Since Kennen’s release, a large portion of the community has been clamoring for buffs. Most of the complaints center around his AP ratios, which people think are too low. Personally, I think he’s fine. As stated in previous posts, I continue to do quite well with Kennen because of his early game strength. He definitely doesn’t scale as well as some heroes, but he’s one of the best early game champions, giving you the power to get ahead and stay there.
Most recently, a forum poster asked why no Kennen buffs had made the new Test Realm patch. I was glad to see Riot respond this time – it’s been fairly quiet regarding the midget ninja so far. Here’s what Geeves had to say:
I ended up buffing his AP ratios as a result of Test Realm feedback in the last patch cycle, and I think it worked out pretty well. I have seen quite a few Kennens internally do pretty monstrous in games, and I have seen some people fail with him.
I think he currently may suffer from Master Yi/Evelynn syndrome where they are very reliant on team comp to pull off their power moves (Lightning Rush/Electrical Surge/ult is a devastating combo but he puts himself at risk to do it). I’m keeping an eye on his performance and I’m pretty satisfied with how he looks currently, but if this changes I’ll make some survivability/scaling tweaks pretty quickly.
It makes me more than a little sad to see him compare Kennen to Yi/Evelynn. Really any character that isn’t a true initiator is going to rely on team comp for success. Certainly Yi and Evelynn are among that number, but there are plenty more.
