League of Legends: Who You Should (Not) Be Playing - Kindred

The Kindred rework has been live for about a week now, and the results aren't pretty. In the span of a day, Kindred went from being a reasonable mid-tier jungler who was actually picking up some steam to the unequivocal worst jungler in the game, and perhaps the worst all-around champion. While the Kindred rework definitely made her more balanceable in the long run -- if a champion with an AOE invulnerability can ever be considered balanceable, that is -- it certainly did a number on her in the short term.

The fact of the matter is that Kindred took too large a hit to her early game to remain competitive with other junglers. Previously, all it took was a pair of completed hunts to make Kindred a real threat, as the percentage damage made her impossible to ignore completely. Additionally, the previous incarnation of Mounting Dread was a far more effective ganking tool. The current iteration functions as an execute, which would be great if Kindred had other early game damage options that synergized with it. Unfortunately, she doesn't, so the one damage tool that could have salvaged her pathetic early game instead has been relegated to a button you press to slow the enemy down while applying a cool looking visual effect.

In exchange for all of these early game nerfs, Kindred theoretically got access to a stronger late game, since she has the "privilege" of being allowed to scale like a traditional ADC. She gains longer range over the course of the game, as well as a potent attack speed steroid, but is that enough to make her a dominant late-game threat? The verdict is still uncertain. Kindred does do quite well in games that stretch beyond 45 minutes where she gets to construct her absurdly expensive core items, but not as well as one would expect considering how powerful she should, in theory, be at that stage of the game. A 54% win rate is great, but other late game champions boast numbers far, far above that, and those champions don't have to somehow farm up the gold for an Infinity Edge and a Statik Shiv from the jungle in order to get them.

So the question is, was the Kindred rework a failure? The jury is still out since we've yet to see how Riot responds to her problems. The last set of reworks had their issues ironed out within a patch or two, so whether or not Kindred sinks or swims will heavily depend upon how Riot reacts to the situation, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Kindred's core issue is that she's an abysmal early game champion in a role whose greatest impact is, traditionally, felt during the early game. That's not a problem that you can fix with a few number tweaks without breaking the game, either, since it's not as simple as just giving Kindred a better early game. A jungler with a strong early game who also transitions into an Infinity Edge wielding ADC with 600 range, the most spammable repositioning ability in the game, as well as an invulnerability field would be even more broken than the Kindred which we have now, just in a different way. Simply put, the current design for Kindred can't be allowed to be good in the early game without sacrificing a lot of her current late game power, which makes it unlikely that she'll ever be "good" unless the meta reverts to a power-farm friendly one. But, at that point, why aren't you just playing Master Yi?

Sorry Kindred. We want to love you, but you're just making it too hard. Maybe the next rework will get it right.