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KINDRED BUFFS PLEASE, It's Time to Talk...

Lil Spaghett·5/5/2017, 1:03:43 PM·6 votes·1,407 views

(TL DR PART) You know; it would be really hard to name another champion as unique and creatively designed as Kindred. They/she/him, whatever their freaking pronouns are; have so much potential and it is saddening to see such go to waste. Kindred innovated marksman jungle; a sub-meta of which still needs some attention. Kindred's passive completely changes how the game needs to be played and her ultimate adds some well needed structure to teamfights by a huge margin. Kindred's jungle clears, scaling, and combat all require a handful of practice and skill to utilize correctly. There is nothing better than a champion in League of Legends that requires a bit of brain to play.

           There is a good reason why even after butchering them; Kindred is still loyally played by their fans day in and day out. I say this champion with no doubt is a ton of fun to play. Kindred is mechanically fast-paced and extremely engaging to play with or against. I hope this post can get the important words out. This is all about giving Kindred what they deserve; some attention.

(MORE RELEVANT POINTS BELOW) It's sad to see once one of the most popular Junglers turn to ash within a few patches. By nerfing Kindred's ultimate, her Q, her base stats, then removing the heal on 'W; riot successfully- intentionally or not; buried the Lamb and Wolf into the "This guy must be a troll for picking _____" category. You can leave Urgot there but Kindred is unworthy of the spot. Ever since the initial nerfs to Kindred, the balancing team has been piling dirt on her grave little by little; I call these unintended nerfs. For example, very recently the 15 physical damage on-hit passive from our lovely Runaan's Hurricane was removed. For many Kindred players Runaan's was a core item due to the on-hit passive being so useful to Kindred's attack speed based playstyle.

        However, I am thankfully not blind. I have seen what Riot has done in patches like 7.5. I appreciate the attention Riot gave Kindred. The change making Kindred's passive mark only Scuttle early game allows Kindred to take less of a risk while in her weak state; that was a very important change. Although, this does make her more predictable for the enemy Jungle; i'll still take it. I would now like to highlight what Kindred still needs to bump the duo back into the meta - with all the effort put into her creation; she deserves to be there. 

        Kindred's passive is her biggest strength and her biggest problem. Kindred requires passive marks to perform as a useful asset to their team. Getting these marks has never been so difficult. As Kindred, you need to gain these marks in the early game so that you can more quickly become that asset I was talking about. Sadly, Kindred's horrid early game makes her prone to easy invades by current meta junglers such as Kha Zix, Lee Sin, Shaco, etc. This weakness allows most any jungle champion to bully Kindred out of her marks and leave her in a drought. Simply, gaining passive stacks through marked jungle camps is extremely risky; Kindred's weak early game will not allow you to dual for them. Kindred must then resort to ganking lanes in order to gain her passive stacks through marked champions. Sadly, Kindred's squishiness makes her prone to deadly counter ganks and her 1-some-odd second slow does not amount for the much needed CC to perform a successful gank. Kindred's kit is more made for dueling and team-fighting than it is for chasing (See her 'W').  Also, the passive is extremely predictable to the enemy team. The enemies visually have access to exactly what jungle camp Kindred wishes to clear and what champion Kindred wishes to gank. This only adds to her high risk early game as any decent enemy team will take advantage of this and be sure Kindred's goals are never met. Kindred is seemingly an early-game dependent champion with no early game strengths. Furthermore; the fact that after 8 some-odd stacks only Baron and Dragon can be marked limits Kindred's scaling greatly. All Kindred has is her late game and by restricting her potential passive stacking you are restricting her only strength. With no doubt; changing Kindred's passive to allow such to be more utilized is what this champion needs most. As of right now; the passive acts more as a way to encourage you to walk into enemy traps. 

      Solutions:

Of course; if they implemented all these solutions Kindred would become absolutely broken. These solutions are not meant to be implemented all together.

-Make Kindred's passive less noticeable to the enemy; making Kindred much less predictable in the early game. For example, the enemy must first see the camp before they discover it is marked.

-Increase Kindred's base stats to allow them to duel for passive stacks in the early game.

-Make her passive jungle marks more noticeable to allies so they can better assist you (the blue swirly is sometimes difficult to see).

-Remove the 8+ stack marking system which restricts your passive to only mark Baron and Dragon to allow Kindred to access their late-game steroid.

