Hey, I'm Rams, better known as RMZY. I'm slightly well known for my assassin Kindred play in diamond, and after some nudging I've given in and written a guide on how I play Kindred.

My accounts are:
http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=RMZY
http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=bootyandthewolf

I also stream at:
https://www.twitch.tv/ramsaylohan

Guide Details x Intro x Summary Champion x Marks x W vs. E Max x Proper E Usage x Advanced

Build x Runes x Items x Duskblade In-Game x Powerspikes x Vision Control x Vs. Tanks x Teamfighting

I'm not going to go over Kindred’s abilities themselves, but I will include a section of tricks that you can do with them. If you want to find out the specific details and scalings, you can find them here.

This is the build that I found my love of murdering people as fast as possible with Kindred. Preferably in one hit.

This build is for killing squishes, you're an assassin here.

This build is not good into bruisers or tanks, but you can deal with them decently once you replace Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior with Infinity Edge.

Pros + Ranged jungler + Good duelist + Insanely great poke damage + Great siege potential + Good single target farming + Incredible vs squishy targets + More damage in teamfights because of the resets on souls

Cons - Squishy - Needs items to be useful - Hard to play, not beginner friendly, feels unrewarding - Easy to counter - Bad early game with Dark Harvest - Very feast or famine - Crit build is insanely expensive

As a whole, this build is very fun and effective to play when ahead, but hard to be useful when behind. However, Kindred in general is hard to get decent with and does feel a little unrewarding until you hit the nice spikes that you need to hyper carry.



See the graphic below for the basics on Mark of the Kindred:

Kindred Mains seem to have a strange psychic ability to be able to predict their marks with somewhat terrifying accuracy. That's because it’s a skill-- here's how to do it.

Knowing the above mark locations and being able to predict which camps are taken is the secret to this. Partially tied with the Vision Control part of this guide, this requires you to track the enemy jungler.

To start with, your first mark will always be on a scuttle. The scuttle spawns at 2:15 and the mark spawns at 2:20. Sadly, this is a 50/50 chance and there's nothing you can do to predict your first jungle mark.

Also, keep in mind junglers tend to not clear gromp or krugs as much as raptors, buffs and blues, so they tend to be up.

Here are 2 examples of predicting your marks:

Example 1:

You have 1-3 marks, you know the enemy jungler is topside and the scuttles are gone. Very likely to spawn on gromp, go to it, start clearing and take the mark.

Example 2:

You already have 4-7 marks, enemy has fully cleared topside, and you don't know if any other camps are up on their botside jungle. But you do know the enemy buff is about to spawn. It's incredibly likely it will spawn a mark when it spawns. Plus, you get a buff. Be careful of vision as you invade it.


The ability to predict marks comes with time. To get better at it, talk to yourself about where the next one might spawn and slowly descend into madness like every Kindred main does and wonder why you play this champion of questionable strength, that everyone hates to play with and that everyone hates to play against. None of them know what you do, most of them even think your ult is castable on targets. The amount of things that hardcounter Kindred is insane and many are not hard to pull off. Most of them think you’re a garbage champion, most of them hate you because you didn't pick a tank and all because of this you get trolled quite often because people think you're trolling because you chose to pick Kindred.

After that is the hard part.

Now, here are a bunch of scenarios with enemy junglers and how you should play around them. While you should always look to gank and help your team, you also need to put the enemy jungler in their place to stop them from impacting the game.

Scenario 1: Enemy jungler doesn't care about your marks.

If they aren't really competing for your marks from the start, they probably don't care. Just swoop in, ward up and enjoy your free win as you can probably take marks a lot easier. Junglers like these might not gank much at all, or might sacrifice jungle to gank a lot. If they choose not to gank much, go into their jungle and mess with them in a safe way, then gank lanes. If they’re ganking a lot, make sure to ward for your laners then take their whole jungle and get free marks and poacher’s stacks.

Scenario 2: Enemy jungler cares a little about your marks, but is not actively trying to ruin your day at every opportunity.

If they do contest you and play smart around it, you can still ward up and play safe. Be careful and watch to see if anyone leaves lanes to help them. A jungler like this is likely to do a little bit of farm, then a little gank, little farm, little gank etc. Ward up and keep the vision to stop them from doing little ganks. If you can invade them and pressure them, do it. Junglers like this don't really like to think and if you force them to, they tend to do the wrong things, so be proactive.

