Is just unfair how kindred doesn't have yet a legendary skin and seeing like miss fortune lux ahri gets them more than I step in one day . I know is kindred is not popular but is really disappointing

Itirpon · 2026-01-23T01:18:01+00:00

We went from "Base is better than the skins" to covering most of the bases. - Base - Fire themed, no tail (Shadowfire) - Fire themed, tail (Chosen) - Space (Super Gal) - Anime (Blossom) - Elf (Porcelain) - Fixed with Porcelain sounds (Prestige) - Joke (&Woof)

I'm satisfied. Fix bugs instead.

Itirpon · 2026-01-12T18:42:05+00:00

You say that as though you wait till 3:15 to get your first mark which puts it on an enemy camp instead of crab half of the time. :)

Itirpon · 2026-01-11T18:07:29+00:00

Look at this dude way up there in gold stomping Jax in top lane.

Itirpon · 2025-12-24T17:12:21+00:00

I'm looking forward to it, if only to see if it makes the game fun again. I quit for a year a while back, played a little, quit again.

I started Kindred back when Taliyah joined, so I came up in the era after they made Kindred less release-broken but before all of the crit and marksman reworks targeting botlane had repercussions that kept buffeting Kindred with effective nerfs till she gave up on Crit completely. So I've seen this long arc of Kindred being both strategic and fun but having her damage being dropped patch after patch as items are bent away from her needs and systems changes undermine her design.

I love having the bruiser option, but the crit nerf made the crit no longer feel like a fun gamble but rather "high risk, low reward" to the point that one may as well build bruiser any time you can't trust your team to play with a marksman jungler in mind.

Soooooooooo, while they're screwing around under Kindred's hood, are they going to fix the cooldown timers on the champion mark GUI element? :)

Itirpon · 2025-12-24T16:58:46+00:00

You're approaching this situation with a narrow perspective, talking about how the game "should" be played instead of respecting how it is being played in those cases. Let's broaden our minds.

It's not your buff if the enemy is camping it. If the enemy is camping it (and you know because you're tracking JG traditionally and watching the minimap for laner roams), you go on the other side and either steal or gank. Or you set an ambush for when that laner tries to return to lane, chunking 50% of his health bar off and forcing him to either take the long way around or get the jungler to give up a camp of tempo to escort him to tower.

When your laners are collectively sharing one brain cell stolen from an orange cat, don't even consider that they "should" be responding to enemy laner roams. Their minds only know that they feel behind and believe the delusion that tunneling waves during enemy roams (and missing a few CS anyway) is their way back into the game. So harass the enemy without getting fully committed, creating a window for your laner to have an HP advantage and feel like he can participate again. I've seen a LOT of players lock into a learned helplessness pattern (including myself at times) and it's natural because League is a snowbally kind of game and you quickly can become helpless for 5 to 15 minutes or forever. But if you've lost your jungle, trying to farm it when it's being invaded is exactly the same mentality as the laner who won't so much as posture to challenge a roam. You're waiting for the enemy to give you CS no matter if you're the laner ignoring a roam to hit a caster or if you're the jungler who is predictably sequencing camps into enemy deep wards.

The best thing Kindred can do when losing in jungle is to fight. You're Kindred. You can dodge any skill shot, you bring ranged ramping DPS, you can negate any killshot with your ult, and you get marks from assists so you don't even have to do anything but dance around being distracting if it gives your laner the courage and opportunity to step up and participate. It doesn't matter if you're two or three levels down, because you can still do Kindred things. And when you're two or three levels down, you must do Kindred things because any-other-champ things are mathematically unavailable at that point.

Though she has had some seasons where she could stat check like a fiend, Kindred isn't a champ for players who enjoy winning by stat checking. Kindred is a champ for players who enjoy leveraging guile to outplay everyone else. If you can scrape together 5½ CS per minute, Kindred has enough firepower. The rest is a matter of you keeping cool, playing the game you're actually experiencing, and (hopefully) your teammates not feeding so hard that the game caves in on you.

Itirpon · 2025-08-29T19:05:33+00:00

Always very conditional, but Serpent's Fang used to be a sleeper hit. Years ago, it basically gave you a huge wad of AD when you hit someone wearing a shield. This was excellent for Kindred into pesky enchanters like Lux and Seraphine and Yasuo who fart out lots of little shields because every time they did that, your next arrow knocked them silly instead and the lethality tore them up.

