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Kindred, not game breaking broken, but unbalanced

JavelinJoe··44 votes·35,020 views

I loved her concept but her kit's numbers make her broken. The reason Vayne can get away with every 3 basics she deals %health is because she is very squishy and has short range. Kindred has her potential damage output (arguably more) but does not have her crutch. She heals by moving (and the next attack although only by a small flat amount, it still can be what decides a fight early on), better burst (quicker damage dealing), and her ult makes her able to 1v1 anyone and possibly win, even if behind. This is because while her ult is active she and her opponent can't die, but still take damage. So regardless of level, defensive stats or DPS 1v1 in her ult almost always ends in her favor 1v1. An unkillable, tank shredding, assassin, who can (far more than any other champion) win 1v1 against any opponent is just slightly unbalanced (not game breaking but definitely not balanced) .

My idea for how to balance her would be to:

  • Cap her passive %hp damage, maybe around 12-15% max because Blade of the Ruined King and sated devourer add to that damage. At 12% cap with BotRK and sated, she deals 18% current health every basic. and every other it is 32% (second hit does less % damage but I did not want to calculate the exact amount so I overestimated)
  • Scale the Ult duration by level. ex: 6 = 2s 11 = 2.5s 16 = 3s. Having a full 3 seconds at lvl 6 makes any opponent who is in the circle a potential kill, not to mention if her E is also activated and the opponent is slowed for 70% and taking more %health damage on the third hit.
  • Alternative to the prior suggestion would be to reduce its radius making it not as large of a foothold for Kindred to fight in.
  • Lower her %health scaling but raise her base damage and AD scaling.
  • Just an idea but what if some forms of cc (like Lissandra's ult or a silence) took her (or anyone it is used on) out of her ult's invincible buff for its duration. Does not cancel the ult, if used on kindred, but for the cc's duration she (or the recipient of the cc) will not be invincible. of course once the cc is over and if her ult is still active the invincibility will resume for the remainder of the ult. CC like knockups and fears won't stop it, but silences and suppresses (or encasings/ being turned to stone) do. Again just a thought.

75 Comments

RiotMeddler60 votes

We're with you on Kindred being too strong, we've got a couple of other things we want to hit in 5.22 before considering whether further nerfs are needed though. The first of those is Kindred's base HP regen, which is really high. We'd overestimated how much regen they'd need to function as a short range, often jungling, marksmen, so we're cutting that down a bunch (10 -> 7). The other change is a bug fix to Kindred's passive since its damage to neutral monsters isn't being capped as intended. That leads to some really fast dragon/baron kills, which in some games at least is likely adding a pretty significant amount of power.

On top of those Kindred specific changes there are also some pretty significant general changes to the game in general in 5.22 that'll impact Kindred (masteries and marksmen items especially). Getting a read on those before assessing things like Kindred's passive damage or ult details is also going to be pretty valuable.

Potato Doc1 votes

Have you thought about some changes to her ult? I feel like stopping all damage at 10 % is a bit strong with the full 3 second duration + the heal at the end.

Ive been thinking about it and maybe a more balanced system for her ult is

if ( hp > 15%) then hp cannot drop below 10% else
unit can take another 200 points of damage but cannot drop below 1 hp

This would allow people to still place damage, without getting the kill during the ult, but allows the enemy team to counter act the heal at the end at higher levels of using the ult it would still out heal the amount of damage taken possible if under that 15% hp

kJs22 votes

He's already said he won't until the new items and masteries are in. Don't push it. It's great enough that Meddler has replied already.

RisenDarkKnight6 votes

Would you also consider lowering their heal off W in lane? It's fine in the jungle where they need the sustain, but it pretty much makes them immune to poke in lane. The health regen nerf will help, but making the w passive less effective against minions may be a good change.

Twiggles5 votes

I want the W heal on minion hit removed entirely, but at least a reduction would suffice. As it stands, Kindred's built-in sustain completely negates the disadvantage their range is supposed to put them at.

