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My Thoughts on Kindred

Tribbles Foxfolk··1 votes·475 views

WARNING: KEEP IN MIND I HAVE NOT PLAYED KINDRED YET AS I DO NOT HAVE PBE ACCESS, THIS IS ENTIRELY SECOND-HAND EXPERIENCE AND OPINIONS. DO NOT JUDGE ME IF I AM WRONG OR IF I AM MISINFORMED. ALSO, KEEP IN MIND I WILL PROBABLY KEEP REFERRING TO KINDRED AS "HER", AS LAMB IS HONESTLY THE PRIMARY CHAMPION. THANK YOU AND HAVE A NICE READ.

So, my thoughts on Kindred so far:

  • tl;dr: Surprisingly balanced while not being too far off in any part of the spectrum. She has good mobility, good damage, nice sustain, some utility, and a fun passive that heavily rewards teamwork and coordination. Her ult is restricted to saving those that are low, and it WORKS ON ENEMIES, which is great for making it balanced.

  • Nice amount of POTENTIAL mobility while balanced out with cooldowns, mana costs, and interruptability. Her Q doesn't make her go very far (About an Ekko for the initial tumble) by itself. Her W allows her to severely decrease the cooldown of her Q to roughly 1.5 seconds at rank 1, but she needs to stay in the zone to benefit from it as well as have the mana to supplement it. To top it all off, her W is on a 10-15 second cooldown, which makes her have to use it wisely.

  • Her burst damage is somewhat limited to spamming Q inside her W zone, but her sustained fighting makes up for it. Gaining a small heal after a while, Wolf being able to attack her foes inside the zone, some extra damage using her E, and being able to save nearby allies, all synergize just well enough to make her teamfighting great while not detracting from each ability's usefulness. Her W is still useful by itself, as well as her Q, E, AND R.

  • Her design is actually quite unique while pertaining to a fairly familiar theme. The Wolf & The Lamb are a familiar concept to most people. The Lamb typically embodies passiveness, tenderness, willingness to help and follow, and caring. The Wolf typically embodies aggressiveness, savagery, pack-hunting, cunning, and ferocity. This is represented quite well in the kit: The Lamb is built more to support her allies (R) and evade most direct combat unless necessary (Q). The Wolf will haunt enemies (E), uses the Lamb to greatly increase her damage output (W zone), and fights enemies that would hurt the twin spirits. (W zone)

  • Despite the recent nerfs to Devourer and Sated Devourer, Kindred still synergizes incredibly well with the item, as it allows her to proc her E quicker as well as boost her general damage. However, Warrior seems to viable enough as well. It comes down to the situation, but her build path seems to suffer from Marksman Syndrome, in that 1 or 2 viable builds (One for Devourer and one for Warrior) will probably be figured out and be the only truly-viable path. Thankfully, Riot seems to be addressing this in the upcoming Marksman Update. (Though, the Update seems to be next Pre-Season since it's so monumental.)

  • Her Shadowfire skin looks absolute LEAGUES better than her base skin, which is starting to get kind of annoying now. Don't get me wrong, I love League and I want to support Riot Games, but I just get that sinking feeling that the base skins are almost INTENTIONALLY made not near as good as their release-day skins just so we'll drop the $10 for them. Now, I will PROBABLY still buy it because, once again, I love League, even though, since the jungle changes, I've had a love-hate as Riot's balance team seems to go through its teen years with all the #LC$B!GPL@Y$ they want their champions to make every new release. I think we're due for a simpler champion, but Kindred is a nice cross between the playmaker and the more simple and straight-forward design. If we can't get another simple-stupid champ, I'm content with more cross-breeds like Kindred.

Overall, Riot, I gotta give you credit for this champion. She's good without being super-OP (Cough Release day Ekko cough), has a great design, interesting abilities, interesting concept that is familiar but still fresh, and still fun while not being troll.

If you can keep good champions up like this and figure out how to fix Juggernauts AND Mordekaiser (Not one or the other, both are pretty evil right now), I'm definitely going to be playing League a LOT more. Throws money at Kindred NOW SHUT UP AND LET ME BUY KINDRED!