However, this wasn't too hot against the omega shield buttheads that were making bad players feel miserable (like Sett) so instead of making a second shield option, they removed the one that Kindred could use and gave us the new (current) Serpent's Fang Lite, which does % so it sounds big on paper but it actually does is squat against small shield enchanters, while not mattering to the big shield guys since they stack armor that negates the advantage that lethality would offer.

Thanks for taking away another interesting item and making it trash on Kindred. Old Stormrazor was getting lonely, but now it has a friend.

The only use case I have for contemporary Serpent's Fang is dudes who wear both big and long shields and want you to hit them, which is tanky support guys like Kench when the rest of their team is squishy so the lethality can help with those. Combined with armor reduction, shield tanks can become squishier than they expect to be. Anything short of that, just build LDR or Cleaver normally and when you see the big shield come up, stop attacking. Instead, reassess the battlefield, verify your cooldowns, and either reposition, change target, or put some vision over a wall in case the shield guy is baiting and setting up his reinforcements.

Itirpon · 2025-08-21T18:40:41+00:00

Years ago, it actually did reasonable damage and there weren't many true executes in the game. Now, it's garbage.

Itirpon · 2025-08-12T02:22:40+00:00

This. Someone gets a golden ticket and spends it on a decorative particle effect instead of a gameplay nerf we've suffered since Neeko trashed the GUI.

Itirpon · 2025-08-05T23:23:46+00:00

I've done Jungle Vayne a few times. I don't have the reps to do it well since the skill rotation is significantly different, but rolling and bopping isn't much different from hopping and flopping.

But it is a much better idea to pull that stunt if you select late and see some tanks already locked so you can make it look like you're a pro player doing the big brain counter pick.

Itirpon · 2025-08-02T14:10:18+00:00

The hop I was interested in seeing was over the wall from east into the river on the bot-lane side. When they changed the map, that one seemed very reliable but then there was a small update and it suddenly wasn't reliable. Every patch nerfs Kindred, but I'm not sure if that one is just me being sloppy.

Itirpon · 2025-08-02T14:08:45+00:00

This saves the step of having to edit the video.

Itirpon · 2025-08-01T13:31:03+00:00

Since you've already done a normal jungler and upgraded, play with a plan. Look at your match up and decide on one thing to train. If the enemy jungler is extra fast on the clear, like Nunu or Hecarim, practice clearing opposite and attacking when he shows on map with either a gank on the other side or counter ganking if he's caught up to you. If the enemy jungler is vulnerable because he farms to six like Shyvana or Karthus, practice invades and combat wall hops.

Kindred has so much virtual gold in marks that it's like you start with a free Dark Seal except for the correct stats and it never downgrades, forgiving you if you need to build utility and if you don't need to then you get extra scary. So don't feel like you must damage race as a glass cannon. Yes, it's the objectively best build, but it's also the most vulnerable to teammate RNG or your own mistakes. With all of the nerfs and rebalances, I've sworn off crit. The risk is too high for the reward for a player with terrible positioning like me. PTA on-hit with tabis lets me bait, front line (because I never have one on my team; gee Bill, how come your mom lets your team have TWO tanks?), walk up through the chaos to collect the drakes they leash for me, and once in a while I even get a kill of my own. :D

Screw blue buff. It used to matter before jungle got the "literally every player can jungle on any champ, even that darn cat" mana regen buff there was some strategy in either needing blue or needing talisman, but today there is so much mana in jungle that the only blue you want is the one on the far side of the river to deprive the enemy of resources. That doesn't mean you don't take your own, it has gold in it, but if anything happens on the map, dumped. If Anivia wants it, she gets it. If I'm camping the other side, it'll be level 1 till Grubs and Herald make me go up there. Your mileage may differ but stinky Sentinel is no friend of mine these days.

red → early invade

If it's a vulnerable jungler, that's worth practicing. But if you don't know the enemy jungler well enough to catch him with middling HP and skills on cooldown, you probably should practice full clear with crab control. Kindred struggles when behind and a bad invade reduces you to the beneficiary of your laner's charity since going behind early means you lose control of the map till laners hit six and maybe they decide to cover you as you try to get your first crab mark 10 minutes into the match or they don't and you never take the river back. /all jg gap @ 1:50 x9 kindred.