SoMNia2 votes

Sustain lanes beat poke lanes. Since when is that a problem? Do you want to remove Nami, Sona, and Soraka from the game? Just play all-in against them like you're supposed to. With no stacks, they're easy to shut down pre-6, and the ult has a significant cooldown.

captainkaiger1 votes

But what about when that sustain isn't based around mana, or another conditional resource, but by your movement. It's almost like Yasuo's flow shield at launch (which was and can still be ridiculous) in terms of strength. Sure, Nami should be able to heal you for a ton, but that is gated by her mana. Soraka should be able to heal you, but it's gated by using her own health and also mana. I saw a Kindred and Soraka lane, and that entire laning phase Kindred never dropped below 75% health.

While sure you could all in or pick her out with blitz/thresh, it's too much of a safety cushion. Especially if their first item is a vamp scepter or cutlass.

SoMNia1 votes

Well, a good Soraka does that with any lane. That's why she's the exception to the rule that you focus the carry, not the support. As long as she's alive, damage to her carry is half as effective as damage to her. Also, Kindred have low base AD and low range. Most of their early damage comes from spamming Q. If you can bait the W and wait for it to run out, then you can go in on Soraka with little worry.

As for Hunter's Vigor itself, you CAN out-harass the sustain. Just don't let them charge it with impunity. Again, their range is low (like actually; that's said of Vayne, but at least her AA range is average; not Kindred). If they wander too close, poke them. If they last hit, poke them again. If they stop moving to attack even a high-health minion to get the heal, throw whatever skillshot you have at them. You don't even have to kill them. If you out-CS them and they don't get any stacks, you win, and you come out of the laning phase in a much stronger position. They don't scale very well with items unless they have stacks.

By the way, Nami is pretty terrible at sustain early on, because W costs a LOT of mana. I've heard "Why so few heals, Nami?" from a carry taking a lot of poke, but rarely being in range for the bounce. It's because I'll go OoM and we'll lose. She's much better at winning trades (kind of a mix between poke and sustain). Soraka or Sona will out-sustain her, and it could become a pretty frustrating lane for both sides. Not that you asked about Nami, but there it is.

DragoonRuin1 votes

{quoted}

Would you also consider lowering their heal off W in lane? It's fine in the jungle where they need the sustain, but it pretty much makes them immune to poke in lane. The health regen nerf will help, but making the w passive less effective against minions may be a good change.

This right here. Kindred's sustain off of her W in lane is just silly high. It's impossible to poke her because she sustains it back up so quickly just with her abilities, and it cost her almost nothing.

RiotMeddler4 votes

Overall we're seeing Kindred perform quite a bit stronger in the jungle than in lane. W healing would be a good thing to consider if we need to take some power off laning Kindred, not yet convinced that's necessary though, especially with the cut to their health regen coming up.

RisenDarkKnight4 votes

It's not that they are too strong as adc, it's more that it is very frustrating to play against. If you are playing a poke support like karma and you land q on them despite their mobility, they gain back most of the health with just one auto on a minion. High sustain champions are just frustrating to lane against especially since you can' t all in kindred after lvl 6 to stop her from sustaining.

Zedex3 votes

I don't know, shes been as strong as shes been since you released her.

The testing rate for new champs can't be very high on the PBE, considering most of them are in some way overpowered.

OyddAWqJ5r1 votes

Honestly lower base health and health scaling and we're good here.

Problem is that she's able to reliably duel enemy junglers early on which really shouldn't be a thing. If she wants to counter jungle she should have to wait until the enemy is low or a camp is abandoned to do so. Being able to control it by default is a nono, especially on a mobile ranged champion. Lowering her base health would fix this.

I've had a game where we killed the enemy Kindred early on and denied every mark but she was still an extremely strong 1v1 threat when she was only level 4 with an unstacked devourer due to how she's a naturally good duelist.

Actually now come to think of it, I think more than base health needs a nerf. That early dueling needs to go somehow.

Yuumi or Lose1 votes

One thing I found very surprising is how there isn't a monster cap on her passive. She can solo/duo epic monsters very easy and quick.

Madkhatz2 votes

I hope you guys are careful with the nerfs on her for several reasons.

  1. Her passive cap isn't fixed (ie a super fast solo dragon at 4 stacks adds a lot of power to her)
  2. Her regen or her passive W regen? (if it's her w regen, tweak it vs lane minions) That will cut the power of it for Lanered's sustain, but keep it the purpose of jungle.

