Kindred, the Eternal Hunters; and How to Tame them. An In-Depth Guide by Chay Kun.
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Introductions.
Good evening! before I get into the meat of the guide, I feel (and have been told.) that it's important to give you some context on who I am. As such. Hey, my alias is Chay Kun I've been playing League of Legends ever since season two. During my time playing league, I've spent most of the seasons in diamond, but never push much past that. This is for a variety of reasons. However lately it's been because I spend most of my time theorycrafting, analysing and working in relation to League. I've done coaching, casting & written pieces for various people at various times. However, I'm not content with that anymore. As such am going to be pursuing higher elo as a player during season eight. With that said, and the preseason lasting about two months, all the more time to test it with! I hit my highest elo (Diamond 2) during the last time that Kindred was viable, partly because I am a player with decent Jungle and Marksman experience but also because of the passion I had for the champion. Ever since their tease, I was heavily invested in the champion, she reminded me of everything I loved and wanted in the game (particularly reminding me of Princess Mononoke, my favourite film.) something I do and am known to do is overanalyse the ever living hell out of League of Legends, Kindred was no exception to this rule, especially as I had a passion for them. They weren't getting a free pass!
I'm here today to have a formal written post/thread for discussion on Kindred, and analysis. I, obviously, will be providing my take. HOWEVER. I would like to stress the openness in this thread, and offer up a space for all of you to give your insight as well! (Note there is a good chance I may disagree and spark a discussion about it, but it's all friendly)
So without further ado, I'll cut the introductions and get on with the 'guide'
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Introducing Kindred, the Eternal Hunters.
I’m making this segment to the guide purely to give players/people who have never heard of nor played Kindred some context as to what they are.
Firstly, and IMPORTANTLY, NEVER, EVER, use the wrong pronoun for Kindred. Like Rek’Sai, the second you use the wrong pronoun you’ll be swarmed with comments saying something along the lines of.
SNIFF Actually, the correct pronoun is THEY, if you could please stop miscategorising my champion I think we would all be able to take you more seriously.
All jokes aside. Kindred is, in all forms, a Jungle champion. However! She is a unique champion, in that she was the first true Marksman Jungler. These days she has contention from Graves, Ezreal and the like. But they've always had differences from the traditional Marksman role. Kindred stays true to the role. In order to make proper use of their kit, you must be able to utilise decent Marksman micro, be it positioning, auto-placement, target prioritisation, stutter stepping, animation cancelling, etc. However, do not be deterred, these are skills that you will develop over time, that are necessary and encouraged to learn in League of Legends as a whole. And she is a great champion to learn them on, especially if you also simultaneously wish to learn Jungle fundamentals as well. The other aspect that defines Kindred would be their passive. Kindreds passive places marks on jungle camps and enemy champions, these stacks give benefits to Kindred. Adding an incentive/minigame to both teams in the game. Efficiently getting these stacks, whilst not getting tunnel visioned is a huge part of being successful on Kindred.
So, to summarise.
Kindred is the first, true Marksman Jungler. you should pick them up if you like the idea of this. on top of this fact, they also have a really interesting dynamic with their passive. that adds a layer of depth to Kindred that not many champions have. Whilst Kindred, being a marksman does rely on decent micro play. There is no huge barrier to entry with their micro. Kindred is a champion which relies incredibly heavily on good Jungle & Marksman fundamentals. As such she's a great champion to practice these on, and a great champion to flourish with once you've got them nailed.
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Base stats.
I feel a healthy place to start when analysing a champion would be to take a look at their base stats. And with Kindred, it really does show the design that they were trying to go with. Giving them the stats of a traditional Marksman more so than a traditional Jungler. Important or noteworthy stats to talk about will get a full paragraph. However, ones after that point will be talked about more briefly.
Movement Speed.
