Kindred Jungle Build & Guide — Patch 26.18

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. Wolf marks a jungle camp from 2:53, then every 45 seconds after it's cleared; Lamb marks a champion every 75 seconds. Completing a Mark permanently empowers Q, W and E, and grows your attack range up to 250 at high stacks. Stack four Marks and your range jumps; stack eight and you start out-trading marksmen from outside their auto range.

Your game plan has 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 three attacks, 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: Gustwalker Hatchling (450g) for a faster jungle clear (the out-of-combat sprint stacks with Kindred's kiting playstyle and helps chase Marks across the map) plus 1 Health Potion (50g). That is the full 500 gold you start with; the Refillable Potion is a first-back purchase, not a start.

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 (3000g) — 45 attack damage, 40% attack speed, 4% move speed. Bring It Down makes every third attack deal bonus physical damage on-hit, scaling up with the target's missing health. It rewards you for staying on a target you have already chunked, which is exactly what the Mounting Dread chain does.
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), 45 magic resist and 20% tenacity. It does two jobs at once: magic resist against AP burst (think Diana, Syndra, Brand), and on-hit magic damage against back lines that build no magic resist at all.
6. Rapid Firecannon — bonus range on the energized shot, on top of the range you stack from Marks. Late in the game you auto-attack carries from the edge of the screen 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 removes every crowd control debuff except airborne effects, suppression included, so it is the answer to a Skarner or Malzahar ultimate and not to a knock-up.
• 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, a debuff that cuts the target's healing and health regeneration by 40% for 3 seconds.

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 into W into Q2 combo, finished with the R kick, deletes you before your own 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 10% health 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 next to his camps at 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 Q/W/E power plus attack 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 up to 160 seconds (160/140/120 depending on rank).
• Ignoring the Mark icon. The minimap shows the Mark as 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 costs 9 seconds at every rank, but drops to 4 down to 2 seconds while you are standing in your own Wolf's Frenzy. That is the difference between one dash and three: if you dive without W down, you have exactly one Q and no way back. Always Q with a wall behind you, so that the next Q, once the cooldown is back, takes you out the way you came.
• Forgetting Mounting Dread's three-attack requirement. E does small damage on cast but the big payoff is the third attack on the slowed target. If you E and only land two attacks, 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-denial at objectives. If the enemy team is about to finish Drake or Baron, drop Lamb's Respite on the pit: nothing inside can die, neutral monsters included, so their Smite cannot execute it and the objective sits at 10% health, untouchable, until the zone runs out. Your team either contests from outside, or arrives while the zone is still up and takes the fight knowing nobody on either side can be killed inside it. Everyone inside heals when it ends, so the exchange favours whoever has more people in the pit.