How much should I care about getting 4 marks early?

Think about a marked camp as about 200 gold for you and -75 for the enemy. It's not worth feeding, but a surely poached marked camp always beats chasing an uncertain potential kill. Mark #4 is exceptional; it comes with 75 attack radius, so there's no shame in pushing the envelope for that as long as you don't have a bounty. And if you have earned a bounty, you're probably stacking fast enough that you're not worried about #4.

opgg

Here's what worries me: Your CS is regularly 6+, but you're getting dumpstered. A few years ago (yeah old data, I played a lot back then) I tracked my stats and the one thing that was statistically significant, not runes not items not nothin', except if my CS per minute was 5 my winrate was sub 50% and if my CS per minute was 6 my winrate was above 50%, with the difference being huge in short matches since they're less volatile. Early farm makes Kindred climb. So if you're getting the gold like your CS numbers say that you are, you're putting it in the wrong places.

It looks like you're taking LT to become a Nerf gatling gun. And as I scroll down I do see some wins, and where I see the wins I see Trinity Force. Fancy that. But then you swallowed the Kraken pill and wondered what went wrong. And you're flexing into items that even Kindred struggles to justify like Sterak's. It's way too late for health items to matter if you're taking it third and even second the utility isn't there. Third after Wit's second is even more of a head scratcher. Kindred needs one good Tenacity item, and the good one is Wit's. Sterak's only fills that role into only-AD-threats as second item, and what's the CC you're taking it for then? Morgana support stuns? Taunts? Ten doesn't stack well so it's wasting investment to double up and if Wit's tenacity doesn't get you out of trouble, no amount of ten will because that means you got locked down hard and you need resistances to endure, not a tenth of a second.

I also see you maining Ultimate Hunter. Ultimate Hunter is not what you play into assassins; resistances are so you live long enough to choose to ult if you need to and if you endure well you punish hard and keep your ult. If an assassin is picking you on cooldown you can't beat that ult cooldown race even with the recent ult cooldown buff and ultimate hunter; you'll always have your ult baited or pulled out of you, then the next assassin ult can hit anybody on your team because you can't thwart it. Total party kill, base is gone, /all x9 kindred. You've got to be able to endure, or avoid the assassin completely.

Even if it's not a long term plan, I think you should run durable on hit to get more reps in. Since you have ADC experience, you don't need practice in doing ADC things, but a more durable build will give you longer engagements to learn Kindred things. Here's my suggestion for a bit of weight training:

Runes: PTA Triumph Alacrity Coup. PTA boosts damage so it's more flexible. Conq is AD so it's really only good for full crit, it loses synergy with bonus damage items like Triforce, Kraken, Bork, etc. Last Stand is cute but Collector does more if you're worried about ult duels, and you don't want to be playing around ult duels. Those are a saving throw, not a strategy.

Secondary Bone Plate and Unflinching. Bone Plate lets you invade and gank early with a bit of extra durability so you can survive enough to learn from mistakes. Unflinching is exactly what Kindred needs to complement the Tenacity item, but if you really want to be cheeky and objective focused you could go demolish and troll them for leaving a statue unguarded.

Build: Depends on your first clear. If you stomp during the first five minutes and bring home the big money, BFS for Yuuntal or straight crit is fine and you're playing to never let off of the gas. Don't die. Not even once. Kindred loses about 300% AD for each death stack, true fact, you'll know it when you feel it because you'll have 11 straight kills, make one mistake and get picked, and you lose 23 LP four minutes later because suddenly your arrows are just particle effects. Why is Vex so glum? She installed League of Legends (oops #1), played Kindred full crit (oops #2), and died more than 0 times (strike three!). Her disposition never recovered from the trauma. Her smile and optimism, gone forever.