Now as for her other things. People need to understand a few things for a jungle marksman vs lane. A lanered has a low chance of getting marks. She can't really wonder the map for her jungle camp marks. She can mark the two bot, but that becomes longer as longer pre kill. So if she kills both she's locked out for along time. Example you can easily get 8 marks before lanered gets 4.

But jungle kindred will suffer via gold, while the lanered will have more gold as expected in lane vs jungle roles.

This brings up another point.

Jungle kindred will most likely be more gold starved then a lane marksman, meaning her items will not be as quickly advanced, her damage lower. Add in counter jungling to.... jarvan and shaco's shut her down very easily.... (such nightmares when playing against good ones)

Also jungle kin is more likely to duel then lane kin. Due to the jungles nature. Which means to get her jungle marks she has to invade... and being a marksman if she's overly weak there's no way she can get her marks. CAuse she sacrifices gold income to walk to the enemy jungle to get it. Which means she may or may not get it. Wasted time walking, not farming, and dying adding to her downtime.

Now moving to damage. Stop comparing her to vayne. Vayne has a lot more damage in every way. A lot more useful abilities. I love playing kindred as well

Vayne has true dmg every 3 hits. %hp true damage. EVERY three hits....say it with me EVERY three hits, no cool down. THARRUEEE damage. She shred tanks ands squishies like no tomarrow. She can stealth, roll and stun as well as a knock back, and a passive plus a ulti that increases her movement speed to rape you when you try to run. Also seen her go 1v5 teams before.

Now for kindred.

  1. Her damage is all PHYSICAL. Meaning armor reduces the effect. Say it with me. Armor reduces the effect. True damage from vayne is..... not able to be mitigated in any way. Result hp% true dmg > hp% kindred.

  2. Her Q is a small dash and 3 targets, she can't control which targets, it doesn't stack her E mark. it has a 9 second cooldown. Is not effected by CDR, only W reduces it to 2 seconds WHILE in the field. Also the damage on it is so so. Vayne increases her ad on her auto, when ulti is active it stealths meaning she can reposition stealthly. Every see how much health is lost on a vayne rank 5 Q auto.

  3. W Gives a field, that attacks things in it, gives her a regen at 100 stacks, causes her Q to go to 2 seconds for the duration of the field. Nerf the W via lane minions and that will shut lane kindred down for endless sustain. The damage off wolves' W is pretty lame unless you got lots of marks. Also PHYSICAL DAMAGE..get armor. Vayne W hp% true damage, already explained...... armor won't save you.

  4. Kins E, is a mark that slows for 1 seconds, after 3 hits does x damage plus mark damage plus % damage. You have to land 3 autos, the Q damage will not add a stack meaning if you W and Q spam you won't add any stacks to it. (gotten me killed a few times) Also most of her damage comes from this ability... Which means... she has to wait for a cool down to use it again. Also armor reduces the effect of this ability. Vayne has a knock back/stun. So she can keep you in place to apply 3 stacks of her silverbolts which has NO mitigation on it... while kindred can not stop you from damaging her or running away. While vayne can also stun knock back and chase you down with her passive.

  5. Ulti Stop bitching about this. It's easily countered has a low hp heal on it. Plus it heals you, so if it lands wrong you just wait and wack. But lets look at what can screw her over. Blitz grab, nautilus grab, lee sin ulti, vayne's E (try dualing when she can just knock you out of it.) Darius E,Trist ulti, Rammus taunt, Azir ulti, Gragas ulti, Thresh Q, and so on. Even draven's E can knock you out of it. Also it effects you and not just her. Take Tryn. His ulti countered how? Vaynes ulti. Gives massive AD to a truedmg %hp damage marksman, and stealth and increased movement speed towards an enemy... Add in the stun and dash and she just hurts. Counter her damage how?

last part.

Kin will be gold starved so most standard builds she has to snow ball hard to build. Vayne easily destroys tanks and squishies and can 1v5 if they are good. Has a dash, knock back, stun true damage %hp, movement speed and a stealth. She doesn't need abilities to shred tanks.

