Kestrel right now is like Ozo, secretly OP, but no one chooses to play her.
Her WP has been viable so far thanks to TB, but her B requires high WP for in-combat stealth so I haven’t seen ppl using TB much on her. It’s also because her perk got changed in the past (used to give her Attack speed / per Adrenaline stack), that makes her early game farm excruciating. You can only play WP Kestrel at the bot lane, she’s too slow to jungle and to squishy to steal.
WP Kestrel viability rating: 6/10
CP Kestrel is not doing well :v. She has an extremely hard early game, and she fall off lategame, in my observation. A long with the change to Energy from the last patch she is now so hard to play. (Can someone tell me whether A.Current or Aftershock work on her?)
Nah. Sure, you can abuse her in certain situations, but she’s not OP. I still think they should bring back the Attack speed stacks, or better, give her armor pierce stacks. That’s what she was meant to do after all, natural armor pierce, not have to buy TB or BS. And yet buy an MJ, and she does less damage than any other WP hero.
She does have armor pierce in her A. Personally I don’t think WP Kestrel any kit changes she’s not that bad. Bring down her WP cap for permanent stealth and increase a base speed and she should be viable
(maybe a few more tweaks). They should definitely not make her too strong because Kestrel is one of those heores who should not be meta or it becomes oppressive.
As for CP Kestrel make her a midlaner (and CP Skye too). @idmonfish Make it happens pls. I’m already tired of spamming this
Kestrel has a niche against low tiers. At level 1 and 2, you can glimmershot anyone to death (take 2 levels of glimmershot first). Spun up Saw? Glimmershot. Krul jumps out of a bush? Glimmershot. When fighting low tiers, they will often stand there and take all four hits, and if you kill them a couple of times early they will stop threatening your lane for the whole match. Kestrel doesn’t have that same advantage in damage through the whole game (she is just ridiculously powerful at level 1 and 2) so she really only works well if you can tilt the opposition early.
Against players who don’t give up early, she’s pretty bad.
Yeah exactly, that’s what I’m saying. She has armor pierce, she’s meant to counter heroes who generally build armor or have it naturally. So make her actually do that rather than just being completely useless.
The energy changes ended up screwing up her WP more by forcing you to buy SSW/HC just to have enough energy to say in a fight.
If you decided not to get any energy items, then you’re stuck with her AAs which are straight up garbage since she no longer has her Atk Spd Perk anymore.
Her ultimate for weapon path barely as any damage and her WP ratio on her active camo needs to be increased to adjust with the new item tree changes.
And bring back her old A with the 120% basic attack amplification and 115% armor pen. Slumbering husk is good enough to counter the A now.
Kestrel is weak right now, if you are awesome at her fine, but even pros known for picking her don’t. She will get a slight numbers buff at some point and be viable again. Simple as that, she doesn’t need a rework like Saw or something.
They nerfed the base stats of weapon and crystal items, they reduced the amount of cp/wp idris needs to unlock his passive accordingly but they didn’t change anything regarding kestrel’s B. Before all you needed was sorrow + heavy steal and you can go invis while taking damage, now you need sorrow + another tier 3 item + heavy steal that’s 3500 more gold. Knowing semc they will probably buff something completely unrelated to the kestrel’s issue like base auto attack damage or the pierce of her arrows.