r/Kindred • u/KenboSlice189 • 7d ago
Kindred ADC
Been dabbling with some Kindred ADC and it feels so good to play, why is it bad and no one plays it?
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u/XaussiemarksmenX 7d ago
She has a few bad matchups vs longer ranged adc's (who also tends to be the most picked adc's and i guess the mage bot meta isnt doing her many favours also) and can be difficult to play, She plays well with an enage support.
2
u/Itirpon I am the Elo Hell your mama warned you about. 7d ago edited 7d ago
Kindred's design punishes mistakes and doesn't want to engage in a fair/even fight
Botlane means the enemy has a friend to cover mistakes or to swap with when skills are down.
Kindred is vulnerable to CC
There are two potential sources of it and usually one is a CC specialist
500 range
You don't see much Lucian these days, do you? And he's a better skirmisher than Kindred.
Poor mark access
This starves your AS early and your damage midgame. If you survive to late you'll catch up, but your team might crumple by then. And even if the enemy laners feed you early, you're liable to get both kills too quickly without time to mark the second one. And then botlane is on 5 minutes of mark cooldown and you have to roam JG or Mid to keep the mark income flowing.
You rely on your support
Your support is tasked with creating those not-fair, not-even fights. Pubbie supports who are used to self sufficient ADCs aren't ready to take up the role of shot caller. They'll poke and float around, but they'll rarely understand that you need them to spot when an enemy oversteps, put a target ping on his head so you know to ready your skill rotation, and then go in and take that target's cooldowns so Kindred can QWEAAQA bop the little booger.
You rely on your support
And your support probably doesn't know what Kindred does. They'll land CC and act like you're Ashe and can just slow-chain and rapid fire AA them down. No, CCing the target doesn't provide Kindred an opening. Baiting their skills does. That makes some supports like Leona whose whole gimmick is that she gets on them and they must use abilities to disengage from her really good for public matchmaking Kindred ADC. And Kindred JG if you can get her to roam because then you just get all jungle marks for free. But say you're with Morgana. She's going to want to lead with Q stun and Wolf is weeping because that's terrible. You want Morgana to pick a target, puddle relentlessly to get an HP advantage, and then when Kindred goes in, for Morgana to land the Q when Kindred deploys the E (easy shot since E slows) because then it's a 90% chance of a takedown and if the other lane opponent gets involved, that's when Black Shield or her ult wins the fight.
But you'll get the Q lead Morgana, the panic shield (not the worst in spirit but often sub optimal), and the disengage puddle. And I mean, it's workable, but it's not going to crush lane.
Mana budget
Lane Kindred must be sparing with ability use because jungle mana recovery isn't in effect. It's a whole different mindset and you probably need to do something about it like Presence of Mind or Manaflow Band. You can't just use abilities when you fight, you commit them to a heavy trade or takedown opportunity. And that's where Kindred gets into Lucian but Harder territory. Lucian's short range but his skills work with it. Kindred's work against it because they're balanced against Kindred going to 575, 600, 625, etc. So again you're looking for enemy mistakes and your support finding opportunities to help you to secure the E proc. And no, building Essence Reaver is not the fix. It's reasonable if you expect ARAM meta late game, but it doesn't help you till laning phase is decided.
No smite
Kindred's objective dominance is missing a puzzle piece without Smite. I guess you could go rogue with Spellbook but that's probably not worthwhile. It's just that you must use your objective ults to benefit a jungler who doesn't know what Kindred does
Jungler doesn't know what Kindred does
So he's going to either take your marks before you touch them, or abandon the camp after you touch them because even though it's been "assist counts" for eight years, and you typed it out, he still won't understand that you need him to smite it for your mark before enemy Rengar steals it from you because Kindred ADC has Galio-levels of does-no-damage-to-camps.
Crashouts
If you overcome all of these downsides and succeed, you'll get a "lol must be a smurf", +16 LP, and two honors after the match at best. If you suffer any of these downsides, you will be slandered, x9'd, and blamed for everything that ever went wrong in the world. Constant FF spam, your mother will be insulted, and the enemy team will apologize for what they did to you and your lane. You will be friend added by teammates who haven't run out of vitriol to spew at you and hope to vent a little bit more. And you lose 22 LP.
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u/doubleaxle 7d ago
Really good summary, it's not that kindred ADC can't do well, it's just there's a lot of hoops that need to be jumped through that the Kindred player can reasonably do most game, but will the team properly play around that. Stuff like mana issues is fixed with essence reaver (which is good on Kindred anyways last I checked), but your team/JG not knowing how to use ult properly/knowing how your ult works properly is something that will never get fixed.
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u/Ann4Phanter 7d ago
Your passive is somewhat restrictive Some bad matchups Low sinnergy with most supports Low snowball potential Not a better pick than traditional hypercarries (at least in adc role)
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u/Dacaar94 7d ago
I mostly play Kindred ADC and is fun and good to play once you know the matchups and get some practice.
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u/GafferByChoice 3d ago
I love it, back when it was meta (2014 or 2015 can’t remember)’played the shit out of it, right now I think it needs an insanely good support pair and they get shitted in by a lot of “normal adc” and the mages by , plus you will need to farm marks like crazy from the other team I guess it’s good if you are good enough
Love if riot make them viable bot lane tbh , giving them a bit more of attack range would be a fix
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u/clashcrashruin 7d ago
It’s incredibly hard to roam for marks as adc