One of the most important base stats available to Junglers is Movement Speed (MS). This is important for a plethora of reasons, be it; pathing, farming, ganking, positioning, pressuring, etc! Movement speed is important. This is one of Kindred's biggest problem areas, as she has 325 base movement speed this is tied with Ivern for the lowest MS of any of the viable Jungle champions. This is clearly an intentional design aspect from Riot, as she and Ivern both have interesting interactions with the jungle and both have an interesting role as a Jungler, Kindred's being as a Marksman. However, this does not exclude their want for good base MS, as it is needed for all Jungle and Marksman fundamentals (the Marksman fundamentals are patched up with bonus MS later on though. On top of this, Kindred doesn't have traditional pathing, as they will prioritise predictions on stacks, and obtaining them. Having a higher base MS would help them in this regard. Which might have been broken in the past, however with the new stack system in place, they do not hyper-scale as much as they used to and as such could probably take an MS buff.
Armor.
Another stat which is incredibly important for most traditional Jungle champions. Armor basically decides if your champion will be able to survive the Jungle, and typically dictate how healthily they do their first (and latter) clears. Kindred, once again falls to one of the lowest base armour tiers in the game (29 +3.5 per level), comparable to Ivern once again. However! Once again, just like Ivern, they have reasons for this. Kindred, being the first Marksman Jungler has the ability to kite camps, and it is entirely possible that you can clear both Red and Blue buffs whilst taking next to no damage. This makes their clear feel similar to Nidalee, and other micro based Junglers. Which can be both exciting and intimidating, as screwing up your Jungle micro can drastically impact the pace of the game. Some will see their low base armour as a challenge and be enticed. Others will be put off by this and avoid champions with this aspect. I personally, really enjoy it. Their scaling can be described, like most of the rest of their stats, as pretty average for Marksmen.
Other Base Stats.
The rest of Kindred's base stats can be described as pretty average and reasonable. For a Jungler, who has aspects of a Marksman, none of their base stats stands out as extraordinary, in fact. They are, across the board pretty unimpressive. But none of them are bad enough to make their unviable, as such I would say that they're in a relatively good spot of balance when referring to their base stats. If anything, their Base numbers could do with slight tweaks on the positive side. With that said though, they don't really need them at this point as they're managing to find themselves in a good place viability wise and can have really great success reliably with their base stats being the way they are right now.
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Passives and Abilities.
After looking at the Base Stats of a champion the next thing to analyse would be the champions Passives and Abilities. We'll be taking a look at what they are, the relevance of the numbers surrounding them and what they enable Kindred to do, I'll also talk briefly about some of the synergies that the abilities have with builds etc, but that will be furthered in the relevant part of the guide.
Passive: Mark of the Kindred.
Kindred's passive is inarguably one of the most defining parts of their kit, it defines how they path, and the pressure that they have on the map, without even having to do anything. Simply put Kindred's passive allows you to mark enemy champions and periodically marks enemy/neutral Jungle Camps. It is vitally important that you learn which camps will be marked, and can predict your pathing based upon this knowledge to stack efficiently. Killing a marked target gives Kindred a stack. Mark of the Kindred stacks grant Kindred's auto attacks bonus range, and their abilities gain bonus effects. I'll now list the full benefits of their passive in full once I have discussed the ability that they are attached to.
- Auto Attack; Kindred gains +75 range once they gain 4 stacks. And after that +25 range for every additional 3 stacks. Capping at +250 range at 25 stacks. Some people don't even realise that Kindred no longer gains on-hit %health damage from her passive on autos. This is important.
Kindred's new version of the auto attack passive is interesting, being one of the few auto attack range modifiers in the game. In a typical game, you'll gain at least +100 range. This gives Kindred one of the biggest auto ranges in the game toward the mid stages of the game, and easily the largest if you stack correctly in the late stages of the game. This allows them to siege, contest objectives, harras, etc. at an incredibly safe distance. This is even more important when you realise that you can pressure people inside of your ultimate with them knowing you have range creep on them, forcing them into a scenario where they are less comfortable in your ult than you are. Meaning most of the time, if played correctly you will win any 1v1 inside of your ultimate and if played correctly feel almost completely impervious to being all inned, but also punish half-assed all ins insanely hard. As if they try to retreat you can auto them from a safe distance and run them down. Kindred's new auto attack interaction with her passive isn't quite as defining as it used to be, however, is still really impactful, especially when put into context with the rest of their abilities and builds.
