Hey guys Strike here, Hit challenger on EUW server in season 10, and currently challenger on EUW in s11 server playing mostly kindred and lee. My final game to get challenger was on kindred, and as such I want to make a guide for this champ that got me back to the top.

I was also rank 1 kindred euw for a while
I have always found kindred fun and interesting to play due to her mobility, carry potential and unique kit/design. I think she's an excellent champ and due to recent buffs is a incredibly strong jungle pick to learn and pick up which I will attempt to help you with in this guide.

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lastly my op.gg: https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=Strikelol1

Without further ado, lets get into it

Pretty standard, smite is necessary if you jungle. Flash is the best for most champs on league, providing you with an easy escape or gap close to finish off a kill. Although ghost/exh/ignite can have their uses, you're far too vulnerable especially on a somewhat squishy champ like kindred if you go these spells.

You never go blue smite, you already have E as a slow. red smite provides you with valuable damage reduction to help you survive burst and also let you burn people down

This is my go to kindred build.

Kraken is a very high dmg mythic for a champion like kindred who has attack speed buffs (both from marks and her ability) that allows her to proc krakens 3rd auto passive repeatedly.

Berserker greaves builds on this strength and is a strong boots option for a variety of marksman, and combos well with kraken. You should swap out berserker greaves for tabis vs heavy ad/assassin comps (to negate lethality) or swap it out for mercury treads if there's way too much CC (looking at you leona, fiddle etc)

Phantom Dancer is really good for kindred especially if it is vs champs you need to kite against. your 2nd core item (apart from boots) must be a crit item cause you want to spec into a 3rd item IE. Phantom dancer is an excellent choice particularly vs tanks or champions you need to kite. This is because it's unique passive provides you with ghosting and 7% bonus movespeed ontop of the 7% it already gives every time you auto attack. Every auto provides you with 1 stack, at 4 stacks of Phantom Dancer you gain 30% attack speed. Coupled with kraken slayer+Conqueror you become an insane tank killer and someone who is rly good in extended fights. The 5th and 6th item is highly situational, and we will go into potential items further down.

The galeforce build is situational and does have uses. However your ability to play with galeforce will determine if it's bad or situationally ok. The situations I believe it's good into is vs A) Squishy champs who you can burst/one shot or B) Vs champions that you rly could use an extra dash against. Since galeforce itself is a low health execute item, coupled with your E you can burst people easily. However the recent nerfs to galeforce (both higher cooldown on active and mythic passive movespeed) makes me question how optimal it is especially when kraken does way more dps in even slightly extended fights.

The general idea remains the same as explained in the first build. However the big difference in this build is you go for collector instead of phantom. Now I have not tried this build enough, because I take collector mostly when I go down the gale path. However it definitely gives kindred a strong mid game spike and is really good into squishies. A sort of middle ground between the gale and kraken build. Definitely can have it's uses vs squishies but not as good as the Phantom dancer build vs tanks/late game.

Now that we got the 3 item builds out the way lets talk about these situational items that you may need in games. Season 11 is notorious for the insane amount of healing that champs and items have (goredrinker, omnivamp, moonstone etc) Therefore, executioner should be spec'd into in these games with overloaded healing. You should never really buy executioner before your mythic since healing isn't a big deal early on and kraken is a big spike. Check if your team already has a lot of heal reduction, if not you can buy it after kraken or phantom dancer..under some circumstances you can even buy it after Infinity edge if its not a big deal/and ur the main carry.

Hexdrinker...is syndra one shotting you without even pressing her R? Is akali hitting 1 Q with blighting jewel sorc shoes and one shotting you before you can press R? Is 1 nidalee spear sending you to mcdonalds? The base magic resis that hex drinker provides can negate the flat magic penetration these champs have. That coupled with the magic shield it provides can provide you with a good ability to duel these champs and prevent one shots. Depending on how fed these mages are you can build this anywhere between just after kraken to after your phantom dancer or even after your IE.

