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Kindred, the Eternally Hunted

Aquinas·6/4/2018, 6:05:41 PM·3 votes·1,938 views

Hello, salty Kindred main here!

Kindred has been my passion since I started playing league which was when season 6 was about to end and since picking them up I have been in love with the champ ever since. After a while I began to hear about how broken they used to be and how their current state is just a husk of what they used to be but I wasn't around to experience that so it didn't bother me much. I knew they were at that point that they were meme tier but that didn't stop me from enjoying them. The mini rework did a lot to take them out of that tier. It made them significantly less reliant on marks and added a lot of flavor and QoL changes but it also tunneled them into building crit over on-hit. Not much happened with the champ after their rework aside from some small buffs but the most recent patches have shined light on some of the key issues the champion faces.

  1. Crit Nerfs : Patch 8.11 saw gold cost and efficiency nerfs to all Zeal items and reworks for IE and ER. Before the patch Kindred's typical build consisted of at least a Shiv and IE with RFC being a common buy as well. But with crit being more expensive than it already was it has became way too expensive to build especially for a jungle, this is also reflected in bot lane where most of those that don't typically build crit are succeeding. It just feels horrible to have your champ changed to build crit and then have that nerfed without compensation for those who weren't even in a strong spot due to crit but still had to build it. Now we have to build lethality mixed with armor shred to be even relatively useful but that's not a marksman's identity to me, that's an assassin. #NotMyKindred

  2. Jungle Changes : Patch 8.10 saw the early experience provided by jungle camps significantly decreased, an increase in gold/experience offered by scuttle crab, and the change to there being only one scuttle after the first two. This lead to strong early game junglers dominated over every other jungler which is a pain for everyone beside Graves, Udyr, Xin'Zhao, and all those of the sort. This stings Kindred extra hard due to being so reliant on securing early game marks in order to being able to make it through the mid game and with less crabs available it becomes increasingly difficult to get the first 3 marks. The machete change also stung more than it would a regular user of machete since Kindred in a sense double dipped off the AS buff with Wolf's W AS scaling off of Lamb's bonus AS but as expected, no compensation buff.

  3. Waste of Potential : Kindred has a huge theme to live up to: Death. Kindred is the duality of Death but it almost never seems that way. Think of a pirate boom ya got Gangplank, Lamppost guy boom ya got Jax, Rock guy boom ya got Malphite, Incarnation of Death boom ya got Karthus?.. Kindred just doesn't come off as a champion that takes peoples lives peacefully/violently instead they come off as a thicc lamb with a floating wolf head that follows, while also holding the title of meme tier jungler. Another thing is skins. I understand that money needs to be made and there are champions out there that have been waiting for a skin much longer than Kindred but there is so much to work with with them. There are Kindred skin concepts all over the place and their general model and design allow for so many concepts but sadly that's not taken advantage of.

  4. General Concern : Many within the Kindred community think that Riot simply doesn't care about Kindred anymore and with Wrekz leaving combined with the typical eh maybe down the road reply from most Rioters when asked about updates for Kindred has honestly lead most people to think "This champ won't be touched for another 2 years till someone at Riot cares enough". Just wish Riot would show a little love for the champ is all because they honestly mean so much to so many people and need so much done to be in a healthy spot.

This patch they've been put in a really tough spot with the ADC changes and Jungle changes combined so I thought I'd voice some opinions. They dropped from a 51% wr to 46% wr while maintaining a 2% play rate which shows just how bad they are right now. Here are some little bugs I thought I'd add clips of in hopes of getting them fixed, thanks for reading! [sg-ahri-2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsltuJ7J6AE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CLeGz_zKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd_PAYXKQoE

2 Comments

SirLapse6/5/2018, 6:51:23 AM2 votes

Yo. Definitely agree that there's been a lack of attention with Kindred, but the champion is literally filled with noobtraps. I'd call it a noobtrap champion appropriately if the kit just "looked" viable and couldn't actually be viable realistically.

First of all, since the emphasis on Marks has gone down and the early game has severely slowed, Kindred is supposed to move toward more of a farming route and counterjungle method, only really going for ganks when there's no risk of countergank. When we talk about the jungle changes, there's a huge lack of adaptability within the Kindred community as there's not really many popular Youtubers that even give the champion a chance. I remember for my first time learning the champ that I just copy/pasted whatever strategy I saw a top player doing. It can still work the same way ironically, but for casuals it is a heavy burden of knowledge that has always existed with the champion. I'd rather not go onto a tangent with the jungle changes in general but hypergankers are essentially dead since their route itself died; it's the people themselves that are not adapting to this shift that makes it so problematic. If you start on the OPPOSITE side of the jungle and grab that scuttle, you will literally avoid most battles with junglers after clearing two camps. If the enemy still goes out of their way to grab that Scuttle then you know what part of their jungle will essentially be left untouched...anyway cutting that topic off.

Secondly, crit nerfs affect nothing except for Runaan's. New IE is entirely for when you're ahead and the enemy has a fed tank. Not understanding this based on the actual shift in tone over ADC builds and reasonings is another show that the champion is filled with noobtrap areas. Kindred has been building Black Cleaver with Runaan's typically in the most successful builds and has been for ages now, with only the jungle finished item changing really. The main difference now is that an older item we used to use, BoTRK, is now the preferred choice to replace Runaan's for higher clear power and dueling since it is cheaper.

For the machete nerf to attack speed, I've already stated in other posts I've made over Kindred over how compensation was necessitated but nothing was really done. It affects Kindred's winrate the most since they rely heavily on clear speed to maintain safety and pressure simultaneously. Probably the biggest issue right now despite how slight it is, but that's mostly due to terrible pathing on Kindred players. The marks basically are a system that makes you more likely to pursue terrible paths, so it is not even necessarily a Kindred player's fault unless they've done their research and still refuse to do correct pathing.

As for skins/general attention, honestly the champion needs balance changes to fix their damn noobtrap problems. I am tired of the low pick rate of Kindred being almost entirely based upon people's terrible usage of the champion, which then leads to a terrible opinion of the champion's capacities in general. I've actually beaten Graves consistently before with Kindred when he was seen as one of the most oppressive junglers before. It's a matter of understanding Kindred and what the opponent is going to do, then correlating it to the best possible options. If Kindred has crap for clear speed, sadly our options get hypergutted worse than other junglers due to being ridiculously easy to all-in early. Talking Sejuani-level here.

The Kindred bugs you've posted I've actually known for a while, and the second one in particular damages clear speed pretty damn hard. Not game breaking but definitely hits the champion's effectiveness.

But to summarize what I've already said, Kindred is basically being revealed once again as a champion that baits people into terrible decisions. I've actually seen Kindred's pick rate rise since the AD itemization nerf, which naturally will dumpster the win rate. Contrary to that winrate, if you know how to jungle correctly, it will essentially play like a slightly weaker Graves with way more emphasis on pre-6 rather than post-6, because post-6 is heavily farming/objective control in between ganks and next to no pushing attempts (different from Trundle/ Lee Sin/ Udyr/ etc.). If Riot would just remove the Mark system's emphasis on jungle monsters and monstrous scaling, it'd save Kindred's win rate in a heartbeat while solving some volatile aspects of the champion.

Zeppelins circus6/4/2018, 7:09:58 PM1 votes

I think the state of Kindred would soon be a irelia class meme at this point. It is too obvious they have failed the mark after releasing her, that they provided updated graves as her superior in ANY instance.