Q: Dance of Arrows.
Kindred's Q is an incredibly useful piece of kit. Both from the perspective of a Marksman and of a Jungler. As a Jungler, one of the most important and most defining tools inside of any Junglers kit would be any abilities which provide terrain scaling. Kindred's Q provides and an insane amount of terrain scaling, with a low cooldown, and an almost non-existent mana cost the closest comparison would be Nidalee's pounce. I'll throw an image in here that shows every wall that Kindred can jump. On top having insane terrain scaling that allows Kindred great pathing/ganking options (I'll discuss terrain scaling more in the play style part of the guide.) Kindred's Q deals a good amount of damage, with a solid 65% bonus AD scaling, on a low cooldown. On top of this, their Q resets their auto attack timer, which is amazing for kiting jungle camps and champions alike, whilst dishing out a really solid amount of damage assuming that we build some bonus AD. However, lately, some Kindred's have been ignoring bonus AD, which I believe to be a bad call, more on that later. The last part of their Q, the bonus attack speed is better talked about with context to the bonuses given to their Q from their Passive, so I'll do that now.
- Q; Dance of Arrows. Kindred gains the same bonus range that they receive on their auto attacks on their Q's effect radius. (Note this does not increase the range of the dash, but instead how far the arrows can fly.) On top of this their Q grants them 5% additional bonus attack speed per each Mark of the Kindred.
Typically, in an average game, whether Kindred is ahead or behind, you should be able to gain about 10 Marks of the Kindred every game, provided that you stack correctly and efficiently, which I'll talk about later. Now with that said, Kindred's Q should be granting you almost +60% Bonus Attack Speed upon cast. This is an extremely high amount of attack speed, which is important as it allows Kindred to function as a Marksman without having to build a tonne of attack speed in her build path. Once upon a time Kindred's main damage came from her on-hit passive, so stacking attack speed wasn't a bad move what so ever, but these days building enough attack speed to function as a marksman and then grabbing bonus AD to play into her impressive scaling and safe auto attack range is a better idea, and your Q's attack speed amplifier really does help Kindred to do this without having to invest too much gold into attack speed. One of the common mistakes that I see Kindred players make is to continue building Kindred in the old traditional way. Not adapting to how she should be played these days, I'll talk more about this in the build section of the guide, however.
W: Wolf's Frenzy.
Unlike the previous two abilities, Kindred's W is not a hugely defining ability, though that is not to say that it isn't powerful. Kindred's W is amazing at all stages in the game for a verity of reasons. It can be used to scout vision over walls, is an amazingly efficient clearing tool because of the cripple that it applies to monsters (alongside its decent damage values.) But arguably, the most important function of Kindred's W is that it lowers the cooldown of your Q exponentially. If you mix this with the ongoing damage that is constantly being applied from your W you end up with a very powerful zoning tool as if someone is inside of it they're likely not going to be able to out trade or out fight you. As such, getting the cooldown as low as possible to keep the uptime as long as possible is vital, so we max it second and try to get early CD. (warriors, tri, bc etc, more on that later.) Ignoring all this, if we look at its scalings it not only has a 20% bonus AD scaling but also shares a 50% attack speed scaling also, which is affected by the attack speed you get from your Q and other sources we'll discuss later.
- W: Wolf's Frenzy. Kindred's W gains bonus 1% current health damage for each Mark of the Kindred.
Kindred's W also has an incredibly relevant %current hp scaling, meaning that her W actually does do a great job at chunking large minions/monsters and tankier champions, this only scales increasingly hard into the game as they gain more HP and you gain more stacks. All of these scalings put together, and the utility that this ability provides Kindred make this one of the less flashy, but more important parts of her kit. Positioning it well to get the most optimal Dances with your Q is really important. It can also be used to snipe kills under tower or to stop people from backing from a safe distance. Really, the better the Kindred player, the better the utilisation of your W. It's something that will come with time and practice, not something that can be taught as readily as some of the other abilities.
E: Mounting Dread.