Guardian Angel is a very good item to build after your core 3 items (as seen above) if the enemy team has a possible one shot on you or if the next fight is a very high stake fight (elder/soul/baron/nexus fights). The core idea being, if you cannot really react in time to peel with R or if R is not enough, the guardian angel provides you with more ability to survive and get your damage out/peel team with R. The armour is good to negate lethality and the AD is no joke either

Quicksilver sash is a good situational item to negate some game breaking CC. I personally build it vs champs like malzahar and fiddlesticks where perhaps there's not enough CC overall to get mercs, but there's this one CC i need to absolutely get out of and where even mercs can't help me. You can build this pretty later on somewhere after IE where the big teamfights are happening and these big CC's are on a short cooldown (malz r)

DO NOT upgrade your hexdrinker/executioner/quicksilver sash into Maw/Mortal reminder/mercurial scimimar until you have infinity edge. Your 3 core items powerspike is WAY too powerful for you to delay it greatly with these items

Ninja tabis..I mean plated steelcaps should be bought vs high lethality comps or full ad comps. Kindred is not a tank and has low health however, if plated steelcaps base armour and auto attack damage reduction is enough to negate a one shot or reduces a lot of damage it is more optimal than greaves since a dead kindred can't do any damage. The flat armour it provides is a natural counter to the somewhat flat armour pen nature of lethality.

Merc treads should be bought vs a lot of crowd control on enemy. An example of this is leona support with a fiddle jungle, it's quite gold effective vs magic dealing crowd control champs too since it gives magic resis. However you should weigh whether quicksilver would do a better job than mercs, mercs won't save you if the reduced CC window does not prevent a one shot..under these circumstances a full cleanse from qss is way more valuable. Not to mention greaves really helps you snowball early on and feels really good on marksman champs.

Lord dominiks regard...honestly I don't build this item enough/much on kindred simply because I find it relatively easy to shred tanks with conqueror kraken Phantom. (true dmg on 3rd autos+kindred doing percent current health from her wolf) However, I do believe that vs a few tanks it could be optimal especially with the rune cutdown you would be doing insane damage to people who have way more health than you.

Now that the situational is out of the way, what do we buy if we don't need the situational items?

Bloodthirster is a pretty good choice. decently high attack damage, crit chance to help us reach that 80%-100% crit and insane amounts of lifesteal so we can heal up quickly. The passive is nothing to mock either allowing us to overheal using the insane lifesteal we now have.

Guardian Angel? but wasn't that situational. It's both situationally good and good universally, a second chance is a second chance. Both psychologically makes you more durable and physically. Enemy team is less likely to burn stuff on you because you have it, and even if they do you have what feels like 3 lives with your ultimate too.

Want some more crit to hit 100%? Don't feel like enemy team can kill you so you don't need any situational items? Runaans can be really good allowing you to AOE and hit several front line members at once whilst providing you with crit chance movespeed and attack speed. Rapidfire allows you to hit someone from 600 miles away especially if you have tonnes of stacks. This can be really good in late game teamfights to one auto from narnia and chunk someone insanely.

Essence reaver is actually pretty good on kindred I haven't used or tested enough since I feel like phantom dancer is way more overpowered especially with kraken. However, kindred is a good essence user for sure with her Q allowing her next auto to be essence reaver powered, the cooldown of essence reaver passive matches your Q passive roughly when your W is active so it is definitely a good synergy. However, essence reaver isn't really as strong since it's 10AD nerf.

Full build no 1: We do not really get to 6 items in these newer seasons since new items/champs/soul/baron/elder really accelerate games. However, I'm a big fan of finishing my build with a GA and bloodthirster, allowing me to have extra survivability whilst not sacrificing my damage. Bloodthirster gives crit in this season so compliments your build well.

Full build no 2: This is an example of a rly aggresive high dps build. I don't recommend stuff like this, extra damage vs more survivability is not worth it. Simply because you are literally forced to play safer and lose effective DPS anyways with such a crazy build but I thought I would put it anyways. Kindred uses essence reaver pretty well with her Q and you get 100% crit chance with this build so you'd be hitting like a truck.

Full build no 3:Enemy team has akali top and zed mid? struggling to keep yourself alive even with ult? don't worry, with both guardian angel and maw and your ult you are near enough impossible to kill LOL.

Lets start with my personal preference, I like conqueror because I love taking extended fights. Kindred stacks conqueror fairly well because her Q gives her 2 stacks every time its cast and hits an enemy champion and her wolf first attack against an enemy champion gives 2 stacks. If you weave autoattacks inbetween your Q casts you can max conqueror fairly quickly even if you are ranged. Furthermore, the build I go for incorporates phantom dancer, once you stack phantom you are going to also have conqueror stacked. So a bonus 30% attack speed from the phantom passive coupled with the extra attack damage conqueror gives means you will start doing insane damage per second.

Kindred doesn't have mana issues so no presence of mind, and she does not get much lifesteal so no overheal. Triumph is the way to go.

I take legend bloodline over alacrity because my build has no real lifesteal, this provides some much needed sustain for a champ that likes to duel/fight.