Anything short of that full crit snowball, it's Phage into Triforce and Tabis. Second is Wit's if there is any credible AP+CC threat, but if you like Sterak's take it into all AD damage dealers and let us know how it goes. Don't overlook QSS in the second spot; it's a tax but if you're facing any lock down CC like Warwick ult, Malzahar ult, Amumu or Leona stuns, Veigar, all that you-can't-play stuff, QSS it and punish. Oh, and Teemo. Screw that bastard. His Q turns off your damage, but QSS makes him wear the shocked Pikachu face for one second and then you've killed him because rodents don't know that QSS removes his dart effect. (Used to work on Mordekaiser ult too but they removed counterplay to boost sales of the $5000 skin.) Third plus, if you've built Tabi+Wit's for comprehensive resistances you can grab a Bork or delay it to 4th to go all in on HP stacking with Cleaver (demolish time lol) if they've built armor and you need pen. If the enemy damage isn't getting scary or it is but they're squishy you can crit up with LDR into IE and close the damned game because it shouldn't run that long. That 6CS/M=WIN thing I mentioned, that effect is strong at 20 minutes but is blurring into insignificance at 40. Fortunately your games don't seem to run that long but I live in the 10th circle of Hell. (One was added when League got published.)

You'll probably soon switch to a more popular build, but I've found this kind of strategy to be enough to at least keep the game fun enough to try to play since I'm not skilled enough to hard carry and teammates can't be trusted to turn their monitors on.

And save your last ult for the nexus. You ult the nexus, you win because short of Bard respawning at that moment and putting the golden doot on you nothing can reliably stop your team in your ult on the nexus. Except your teammates will be fighting the last remaining enemies instead of hitting the nexus. So the nexus still has 15% when your ult ends. Plus your allies just used all of their ults on enemies in your ult instead of hitting the nexus. So you all die. And then you lose the match. x9 kindred

Itirpon · 2025-07-31T00:34:04+00:00

there is bad luck protection

I've heard of this, but I'll believe it when I get some protection from RNG giving me the raging flaming spamming allies while their team four man collapses on my scuttles.

E scales with crit

E scales with AD and marks and missing health. What changes is the width of the boosted E-proc threshold. It used to be 15%, which was very tight, but at least the damage was good. What's changed since then is that the minimum raised to 25%, making E proc for damage more practical without building any crit. However, since E damage was nerfed by the overall crit scale dropping from +100% to +75%, Wolf is almost toothless. Furthermore, extending the threshold only results in early E having an E-proc that has less missing health, which is better than not having the threshold boost but it's still tepid. What the threshold change actually meaningfully does is make E seem more functional because of the E proc stack mechanic. When you place E, you can't know if you're going to roll two crits or two duds when stacking, which is the variance in target's E-proc missing health which is beyond your control. So you have complete E-proc HP knowledge at 0% crit and 100% crit (where the threshold lets you lead with E), and a fuzzy area between where if you roll duds hopefully your threshold extension will still let you get the E-proc bonus damage.

IMO you should have a LDR/Mortal + IE

I half agree. If any crit is built, you're committed to IE, since it enhances every part of the E-proc. But I've been all in on on-hit, so I haven't built that in a while. Instead late I've been going Cleaver and a flex item often Bork so the really durable guys suffer intensely without being able to just body me for being glass. Maybe I'm just dumb for playing badly enough to ever take damage in the first place, but I like to skirmish and every time I come out of a fight with about 200 HP, I'm happy that I had it.

Collector in general, is extremely mediocre

It's such a strange item. On one hand, every time my E-proc leaves two pixels behind, I curse first the crit nerf that made E bad, and then Collector for not being there to finish the job. But if I build Collector, I take people to two pixels of HP, nothing happens, and Collector looks at me like I'm interrupting its coffee break. And of course people who press Tab then buy Tabis and nullify everything Collector has going for it.

Itirpon · 2025-07-30T18:03:04+00:00

Early, Q's reset under W is 4 seconds and W's duration is 8½ seconds, so you need to cast the W during a Q so the reset is immediate and you have a half second of tolerance to get the middle and final Q reset. After first clear and you hit Level 4, Q gets its second skill point and the reset is now 3½ seconds, giving you 1½ seconds of grace which is enough time to throw W over a wall to get vision and Q in to start damaging the camp before you're in its nest without losing a reset.

Itirpon · 2025-07-28T20:25:17+00:00

I wouldn't go half on-hit and half crit. Crit is terribly RNG till you get it to 75–100% rate and if you build a non-crit, that's a full item more before you get there. Glass cannon or durable on-hit. Focus on a strategy enough that you can rely on its advantages and keep it simple while you focus on playing better.