Kin needs abilities to shred tanks. Her base stats are very low. Also a few champs destroy her outright. Jarvan, le'blanc, jax, shaco, vayne, trist, xin. If your dying to her, find out why. Even olaf can tear her a new one.

If your crying about her sustain, fix the W vs lane minions.

But you must touch her careful as she will be more gold deprived when played her in designed role. It's the case of lulu Lulu is a support, abused when played solo lane. There's careful tweaks one must do. But outright calling her op is just stupid.

I suggest riot fix her Monster passive damage cap and her sustain vs lane minions. Before touching anything about her. That alone will take out a lot of power. Also with the new changes coming out Riot should wait to see how it plays out or her.

Side note. Kindred doesn't use crit very well like most marksman. She's also down one item slot for a jungle item which isn't fully efficient damage item like a pure damage item is. So that right there has to be taken into effect.

Learn to play around her before crying foul. I've seen a lot more over powered champs released, she can can be 1 shotted easily... also... she very team comp oriented. meaning she can't 1v5, she needs a front line VERY badly due to her range... and abilities.

She's very much high risk, high reward. But I enjoy her....

Vayne is still a bane. Now If they took vayne to hp% damage only. Then I'd maybe accept a few tweaks to kindred beyond the suggest 2.

Velasan3 votes

{quoted}

We're with you on Kindred being too strong, we've got a couple of other things we want to hit in 5.22 before considering whether further nerfs are needed though. The first of those is Kindred's base HP regen, which is really high. We'd overestimated how much regen they'd need to function as a short range, often jungling, marksmen, so we're cutting that down a bunch (10 -> 7). The other change is a bug fix to Kindred's passive since its damage to neutral monsters isn't being capped as intended. That leads to some really fast dragon/baron kills, which in some games at least is likely adding a pretty significant amount of power.

On top of those Kindred specific changes there are also some pretty significant general changes to the game in general in 5.22 that'll impact Kindred (masteries and marksmen items especially). Getting a read on those before assessing things like Kindred's passive damage or ult details is also going to be pretty valuable.

Hi meddler. I've been playing kindred like crazy so actually stopping by to put in my opinion on her (I'm not challenger level, but at least I know the basics in other words).

Kindred's passive damaged could be capped against monsters, but at the same time as an ADC style jungler I think it's ok that they take away dragons quickly. Not unlike a Vi or similar characters.

In my experience so far Kindred really is not too powerful, she is very susceptible to being jumped on and focused. She needs high damage to lend to her assassination style.

So, really what I'm saying here is that if she is going to do less damage against champions she will need more range or Hp or something to not just get jumped on by every kha'zix/vi/j4 out there and killed. However, I'm totally ok with the idea of capping the passive damage versus monsters. It seems like if I've built up enough stacks in game to really do some damage to the enemy I had to work for it.

I'm really enjoying Kindred and is my favorite champion released this year.

RiotMeddler6 votes

Glad to hear you're enjoying Kindred. Ability to take neutral objectives pretty quickly is a strength we want to see on Kindred, at present though they're not just quick but incredibly quick hence the need for a cap. Current plan is for a cap that increases slightly with number of passive stacks Kindred has (75 base + 10 per stack), so that they're still getting some increased objective control over time, without going too nuts.

Phoenix Kotori 2 votes

That sounds reasonable I worried she was gonna get stuck at flat 75 which would have been underwhelming, imo.

ploki1221 votes

For those wondering, this is the amount of health required to reach the cap :

  1. 6800
  2. 3800
  3. 2800
  4. 2300
  5. 2000
  6. 1800
  7. 1657
  8. 1550
  9. 1467
  10. 1400
  11. 1345
  12. 1300
  13. 1262
  14. 1229
  15. 1200
  16. 1175
  17. 1153
  18. 1133
  19. 1116
  20. 1100
Kratospie1 votes

It did have a cap on monsters (or at least was going to) back when Kindred was on the PBE. Did that get removed at some point?

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/THNELApb-after-6-stacks-kindred-wolf-should-hunt-dragonbaron-only?comment=000000000002

SIayton2 votes

Why not leave the cap off for dragon but inact it for Baron? I think she needs it to solo it like a lot of other competitive junglers but her doing Baron in a matter of seconds definitely shouldn't be a thing.