Kindred's E is a high damage execute that is procked by hitting a target three times after the initial cast. Kindred, being a champion that innately has good attack speed and good attack range can prock this relatively easily this ability has an insanely high AD scaling of 80%, it also has the ability to crit targets for bonus damage if they're below a certain health threshold. Combine this fact with the missing health scaling and you have one of the best non-ultimate executes in the game. Like with the Q, having such a high scaling insensitive getting as much bonus AD as early as is possible, once more making Warrior an amazing option on Kindred. All of this said we're also ignoring the fact that it's a great opener in a gank and better still in duels in the jungle as it also comes with a 50% slow for 1 second to help pin a target down initially before you finish them off. Because of the incentives to take points in your Q and W, combined with most of the damage from this ability coming from scalings, we feel comfortable maxing E last giving us a nice, standard skill prioritisation of R > Q > W > E.
- E: Mounting Dread. For every Mark of the Kindred, their E does an additional 0.5% missing health damage and gains the same range bonus that your autos do from the passive.
This is one of the more underwhelming passive upgrades, as the scalings are already insane, this relatively small increase doesn't stand out as much, however. It is not to say it is irrelevant. It adds up, some games you could get upwards of 20 stacks, which would be 10% bonus missing health damage, which is a considerable deal. However, just like I said before. Most of this abilities power comes from its initial scalings, making it a great 1 point spell. HOWEVER, the bonus range that your E gets given from the passive is no joke. It means you can cast it from a safe distance and run people down, and prock it in certain situations without the enemy even being able to retaliate. This being the last ability that is boosted by Mark of the Kindred I feel it is important to stress how vital it is to get as many stacks as is possible, without tunnel visioning or falling behind as a direct result. They're powerful, they're one of the main things that enable Kindred to be BETTER than other champions, without them you're just a glorified Twitch jungle without stealth. A good Kindred will constantly be thinking about where the next stack is going to be.
R: Lamb's Respite.
Kindred's ultimate is one of the single most interesting pieces of utility any jun- no, any champion gets in the game. It has a plethora of uses, and its utilisation singlehandedly decides if a Kindred player is good, or great. Understanding it's many uses, and how to best abuse it is incredibly important. First, understand that not just your allies gain the benefits, but your enemies too. So using it at the wrong time can actually turn the tide of the fight into your enemies favour, sometimes you're going to have to let an ally die whilst it's up, getting the discipline to hold this ability until the perfect moment is very important. However, it is just as important to be able to use the ability to save an ally rather than yourself, and have the self-control to use the cooldown for that reason. Once you understand when to use it the next thing to concentrate on would be HOW to make the best use of it. Firstly, understand that once you're at the 10% threshold you CANNOT gain healing. Make yourself and your allies hold all healing until the end of the ultimate and burst it to get higher HP totals than enemies that are inside of it. Also, consider that you are the one casting it, you have elective control over the ability and know exactly when it is coming down. Use your E, W and Q's wisely whilst inside of your ult, timing them to create as much pressure as possible towards the ending, but also utilising the W to deter people from leaving your ult for free. This leads to another concept, which is that with all the added ranges that you have you can use your ultimate and hit people who are standing outside of it. Using your ultimate as a zoning tool, declaring to enemy champions that they have to walk towards you, or get outranged safely and killed is a very powerful tool. The last trick that I can teach you would be to ult for objectives. Imagine the scenario... A baron fight, coming down to a 50/50, the enemy jungler jumps over the wall, about to burst and force the 50/50 with smite... You use your ultimate, preventing Baron from dying to the smite, then finish it with your own before or after dealing with the enemy jungler. This is a great example of how YOU are in control of your ultimate, and although it might give both sides advantages, understanding its use can sway even a 50/50 to much greater odds in your favour. Like I said before, being able to utilise this amazing piece of kit is one of the most important things a Kindred player can learn, but it is, similarly to your W. Not something that can be taught, it's something you must practice and actively be thinking about, it'll come with experience. But getting off a game-winning Kindred ult feels amazing, and is more common than you might think.
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Builds: Pre-game, Runes.
