Kindred needs a lot of follow up work

http://static.mnium.org/images/contenu/unes/big/result_lol_kindred.jpg

I liked the changes to kindred, but it didn't help with their primary problems at all. It just made them easier to balance, which is good, but these are just some issues that were added/need addressed. I appologize for the long post, but I want to provide as much detail as I could, agree or disagree to some of it.

What's the problems exactly?

First of all, the "turning kindred into a marksmen" attempt failed, again. The old kindred's gimmick was stacking attack speed to apply the on hit damage of their %Health autos. With the removal of %health autos, their primary damage and synergy with attack speed is null. This change caused kindred to become less of a marksmen carry, and more of a damage carry. You'll notice how weak your autos are all game if you do rush attack speed (bloodrazor) because you won't have those 1 or 2 marks worth of bonus damage early. Your autos were extremely weak to make up for the ridiculous uncounterable %health, but with this change there wasn't really any damage benefits, only range benefits and attack speed bonuses on Q (which as I said, attack speed doesn't matter much without the on-hit and the range won't apply until later and doesn't matter much when you're not laning). This seemed to, in my experience and judging various probuilds, shift kindred into favoring warrior enchantment or cleaver rush more than the attack speed on-hit vision that you guys had when trying to re-direct kindred, which stapled kindred into what they were rather than opening them to more options.

Secondly, the "crit benefit" just doesn't work. You guys wanted to make wolf feel more like an execute, which you did, except with one major flaw. The chances of actually executing with wolf are extremely low. Most likely you'll use your E to slow the target so you can actually catch them or make the gank easier, but the flaw is that you have to calculate that either those 2 autos prior to procing wolf will be enough to bring the target in execute range (unnoticeable and actually doesn't matter much early) or that saving wolf for the execute is even worth attempting. This makes the only "crit benefit" extremely inconsistent and not worth actually investing in considering the little you'll actually use it.

The W change was good, but needs some work. First of all, wolf won't go over walls which is the clunky part of this, but he will go over walls lamb could Q over, this needs fixed so wolf can just ignore terrain. That shouldn't make or break kindred, but it would be a quality of life change to make kindred feel better. Additionally, when riot said "wolf would provide vision" I expected something similar to Elise's Rappel, that is not the case as wolf barely reveals the target he's going for if they're in brush or in FOW. It just feels weird. Again, these aren't power changes but QOL changes.

Ultimate was unchanged, I'm kinda glad because its such a broken ability that changing it in anyway would take a huge risk to kindred, but I do feel the only reason this ultimate isn't the literal most toxic thing in the game again is because kindred themselves are just so piss weak that even this wouldn't save them.

What changes were good?

As I stated, the W change was good, bit clunky, but good from what it was. The new mark system doesn't affect kindred as hard as the old one. The old mark system was kindred's primary damage, and if kindred failed to get any marks, they would feel as weak as you may feel them now. However the marks are now mostly just benefits, they won't change the feel of kindred but will add some more minor bonuses, such as attack range, W damage, and E damage. You can survive the game without these bonuses, they just feel so good if you do get them and that's what I enjoy, the fact that an RNG life risk mechanic doesn't define whether or not kindred will be useful. The problem is kindred is much weaker so getting the marks feels more shitty, but more on that another time. Trying to make E an execute sounds thematically fitting, but I'm afraid these changes might not be what creates that, but regardless the idea is a good direction.

Ideas for changes

Q- make it apply on-hits. The arrows feel like autos, but they really are not. I feel if Q did on hit like Vayne's tumble, it may steer kindred into the on hit builds riot has envisioned for kindred (marksmen itemization), as it would not only be their most used spell benefiting from it, but it would also be a good power shift. If it proves to become powerful later, there's always the base numbers of the Q itself that can be adjusted. Additionally 50% bonus damage to monsters would feel good especially for securing marks since kindred takes incredibly too long to do them, but that's only if their base AD isn't changed.

W- Make QOL changes with its consistency, no power changes, the changes he got were actually really good.

E- Remove the E execute for more power in Q OR make the crit benefit be much larger, such as being 0-100% crit health ratios rather than 15-65% at 100% crit chance. This would make make the crit feel more benefitical to wolf. An alternative would be removing the "crit" part of the E and just making the %health bonus damage scale with crit chance, similar to Xayah's feather recall doing damage based on her crit chance. A weird idea I also had to fit with wolf's thematic of "hunting those who run", perhaps make his damage scaling with the target's movement speed, making him doing more to those who run. Just a little idea, I dunno how that would work.

Base stats- Maybe give kindred a small base AD buff, I will say, when I held mid lane as jungle kindred around level 5, CSing under tower felt like one of the worse experiences I've had with CSing and this is coming from somebody who still plays Elise top and autos in human form. I don't believe this will ever be Kindred's strength, CSing as a jungler, but again, another QOL change and the base damage to minions alone speak for how weak kindred actually is.

I would love to see Kindred in a good and fair spot, and I'm happy riot is giving them some love but not going to the lengths of what they were at release, but these are just some personal thoughts I had, as somebody who used to play kindred around release, and has communicated with one tricks over the years.

TL;DR: Kindred needs more changes, the current ones didn't fix kindred's issues and only enhanced them. The chances however were good for basework, and there is definitely now room to add or remove power into them to make kindred feel great, and/or live up to their expectations.