ESSENTIAL DISCLAIMER: Certain strategies/ matchups may be different in higher elos

The build revolves around sabotaging the enemy jungler so your jungler can get your other lanes ahead. Do not play to get ahead, play to hinder your opponents. On the other hand, if your opponent Ints a few times, still play passively, but when they think they're poking you like normal, Q + W in on them and skirmish.

Ideally, your jungler can invade bot side and take the enemy's bot buff. You can then take your jungler's top buff, leaving the enemy jungler with 1 buff out of 2. This also lets your jungler hover bot side while you take top scuttle.

Even if you fail, it's still a win if the enemy top/ mid lanes chase you, as mid loses lane priority and top lane loses CS while chasing you. If the jungler chases you, then you throw off their clear timers, possibly allowing you to steal their scuttle crab.

If you succeed, the buff respawns in 5 minutes, or around the 7:00 mark, which is when you look to hard push and roam for it. If a lane rotates to try and stop you, you can still smite the buff and Ghost away while the enemy laner loses CS. If jungle tries to stop you, your jungler can take the dragon which spawns at 5:00.

Your buff should give you breathing room to help survive in lane. Ideally you get the blue buff.

The most important part is informing your team.

For Blind Pick, if they see you lock in Kindred Smite Ghost without a word, no one will call jungle and you'll be forced into the role. Wait for someone to call jungle and then inform them you plan to use your smite to buff steal.

Ask them to try and take the bot side blue buff while you take top side. If successful, you'll be able to ability spam in lane.

Your jungler should focus on getting Mid and Bot ahead, as you usually have enough sustain and dive-survivability to keep top lane even, if not ahead.

If you play Duo Draft Pick, your primary role should be Jungle and your secondary should be Top. Ideally, you play duo with a Top primary Jungle secondary. Going Jungle forces you to take Smite, which isn't a problem since you can play Smite in both roles.

If you play Solo Draft Pick, your primary role is Top and your secondary should NOT be jungle, because jungle's an awful role and you'll get flamed if your team ends up losing. If you're good at jungle, though, be my guest.

If you can't, play Jungle or ask your Top lane to swap roles with you when you see your champ has a winning top lane matchup.

You have the advantage of surviving top lane with smite, which counters most losing matchups since you can dodge into the jungle role. You can do a similar thing when you're losing in jungle.

At the start of the game, immediately run to the enemy top's jungle. Try to ward the bush that's next to their buff. If you get collapsed on, burn ghost and Back. Knowing their jungler started top side is significant as it lets your jungler invade their bot side. If your jungler decides to invade (and is successful), take your jungler's top buff.

If you successfully ward, wait to see if the jungler takes it. If they do and you have ghost, consider Qing in to smite steal over these walls, or at least force them to smite it.



Kindred's W + Smite lets her take buffs in around 20 seconds, and if top or mid lane tries to stop you, you can usually pot up, tank their attacks, and still smite kill the buff.

After that, pop Ghost and run. Use your pot if both top and mid collapse on you. Maybe also /all chat and say "Thanks for the leash!"

Watch the minimap and be careful of getting collapsed on.

Figure it out yourself. Each build has a reason and a playstyle to match.

Freebie #1: Unflinching is almost essential for top lane Kindred. Unflinching's Slow Resist + Tenacity is extremely important for surviving ganks and dealing with CC

Freebie #2: Kindred's waveclear is hot garbage. You need ~12 bonus AD to effectively last-hit minions. Aka, if you go Doran's Shield (which gives 5 AD against Minions), your Offence and Flex shards need to both be Adaptive Force (9 Adaptive translates to 5.4 AD) for 15.8 total AD. Only go Attack Speed + Adaptive Force if you're starting with an aggressive item like Cull, Doran's Blade, or Longsword

- You are still playing top lane.