Scenario 3: Enemy jungler is a complete ******* and is setting up traps and roaming with teammates to purposefully kill you at mark spawns.

This is frustrating, don't fall for it. Ward up and leave to do other stuff instead. Teams with a jungler like this will team up a lot so try to avoid fighting and use vision to get your stacks, then scale. You also MUST have some winning lanes so you need to gank, but it will be ganks of inches. If you get a flash or summoners and they're past the halfway point of the lane, do not chase, the enemy jungler will collapse.

Scenario 4: Enemy jungler is an ******* and is trying to fight you but is playing a champion you can counter or outduel.

Literally kill them, go into their jungle, kill them again and watch for laners coming to help them. These kinds of games are nice because you can pop off and destroy.



Enemy jungler doing everything in their power to stop you from getting marks? That’s a shame, because whilst they're pathing badly and going out of the way to deny you marks, as soon as you see them head towards it or the icon disappear off the minimap you can do one of the following:

• 1.) Steal their opposite side jungle and stack with Poacher's Dirk.
• 2.) Take an objective on the other side of the map (Solo drake.)
• 3.) Gank the opposite side of the map without worrying about a countergank (You can even dive reliably.)

Sometimes junglers will then stop pursuing them, letting you take them easier, or maybe they won't. You will have to figure that part out for yourself.

Dark Harvest Dark Harvest: This keystone is half the secret to this build and managing it is the difference between getting a kill in a gank or multi kills in teamfights and dying. There are 2 strengths to this: 1.) Giant front-loaded damage that synergises well with other frontloaded damage items like Duskblade of Draktharr. 2.) Being able to proc the damage multiple times a fight as new souls are acquired mid-fight from champions or minions caught up in the battle. Champions grant 6 Soul Essence, large minions grant 4 Soul Essence, and large monsters grant 2 Soul Essence. Something to take note of is if you get the kill or last hit, the soul will automatically come to you. If not, it will lay on the ground for a short amount of time and you will have to walk over and pick it up yourself. Another fun thing about this keystone is, it also applies to ALLIED CHAMPIONS AND ALLIED MINIONS. This means if you have a feeding botlane, at least go and collect some free souls. We'll talk a little more about this keystone here. Sudden Impact Sudden Impact: With this rune, you can basically have 100% uptime with 10 lethality and 8 magic pen because of your Q dash. Also, your Wolf's Frenzy damage is converted to magic damage (No AP scaling), so it affects this too. Pretty neat. Eyeball Collection Eyeball Collection: Gives some bonus damage, easy to stack, and also helps with clear. Relentless Hunter Relentless Hunter: Kindred has one of the lowest base movement speeds in the game at 325, so this helps you get around a little faster. Especially useful since most junglers have base movement speeds around 335-340. Secondary Tree: Precision Triumph Triumph: I play this because it gives back a lot of HP on kills and assists, especially in teamfights on your ult. Legend: Alacrity Legend: Alacrity: This just helps with clear.

So, there are 2 buffs for this keystone. One being a count of current souls, the other a timer. The timer is the one you need to watch because before 150 souls you have 20 seconds to use the proc before it falls off. Don't worry, once you use this proc / it falls off you still get to keep your total souls, but you won't get the damage till you acquire another soul and then you will regain the proc.

Monitoring if this is up is what makes the good users crush people with this keystone.



Incredible Kindred Main and all-round great guy Forest Within (you can watch him stream here) wrote quite a long explanation on this a bit ago when we were theorycrafting using Dark Harvest as with Kindred. Although his poison is Youmuu's Ghostblade > Runaan's Hurricane > Black Cleaver, it's all still very relevant to the Red Build. This is what he wrote:





Most of Kindred's powerspikes are item related. However, you get spikes on marks and certain levels too.

• Levels 3 & 4: Good dueling capacity on these levels and level 4 Dance of Arrows damage is nice.
• Level 11: Lamb's Respite cooldown stops sucking.
• Level 16: Lamb's Respite cooldown definitely stops sucking.

