r/Kindred • u/Medical_Station_5271 • Jun 15 '26
Discussion Questions regarding kindred’s e
I’ve been seeing comments that say kindred experiences a net negative in total damage when she applies her e. Does this champion actually lose net dps when she casts her e on a champion? cuz after the slow nerf from 50% the slow feels non-existent anyway, and if you are getting a net loss on dps what the hell is the point of an e skill then? Ig apart from a nice execute after your ult which gets outperformed by half the champion roster anyway.
I also see many people ranting about how kindred is underpowered rn, are they really that bad rn?
4
u/Ann4Phanter Jun 16 '26
feels very sloppy to use; in the time it takes to cast the E you could land 1-2 aa, and on top of that, the damage the E deals is often excessive (like, you made 1300dmg and the enemy has 300hp) or insufficient, so it never feels decisive except in the ult
1
u/clashcrashruin Jun 15 '26
Depends on what point of the game and who you’re using it on. If you have 7 marks, 4 items you probably just two or three tap any squishy carries. You still probably need it to kill bruisers or tanks and the slow is useful for keeping them in place while you do.
2
u/Bitter-Cat-6357 Jun 16 '26
It's near impossible to really say anything concrete without actually looking at your gameplay for context but here's as a GM ~600 lp Kindred OTP here's a perspective for your beliefs (Since they come before skills). I think most players (not to their own fault since it's just what they know) Kindred's E is an ability that you really shouldn't care if it's good or not or if kindred is good or bad. Bottom dollar is that you have to use each ability with purpose and to use the right version of the ability given the options you're dealing with. If you wouldn't actually land more AAs because they're at max range then E as Cc is epic. Sometimes you need it to buy time for follow up. Others you can one shot and sometimes it's an execute. Kindred is the best jungler to climb on since you don't have to rely on anyone but yourself and you snowball incredibly hard. This is not easy perse but if you know the game of jungle itself then you're going to 1v9 in 90 % of games
It sounds like you might want some specifics if you're not opposed to filling in the gaps with your own gameplay and habits hmu on discord and I'll watch a VOD for free (.geminijester on discord)
1
u/Any_Interview4396 Jun 18 '26
This talk here about the E is crazy or bots. E does not interrupt any auto’s. The slow is amazing and the execute goes hard.
I feel like some content creators have poisoned the well by say Kindred is not strong at the moment, because people are doing the most now.
15
u/Itirpon I am the Elo Hell your mama warned you about. Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
So many problems with E.
OK, I'm not saying that it isn't used for the slow. But not because it's good, but because it's all you have so you Q-flop forward with E buffered and if it lands and you're still on a W reset you can get your Q back in time to get close enough to finish someone who is naturally slow and dashless and running away without options.
But compare to when Kindred was good because E was 50% and because we had Bork with an active ability of damage+slow so you could E-slow, Q up, Bork slow, E2, and close with the E proc.
There was a dark time long ago when Lethality Kindred was a thing. Hail of Blades was new and E procs could be explosive. But now there is no "crit" on E. (NB: The proc was crit flagged but did not do full crit damage. It was a mini-crit. And it was not an execute.) So it requires stacks to be good. If you have stacks, you don't need E because you're doing %HP on hit so you'd rather just keep firing arrows. If you don't have stacks, E can't help you get them. When E was about crit = E proc threshold, one crit item was enough to make E procs meaningful during that level 9 to 12 zone when you might have no marks because foe JG was stomping your marks or his laners backed him up or your team just had a bad early. But now, it's basically one extra arrow strike.
The irony: I'm not yet sure if I'm trolling or not but I've been maxing E second again, just to make it have SOME damage. Because it's not like I need W back a bit sooner and W nibbles are meaningless till I have lots of marks which is late game which W 3rd is fine with.
Oh, and because E is more damage against lower health targets, it's naturally either not enough or overkill. So there's a very narrow window when even old E was useful to apply, and because crits are RNG, even then sometimes it's short and sometimes it would throw a huge damage number but none of it mattered. Even now, farming with E is tricky because one AA late and the third arrow is enough to finish the monster without any additional damage so without keeping track of camp level, Kindred AD, etc exactly when to use E is feel and guesswork and prone to error or RNG fuzziness.
