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Kindred's Rework: Disappointment

CosmicMyst·6/10/2017, 8:24:45 PM·6 votes·814 views

(*They instead of *her because it's 2 characters :p )

Since Kindred came out, I fell in love with their lore, their kit and the two characters. I've played them as much as I could in ranked and they helped me get out of bronze into silver and from silver to almost gold. Then, the rework happened and my winrate dropped, I started losing more and more games. I had no other choice but to always pick another champion to play instead of picking them.

When Riot announced the Kindred rework, I asked myself ''Do they need to be reworked? They are good the way they are right now. There's nothing that needs change.'' I was also very scared because I thought I had to change my playstyle completely because suddently, Riot paid attention to our beloved champion. As I analyzed the rework, I thought everything might be okay in the end. The things being changed didn't sound that bad as I feared but that first game after they released the rework hit me in the face. I screwed up every game and I could barely get positive KDA's compared to before when I would get S- often enough. I still remember ganking Yasuo my mid lane at some point. Yasuo died and I was trying to kill his laner but he got away. My mid laner typed: ''Wow you do no damage''.

As the weeks go by, Kindred get worse and worse. Even though Riot said they were going to keep their playstyle because of so many Kindred mains, they don't feel the same way they did before the update. Yes, Kindred mains are still trying to figure out this ''reborn'' champion with the right build paths and I should wait to see where all this will lead us all but I just don't think I should let go of the fact that their winrate dropped from 51% to 44% in a few days. I don't think I should let go the fact that they were amongst the top 12 junglers in terms of winrate and now they are the 34th (last) jungler with the worst winrate possible.

Even though Riot did try to make this champion more playable for low elo players, I don't think it was the right way to do it. I mean, I was myself low elo when I started maining Kindred and yes, it was hard but I managed to understand how they work and I climbed. It only took daily practice and watching other Kindred mains like redKînd (EUW). And now, there are people that even say the champion was easier to play before that update. It all just seems to be a big nerf to Kindred in all honesty and I don't understand why Riot suddently wanted to update a champion that is still relatively recent. There are so many old champions that could use a rework or an update like Ryze has the lowest winrate of all the champions** (39.92%)** and if they want to update champions that are in a really bad spot, they should have looked at Azir (winrate: 43.61% ) who has a bad winrate for quite a while now.

9 Comments

Kurotama Hime6/12/2017, 4:27:41 PM3 votes

****Ok, here's my way of seeing the problems of this rework.

  1. How is crit supposed to fit in the jungle? There is no jungle item made for crit to help Kindred. She is neglected with items and stats.
  2. She used to be amazing against tanks (with her passive) and knowing that we're in the tanks = op season, Kindred was useful. Now, all she can do very well is 3-shot the adcs (if all three crit) but do almost no damage to tanks.
  3. She is just missing SO MANY STATS to be relevant. If she had a bit more base damage, mouvment speed and a bit more base attack speed, she would be much better.
  4. I haven't heard any high elo player yet saying she was amazing or that they carried every game or so. All I hear is low elo people saying she's amazing. Of course she's amazing when 3/4 of low elo players still don't know what she does or what her abilities are.
  5. How was the rework worth it when the playrate raised of 1.6% but the winrate dropped to 44%?????
  6. She used to be okay at least against other junglers. Now, she can't even compete against them anymore. She can't even duel anyone.
  7. Riot tried to solve her problem of ''she depends too much on marks so let's give her base damage and AD scaling with her abilities'' but they just created more problems.
  8. Junglers are supposed to be present early game but she needs to build crit to be strong and crit will only be relevant towards the late game. See the problem?
  9. Even if she has a strong early game somehow, her mid game gets destroyed if she doesn't take advantage of her lead by helping her team and all.

_This is why I hate the rework. I think they should revert it and then fix the problems with the old Kindred. _

SirLapse6/10/2017, 9:42:57 PM2 votes

I think the issue at hand is more difficult than it seems. I successfully realized from revising my own gameplay patterns and the reddit for Kindred that Warlord's Bloodlust is now the BEST keystone for you to be taking. I made a build oriented around Dodge Lamb's (and Ivern's) style with early movement speed by incorporating 3 MS Quints + Wanderer Mastery and Hunter's Machete. It made me quite the threat against literally everyone that underestimated how fast I'd be going through my jungle and to Marks. It's only possible because you get attack speed early to compensate for the loss on runes that people normally are factoring in.

However, I did NO DAMAGE. That is a huge problem in this rework because you have no high rate of consistency with a Warrior Enchant unless you're using my build pattern specifically. And even then, Graves can actually do this better without needing all the extra MS. The one thing you have over Graves is that you'll smash assassins like Kha'Zix, outscale Lee Sin, and have a decent (though lacking) mid game power spike through roaming on the map.

There is a cheese strategy that is all-or-nothing and actually is garbage against things like Warwick who do not allow you to play the game fairly. Red Smite, rush Berserker Greaves, straight into IE and Shiv/Phantom Dancer and Essence Reaver. Quite potent with Fervor but feast or famine for sure. It'll let you reliably win games if you're above the skill level of the opponent however. The reddit thread particularly noted this as the most optimal strategy, and although I disagree with its consistency, it is in fact the most potent.

I definitely believe that she needs a base attack speed increase, which is actually pretty damn severe, but it will compensate for the loss of early damage since literally every Kindred is bringing up attack speed in their runes to keep level with other junglers.

Clayblob27/11/2017, 4:21:49 PM2 votes

How to solve kindreds problems. give her back her old passive

Linna Excel6/10/2017, 8:27:06 PM1 votes

I think her biggest problem is riot designed her to be a win-more champ and the rework only made it worse.

Winters Dawn6/10/2017, 10:02:17 PM1 votes

I love her rework

Cavemantero7/19/2017, 2:09:40 AM1 votes

Its the ghostcrawler cancer of invunerability abilities. He ruined WoW with them. It was predicted he would ruin this game by doing such things and he has succeeded. The guy is a cancer of good competitive games. Season 5 was amazing..the best LoL had ever been...they said it was a 'mistake' because people were having fun actually playing instead of watching LCS.