One of the most important things I value in League of Legends is ensuring that everything in your power before the game starts is as optimised as possible. The reason for this is because it's the one thing you have complete, elective control over. Going into season 8 this has become a lot more simple with the runes/masteries system becoming much more streamlined. With the new system combining runes and masteries we now only have to optimise one system for the game that we're going into. *I highly recommend and always have only having a single page that you edit for every game that you go into, this helps you learn all the runes, and how to adapt them to the game in question.
Inside this section, I'm not going to mess about too heavily. I'll talk about the two pages in contention for Primary, what they offer and which one I feel is best, I'll then go over every rune in the primary page and the options that are decent takes in secondaries, including situational options. I've already released a relatively in-depth video on Kindred runes, but this will be more in-depth and less condensed for video form.
Primary Options, ending the debate.
Ever since the release of runes reforged there have been two different opinions on which page is the better Primary option, Domination or Precision. Hint, I'm a hugely in favour of Precision and think Domination is a terrible primary choice, and I'll explain why.
When deciding on a Primary page, there are a few fundamental rules that I feel should be followed;
- The champion should make effective use of the path bonus
- The champion should make effective use of at least 2 minor paths, ideally all 3.
- The champion should make GREAT use of at least one of the keystones.
So, to end the argument and to articulate why I love Precision as a primary choice, Kindred makes great use of the bonus attack speed from the path bonus, loves all 3 minor paths and has multiple good options in each of them and has positive synergy with all of the keystones, with one seeming overwhelmingly good. Domination, on the other hand, you like 2 minor paths, don't really make insane use of the path bonus and do not LOVE any of the keystones, at least not to the extent of the Precision tree, so in my opinion, there is almost no argument. Precision is your primary tree, almost always.
Primary choice: Precision
Talking briefly about the path bonus, the 18% attack speed you get helps you a tonne with early jungle clear, allowing you to more easily kite camps, combine it with the 15% attack speed you get from machete and the attack speed boost you get from your Q and you have a great clear, you barely take any damage if you micro properly, except raptors and krugs. On top of this attack speed just generally scales well with Kindred's kit, so it's all happy days.
Keystone choices
- Press the Attack
Press the Attack is insane on Kindred and is usually the correct choice over the other two keystones that you have available to you. To quickly explain why you don't take the other two, Lethal Tempo would have been good in the on-hit era of kindred. However, she's outlived that phase and no longer builds, nor supports on-hit builds, as such Lethal Tempo falls short. Fleet Footwork is awesome, it pays homage to old Kindred W passive just like warlord's did, however, Kindred no longer needs this, combine that with the abysmal 10% bonus AD scalings that it has, it simply doesn't cut it and is out-valued by Press the Attack almost all the time.
Kindred being a champion that already has a 3 hit ability, that they can readily prock instantly should make you realise that procking Press the Attack is insanely easy for them, making use of an AA reset from your Q, the large AA range and attack speed that they possess means that they can prock Press the Attack insanely frequently, on top of this the 12% vulnerability further enhances your E's execution damage as well as the rest of your kit, and your teammates damage. As long as your target prioritisation is correct the amount of pressure you can put out with Press the Attack and your E is simply insane, the positives of Press the Attack on Kindred are endless and evident. Take Press the Attack.
Minor Path choices
Looking at the three minor paths in Precision you have great options in each of them in Heroism you have Triumph this is an insane tool for Kindred as one of the main resources that Marksmen and Junglers have to watch is their HP levels at all stages in the game. Typically in a late game team fight, you will fall to almost 10% HP and survive with elective use of your ult, to instantly get a kill after the stalemate that was created ends. This allows Kindred to regularly get full value out of the missing % hp heal and regularly creates clutch situations where you can get aces in situations where without it you would simply just die. Overheal is another 'ok' option, as you have synergy with your lifesteal and ultimate, and can enhance any healers in your team (Which is cool as Kindred loves Ardents.) however most of the time I feel that Triumph is a more solid option, even when you do have healers. However, I wouldn't criticise choosing overheal as an option if your team has a Soraka, or something similar.