WinBoat1 votes

Personally I think Kindred's damage is ok on champions just because all ADC's seem to hit that hard regardless. Vayne is really similar between Kindred's E, and Vayne's silver bolts. The only problem I have with Kindred is just the self heal on W when in lane. It's out of control, other than that... Keep the damage (although she does do lots of damage to monsters like baron and sure that can use a tweak).

tunehunter1 votes

I am glad Riot is taking it easy with champion changes on a new champ when there are so many changes coming in. Honestly I am kind of curious as to what I am going to build on kindred with the updates. From what I can tell gold costs of finished jungle items are going up, but its compensated by gold value of monsters going up, but later gold from monsters is technically going to be lower thanks to the change from extra gold granted from jungle items being removed along side it, But XP gains increasing (especially after first back) all in all gold increase acrossed the board is making me think games are intended to be faster which makes me think devourer is going to be even less of a good item to buy on most junglers. Then there is the changes to Warrior which removes the armor pen from it, but also increases its AD which means for kindred it may be stronger early, but still pretty useless late. BotRK is Nerfed, the bow lost 40% attack speed for crit, which I havent been able to tell if that's good on kindred, it doesnt feel like it. Masteries have changed, several other items lost attack speed, or the ones that had attack speed were nerfed in some way..... I think the only one this is not the case for was Berserker greaves.... technically other items werent really "nerfed" they just lost attack speed and usually gained crit or something else Kindred didnt care for as far as I can tell, but basically land scape of items changed heavy.

Then their is the armor pen nerfs on Last Whisper build paths (It actually makes me think about picking up the changed Y. Ghostblade... that thing looks sick...), since some one would have to build pretty high armor for it to be as effective as old, still that much armor will affect some one even if you pierce it some what, but so far best I have been able to figure since so many items have attack speed and Crit on them could go something like Rapid Fire Canon, Phantom Dancer, Trinity Force, Zerker grieves... Kind of just theory crafting now, but seriously there is a lot of things changing and the dust has not even come close to settling on where Kindred lands, oh and to every one who thinks "Stop pinging your symble in the enemy jungle your marks arent a team objective" Remember, Kindred is a member of your team..... those marks are an objective... that makes it a team objective. Its no different then blue buff or the new Rift Herald, it is something you kill that gives ONE member of your team a buff, the difference between blue and rift and Kindred's marks is... THE blue and rift goes to any one and is TEMPORARY, while the Kindred Mark always goes to one of your carries (Kindred) and is PERMANENT, why would you not want to help one of your carries snow ball the game makes no sense to me.

Myrkrvaldyr1 votes

Why is kindred's range 500 and not 550? It's too short for a marksman. Even if she's mobile with her Q it has a long cd unless she's in the wolf zone. Are there plans to buff her range? Just her range.

Slamurai Jack8 votes

I love how everyone's solution to fixing a champion is "cap this" and "remove that". Don't want all champions to be the same? Then stop trying to take out anything that's different.

Anidan1 votes

People are against homogenization when it's convenient to them, and for it when that becomes more convenient still. It's kinda like champion win-rate in solo queues: it matters until it's suddenly not good for the argument anymore.

Trash MammaI7 votes

She's perfectly fine the way she is, she doesn't need nerfs nor buffs. They aren't going to nerf her damage because you can prevent her from getting any marks by taking them (which is easy to do) her ult is a gamble most of the time and her W's damage can be completely ignored by getting out range. Her Q you have no control over who it targets. Her E is mainly her only strong feat.

Cozmic Cat1 votes

Try fighting her as a tank champion , She Can shred you in just secs + her passive gives her SOO Much Magic damage per hit and she always get Sainted Devourer on top it . So you are losing to her no matter what unless she is bad :P

Void Nargacuga3 votes

Taken from the League of Legends Wikia.

League of Legends Wikia Mark of the Kindred COOLDOWN: 25 (Upon the marked monster camp's death, even if Kindred are not involved)/ 90 (upon selecting/changing the target) Per Target Cooldown: 240

Innate: Both Lamb and Wolf mark targets to hunt.Scoring a takedown on a marked target permanently empowers Lamb's basic >attacks to deal 1.25% of her target's current health as bonus on-hit physical damage, stacking with each mark consumed.