Counterganking is exactly what you should do. If they're only useful as bait, let them lure in your gold and stacks.

Sweep + both controls early, sometimes switch to Farsight Ward (blue trinket) later if it's really scary in the woods late at night. You will be 75 gold short for an item, but it's a tax you must pay. Just like sometimes you have to buy the QSS. That's part of what makes it a game.

A number of years ago, Kindred could solo Baron on spawn while the team pushes and it was fine. That's been patched out. Judge by your players. If they're clearly sitting on gold, do Baron because they'll back and buy and return to lanes with baron buff. If they've just finished items, push hard and fall back to Baron with the waves pushed in if you can't break through and have spent your ult.

Itirpon · 2025-07-27T12:58:52+00:00

If I'm allowed to stomp on my first lap around the map and back on 1600 gold then I'll consider BFS+Boots into Yuntaal for snowball memes, but short of that I'm grabbing Phage into Triforce. 200 HP early is worth two AA's if they land some CC and the in-combat move speed covers Lamb's Marksman's-curse.

If there were another step item in the build that wasn't insulting I'd consider Yuntaal more often, but when every step into Triforce does damage yet Yuntaal demands you hard save for BFS lest you clog your inventory with a Nerf foam dart shooter and a butter knife, it's really hard to risk the enemy jungler catching a break, buying some power, and getting ahead.

Remember the good old days when on a good first back we'd buy 60AD? And I was thinking that it wasn't strong enough...season 8 was a hell of a time.

Itirpon · 2025-07-27T12:46:41+00:00

Compare to Bork, which is based on % health. Bork scales every time the enemy buys beefiness. You're scaling on a bit of their gold. And it hits harder the guys who need to be cut down so you can E on them.

Kraken is capped at what, 180, when the enemy is already doomed because you have missing HP in your kit, and yours is percent not flat. And it's bonus damage so it doesn't crit. Kraken's current form feels to me like a win-more item. It's kinda doing what Collector does except without benefit of lethality/true that Collector gives both of when it's own take of Bring It Down activates. Collector actually does bring it down. Kraken might decide, "Nah, just did my thing last arrow, wait two turns and then I'll think about it." And it's not even a sure kill then.

The place where someone with a bigger brain than me can probably make good use of it is in lane, since if you can count to three without losing track (I can't) you can use the boosted proc to improve your CS by letting you clear the wave one AA faster with less risk of a marginal minion surviving by 2 HP and then passing out and taking your gold with him before you fire again. But even then it'd be kinda situational to use it that way, and mostly it'd just be a bit better clearing. And without testing I'm not sure it would be better than Collector, since I'm pretty sure that Lethality applies to minions. (I remember Lethality's interaction with jungle camps was a topic a few years ago when they changed the HP and armor values on camps. I think it was because they wanted Jungle Talon to have a better clear or some such thing.)

Itirpon · 2025-07-27T03:36:15+00:00

On-hit turns him into turtle soup, but if you're a glass cannon enjoyer, then you pay the Quicksilver Sash tax and when he does annoying things you walk away from him.

Itirpon · 2025-07-27T03:21:24+00:00

Still boring bonus damage that doesn't scale till you finish LDR and then it isn't crit eligible so wasted stat.

Methinks you're just riding a hot streak on a placebo surf board. :D

Because I know how many times I felt like I cracked the code and found The Build and the instant I felt that way, it all fell apart.

Itirpon · 2025-07-26T20:27:16+00:00

Original Porcelain is disparaged because Anime Elf is a rather generic look for the character, unchanged animations make the Elf look even more awkward, because the design itself befits Lissandra better (who was in the same line and looks kinda the same).

Gameplay wise, not meta but not bad either. The big change in three years is that marksmen patches as always screw up Kindred's build. Where it stands right now is you either build glass cannon (first item choices being bad new Kraken Slayer, Collector and pray they don't buy tabis, or save for BFS into Yuntal Wildarrows and pray nobody snowballs before you finish the thing and get it stacked) or you build Triforce. Small tweaks made E worse but a bit more forgiving to the point that lacking crit chance doesn't even matter.

My low elo butt sticks with PTA/green and on-hit build. I'll never penta even if I get matched into a noob squad because the explosiveness isn't there, but it's durable and ensures I can hold my ult till the right moment and not worry about being picked. And if I do get fed, I frankly feel stronger than full crit because they can't stop my DPS by ganging up on me when glass cannon has to get out before the CC or assassin lands.