-Marking an enemy champion with Kindred's passive briefly reveals them. For example; this would allow you to check the position of the enemy jungler before you try for a passive stack. This change would decrease her early game risk.

-Kindred's ultimate should be modified so it more benefits Kindred than it does enemies. This would allow Kindred to use the ultimate to their advantage while dueling. The randomness of Kindred's ultimate can give the enemy team assistance; often times this is incalculable and cannot be foreseen before use.

  • Allow Wolf ('W') to stack the 3-hit proc Mounting Dread ('E').

-Re-implement Kindred's 'W' heal to allow them better early game dueling potential.

-Buffing the slow duration on Kindred's "E" would allow them to gank and chase more efficiently. With the 'W' being stationary, this would allow enemies to suffer more from Wolf's bites rather than quickly walking out of his range. This buff would also amplify her kiting strength.

-Remove the slow from 'E' and add a slow to Wolf's bites on champions from 'W'. This buff would also amplify her kiting strength.

  • As Kindred's marks are so hard to get, Kindred is lacking necessary damage to fill her role as a marksman. Possibly buffing Wolf's 'W' scaling attack speed and/or on-hit damage would allow some much needed damage in Kindred's early to mid game.

(WRAPPING IT UP) These are rough thoughts and theories. I understand some of my solutions lack detail and a few are too powerful. The main purpose of this post is to get people discussing this champions again and hopefully word reaching Riot Games. Kindred needs their attention. I would love to read some feedback in the comments so feel free. I encourage you to post some of your own solutions to Kindred's problems or perhaps your own theories as to why they are currently so underplayed.

pce

8 Comments

Bot With Dumbass5/5/2017, 1:32:35 PM3 votes

i agree 100% she is such a unique and innovative champ she needs more recognition from riot up voted

AgeOfTheMage5/5/2017, 3:40:45 PM3 votes

not to mention kindreds passive sometimes marks camps that are currently being killed by the enemy jg, making it REALLY hard to get them.

Bunnymap5/5/2017, 2:06:51 PM3 votes

If anyone brings up their winrate, keep in mind that they're pretty much only played by mains, so the winrate tends to be higher.

DuskDaUmbreon5/5/2017, 6:57:09 PM2 votes

I think you're onto something about their passive being the issue. But making it too much easier would be…obscene. I think that their passive is forcing them to be weak. If they're in the meta, they are the meta (even more so with the new tank meta(?), since they're one of THE best anti-tanks in the game, second to Vayne), but if they're not, you might as well be hitting enemies with jelly doughnuts.

My suggestion is to make Kindred's passive less vital, but still important (maybe via other incentives? Restore HP on a mark kill, maybe?). Reduce the %damage per stack (.75% per. Needed so that Kindred can be buffed), change it so that it's not a pool noodle against anyone low on health (either simply make it do %max health, or make it stronger the lower health the enemy is), and make their stats roughly as good as any other marksman's (or maybe a bit below, since they do scale better than any other). That'll put them in a more healthy spot, since they won't have to build like a bruiser to be a half-decent marksman.

After that, Riot's able to do a bit more. Changing their W is imperative, since it's really only good outside of the jungle for some very basic harass or (far more often) reducing Q's cooldown. Wolf feels less like he's running someone down, and more feels like a leashed-up Chihuahua barking at a mailman: Inconvenient and annoying, but basically ignorable as long as you avoid it, or bring someone else. Make it mobile, make it stronger, make it a passive (Wolf helping on every AA?) or a toggle (and, ya know, mobile, or it's still basically useless). I really don't care, but it needs something to make it useful for anything but Gromp.

Next, increase E's CC while removing some of its damage. For a 3-hit passive/active thing, it does a lot of damage. Like, up to 1/3 of a target's max. Right now, as Kindred is, it's weird. It's CC, so you'd think you begin with it, but it's Kindred's best flat damage, so you'd think you'd end with it. That should be fixed if their passive's changed from %current to %max, though, enabling it to stay as it is (with, as I said, a boost to CC and a nerf to damage).