• 4th mark: First range increase, this is pretty huge. This mark is very important. So important that I just played vs someone who played Kindred, and they flashed a wall just to deny 4th mark and last Poacher's Dirk stack from me. I was legit furious.
• 7th mark: Next range increase, and a lot of power from Wolf's Frenzy.
• 10th mark: 3rd range increase, hypercarry level of damage from Wolf's Frenzy. Also enables you to do Baron outside of the pit because you have so much range.
• 13th, 16th, 19th marks: You normally won't really get to these, but you can imagine the kind of power you get if on average most decent Kindred mains will end games on their 10th mark.

• Completing Poacher's Dirk: Serrated Dirk gives you a ton of damage. With just Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior and Serrated Dirk you'll have a lot of damage.
• Skirmisher's Sabre: Warrior: Tons of flat stats. Your Mounting Dread damage feels nuts.
• Duskblade of Draktharr: Your bread and butter. Enables you to do all the Duskblade of Draktharr tricks and at this point you can 3-shot any squishy.
• Rapid Firecannon: Easier 1-shots.
• Last Whisper: Enables 1-shots on some champs with armour.
• Infinity Edge: 1-shot entire teams, no matter the target. Requires full build though.

Always start with this.

Always start with this. (Also, cool kids never buy Stealth Ward. (Also also, see my section on Vision Control to see how to use this trinket properly.))

Buy these first back. Movement speed is everything.

Sadly these are going to be your go to boots. Almost every jungler is AD and does a lot of damage. Also, your primary targets are going to be the enemy adc. Too OP not to buy.

Buy vs a lot of CC and/or if there are 2+ AP users on the enemy team.

If you're ahead or just want to gank a lot. Replace them at 20-25 minutes with one of the boots above.

God I love these things. Buy for early gank pressure and resistance to slows.

This item is huge. Let's face the facts-- it's not hard to steal a few camps here and there, but you're also a champion that gains power from taking enemy camps. It also builds into our favourite item Duskblade of Draktharr More on this later.

Red smite is broken op. It gives you vision on who you smited and reduces damage received from that champion by 20% for 4 seconds. If that wasn't enough, it also does a large amount of burn damage (60 - 162 based on lvl) as TRUE DAMAGE. All around broken item.

Also broken. Ignoring CDR isn't exactly desired on Kindred, and the gold efficiency on this item is through the ******* roof. It's 2100 gold worth of AD and 266.67 golds worth of (ASK WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE) for only 1625 gold. That's 145.64% gold efficient. Not bad.

This item. I love this thing. You can do so much with this item alone, it requires its own section. See here for more.

I love this thing. It synergizes perfectly with Duskblade of Draktharr, Dark Harvest AND Statikk Shiv. It lets you hit first, siege and poke. This item enables a lot of 1-auto 1-shots on carries that you couldn't normally get.

This item and Rapid Firecannon are the dream team. Buy this if you aren't scared of getting 1-shotted.

In my opinion, this is the most underrated item in the game. Aside from the tons of AD and 15% healing on all physical damage dealt, (If you crit your Mounting Dread, it can heal insane amounts) the flat 30% damage reduction is nuts. This and Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads make you safe from being 1-shotted, so assassins like Talon, Rengar, Evelynn, Zoe, etc. won’t be able to 1-shot you.

A last item buy, do not buy this if the enemy has no bruisers or tanks. Decide on Mortal Reminder or Lord Dominik's Regards depending on whether or not the enemy team has healing mechanics.

Replace Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior with this. DO THIS BEFORE FINISHING LAST ITEM. Get the component for your last item and save 1563 gold, then sell Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior and buy Infinity Edge. For this build Infinity Edge does more for your capacity to 1-shot people than any other item you could finish last. It also enables you to deal with tankier champs better.

This is me. I've played Duskblade on Kindred for so long. This item allows you to do the following and mastering them is key to getting the most of this build:

Having just Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior and Duskblade of Draktharr means you can pretty much kill anyone without Ninja Tabi or any armour items in 3 autos at this point, if not less. Make picks with it, and in most duels, you'll win.



So this is huge. The passive disables wards you walk over for 8 seconds, then recharges for 90 seconds, but that isn't just it. There's way more to this, WAY more which is probably the most broken thing about this item.

This is the only item in the game that can tell you if there is a ward nearby / if you are in vision 100% OF THE TIME.