2 Comments

WookieJesuz1 votes

Good analysis! Nobody has joined this chat for some reason so I'll drop my 2 cents in. I feel like Kindred will be a fun champ to play, I love the visuals and thematics, and I agree, that skin is bomb. As for gameplay: She has incredibly low base stats, resulting in poor scaling with triforce and anything else relying on base ad. Her ratios are meh, personally I think an on-hit/armor pen build would be best
Kindred item 3930 item 3153 item 3071 item 3142 item 3035 item 1300 Her strength really shines in area control and suprisingly in siege compositions. I say this because if your team - while sieging turrets and champions down - is initiated on, typically you won't have very good teamfight. Kindred makes up for that fact by allowing your whole team to survive and let the enemy champs come into your w. Chilling smite would be best, as you will spend most of the game fighting champions, not jungle crereps, and since she doesn't have much cc, the blue smite makes up for it. Devourer or Warrior, depends what your team needs. Devourer for late game, warrior for early game. The one thing I've seen a lot of people flub up is her passive. It has the potential to shred incredible amounts of HP, but most people forget to mark. The entire early game should be focused on it IMO.

Summary:

  • Fun champ
  • Cool thematics/visuals
  • Armor Pen/Attack Speed
  • Devourer/Chilling Smite
  • Anti-Burst, Pro-Siege
  • Team Player ADC

Potential Buffs Due to low stats, bump up a little bit of everything: base AD, movespeed, attack speed. For some reason Wolf can't proc On-hits, that would be a good synergy with on-hits to allow her to succeed more

Kindred's real strength is not in picking people off, dueling, or anything of that sort. She's exceptional against burst targets, denying death to her teammates. Her coulpled with one of Kayle Lulu Janna would be absolutely devastating. With some minor buffs, she will be a great champion imo.

Tribbles Foxfolk1 votes

{quoted}

Good analysis! Nobody has joined this chat for some reason so I'll drop my 2 cents in. I feel like Kindred will be a fun champ to play, I love the visuals and thematics, and I agree, that skin is bomb. As for gameplay: She has incredibly low base stats, resulting in poor scaling with triforce and anything else relying on base ad. Her ratios are meh, personally I think an on-hit/armor pen build would be best
Kindred item 3930 item 3153 item 3071 item 3142 item 3035 item 1300 Her strength really shines in area control and suprisingly in siege compositions. I say this because if your team - while sieging turrets and champions down - is initiated on, typically you won't have very good teamfight. Kindred makes up for that fact by allowing your whole team to survive and let the enemy champs come into your w. Chilling smite would be best, as you will spend most of the game fighting champions, not jungle crereps, and since she doesn't have much cc, the blue smite makes up for it. Devourer or Warrior, depends what your team needs. Devourer for late game, warrior for early game. The one thing I've seen a lot of people flub up is her passive. It has the potential to shred incredible amounts of HP, but most people forget to mark. The entire early game should be focused on it IMO.

Summary:

  • Fun champ
  • Cool thematics/visuals
  • Armor Pen/Attack Speed
  • Devourer/Chilling Smite
  • Anti-Burst, Pro-Siege
  • Team Player ADC

Potential Buffs Due to low stats, bump up a little bit of everything: base AD, movespeed, attack speed. For some reason Wolf can't proc On-hits, that would be a good synergy with on-hits to allow her to succeed more

Kindred's real strength is not in picking people off, dueling, or anything of that sort. She's exceptional against burst targets, denying death to her teammates. Her coulpled with one of Kayle Lulu Janna would be absolutely devastating. With some minor buffs, she will be a great champion imo.

Thanks for chipping in! Like I originally posted, I haven't actually gotten any hands-on experience with Kindred, so I don't know her stats, but I HAVE seen how squishy she is. She's squishy, but almost exceptionally so. I do agree MAYBE a small base AD buff, a little attack speed, and MAYBE a little in the defensives (HP, Arm, MR). I want to see how she releases before making any calls on buffs/nerfs, though. So far, though, I totally agree with your assessment.

By the way, in your build, for the most part, I agree, except that maybe Blue Smite should be swapped for Red Smite for the better dueling potential. Your E already has a slow and a nuke built in, so Blue Smite might be overkill. Red Smite keeps you healthier in a fight and allows you to pick better 1v1s, which is where Kindred will lack.

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