Coup de Grace is my go to, kindred has an innate execute (her e) that does more damage the lower they are so coup de grace works really well with it. However, vs tankier comps you should take cut down it does way more damage.

Second tree I love inspiration, magical footwear has insane gold value (free 300 gold+10 movespeed extra)
Cosmic insight is really strong, it allows you to get your smite and flash back faster allowing for better clear+aggresive/defensive usage of your summoner spells.

10% attack speed is pretty mandatory, you need to attack faster to do more damage overall.
9 adaptive 2nd, some AD to make your fast attacks do more damage
3rd I go armour mostly cause camps do physical damage however vs double AP jgl mid or triple ap comps you can take magic resis.

Although I feel like conqueror is really strong and works well with my build, I cannot deny that press the attack makes a lot of sense on kindred. Kindred's E requires 3 auto attacks, and hence can abuse press the attack enhanced damage for good one shots.
I believe press the attack could work better with the collector builds or a more assassin playstyle with kindred and should be taken depending on your playstyle preference.

Some people are taking domination 2nd, with emphasis on either relentless hunter/ravenous hunter.

The ravenous hunter 2nd allows you to take alacrity instead of bloodline and have omnivamp and some attack speed people often couple it with either sudden impact (more early oriented) or eyeball collection/zombie ward (more scale). I personally don't think omnivamp does too much on kindred especially with the big nerfs on ravenous hunter, and think bloodline gives enough healing cause kindred primarily autoattacks.

I personally don't think this change is more optimal since you lose out on the free 300 gold from magical footwear+the summoner spell/item haste from cosmic insight. Not to mention the flat out lifesteal from bloodline is higher than the lifesteal from ravenous hunter..however ravenous does have omnivamp. Needless to say ravenous is harder to stack too and requires champ takedowns whilst bloodline can be stacked from both champ takedowns and farming camps/objectives/minions. Relentless hunter is interesting and perhaps an argument can be made for it if you can use the movespeed to jungle better and move around map.

However I believe relentless hunter is currently not as strong as it used to be and same for ravenous so I prefer my page.

Just going to put this out here for anyone who wants to play kindred adc/mid. I think this build not too bad especially for bot lane where short trades are quite common/bursting enemy with your support. Synergises pretty well with your E where you can quickly auto 3 times to burst someone. The taste of blood is pretty universal for laning bit of sustain+the cookies for easier laning and boots.

You can also go cosmic insight and biscuit delivery especially if you are going to go galeforce since the item haste reduces your galeforce cooldown from 90 to 82

The other alternative for lane is press the attack kindred with boots/biscuit or biscuit/cosmic insight.

A handy tip for lane kindred players. If you damage a camp that is marked once and then your jungler takes it you WILL STILL get the stack. So if crab is marked and your jungler is going to take it, just auto it once and you will get the stack too when he kills it. (VERY IMPORTANT)

Ok this one will be a little long and indepth here goes:

You start with W, because wolf will allow you to clear your first camp far quicker (slows monsters and does more damage to monsters) and Q cooldown is way too long because you don't have W to reduce cooldown. You max Q since it's your primary tool to both kite/dps and provides you with attack speed and when maxed has it's cooldown reduced even more when W is active (strong). You max W second to have a reduced cooldown so you can abuse your maxed Q and W synergy (lower CD's on Q so you can ballerina dance). E is maxed last and ultimate points are put in whenever available (6/11/16)

Usage of abilities:
-If you leave your W wolf zone it stops the ability prematurely. Therefore you want to use your Q's while inside the W to ensure the cooldown of Q is reduced and your W wolf keeps attacking.
-Your E can be used to slow targets and get close. It can also be used as an execute after your ult. After pressing ult put the E on an enemy inside your ult. Fire your first two attacks and wait to use your third once the ultimate is finished to instantly execute someone after your ult.
-Do not use your Q to jump into champs with potential deadly skillshots. An example is elise coccoon or lee sin Q. Rather walk and size them up using your Q to dodge.
-DO NOT WASTE YOUR R. EVER. Your R has a RIDICULOUS cooldown. Don't go for bad plays. Base buy items and save your ultimate for important fights around objectives. Don't just use it randomly 1v1ing in enemy jungle when your whole team is dead for a gromp.
-Wolf will attack the enemy you are attacking. But if you attack no enemy and activate Wolf (W) it will attack champs too and can give you turret aggro so becareful when diving.

