Kindred Jungle Build & Guide — Patch 16.12

Overview

Kindred is a marksman that hunts in the jungle. Lamb shoots, Wolf bites, and the kit is built around one mechanic that no other champion has: Mark of the Kindred. Every 4 minutes a Mark appears on a random enemy — a champion or a jungle camp — and killing it gives you a permanent stack of attack speed, attack damage, and bonus auto-attack range. Stack 4 marks and your range jumps; stack 8 and you start out-trading marksmen from outside their auto range.

Your game plan splits in two halves. Early game you are a mark hunter: you read the Mark icon on the minimap, decide if it's worth contesting (yours = always go, theirs = trade pressure for it), and bend your pathing around it. Mid game you become a flanker — Q-dash into the enemy back line (the carries that stand behind their tanks), E onto the carry, chain 4 autos, and Mounting Dread executes them on the missing-HP hit. Late game you are a hyper-scaling skirmisher that out-kites every brawler in the game (kiting = walking backwards while still attacking, so the enemy never reaches you).

Recommended Build

Starting items: Smite + Gustwalker Hatchling for a faster jungle clear (the out-of-combat sprint stacks with Kindred's kiting playstyle and helps chase Marks across the map) plus Refillable Potion.

Core items (in order):

1. Gustwalker Hatchling — jungle pet that auto-evolves around minute 3-4 once you have cleared enough camps. Grants out-of-combat sprint plus a brief movement-speed burst out of brush — perfect to chase a Mark or close a gank from fog.
2. Kraken Slayer — every third basic attack deals bonus true damage. True damage ignores armor, so it punches through tank itemization on enemies you cannot shred otherwise.
3. Berserker's Greaves — flat attack speed boots. Default choice; only swap to Mercury's Treads when the enemy team has 3+ hard CC.
4. Runaan's Hurricane — adds two extra bolts on every auto. Triples your jungle clear speed and lets Wolf-and-Lamb DPS spread to 3 targets in a teamfight.
5. Wit's End — magic damage on-hit (extra magic damage added to every basic attack) + magic resist. Two birds: lifeline survivability vs AP burst (think Diana, Syndra, Brand) and shred vs squishy magic-resist-low backlines.
6. Rapid Firecannon — bonus range on the energized shot, on top of the range you stack from Marks. End-game you auto-attack carries from screen-edge while their team chases nothing.

Situational items:

• Edge of Night — vs single-target lock-on ults (Malzahar, Skarner, Warwick). The spell shield eats the cast so the chain never starts.
• Mercurial Scimitar — vs hard CC chains. The active cleanses every CC including suppression — you press it the moment Skarner pulls or Sett ulti lands.
• The Collector — when ahead, executes targets below 5% HP. Stacks neatly with E's missing-HP hit; the corpse generates extra gold.
• Mortal Reminder — vs healing-heavy comps (Aatrox, Soraka, Dr. Mundo). Applies grievous wounds so their sustain in extended fights gets cut roughly in half.

Boots: Berserker's Greaves default. Mercury's Treads only vs heavy hard CC.

Skill order: Max Q first (clear speed and damage per dash), E second (more burst on the missing-HP hit per rank), W last (the AS and heal scale fine on rank 1). R at 6, 11, 16.

Runes: Primary Domination with Hail of Blades + Sudden Impact + Sixth Sense + Treasure Hunter. Secondary Precision with Triumph + Coup de Grace. Hail of Blades is iconic on Kindred because it ramps your first 3 autos to maximum speed — exactly the autos you need to start the Mounting Dread chain.

Key matchups

• Lee Sin: Loses level-1 to you, but at level 2-3 his Q-W-Q kick deletes you before R is up. Path away from his side until level 4, then look for a counter-gank where he commits Q without W ready. Track his W cooldown — without it he cannot leave a fight.
• Karthus: Pure scaler. Invade his red side at minute 3 and steal a buff; he cannot stop you, and the tempo loss delays his level-6 spike. After 3 items he wins, so close it before minute 18.
• Master Yi: Must-kill before he gets Kraken Slayer. Save E for his Q-dash exit window — when he reappears he eats the slow and your team chains CC. After his first item, do not 1v1.
• Diana: She wants to dive your back line; you want to dive hers. Save R for when she lands her R on your carry — the sacred ground zone keeps the carry above 1 HP through the burst, then your team kills her in the recovery window.
• Xin Zhao: Knock-up + lock-down kills you in 1.5 seconds. Never path adjacent to his camps level 2; group with a laner for buffs until you have 2 Marks of bonus range. After 3 items you out-kite him with Q resets.

Power spikes & win conditions

• Level 3: Full kit unlocks. Your gank pattern is E onto the target -> 3 autos with Q dash mid-chain -> 4th auto triggers missing-HP burst. Without R yet, do not commit deep on a level 3 gank — flash-distance only.
• First Mark stack (~ minute 5): Permanent +AS, +AD, +range. Every Mark you complete after this widens the gap. Fight over Marks even if neutral — the stat lead is bigger than a single trade (a trade = a brief exchange of damage in a skirmish).
• Level 6: Lamb's Respite unlocks. From here on you can save a teammate from a guaranteed kill. The trick is never pre-cast — drop it the moment you see the enemy commit the kill spell, otherwise the zone runs out before the threat resolves.
• 3 items + 4-Mark range bonus (~ minute 22): You out-range every marksman in the game. Position behind your front line in teamfights, stand still, and auto until everything dies. This is your scaling cliff — group with the team, do not splitpush (don't farm a side lane alone).

Common mistakes

• Pre-casting Lamb's Respite. R is reactive, not proactive (you place it AFTER reading the threat, not before). Drop it the second the enemy ulti hits, not when they walk close. Pre-cast Rs save no one and waste your only safety tool for 110 seconds.
• Ignoring the Mark icon. The minimap shows the Mark on a small skull icon. Players who don't track it lose the entire identity of the champion. Open your map every 30 seconds and ask: "is the Mark mine to take, or theirs to deny?"
• Q-dashing into the enemy team without an exit. Dance of Arrows has a 12-second cooldown at rank 1. If you Q in to chase a kill and someone CCs you, you have no escape. Always Q with a wall behind your dash so the next Q (after CDR) bounces you back out.
• Forgetting Mounting Dread's 4-auto requirement. E does small damage on cast but the big payoff is the 4th auto-attack on the slowed target. If you E and only land 2 autos, the missing-HP burst never fires. Commit to the full chain or don't cast E at all.
• Saving R for the perfect moment that never comes. A "wasted" R that saves an ally for 3 seconds is still better than a perfect R that you never press because you held it too long. When in doubt, drop it.

Advanced tip

The R-bait for objectives. At Drake or Baron with low HP teammates, drop Lamb's Respite ON the objective instead of on your team. Every unit inside cannot drop below 1 HP — including the objective. Your team smites or finishes the objective during the zone, and any enemy stepping inside also cannot kill you, so they either give up the contest or get caught when the zone ends and your team is full HP from R's tail heal. This flips a 50/50 Drake fight into a guaranteed objective + double-kill scenario when the enemy doesn't read the trick.