Lamb - Enemy Champions: Lamb is offered a selection of champions to take down, which is hidden while in combat with an enemy >champion. Once selected, there's an 8 second delay before the mark can be collected and Lamb can change her target after 90 >seconds, if the target hasn't died in that time. Targets successfully hunted cannot be targeted again for 4 minutes.

Wolf - Enemy Monsters: Wolf periodically selects a random monster camp within the enemy's jungle, excluding epic monsters, or Rift >Scuttler Rift Scuttler, and highlights the camp to both teams, starting at 2:30. This ends upon acquiring 6 stacks, including from >enemy champions'.The mark is removed upon the monster camp's death even if Kindred are not involved.

They only deal physical damage without this --> http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/7/7b/Sated_Devourer_item.png/revision/latest?cb=20150626201727

Maybe this too if they got it: item 3091

Its more beneficial to stack armor against them. Like these for quick and easy examples for me: item 3075 item 3110

Health tanks like DrMundo will have HORRID times trying to go up against them since they NEED health to deal damage because they have abilities that scale off their health. Hope this helps!

Most likely Rammus and Malphite could just shrug them off since they LOVE building armor and LOTS of it. I have yet to face either of these two yet. I don't play norms to often, but when I do play norms I dislike jungling since I'm still learning it and everyone seems to expect you to gank every lane at the same time. At least that is how I feel sometimes. Oh, and they somehow expect you to KNOW every match-up possible it seems, no matter what position you are in.

Trash MammaI1 votes
  1. Tanks are garbage anyway and are becoming worse with the preseason
  2. I go warrior so idk about always going Sated* also the beef you have is with the item sated, which a large selection of the champion pool can easily abuse, blame the item not the champ
  3. You're bad if you're losing to her is the correct way to put it

You're just as bad as those people who bitched about Ekko's ult doing too much damage when he was released when the reality is you have no business standing on top of his afterimage like a dingus

Zlysium4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Simple Tora,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=yrOG8uEA,comment-id=000000010002,timestamp=2015-11-07T12:36:12.238+0000)

  1. Tanks are garbage anyway and are becoming worse with the preseason
  2. I go warrior so idk about always going Sated* also the beef you have is with the item sated, which a large selection of the champion pool can easily abuse, blame the item not the champ
  3. You're bad if you're losing to her is the correct way to put it

You're just as bad as those people who bitched about Ekko's ult doing too much damage when he was released when the reality is you have no business standing on top of his afterimage like a dingus

At some point in time you will end up being near the image when he presses R. Sometimes it's completely unavoidable. If any time you ever got into a bad spot you got deleted, then even though you're only in that spot a small amount of times. It's still enough especially in late game to win. You can say "no business standing on top of his afterimage" when in reality it's meaningless to say that. Nidalee spears got nerfed because even if she missed 80+% of them in a game. the 20% she landed got kills. The counterplay? Dodge them. The actual play? You still get hit eventually. If at any point in time she landed a single spear. Someone had to recall. Same concept. Not difficult to understand. That's why people complained.

Renascent12 votes

Had a hilarious fight against a full health Kindred when I was at just 10% hp as Rammus. Kindred died, I had 5% hp left.

Before you say that it's because I was really ahead, or Kindred was really far behind, we both at the most kills on our team at over 7 each.

How could I have won the fight, then? Kindred is ALL PHYSICAL DAMAGE (Even her passive, look it up). Unlike Vayne and Kog'maw, it is EASY to itemize against Kindred. Her most notable source of damage output is %current health damage as well, so that part was negated almost completely. All you have left afterwards is an extremely squishy auto attacker with no crits attached who can barely lifesteal because it is reduced drastically by armor.

tl;dr Not all tanks aren't completely shut down by Kindred, because she's not a dedicated tank buster like Vayne or Kog'maw; Kindred's damage output is COMPLETELY PHYSICAL, so all you need is armor for counter-building.

