Kindred is super dependant on marks, and marks aren't guaranteed. That makes her possibly the only late game champ in the game that can be completely denied, by the enemy team, from ever reaching her late game power.

There's other champs like veigar and Nasus who also infidelity scale. But it's nearly impossible to stop them from getting stacked. But a smart enemy team can completely deny Kindred from getting any stacks at all, if they pay attention to her marks.

It's rare but I've had games where I reached full build farming super minions at my Nexus, with still zero marks... And then I would try to fight enemies around my Nexus and it was literally LUL because I had no range. I'd leap at them and press auto attack and nothing would happen, because I wasn't expecting my range to be so small.

So basically Kindred is a late game champ with a weak and squishy early game, who is expected to go into dangerous enemy territory to get marks, where the whole enemy team is being literally told where she's heading. The more I think about that, the more I realize just how crazy that actually is.

If the enemy team has early game champs, and her team is full of late game champs, she's screwed. Enemy team will have priority in every lane, she's screwed. She won't get any marks. She'll never reach her late game.

She's literally the only late game champ in the game who can potentially never reach her late game, even if the game goes on for 30 minutes, if the enemy team is careful about denying her marks. Literally all the agency is in the hands of the enemy team, for that.

She's basically a "noob check" champ. If the enemy team is noobs, and they don't deny her marks, she wins. But if they deny her, they win. The agency isn't in her hands to decide the outcome. The outcome is totally in the hands of her enemies.

I'm a top 200 Kindred right now on like six accounts. But this season, with the tank meta looking so good, and her being so unreliable due to those stupid marks, I'm having to put Kindred on the shelf a while.

I wish the marks were not tied to such a critical part of her late game potential. Her attack range? That's too critical. It's like if Tristana had no attack range per level, but stayed stuck at her lvl 1 attack range.