Their ult…It's a potentially game-changing power for certain, but…still feels kinda useless. You can't use it to save yourself from a surprise attack, since you're trapped in the area (and you can't kill the enemies in it to save yourself), so it ends up being as useless as a mage buying GA, since you're going to die as soon as you revive/recover. Sure, it counters DoT pretty well (as long as you can use it, at least), or Zed's ult, but it's terrible against burst (always accompanied by CC), and its cooldown is obnoxious, especially at low levels. Given that it's so hard to use well, it's…well, terrible, to say the least. Cut the CD and mana cost a bit (all comparable abilities are either 0 mana or on champions that actually buy mana. See: Zilean, Kayle, Tryndamere, Taric, Bard, Ekko, and, to a lesser extent, Shen's ultimates. All are immortality/revive/"Oh shit" ults, all are 0 mana or on champions that typically buy at least 1-2 mana-granting items. In Ekko's case, it's both!), and maybe change the ratio between allies' and enemies' healing/saving thresholds. Making it mobile would be ideal, so that it's useful for when it's just Kindred, but that could be pretty broken. It is an AoE Tryndamere ult, and is an almost-instant cast…

Obviously this wouldn't fix Kindred instantly (numbers are gonna be off for certain), but it would stop them from being like Aatrox was (not allowed to be strong, simply because of potential power). It'll allow them to exist in a game with fewer hunts, without being useless. But we may want to wait for the patch to settle, first, since they're going to do better in a tank Meta than in an assassin one.

Anyways, just my personal 2¢.

Chembaron Yamada5/5/2017, 2:24:56 PM2 votes

I agree that Kindred could use some buffs, I would like to see that champion more in the rift since the concept is really great.

That being said: I disagree with almost every buff you were suggesting here. =/ Most of these are aiming for 2 things.

  1. Increasing Kindreds dueling power
  2. Reducing the risk to take marks

These 2 points are absolutely intended weaknesses for Kindred.... Kindred are not meant to be an early duelist, exactly because the mark mechanic is meant to be a risk. There is alot of late game power in these stacks and every jungler fighting Kindred is actually pretty busy taking the camps away from them. And that's how it should be. They even removed the passive heal from Kindreds W exactly because of that: Kindred had too much dueling power while never being intended to have that.

As far as I know, Riot is still working on a Kindred buff. But not these you are suggesting here, it got hinted that they want to introduce some kind of interaction with the stat crit for their kit. How exactly they want to do that, I don't know. But it makes sense. Alot of marksmen got crit interactions recently, Jhin and Xayah were designed with it from the start and they introduced it for Miss Fortune, Quinn, Caitlyn and so on.

It would be a buff fitting Kindreds direction. Their early game power is untouched, since you don't have access to crit in that phase. But the late game, which is the time Kindred should shine (gameplaywise and thematically) would be buffed that way. Kindred could become a late game hyper carry even more.

Facit: I would prefer to see that crit interaction implemented soon instead of seeing the buffs you suggested here...

T1GK9/25/2017, 3:38:42 AM1 votes

Now starting to play kindred a fair amount myself, I really hope a buff to their chasing ability is added. For example, a longer jump distance with their Q or longer slow time with their E. I love playing kindelred, but the awful early game costs them a fair amount of kills, and if not dealt with correctly, can cost the game via deaths. Another minor detail that was said by Jaredc3 is to be able to proc their e with their Q, making chasing/ganking more effective early game.

Please Riot notice this thread. I want to make kindred great again!

logic3015/5/2017, 5:21:40 PM1 votes

I say boost her base ms to get in and out of the jg quicker. Also make her q jump longer to possibly be able to jump through more walls. Maybe make q proc an e stack

AzureKindred5/11/2017, 11:31:49 PM1 votes

I want kindred to be able to chase enemies and secure kills easier from ganks and invades.

"Chasing is the best game in the world, and I always win." Do you, wolf? No you don't, since kindred has almost no chase potential.

Rework:

Wolf's Frenzy zone jumps to the enemy that's hit with the third part of E. This only works if you are inside W and land the third hit of E on a champion which is near enough to you for the W zone to stay active. Wolf leaps from kindred and attacks the target, fitting thematically with E and W. Imagine the W zone vanish for a split second, and suddenly reappear as vicious wolf strikes the opponent, make it flashy with some dark wolfy effects as it hits. Wolf will then continue to bite them from W, and Lamb can use Q one or two more times to keep chasing the opponent.

I often jump in with Q, use W and E, wolf hits one or twice, and because the enemy laner is usually going to retreat, I move out of W and it basically did nothing but refresh Q once.

My suggested rework would add more skill and payoff to E, since right now it's point and click with little pay off except some nice damage.

There are so many champions now that can literally jump around the map forever, so having a few extra hops with Q, provided by my rework, only seems like a good balance.