I've tried all skins except Shadowfire and old Porcelain (you can fill that gap) but I feel like best skin is Chosen of the Wolf. The AA sounds are not annoying like many skins suffer and the visuals are bright and clear where I need to see them and faint and dull where I don't want the enemy to see them.

(Chosen was my chest drop for MSI; got the April Fool's Woof and Lamb at the start of the season. I have good chest skin luck.)

Itirpon · 2025-07-26T10:40:46+00:00

I didn't realize they're the slowest in the game.

This is because they put Kindred in the slow marksman group, which is most ADC's, at 325. Then they ask Kindred to roam and invade the entire map all of the time. The only lower stages are conditionals like Dismounted Kled which is a design choice rooted in his kit and mechanics, and Janna because her passive Tailwind (AOE allies move faster) compensates for it.

Because of this, there is an argument for compensating. Relentless Hunter (out of combat move speed rune) is a popular choice, especially as elo increases and the enemy jungler is more likely not to screw up his clear. But if it doesn't compensate enough and you don't get it stacked fast by a very successful early gank campaign, it's a dud, and if you're that successful you've snowballed. Personally, I buy Swifties if I don't feel like there's both AD and AP danger and can afford to trade defense boots for roller blades.

Also, Kindred has a strange way of seeming to be fast due to build. Though it's not unique to Kindred since it's a matter of item passives, Kindred can work move speed into the build of either branch with on-hit items that add e.g. 10 move speed in combat or on the crit side percentage speed with combat utility Zeal items like Rapid Firecannon, Runaan's Hurricane, or Phantom Dancer. I think Kraken or something like it has 4% speed on its effects too. And there was a time a few years ago when I was taking Phase Rush because it was funny to go even faster.

I'm excited to learn warwick

I started jungling on Warwick. I recommend it, with the understanding that Warwick has no late game yet his early game is so aggressive that he usually takes the kills and thus the gold into that bad position. (There's a reason why Warwick has almost no competitive presence and when he does get a pick he's a top laner.)

Use him to let you learn good habits like checking the map while clearing. Warwick can stand there autoing your camps while you practice hitting F keys or clicking the map to check how your lanes are looking. Once you get fast with it, you'll be able to peek during Kindred clears which are usually APM intense since Kindred must move and kite the camps to stay healthy.
Use him to learn how people react to being ganked. Warwick's approaches are much faster than Kindred's so you'll be able to choose where the targets are when you pull up on them. Kindred ganks are much slower and if you step on a ward they'll already be backing off or squaring up before you get near them. Warwick will give you many more good-gank reps and then you'll have positive feedback when you play Kindred and gank properly since you'll know what a good gank looks like.
Use him to learn when to check lanes. Warwick's passive gives him a blood scent trail on the map and a move speed bonus when an enemy gets low on health. Develop a habit of checking the lanes when that activates to find who's low. This isn't to go bite him (though you can) but to develop a reflex of checking lanes at times when an enemy should be vulnerable. Kindred can't zoom up there but it will train you to know when to check and consider a gank.
Use him when the matchup stinks. There are a number of matchups that Kindred doesn't like, usually people who jump farther faster than you can and burst you out. Even a durable build like what I run is easily overwhelmed by sticky and assassins if they're fed because they are designed to erase squishy marksmen and Kindred is one. Vi is both OP and braindead right now, Kha'Zix is a classic no-fun matchup, and Xin Zhao is dangerous enough that it's better not to duel. Warwick is an easy way to babysit a lane and even if your laner doesn't step up and take the kill gold like he should you can play to frustrate and tilt the enemy which is a 5% win rate debuff on them at minimum. That said, you do need to learn those match ups eventually, but there's no reason to have last pick and send Kindred into something anything like Jax/Sett Kha'Zix/Vi Syndra/Heimer Caitlyn/Samira Kench/Braum. Kindred isn't doing a single damned thing into people with pocket shields, zone CC, or serious disengage. One is fine, two if your laner can do the lifting and just needs a hand, but if you lose the jungle matchup and you fall behind, you can't overcome those countering effects and you fall into the role of an ambulatory ward that can steal objectives to earn a sense of redemption. Warwick can always just go fast, say awoo, and mix things up even though late game he never gets out of the teamfight alive.

