Kindred, first impressions
These impressions are all from the third person, either as kindred's ally or her enemy based on summoners rift normals. Kindred's current, seemingly balanced state didn't really surprise me as her kit didn't appear overloaded or filled with ridiculous stats pre-release. Kindred definatly has an apparent skill ceiling As a different style of jungler I'm yet to see her stomp early on or see her late-game strength from her stacking passive. Generally this is due to a lack of presence as she tries to power farm for sated while leaving her lanes to fend for themselves, or simply doesn't get rolling from ganks resulting in an extremely weak mid-game against tankyer or more bursty junglers. Kindred both lacks and has decent objective control over dragon and baron. Due to he squishy calibre she can easily be popped if caught rendering the dragon/baron secure much more difficult. On the contrary wolfs frenzy can zone very effectively(unless against high mobile/jumping team compos) and once she hits 6 she can ult herself and hopefully survive long enough to get off the smite.
As for her kit specifically, her passive, dash and slow appear to be relatively well balanced. Having not dealt with a with a kindred who abuses the 2 second cd on the Q while in the wolfs frenzy arena, it appears that it can be absurdly strong, if you have the mechanics to set it all up and keep the enemy in the arena. Wolfs frenzy's passive is fine and required for a squishy jungle like kindred. In the jungle the active appears very effective at helping kindred clear, however as wolf is un-targetable, a ballsy invading kindred can shred an unsuspecting jungler with zero counter play available. The slow on the E+red buff if present makes it very difficult to deal with early on, again, if the kindred is ballsy enough to enter your jungle. I've only had to deal with this once, and only escaped because of nautilus hook which pulled me clean out of the arena.
However when taken out of the jungle and into lane the active is an absurdly strong zoning tool if placed correctly that can essentially cut off the enemy from cs for 8 seconds, unless they take on wolf's full damage and venture into the arena. A solution could possibly be to give wolf a scaling, counter based HP system, similar to that of a pink ward that would increase as wolfs frenzy is levelled up. This would prevent him from popping to a burst mage/crit(if it had a normal HP system like a champ) the second he's summoned. A minimum of I'd say, at least 5+ attacks would be required in order to fend him back to lambs side. An addition/different implementation could be to allow CC effects to act upon wolf. However single target CC effects like malz/naut ult wouldn't work in order to prevent mis-clicks. If kindred was then given full control over him(like yoricks clone) he could be directed to dodge or block incoming CC, adding some more diversity to the use of this spell (IE blocking projectiles). If this appears to much for a non-ult spell perhaps while in wolfs frenzy lamb+wolf share half of the CC effect/duration of blocked spell each.
Kindred's ult seems well implemented and interesting to use during team fights and skirmishes. Only issue is the lack of distinction that the ultimate's animation possesses. Many times I've run away from kindred's ult and died because I've either not noticed it at all or mistaken it for another AOE spell as I'm not used to it's appearence. I believe a greater degree or visual distinction is required in order for it to be effectively utilised as a clutch/utility/rescue spell, defined as kindred's ult and not just another AOE as well as hopefully increasing it's overall effectiveness.
Overall a fine effort from riots design team. One of the most balanced champion on release I've seen in a while.
