Occupying one of the more unique roles as an ADC jungler, Kindred combines both powerful early game aggression through invades and a strong late game scaling through their passive stacks. On paper, Kindred seems like an amazing powerhouse if they can do well in both early and late game, but in practice, they have a steep ceiling to maximize their passive stacks. With Jade “Sheiden” Libut, we’ll break down their build path, when the best time to play them is, and tips for optimizing your play!

A Brief History

Let’s ignore Graves for a hot moment, that one weird meta where Ezreal was a jungler, Twitch being Twitch, and say Kindred is the go-to pick for when your team needs an AD Marksman in the jungle. Kindred is a pick that at first, you might think would have struggled in pro play except in favourable metagames where teams really want a carry jungler. In particular, Kindred is often the counterpick answer to their Marksman jungling counterpart Graves, where Kindred both outranges Graves, scales well into the late game, and has tools to avoid his main sources of damage to win duels.

Sheiden: “But Pyosik picking Kindred is because he [started out] as a one trick Kindred, so most of it probably comes with being a comfort champ. There's some [enemy] draft where there's like diving champs, Kindred is pretty strong, but I think Pyosik's picking Kindred is because it's Pyosik too.”

When discussing Kindred, we always have to mention Pyosik, a player named after his favourite Champion Kindred, who brought Kindred into pro play with even his World Championship skin being Kindred. Milkyway, currently the jungler for Royal Never Give Up, began as a Kindred one trick who often brings Kindred into his pro games. In various metagames, Kindred is often used primarily to fill the carry jungler role, but can occasionally be the answer to enemy teams that struggle against Kindred’s ultimate, as well as against more bulkier team compositions where their %HP damage cuts down tanks and high health targets.

For Sheiden himself, Kindred is one of his primary Champions he reached Rank 1 with, and one of his highest win rate Champions when he was on Evil Geniuses and FLY Challengers.

When to Pick Kindred

Sheiden: “If you have really good setups from your laners like good crowd control. If you don't have CC with Kindred, it's really hard to make a play. They just run away from you. I think one Enchanter and some engage champs are really helpful. You can't really blind pick it, because there are counterpicks, but you can pick it into like... I think her worst matchups are like Kha'Zix and Xin, but you can play it whenever you want after that. I don't recommend first picking it, because there are a lot of champs that can deal with Kindred, like engage champs, ranged champs, kiting champs, that's the problem. But if you have good setups with champs like Taliyah, you can. If you have a lot of tanks, you need to be doing the damage, that type of situation.”

Champions like Galio are really helpful for Kindred due to strong synergy throughout both early game and in skirmishes. You can use Galio’s taunt as Kindred’s ultimate ends to more safely secure kills.

To sum up, Kindred is a pick that relies heavily on the capabilities of their teammates to be useful. Now, this might be a little obvious, as what jungler would not want the perfect teammates to assist in a gank? However, Kindred’s marks rely heavily on their team in order to build them up, not only in ganking but in getting camps. You generally want laners who can also get priority on the enemy team to let you safely invade camps, as well as teammates who assist in ganks. Kindred’s viability is dependent on both their gold and their ability to secure marks, which puts them in a feast or famine type of situation when falling behind.

Being a feast or famine Champion also hinders Kindred’s ability to be picked blind. Certain Champions have significant advantages against Kindred, able to take advantage of their dependency on farming and obtaining marks, as well as out duelling them in the early game for when Kindred wants to invade. There are also Champions who have a kit that naturally counters Kindred like Kayn, where he can wait out Kindred’s ultimate in his own ultimate.

What to Build as Kindred?

Kindred wants typically the same stats as other AD carries - attack speed, attack damage, critical stats, and armor penetration. But in particular, Kindred wants items that synergize well with their kit.

Trinity Force is one of the more common ones, due to the synergy with Kindred’s Q – Dance of Arrows where it gets placed on a short cooldown in their W – Wolf’s Frenzy, letting Kindred weave in Spellblade autos between attacks. It provides very strong early stats and has an easy build path.

Kraken Slayer may have fallen from grace as the most powerful true damage shredding item with strong critical stats, but it provides damage that gets more powerful with the opponent’s missing health. Kindred’s auto attacks deal current health damage, with their E – Mounting Dread dealing missing health damage. As Kindred, you will often find yourself fighting tooth and nail in your ultimate Lamb’s Respite when both Champions are low hp, making the extra burst from Kraken Slayer’s missing health scaling all the more powerful.