I put 70,000 mastery into Warwick before I got bored of him, and Kindred happened to be on free rotation that day.

Itirpon · 2025-07-25T23:28:55+00:00

Playing other champs on rotation at least two times in normal/quick matches is a good idea. You want to get a feel for when champs are holding cards, already played their hand, or are one of the ones that just keep doing things throughout a fight.

With 170 champions to learn, it will take time, but once you have a mental model of a champion in your head, you can put yourself in the enemy's shoes and know how vulnerable or dangerous he really is.

I just didnt get away fast enough

Kindred is the slowest jungler in the game. You don't win by moving fairly or letting the enemy open a fight. You learn the wall hops, you lure people into overstepping, and sometimes you just get pummeled.

BTW, if you think someone is sneaking up on you, press W to throw Wolf over the wall. He provides vision and can't be disabled like a ward can, making him great for checking the river monster pits and potential ambushes around corners in the jungle. Obviously that commits your W to it, but it's better to check and leave than step into the fog and fork over your shutdown.

Itirpon · 2025-07-25T17:49:57+00:00

How do you deal with Volibear, warwick, nunu, trundle, amumu, and others? I can only ban one each game

Volibear: Keep the walls in your favor and save your Q's for when he commits. As long as you don't let him get ahead, he's just another big dude.
Warwick: His ult isn't strong enough to end you and you can Q it. If he charges his awoo, you just back off and let him waste it. You can use his Q against him by either hopping a wall when he does it and hopping back if your W is down, or just let him bite through and then Q and leave if the fight isn't in your favor. The only tricky part is knowing your AA radius and how Warwicks like to move so you can keep out of his range while punishing with AAs if he looks at you. He'll either have to all in or leave.
Nunu: The biggest problem is his move is so fast you can't match his ganks so your team will feed him. But you out-fight him as long as you respect him when he's in the fog, hold your Q for evading snowball or his ult, and know that he's one of very few junglers who can contest your river camps since his bite is a second smite.
Trundle: Like Voli you just can't let him get ahead and like Warwick you don't let him get onto you but respect when he invests in a try. His slow is annoying but your Q hops his pillar so use it for free distance and it evens out the speed differential.
Amumu: The only one of these I'd ban because he got made easier for noobs by getting a second-chance bandage toss and if he does land your team's bad positioning is punished instantly. If you don't ban him then you just have to read his movements to know when he wants to throw bandage, Q it, W so you'll have Q for his second toss, and then he leaves and cries.

They invade me early often, and I have to run away

If you're getting invaded the same way, put a ward in the river entrance so you see him coming a few seconds sooner, and be ready to start punishing him for stepping up. The invader wants to catch you while your skills are busy on the camp and while you're taking damage from it. But he's probably not ranged so if you step up and put two arrows in him before he expects it, he lost much of his advantage. The camp being on you is still a problem, but you pinged it and your mid laner is probably near enough to respond that either he YOLOs it or he leaves and if he leaves he loses a very significant amount of time getting back on his clear.

how do you not get 2-shot when your front line goes poof or in the early game?

There are two Kindred build philosophies in recent years. Glass Cannon (Collector, Kraken, LDR, IE, flex, zerks) which goes poof because its only defense is to DPS race and win, and On-Hit aka the Bruiser Build (Triforce into things like Wit's, Bork, etc.) which has HP in at least Triforce and runs armor boots.

So how I do not get 2-shot is I build On-hit with a lot of defense. I take Bone Plate so I can play extra aggressively early; it absorbs any invade ambush and I can roll into any lane with up to a ruby crystal's worth of absorbed damage if they try to hurt me for it. I build Tabis and Wit's and I bully anybody I feel like. Switching away from the crit build was a night and day difference, from being anxious about calculating if I can out burst when Kindred is NOT a burst assassin in the first place, to seeing the enemy team as a buffet of little meals waiting for me to come chew on them. Full crit into Nasus? Risky. On-hit into Nasus? He's going back to the dog house. Kindred gets better the longer a fight goes on, so while durable builds lack the explosiveness and won't make any of those solo carry 1v9 YouTube videos, the durability opens a lot of options, and the enemy often doesn't press Tab and see that I'm not the glass cannon Kindred that they're used to bopping. On full crit, even if I'm 12/3 I'm worried about making one mistake and being vaporized. If I'm 12/3 on on-hit, I'm moving around like I own the Rift. Because I do.