MARKS: YOUR bread and butter. You must collect marks.
But how do I get marks? what do they do?
Marks can be obtained in one of two ways.
1) You can either mark a champion using lamb to hunt them. once you takedown them you obtain a mark
2) Kill a jungle camp/objective that wolf has marked

Lets start off with marking champs. When out of combat you can pick 1 of the 5 champs on the enemy team to hunt. Once selected, it will take 8 seconds for the mark to fully activate. Once marked a takedown on the marked champ provides you with 1 mark. After a successful hunt, you cannot mark the same target you hunted until 4 minutes later. If you struggle to kill your hunt, 75 seconds after you mark him you can change to someone else.

Now? how can I use this to my advantage? Well you can run to a lane and on the way there you can mark someone and kill them 8 seconds later. Oh you wanna dive bot? how about we mark them before we get there.

Now the 2nd way to obtain marks: Wolf marking jungle camps.

If you are sitting on 0 stacks wolf will mark the scuttle crabs. Your first mark does not spawn until 3:15 (when crab spawns)

1-3 Stacks wolf will mark any of the following: Scuttle crab, raptors and gromp
4-7 Krugs, blue, red and wolves
8+ Objectives (Baron/Drake/Elder/Rift)

40 seconds of not having a mark on a camp/objective wolf will mark something else

How does this help you? well you can sort of predict where you mark will be and play accordingly (if you get really good)

What do the marks do? They buff your basic abilities!
Your Q gives you a further 5% attack speed when used PER STACK
Your W current health damage is increased by 0.5% per stack
Your E Missing health damage increased by 0.5% per stack

They also buff your attack RANGE: The first 4 stacks you obtain increases your attack range by 75!
Subsequently every 3 marks after 4 increase your autorange by 3.
Your powerspikes for marks are as follows, 4/7/10.

The first 4 are really needed. the 75 auto range and buffs on your basic abilities make kindred good. You should always aim to get 4 at least. By 7 you are really strong, and is a realistic aim for a good kindred player.
10 is harder to do but once you get this far you are REALLY strong. Past 10 rarely happens but if you do you are in a prime position to 1v9.

Now then? How do we path as kindred? Lets run down a typical path up until 3:15 and just after.

I prefer blueside start but it depends on what side you want to end up on. Here goes:

Blue>Gromp>Wolves>Red ----Look for gank until 3:15 then do crab (preferably marked one) and then finish off your raptors and krugs. Reset (go back to base)

Slightly advanced version: Blue>Gromp>Wolves>Raptors>Red --Gank/Crab do krugs reset.
Why is this advanced? well because if you do it too slow you will be late for crab and thats not bueno. If you're starting out take the 1st path I have mentioned always until you get used to kindred

Alternative path with red? Red>Krugs>Raptors>Blue ---Crab/gank do wolves gromp reset
-Slightly harder to do because kindred has bad AOE's and struggles to clear raptors and krugs early on. Do blue path if you are starting out.

Tips for raptors: Your Q shoots out 3 arrows so kill the small ones until you have 2 left (3 including the big raptor) then just AOE with your Q and focus the big raptor
until they all die.

Feel free to use smite even at lvl 1 if the leash is rly bad. you don't wanna sit there autoing for 1 hour to kill it

If you feel like youll be invaded at red, make sure to start with a trinket as opposed to sweeper and ward the bushes once you get to it. Alternatively don't do raptor camp if you are low and think you will be invaded and skip straight to krugs or red (since raptor chunks you hard) You can then after krugs wait for your smite and do red with smite (much safer)

What is my early game objective? You want to secure some marks and ganks. If you can get noonquiver or good components on your first base you're good to go!

Once you have noonquiver you are able to do drakes fairly easily. How do you decide to do drakes? Is your team in the driving position and you have pressure and your allies can move to help you? Do drake

Are the waves of your team inside enemy tower and the enemy jungler is not one of the threatening ones that I have mentioned above? Do drake.

Securing objectives is important, as they provide your team with buffs.

Furthermore, rift herald is really good on kindred if you use it pre 14 to break a tower and obtain plate gold. Kindred is a really strong champ with items and marks. rift allows you to get there.

Speaking of drakes, even the frowned upon wind drake is nice on kindred for the ultimate cooldown :). So do objectives where possible! don't sacrifice too much to do it though! hence it is best to do with at least a noonquiver.

Thanks for reading, I hope I was able to provide you some insight on how to play this champ. I will be working to finetune the guide and make it as good as possible, to ensure you guys can take in the maximum possible knowledge.

If it helped or if you have any feedback feel free to comment/post it below I will keep working to finetune it and would love your help/feedback.

Also if anyone knows someone that can help me with the aesthetics of my guide feel free to contact.