The Collector is another similar item to Kraken, being a good early snowball item that synergizes with Kindred aiming for low health executes through Mounting Dread and when their ultimate Lamb’s Respite ends. It provides strong early game stats with Lethality, as well as helping you build towards late-game critical items.

When to Mark Enemy Champions and Controlling your Pathing

The most important thing to learn as Kindred is understanding their mark system and pathing efficiently to farm gold and get marks. For the very basics, you’ll want to know the following.

• Kindred's marks on monsters appear 45 seconds after the last target dies or the mark expires. You can assume where the mark will be depending on what camps are on the map. When marks appear on enemy camps, it will be on a camp that is not taken, which you can use to guess where your opponent is.
• Marks will spawn on the Scuttle Crab between the first mark, spawn on Gromp and Raptors between your first and third mark, and Wolves, Krugs, Red, and Blue Buff at your fourth to seventh mark. Past that, you’ll see marks on epic monsters.
• Your first few marks are the most important, as you hit a big 75 range increase at your fourth mark.

Sheiden: “You should mark way before you actually go and gank them, because usually when you mark someone, they'll start playing safe because they think you're just coming at that time. You kind of want to mark someone where you're pathing or where you're going to end up, so yeah, kind of mind game a bit.“

Kindred can mark Champions ahead of time, long before you can consider ganking. Above is a more obvious gank path that aims to gank bottom lane, invade where Lilia is likely to defend the marked camp, but you may also want to have your opponent guessing at your path. An optimal path is not always the best option because your opponent may play around it.

Deciding when to mark enemy Champions comes down to understanding how you want to path. Generally, marking an enemy Champion is a big warning sign for the targeted opponent to play safer, which you can use to your advantage. The mind game you can play is that Kindred also gets marks from camps, which your opponent now has to guess whether you’re going to gank for the mark, or if you’ll invade. You also want to take into account your teammates and the wave states of your laners, as whoever has priority helps you identify who can assist with an invade or whether or not they are gankable for a mark.

Your pathing should always consider the enemy jungler’s pathing, especially when it comes to if you intend to invade for marks. You want to keep an eye on where the enemy jungler is, which will let you time when a camp spawns, allowing you to path to be in the spot to quickly obtain the mark. Keep an eye on when the enemy jungler ganks an opponent, as that will immediately tell you where they likely cleared the jungle, as well as whether you can safely invade for a mark. Invading is best done when your laners are able to help you, and if you can safely win the 1v1 against the enemy jungler. If you predict your opponent’s pathing carefully, you can catch them off-guard at the camp when they’ve used their abilities clearing.

Consider also that the enemy team is playing around your marks. You can easily take objectives on the opposite side of the map if your opponent becomes paranoid of defending their marked camps, letting you have knowledge of their position. Where the mark ends up tends to be where your opponent has not cleared yet, making it a way to track your opponent in an unorthodox way unique to Kindred.

Your Champion Scales, Farm and Do Not Neglect Your Gold.

Sheiden: “Farm well, and avoid dying a lot because your champ will outscale. Try not to make mistakes. I see a lot in solo queue, players just spam gank, fail, and die cause the champ is really weak and easy to kill. I think every champ is kinda the same right now, everyone needs to farm in the jungle, but if you see a good setup with your laner, you can skip camps and adapt. If you can't do anything, just farm, if you can do something, just go.”

As with any ADC, Kindred scales off gold just as much, if not more than, having extra marks from a sneaky marked jungle camp that you had to awkwardly drag yourself to. You want to be hitting your powerspikes, especially with Trinity Force, as it enables you to have stronger ganks and faster clears to get your marks.

Some things may seem pretty obvious, after all, dying in League feeds gold to the enemy team and gives you less time to get gold, and making mistakes is always something that you should avoid. However, consider that Kindred is, as mentioned before, a feast or famine Champion. Falling behind as Kindred makes it extremely hard to get to the late game scaling.

Remember, farming is not the only way to obtain gold, but having good farm is the simplest way to obtain it. Kindred as a Champion wants to be flexible due to having a dependency especially on hitting her fourth mark, which you want to balance reaching as soon as you can, but also steadily building your items.

Conclusion

Kindred is a fun scaling Champion that brings a unique playstyle aimed at players who want to carry the game through an AD carry. With a high mastery curve and a strong pick for outsmarting your opponent, Kindred excels in the hands of players able to take advantage of her unique marking system.

We thank Sheiden for his time in discussing Kindred with us. If you would like to follow him, check out his socials at:

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