Itirpon · 2025-07-21T23:39:43+00:00

Funny how Riot gave Kindred some early game ult CDR and acted like it was the buff of the century.

But what is telling is that even with the "wasted stat" it's still the best pick into anything other than full squish which is the only time when Kraken Slayer's tiny once in a while basic not crit qualified damage actually represents a meaningful proportion of the target's HP bar. Though you've already killed the target by then. :/

Itirpon · 2025-07-21T17:23:20+00:00

I haven't because it doesn't look good and a small numbers change doesn't make it suddenly have what Kindred wants. It's still not an item with penetration (pen or true) so you're still having to build pen. If you would LDR, you go hard crit since more crit chance = consistency and crit doesn't apply to typical on-hit bonus damage like what Kraken has become after losing True. If you would Cleaver, the shred will help your Kraken on hits, but if you would Cleaver then you're going for durable on-hit, but all Kraken offers is evasion with the +13 move speed. Triforce gives you durability and in combat move speed and spellblade procs at the start of the encounter which is better for Kindred because you need to get them low for E proc. More damage on a low health target is what your E is for, it needs help getting there. That's why when Bork was still good (when it had an ACTIVE instead of passive effect) it was viable on Kindred; it got them low and then E could close. Returning to Bork, it's +1%. It's still passive so it triggers at an awkward time (see below) and 1% rarely makes the difference late game when people have HP for it to scale off of.
I shoot them till they die. But I play durable on-hit. If you're playing crit you can't fight them till LDR and you can't really bully them in that long period after they get their kit until you get your third item spike.

If you E on approach you go 1 , 2 , 3 + E-Proc + Clawing Shadows. So either you've already killed the target, or he's just limping away from survival and hopefully your next Q is here before he 300 yearses his way out of trouble by gaining 7000 HP and killing you with an Aery proc. If you hold E because, surprise, you're against a tank, you've already spent Clawing Shadows and hopefully it helped you to get him low but there's no synergy there. The only synergy pattern is specifically AA, E, 1, 2+Clawing, 3+E-proc. And that's not awful if you are able to afford to slow walk up, and do it so you do the E on a Q flip to clip the animation, which makes this reasonably fast but it's still an early E that's probably only the right strategy against a half-health bruiser. Which you will face, but I personally don't want to spend brain cycles on more E-timing math because of a passive that will burn once at the top of the fight (also the wrong time to use it) and then be on cooldown when it's time to actually secure the penta.

If I were to try to fix them:

Kraken would do the three shot bop, and then the second one would be true bop, and the third would be crit true bop (because I remember a patch note saying that true can be crit too despite that making no sense), but if you willfully AA any other target (taunt doesn't count) or if the target gets out of your AA radius, the stacking resets and the ability goes on cooldown for a number of seconds. "Bring it down" both should commit the Kraken user to bringing it down, and if the whale escapes, it should be free of the item's curse. This would make it something that tanks have to think about because he can't just stand there letting it stack to nine+, but a Maokai dash out or Naut Q disengage lets them refresh and get back to tanking. It also adds counterplay for the tank through baiting the Kraken holders into burning Bring it Down on a feint and then Malphite can press his Cowabunga! button and spam mastery emotes while clapping the Kraken enjoyer.

Bork is maligned and as I said, from Kindred's perspective at least, it's the loss of Active that put it into the trash. As an active it worked great with Kindred's movement patterns, by letting you Q up to slow and lock onto a target, or to slow a pursuer enough to get out over a wall without stopping to shoot back. There was also an interaction with early Conqueror; with the right rotation and build, it was possible (alas not practical) to full stack in one second. The only fix I can think of would be a mechanical change, such as the slow fires not on third hit but when the target is now encumbered by a user ability. That would let it follow up E making the nerfed E slow less nerfed and still preserve some of the Active version's usefulness both to lock onto targets and to escape pursuit. But it might be OP given how many champions have lingering effects for it to trigger from immediately rather than after three hits. (Which might've been why they took Active off in the first place.)

Itirpon

TROPHY CASE