That blows.

What are your thoughts on the Kindred update? Let me know friends.