So the first passive of this item is:
UNIQUE – NIGHTSTALKER: After being unseen for at least 1 second, your next basic attack against an enemy champion will have enhanced effects. The enhanced attack lasts 5 seconds after being seen by an enemy champion. Melee champions will deal 65 - 320 (based on level) bonus on-hit physical damage and Slow icon slows by 99% for 0.25 seconds. While Ranged role ranged champions will only deal 45 - 300 (based on level) bonus on-hit physical damage and not apply the slow.

So if you're near a ward, the nightstalker passive will start counting down to when it wears off. This means you can tell if an area is warded without using a sweeper nor control ward. You can also ping the item and it will say Unseen or Seen so you can alert your teammates (I would use the vision ping if you are seen instead, since most animals won't understand the item ping.)



While the clip below isn't a teamfight but rather a 2v2, it shows you management of Duskblade of Draktharr passive to get poke and eventually kill one of the enemy squishies.

As you can see there, I go in to poke, chunk out the enemy ADC, then I go back into the enemy jungle a little bit to reset the Duskblade of Draktharr passive. I walk back up to poke again and end up killing the enemy jungler in 1 auto.

This is what you want to do, poke, reset, poke, reset. Try to have a Dark Harvest buff up for super insane extra poke.




I talked a lot about this in my Duskblade section and how Duskblade of Draktharr is op for this.

However, as Kindred you need to be able to control the enemy jungler or they will take hard advantage of how squishy you are. The way we do this is through control wards. Always have one on the field and one in your bag if possible and drop them places the enemy jungler is certain to pass on that side of the jungle. The best places to do this are:

• 1. Bush behind Red Buff, then when safe to do so move up to bush facing Red Buff.
• 2. Bush facing Blue Buff.

Now with Yellow Trinket Wards, drop those in places of high traffic, here is a quick map of good places to drop Yellow Wards. (It’s a bit outdated, but still super relevant. Replace Green Wards with Yellow Ward and Pink Wards with Control Wards)







So first let's figure out which does more damage. Wolf's Frenzy gets 20 extra damage when maxed and during the duration, until you get major attack speed items, Wolf will attack 5-6 times. This comes to about 100-120 extra damage from Wolf's Frenzy max. You also get 1.5%+1% per mark with a + 20% bonus ad scaling. It’s important to keep in mind that all this damage is turned into magic damage, which I’ll explain later.

Maxing Mounting Dread, however, goes from 65 to 145, which is only a bonus of 80 damage on your Mounting Dread.

But Mounting Dread automatically crits for 50% under a certain percentage, so that's 120 bonus damage. Also add 8% + 0.5% per mark of the enemy's missing health and a +80% ad scaling.


After a lot of debating and grinding out maths with other Kindred mains, maxing Wolf's Frenzy second is better and here's why:
I used to max Mounting Dread, simply because I thought staying in your Wolf's Frenzy is not guaranteed, whereas your Mounting Dread damage is. But we debated that since the rune changes, most champions have way lower base MR than base armour, and if anyone buys Ninja Tabi it negates 12% of the damage. (Stupid broken op boots.)

Also, maxing Wolf's Frenzy second gives it a nice low CD, so you can get more Dance of Arrows off too.




This is one of the things that takes time to get good at on Kindred.

Kindred Mounting Dread execute range starts at 15% HP and goes up 5% every 10% of crit you have. With this build:

• Rapid Firecannon gives only 30% crit meaning you get 15% extra so that's a 30% execute.
• If you buy Statikk Shiv afterwards, it's a 45% execute.
• If you then replace Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior with an Infinity Edge, that becomes a 55% execute.

However, vs a squishy or a squishy with 1 armor item ( Ninja Tabi, Zhonya's Hourglass etc) the Mounting Dread damage is not needed as with this build you can kill them in either 1 auto or auto Dance of Arrows auto.

This is important vs tanks and bruisers where that execute damage matters, which I will talk about in another section.



It's true. This build is not good vs tanks. They will laugh at your Duskblade of Draktharr + Dark Harvest damage and not care about you.

But you’re an assassin. You don't go for tanks. So don't go for them.

If you're new to the champ you might find it strange I'm writing this part, but Kindred was a champ designed to kill tanks for the longest time. Kindred then got reworked. Also, the common playstyle of a Kindred is as a tank shredder, so a few people who've played the champ a few times before will be used to playing like an ADC sitting at the back and working their way through the enemy frontline.