FastAsHeck2 votes

PREACH

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

pripustas3 votes

Zac and Janna are pretty good against Kindred team, just hijack her ult Trundle YOU'RE IN MY KINGDOM NOW

Nightshade173 votes

Just remember kids, Kindred's ult won't affect her if she's not in it! Blitzcrank Azir And especially TahmKench

Gold General1 votes

you forgotGragas

TeCoolMage2 votes

I think Kindred is simply broken in the way champions shouldn't be so feast or famine, and even the smallest changes to any stat can make him either completely OP or extremely weak. I don't think a rework should be done, but simply changing around numbers won't work.

His passive: His strength is his HP tank shredding potential, and objective taking ability, on the other side of the spectrum from Kalista, instead of securing an objective that is contested at an exact moment, he has the ability to pressure them by taking them at any point when given enough resources, but at the same time unmatched sustained damage against tanks through sustained damage (again, opposite of Kalista, who uses a burst of damage to finish off champions).

Cap the damage - lose half the passive's ability. I guess it could work if the max damage increased per stack, but Kindred's strength really lies in late game objective pressure.

Auto range is too short, requiring him to stand dangerously close to the enemy, which means either all fights require ulti usage to get the enemy to low health, or simply staying back and not doing anything until an assassin dives. Way too defensive, considering the fact Kindred is an offense-based-counter jungling champion. Make this larger, and he beats a lot of ADCs in viability.

Also, the passive puts a lot of pressure on Kindred to build full Attack speed and armour penetration, at least until he gets ridiculous amounts of it

Abilities: generally turns Kindred into a "just right click when needed champion", which is what the marksman update is trying to fix

Q: Lowers DPS at high amounts of AS, and is really limited late game due to bad scaling and range. It's great to avoid taking damage from camps. Also lowers mobility at high amounts of MS. I know Vayne does this too, but she's not limited to an area to do so.

I actually wished the modified 2 second cooldown scaled with CDR, I really like using it. Unfortunately, it's mad crazy in power early on due to the fact camps don't move around while teamfights do. Later on, it deals miniscule amounts of damage and is only used for mobility

W:

Passive: I don't really like the lack of scaling on W, having 1 rank in W then never needing to touch it again is kinda annoying. I wish it scaled with a stat dependant on rank or at least something that makes it worth taking

Active: Amazing zoning, but activating it's just an activate and forget ability, and it puts pressure on the team to keep the teamfight in the zone or lose a lot of damage.

E: It's fun to use, but only becomes a finisher later on

So 5% max HP at all ranks, and a pretty mediocre amount of damage, at a short ish range, but with an amazing slow. It works great against buffs, but is capped for dragon and baron. The slow is what stops it from being completely forgotten about.

R: The passive and ultimate are what everything about Kindred's effectiveness revolve around. The heal is kinda bad later on due to no scaling but that's not the main point of the ultimate. Not dying is a huge thing, but Kindred's range forces him to stay in a range similar to a burst based champ for enough time for a sustained damage champ to kill, so the ultimate is pretty much required

This is what I propose for some of these problems, only : The amount of damage each stack can do is capped, but more stacks still equals more, potentially infinite damage to camps. E base damage is lowered and scales very lightly with stacks, but still max HP damage and not current HP damage. Probably 0.25% per stack or something. Can auto attack while moving from Q, and Q damage scales very very very extremely lightly with stacks, maybe 0.1% damage per stack or something, and base damage is lowered a bit. Also the speed of movement scales with movement speed a bit because it's so slow. Kindred starts with one stack (So Kindred can't be killed by the first few camps due to terrible damage) Lower amount of damage per stack Lower AD scalings even further, to Tristana levels. Q prioritzes champions (god it's so annoying to gank with that thing)

Now instead of relying on items, Kindred can rely on a balance of counter jungling and ganks, but still scale off items as a backup plan if counterpicked.

Divewing9 votes

Kindred. Is. A. THEY! ITS NOT DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER

TBakes2 votes

I honestly think players are still working out how to play around her ultimate. It's really jarring when you almost have a kill or multiple kills in the bag and then Kindred pops the ult to save them. Do you stay in the ring? Do you run away? Do you focus others now? I admit it has been a hard adjustment for me to play around it when I think I am about to get a kill or our team is about to have multiple kills.