- The sabotage heavily relies on a jungler that can take advantage of the early EXP lead. Unfortunately, it seems to be a 50/50 on whether or not your jungler is competent enough to do so

- Your Q is essential for dodging skillshots and disengaging. Play safe when your Q is down

- You are (sadly) one of the slowest champions in the game (325 MS). It doesn't feel like that while you have your Q, but without it you are a snail

- Keep yourself above 135 mana. That's enough for Q + Ult

- Ghost is better than Flash in the Top Lane because of how far you have to run. Also, your Q is enough of a dash for you to survive ganks you see coming, and ganks you don't expect can be survived with Ghost + Q + W + Q + Q. You might even be able to turn it into a kill.

- A surprising number of people think that taking Smite reduces your minion and gold exp (In the Blind Pick elo I'm playing at), and it doesn't. It's the Smite Knifes that reduce gold and exp, and the debuff falls off at the 20 minute mark, which is why you want to stall the laning phase. Longer game = More time to get Challenging Smite and hit your late-game split-pushing power spike.

- Blue Buff is significantly easier to steal than Red Buff. If they ward and you get collapsed on, you can Ghost into the river with Blue Buff but with Red Buff you can't. If invading, consider your top lane matchup and whether (worst case scenario) you can afford to give them 300 kill gold.

- The extra smite allows your team to (more) safely take objectives, as when grouped, your combined smites deal 1350 or 1800 true damage. It also allows you to safely solo Rift Herald and steal top scuttle from the enemy jungler.

- Ghost is mainly used for escaping ganks. Occasionally you can use it to engage on people, but (because you're a snail), play safe when it's down

- You usually want to freeze the wave. When the enemy laner shoves the wave, clear it until 3-4 casters remain. You can usually stand in front of them and wait for your minions to arrive. A lot of Champions can't handle this, since they can't poke you and shove the wave under tower. Your Smite provides additional help since you can Smite minions to keep the freeze balanced.

- Kindred is nearly impossible to tower dive, as your Ult gives you 4 seconds of invulnerability, more than enough time for the turret to stack up damage and for your E to prevent the divers from escaping.

- When you're tower dived without your Ult, try to E the champion tanking the hits. No one really notices the 1 second 50% slow on your E until they take an extra turret shot and Int 300 gold. You can also semi-kite enemies by Q'ing over your turret.

- When you have to 50/50 a cannon minion under tower, you can smite it to guarantee the gold.

- If you have 2 smites up and plan to hard push the wave, you can smite a melee/ cannon minion to speed things up. The 15 second cooldown will usually end by the time you get a jungle camp down into smite range

- The tilted enemy jungler may try to invade your jungle after you steal their buff. Ask your mid lane to ward your jungle's top buff.

- You sacrifice some of your early game to sabotage your enemy's early-mid game. You scale decently well into mid game. In late game you'll usually be targetted with CC as you'll still have the DPS and range to kill the enemy ADC. In those cases, you're more of a mobile Ult that forces out your opponent's abilities

- Consider buying Redemption when you're behind. Kindred's ult leaves everyone at 10% Max HP before healing them for ~300 HP. Redemption does 10% Max HP true damage while healing your team for ~300 additional HP. That would leave your team at 10% Max HP + ~600 HP while the enemy team (that survived at 10%) is left at ~300 HP.

- Your late-game powerspike occurs after you get Challenging smite. Play to reach it. Once you get it, the enemy team has to send multiple champions to counter you.

- Your sustain lets you survive in lane even at an item disadvantage. The ideal scenario is if you freeze wave, your jungler ganks, and you back with the kill gold.

- Certain Champions out-snowball you. Use common sense and check the Extreme matchups for Champions you shouldn't trade kills with

- Watch some Youtube videos/ guides on Splitpushing and how to play Ranged-VS-Melee matchups. Sometimes you'll have to play like the Melee

I mainly made this guide to keep track of how I'm doing.

I'd recommend reading the other guides to know how you actually want to play, but in general it's a mix of split-pushing and grouping for objectives.

Some people would consider this off-meta, but the "meta" is just whatever people think is good, and what most people think is good is what they're told is good. Everything's off-meta until it's successful, and I think this can be successful. Just make sure you have balanced team, considering top lane's usually the front-line.

Also, there are parts where I could go way more in-depth, but I don't feel like it and part of the fun of League is mastering the champion. This smooths out the path— it's not a walkthrough.