You can do this if you have replaced Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior with Infinity Edge and last item Last Whisper.

4-5 items, you don't do this with this build, which we will talk about in the next section.




This is a tough one. Also kinda mean, since your team will be fooled into thinking you're going to help them and fight with them because you’re an adc.

But you're not an adc. You're a squishy 1-shotting machine.

Play to the side and flank. Let the enemy team engage your team, then jump in and kill the enemy backline like the assassin you are and hope your team can kill or deal with the tanks.

What tends to happen if you teamfight with 4-5 items is that you will kill the enemy backline and the enemy tanks just kill your whole team 2v4 because tanks are braindead and broken right now.

However, if you have replaced Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior with Infinity Edge and last item Last Whisper you can also kill the tanks. Just kill the enemy adc, then help your team out. This also works before getting a ton of items, but sometimes you're better off just running away if it doesn't look good.



If you're playing against squishies and maybe 1 tank or bruiser, simply just poke someone out since their frontline is weak. If they stay, your team should engage and win it due to their team being a lot lower in hp. Fairly simple on paper but a lot more demanding mechanically since they'll probably be able to 1 shot you as well.





Wall jumps. Man, wall jumps are just the best thing in the game and Kindred can hop a good majority of them. This is something that Kindred has over the majority of every other champ in the game. Sure, most champions can hop a wall, but only Talon, Kindred, Nidalee and Kayn can hop multiple walls one after another so quickly.

The hardest walls of note are the the blue buff wall towards midlane and the front of the red buff wall on topside towards base and the blast plant. I recommend going to practice tool and hopping all the walls in the above picture. The secret to the hard wall jumps is clicking right up to the wall as close as you can, then instead of placing your mouse cursor on the other side of the wall, place it much farther away than normal, like close to the side of the screen.



Not really an important thing and is almost unusable but I have gotten some kills I wouldn't normally have by doing it.

If Lamb is next to a wall she cannot jump over, if you Auto Attack a target then Dance of Arrows into the wall when you're as close as possible to it, the Dance of Arrows animation will cancel and have an auto way faster than normal. So you end up with Auto > Dance of Arrows > Auto way faster than normal.

This is really good for a build such as this that has very low attack speed early that can score you a kill, but VERY, VERY rarely. Don't worry too much about this if you're trying to master the champ.



Not a lot of cool tricks for Wolf's Frenzy, however you can stand right next to walls or place it way ahead of you into bushes because it will reveal the area. It should be noted it will only reveal bushes if Wolf enters the bush.

This ability is INCREDIBLY stronger than it seems. You can use it to watch areas that are even Red Warded where other wards would be rendered useless. This is one of the things that makes Kindred one of the best champions to steal Baron with in the game. This and Lamb's Respite, see below for more on this.



The power of this ability is both hated and respected but almost never is it EXPECTED. A game changing play you can use this ability with is Baron and Dragon steals.

The trick is to jump into the pit as the enemy is about to smite the Drake or Baron thus smiting into your ult, meaning you SAVE the Baron or Drake till after you ult. After your ult has finished you can smite the objective and Dance of Arrows out to safety or at least with the objective secured for your team and not theirs.

In this video below you can see Xmithie jump into the drake pit. Just as mlxg is about to smite the drake, Xmithie ults it, thus mlxg wasting his smite and Xmithie securing it with his to get the drake.





Another thing to use Lamb's Respite for is if you want to secure something like a turret or an inhibitor but would normally die doing so. You can ult to give yourself the extra time to kill it that you wouldn't normally get.

The best case scenario of this use is to kill the enemy nexus with your team inside the ult. I've won games where we kill the nexus turrets as the enemy team spawns then I ult my team and we kill the nexus within those four seconds the ult is up.




Kindred is a hard champion. This build is a new, incredibly exciting way to play the champion and do some things almost no other champion can do.

This build turns Kindred into a mix of Jhin 4th shot as poke with the mobility of Fizz and the teamfight potential of Tryndamere and the assassination power of Quinn.

Best of luck on not tilting off the face of the earth because the enemy team works so hard to deny you marks and poacher's stacks whilst your team can barely have the brain cells required not to die to the enemy turrets.

Peace
Rams.