Kuroi862 votes

Did... did you really just compare % current health physical damage to % max health damage??? . . . . . . . . . sigh This is why no one takes players seriously when they try to talk balance.

Ferus and Ferrum1 votes

Kindred's % current health damage is also physical, compared to Vayne's true. At least you can itemize against kindred if she snowballs. Not saying she's balanced but I don't think the passive is her issue.

Madkhatz1 votes

{quoted}

Did... did you really just compare % current health physical damage to % max health damage??? . . . . . . . . . sigh This is why no one takes players seriously when they try to talk balance.

There is, it's bugged, to where it's not capping properly resulting in fast monster clears.

Omiwom2 votes

The reason she's unfair is because if she's ahead, you can't attack her. You WILL get slowed and shredded by the point and click E and insane %hp damage, and she WILL ult herself if you start beating her. She can't miss any of those spells. Her skills are very reliable so you can't outplay her. Imo her kit design is flawed and un-fun.

Either remove the heal at the end of her ult, change her %dmg to flat dmg, or make her E a skillshot.

JJ Kong1 votes

[deleted]

Riderx262 votes

CD*

cookie5421 votes

I like kindred and I do agree that something has to be done with the sated however, I play Kindred support and her passive makes her able to do damage even without items. She does a lot of damage early game and has lots of sustain. Making her squishier would help when ganking but she can heal any poke done to her and stay in lane.

Madkhatz1 votes

{quoted}

I like kindred and I do agree that something has to be done with the sated however, I play Kindred support and her passive makes her able to do damage even without items. She does a lot of damage early game and has lots of sustain. Making her squishier would help when ganking but she can heal any poke done to her and stay in lane.

She has some of the lowest base stats. She's a jungler she has to be somewhat not squishy. They tweak her W vs lane minions, sustain isn't an issue. It's no different then support rengar. Lots of damage, huge sustain. Also can jump on you. But no one is screaming nerf it.

Abyssphere1 votes

{quoted}

She has some of the lowest base stats. She's a jungler she has to be somewhat not squishy. They tweak her W vs lane minions, sustain isn't an issue. It's no different then support rengar. Lots of damage, huge sustain. Also can jump on you. But no one is screaming nerf it.

Kindred has low base stats? Since when?

Kindred stats: Health: 540-1985 Armour: 27-82.3 Health Regen: 10-19.4

Elise stats: Health: 529-1889 Armour: 22.1-79.1 Health Regen: 5.7-15.9

Kindred has more health, armour and health regen at all levels than a jungler who actually spends a lot of her time in melee range. And nobody has ever accused Elise of having terrible base stats, by the way. The only poor base stat Kindred has is AD and her poor AD per level scaling is quite obviously because of her passive. Kindred has excellent base stats.

WildJester1 votes

Agree. (Darius is game breaking)

Keti1 votes

Just a few notes as someone who's played a lot of kindred in diamond since release (mostly top lane).

The current nerfs are good and make sense.

A LOT of people overextend into kindred's w, get chased back across and and die, not realizing they just played into kindred's optimal situation. She has high bases and poorish scaling, armor stacking is good against her, she also kinda struggles to force aggression in her own but teammates help with that.

Making w only proc in jungle or nerfing it substantially is entirely unnecessary and would just remove her from viability in lane. She's only 500 range (stop comparing her to 550 range vayne) and lacks ways to extend beyond that easily like sivir Q and doesn't have anything like a spell shield. Without it she just loses her niche as an adc and isn't worthwhile top. The removal of mana potions is actually a fairly significant nerf to lane kindred as is. She has to commit to her engages fairly heavily (blowing w early is required, have to commit 70 mana to a cruddy version of silver bolts) and any half decent disengage (please just don't fight in her w) or just proper use of the bushes can kinda throw her into farm mode. In bot lane most adcs easily outscale her and in top lane a bruiser will have way more map presence through the mid game (shes pretty easy to shove in). Shes really a snowbally champion due to her passive and early game strength, and if you just treat her as such they're really not too threatening in lane.

Kindred + azir is freaking busted. I expect kindred to be nerfed into a walking ult eventually because of specific synergies with her ult being so strong

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