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Kindred - Gameplay Design Flaws

Onkel Malte·11/17/2016, 5:38:42 PM·2 votes·772 views

So i was playing Kindred lately, and was looking at the stats of this champion on Champion.gg I knew Kindred were nerfed hard because they were so good at dueling and very popular especially in LCS, but now it feels like they are one of the worst picks ever in the jungle even though they were specifically designed and tuned for jungling. They hold a 2.16% pickrate and a 48.87% winrate

It's a nice concept to make a champion the personification of the Grim Reaper and call them the Eternal Hunters. But iit doesn't seem like kindred really is any of those stated above in terms of Gameplay.

There are some major flaws with Kindred's current design

  1. Unlike other late game scaling Champions Kindred don't rely on farm but on kills. Which means by just playing safe you can gut them, because their damage is extremely low if they don't reach 6 stacks at least.

  2. Kindred are the "Eternal Hunters" but do not really excell in hunting a target. Kindred have nice mobility with dance of arrows, but lack essential movementspeed.

  3. Kindred have 0.625 base AS and no attack speed steroid, which is exceptionally low for an onhit DPS Champion and makes building AS less effective.

  4. Mark of the Kindred is their main source of damage dealing current health damage, which means DEATH struggles at killing low health enemies and contiungly attacking one enemy lowers their dps further and further.

  5. While Kindred are designed as Marksman Champion their recommended build now is item 3006 item 3085 item 3156 item 3022 item 3071 item 3046.

  6. Hunting high priority Champions like ADCs and Mages is essentially useless, because you only want an assist on the Champion. So tanks and fighters are the better choice, which makes the "hunting" effect really lacking feeling.

It's been months since I saw Kindred in a game and I even stopped playing them since the W heal was removed. It's really sad because I loved this champ but it's so hard to win with kindred in your own team

There are a lot of small buffs like base MS and AS increases that would put them back in a more viable spot, but nothing has been done since the nerfs back then :(

7 Comments

Tormentula11/17/2016, 6:12:02 PM1 votes

Kindred is fine, just last patch they were one of the highest win/rate junglers. They're just struggling this patch like every other marksmen due to the existence of Zed Leblanc Talon Khazix Ekko RengarLeeSin Hecarim Zac .

Once these get nerfed (way overdue for some of them) kindred will be fine. She always has been but because she's not a 15 stacks at 20 minutes champ anymore there is QQs on them. The W heal is completely fine being gone now considering smite basically brings you to full HP.

{quoted}

  1. While Kindred are designed as Marksman Champion their recommended build now is item 3006 item 3085 item 3156 item 3022 item 3071 item 3046.

Azir is a marksmen and builds item 3115 item 3116 your point? Marksman has nothing to do with their builds but their roles (lots of dps). Where's bloodrazor fitting into that build?

Even on release kindreds just build devouror and full AD from there.

You have to consider, for the ammount of times kindreds throw games roaming in enemy jungles, 2.16% pickrate and a 48.87% winrate isn't too shabby.

Yago11/17/2016, 6:29:32 PM1 votes

{quoted}

So i was playing Kindred lately, and was looking at the stats of this champion on Champion.gg I knew Kindred were nerfed hard because they were so good at dueling and very popular especially in LCS, but now it feels like they are one of the worst picks ever in the jungle even though they were specifically designed and tuned for jungling. They hold a 2.16% pickrate and a 48.87% winrate

It's a nice concept to make a champion the personification of the Grim Reaper and call them the Eternal Hunters. But iit doesn't seem like kindred really is any of those stated above in terms of Gameplay.

There are some major flaws with Kindred's current design

  1. Unlike other late game scaling Champions Kindred don't rely on farm but on kills. Which means by just playing safe you can gut them, because their damage is extremely low if they don't reach 6 stacks at least.

  2. Kindred are the "Eternal Hunters" but do not really excell in hunting a target. Kindred have nice mobility with dance of arrows, but lack essential movementspeed.

  3. Kindred have 0.625 base AS and no attack speed steroid, which is exceptionally low for an onhit DPS Champion and makes building AS less effective.

  4. Mark of the Kindred is their main source of damage dealing current health damage, which means DEATH struggles at killing low health enemies and contiungly attacking one enemy lowers their dps further and further.

  5. While Kindred are designed as Marksman Champion their recommended build now is item 3006 item 3085 item 3156 item 3022 item 3071 item 3046.

  6. Hunting high priority Champions like ADCs and Mages is essentially useless, because you only want an assist on the Champion. So tanks and fighters are the better choice, which makes the "hunting" effect really lacking feeling.

It's been months since I saw Kindred in a game and I even stopped playing them since the W heal was removed. It's really sad because I loved this champ but it's so hard to win with kindred in your own team

There are a lot of small buffs like base MS and AS increases that would put them back in a more viable spot, but nothing has been done since the nerfs back then :(

Heyo. Kindred ADC main here. I peaked at Plat II (and climbing) before falling due to decay and then tilt trying to earn back my ranking at the end of the season.

Anyways, Kindred's nerfs were completely justified, across the board, and she is in a very comfortable state right now. A couple of love tap buffs would be nice, but are completely unnecessary.

To respond to your specific points, though:

  1. She can also get marks off of camps, or assists. A good Kindred knows how and when to go collect marks, and can often get quite a few if they play right. Once you get a few marks, especially if you get them early, you can easily obtain more of them. Getting marks off of assists is particularly easy in teamfights. Even if she does not have marks, her basic attacks will still deal some damage with BotRK / Bloodrazor, and her Q, W, and E all either deal significant base damage, or percentage health damage. Her R can also turn a fight whilst very behind.

  2. They might not have much base movement speed, but they tend to build Hurricane and BotRK, which allows them to run down quite a few opponents. You also severely understimate how strong her Q is for ganking targets. You can hop over thin walls, which allows you to say, tower dive the warded enemy bot lane by hopping the thin wall by river bush (if on left side) or dragon pit and then Krug's wall (if on right side).

  3. Kindred's base attack speed is low to prevent them from snowballing quite as hard. If they had higher base AS, they would likely snowball even more than they already do.

  4. Kindred has a number of mechanical quirks that are unbeknownst to the average player, but us Kindred mains are well aware of. Mark of the Kindred actually has a damage minimum of 8 per Mark. If you have 10 Marks, it will always deal at least 80 damage. Or, in other words, you will always deal as much damage as you would when attacking a target with 640 health. This is especially noteworthy early/mid game, when enemy champions will hit below that health threshold very early in the fight.

  5. I fail to see the problem with that being their recommended build. Yes, it's not a standard Marksman build, but Kindred's damage scaling comes primarily from their passive, and not their items, therefore, it's often best to just build tanky, as you can still dish out plenty of DPS.

  6. Why would you say you only want an assist? You snowball harder than most champions in the game, so taking the kills from your laners, if you're jungle, seems perfectly acceptable. And killing squishies is far easier than killing tanks, and they're also threatening, so they're still priority targets.

bad arcade kitty11/18/2016, 12:57:37 AM1 votes

her winrate plunged because her old mastery was nerfed and also people began to pick a lot of colossus junglers and those win more... against whom do you think?

thunderlords kindred is a beast btw

p.s. kindred gets marks on assists, and with runaan it is easy to get an assist with her every teamfight

that's leaving aside the jungle marks