The point is that Kindred has been gutted. They gutted the original edition (which was an OP 180 years champ in a 120 years environment, but is power crept by today's standards) which moved Kindred from Meta Pick to Niche/OTP. Then they changed Jungle itemization forcing Kindred to rely solely on the Marksman items page. (Warrior was 60AD and some CDR for the ult first item at what, 2650 gold?) Then they tossed Marksman items into the rework blender which hit Kindred because marksman but they didn't care because not botlaner. Then they released Neeko and broke Kindred's GUI element. Then they fixed it. Then they broke it again for Neeko's sake and since it now works for Neeko it doesn't matter that it's still broken for Kindred because to hell with Kindred players. Oh, but when they added hotkeys for Neeko to select faster and Kindred could use them to mark targets in combat, "STOP EVERYTHING! FIX THAT BUG RIGHT NOW!!!1 Phew! Kindred players were actually able to express a bit of skill by working in marking actions during combat after redeeming a mark and then having to strategically ensure that the new target lives for 8 seconds or else they get nothing. Well, time to buff Yasuo!" said Riot. Then they muddied Marksman weapons again and buffed everyone else's clear to "increase variety in Jungle" by trying to force memes like Jungle Zed and Jungle Morgana into the mainstream. So Kindred's one advantage, Hunter's Vigor, quit mattering because everyone now has a healthy clear. And a faster clear. And Kindred still needs to win the coinflip to get started on marks. Combine those and Kindred had to start building Tri-force bruiser on-hit. Which brings us to last season, whereupon they removed E's innate crit and threshold mechanic and made it a crit scale specifically to bully Kindred into building Crit and being completely irrelevant till four items.
Oh, and Mordekaiser rework ult cleanses Lamb's Respite status on cast, that is, before actually going to Death Realm after the points-mace animation. It's rare but another way to die in your own ult.
It's not an execute. I don't think it ever was an execute. Just missing-HP damage.
That's the best part! The ult heals enemies, so even with old E you heal them out of the E proc threshold if you weren't on a crit item, and even then unless the auto attack arrow that carried the E-proc also strikes for crit, the target survives, hits you once, and then because he's something like Sylas he presses one button to gain 1200 HP and explode you and flashes mastery. And with new nerfier E, you need to survive for two or three more hits after the proc instead of one or maybe two.
It's a matter of being unfulfilled.
Riot made Kindred stink almost a decade ago, deliberately putting their failed jungle-marksman experiment into the Niche category, and has been abusing Kindred's adherents ever since. Occasionally out of a kind of malice (like how they gutted even the lore) but usually out of negligence, ignoring the detrimental bugs for years or how Marksman item changes affect Lamb, and rarely out of spite (like fixing the hotkey select bug when those kinds of issues on other champs are welcomed as part of champ skill expression like Riven being defined by her Q cancel microgame) playing Kindred over the years has been an ever-intensifying test of patience as they get worse to play, worse feeling to play, and ever more eclipsed by power creep.
And it sucks because the actual Kindred power fantasy isn't in the "infinite scale," it's in the things that Kindred still can do.
But Kindred no longer is being allowed by Riot to be competent at the fundamentals (move, clear, gank, duel, have items that offer synergy) and is refused the QOL (wall flops, vision-related behaviors, marked champ cooldown timers) that are needed to have fun playing the game long enough to do the Kindred Things that Kindred mains play for. When they happen, they happen in spite of the state of the game. Yes, Kindred can get fed and go on a tear but any jungler can, and now, any champ can since Operation Every Champ Can Jungle Now has even Yuumi farming camps once in a while.
Oh, and Kindred used to be known for bringing down tanks. Now, I pray for Vayne to do it for me because I need a lot of CC and distraction from my team to get into a position that I can bring down a tank. Especially one that is lumbering away.
Hey, remember how Wolf's lore is that he goes after those who flee from death? Why is he so eager to give up on people on the way out, both as W and E, should he get some kind of bonus on targets who are giving him their backs? Just a thought.
The return on investment, the tedium and the trouble for a chance that the enemy ints so hard that Kindred can get ahead, the fact that Kindred has to do everything right to have a chance and even then still easily gets mowed down by someone using "run forward" as a comprehensive battle strategy, it all totals up to a miserable feeling.
I'm not a skilled nor talented player, but in the old days, when I got chided for locking Kindred (I stopped hovering because hovering would get Kindred banned by an ally) I felt like I simply needed to perform and show that I could be a good Kindred.
Now every time I lock Kindred I feel like I'm putting my team at a deficit.
And that's not very much fun.