League of Legends patch 11.9 is the Mid-Season Invitational patch, and will determine the international tournament’s meta.
Kindred not only got buffed recently on patch 11.9, but also on the previous 11.7. Holding a mere 50% win rate across major professional leagues, marksman jungler Kindred was only picked 22 times in Spring.
In Patch 11.7, two abilities were buffed:
Q – Dance of Arrows
- Bonus damage ratio increased from 65% AD to 75% AD
E – Mounting Dread
- Cooldown reduced from 16/15/14/13/12 to 14/13/12/11/10 seconds
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Even so, Riot still thinks that Kindred is struggling in the jungle, and made changes for a “stronger mid-game power spike”. So in the current patch 11.9, their Q was buffed again:
Q – Dance of Arrows
- Cooldown reduced from 9 to 8 seconds
- Base damage increased from 60/80/100/120/140 to 60/85/110/135/160
Kindred’s bread and butter ability getting buffed twice in the last three patches is a huge deal. Dance of Arrows scales better now, and has 20 more base damage at max level.
Most significantly, its cooldown was decreased by a second, alongside their crippling E ability, which gives Kindred more leeway to use them in extended team fights.
Their current high ELO ranked win rate is still below average at 48.42%, but to be fair, Kindred was never a great solo queue champion since acquiring marks requires team coordination.
Overall, these buffs may be enough to push them to become a hypercarry in the solo lane, especially at pro level.
At the very least, expect Kindred to be one of the top junglers at MSI 2021 alongside Udyr, especially after Hecarim got nerfed.
Click here to read the full League of Legends 11.9 patch notes.
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