The legend tree is insanely awesome for Kindred, a champion that spends a lot of time farming both camps and champions. You can get your Legend stacks insanely consistently and make great use out of all three options. Although typically I would say that Bloodline is the correct choice, tenacity is also a good option when looking at a team with insane amounts of CC, and alacrity is 'ok' but I would say the demand for some lifesteal without having to opt into building some, and the value the stat provides is just straight up better than the attack speed you get from Alacrity. Legend Bloodline is an incredibly solid option for Kindred, most Marksmen really want lifesteal but hate having to divert their spike items to grab it. Kindred is no exception to this rule, but also uses her health as a resource when farming the jungle, adding even more value to grabbing some lifesteal as early as possible. Kindred used to love picking up BotRK as early as possible, but these days there aren't really any lifesteal options that Kindred wants to buy outside of perhaps their 5th-6th item options. As such getting Bloodline is invaluable and I highly suggest taking it, as it opens so much more aggressive and defensive options during fights, trades and paths.
The final minor path that we have to choose from is the Combat path. Picking an option from here is actually really simple, we just look at which one is going to give us more damage, more consistently. We never pick Last Stand, as taking it is basically amusing a losing position, something which you should never do. Kindred clears healthily and has lifesteal so usually shouldn't fall too low naturally. Coup de Grace is typically the best option in the combat tree, simply put. If you ever kill an enemy champion, at some point in time you will be getting the 10% increased damage that it grants you. On top of this, as a jungler when you go to gank a target, usually they can already be below this threshold. As such you can make great use of Coup de Grace on a regular basis, which makes it a solid choice most games. However. You might consider taking Cut Down vs 1-2 large tanks that you will find hard to get to the 40% threshold, as that will increase your damage more consistently versus them, however, this is rare.
Secondary Tree choices.
Seeing as Domination is in contention for your primary path, it's the obvious choice for your secondary, as the minor paths are really nice. However taking a quick look at the other trees you'll notice that very few of them actually give Kindred anything that is too wanted, the only option that I would say is tempting would be Gathering Storm in the sorcery tree in games that look to go insanely long. But that aside, I think domination is the correct option most of the time.
Assuming we're not playing in competitive, taking options in tracking such as Zombie ward and Ghost poro aren't going to be as impactful as the other minor path options in Domination. Cheap shot and Taste the blood are traps that a lot of players fall into taking, as simply put, the damage that Cheap shot gives you is outvalued by the consistent lethality you can get with Sudden Impact and the tiny inconsistent healing that you can get from Taste the Blood is also outvalued by Sudden impact, which, hint, is the option I like to take majority of the time. The Hunter path, similar to the Legend path really suits Kindred's style of hunting down champions for their Marks, and also provides great bonuses. Ingenious hunter is basically useless on Kindred, though. Relentless hunter is typically the better option for Kindred as the movement speed out of combat that it gives you is insanely useful for all forms of macro rotation, be it pathing, hunting marks, rotating etc. 48 out of combat movement speed is nothing to gorp at. Ravenous hunter can be better sometimes if you're playing in matchups where teamfights will be drawn out, but it's rarely a superior option to Relentless hunter.
Your typical final page.
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Builds Item options.
Something that I can't stress enough going into this section is that Kindred has changed. Gone are the days where on-hit builds are good options for Kindred, so if you're coming here looking for some Rageblade, BotRK action, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I love those builds and they can be fun though. Typically Kindred will opt into one of two builds, both of them are good, but are good in different scenarios.
- The first option is a crit build. This build will take Shiv, IE, RFC after warrior.
This is the most popular build option for Kindred at the moment and is one that most players will build without question. However, I do believe that it's not always the correct choice and sometimes should be avoided. Examples of this would be when your team already has one or two crit champions, which means that the enemy team will build randuins, you don't want to give them more value, or the option to build randuins in the first place. Typically this build is best when playing with a non-crit ADC, but you can still do it with one, assuming you're getting ahead enough for the spikes to out value randuins/tabi stacking. Other scenarios where you shouldn't build this include when your team doesn't support having another squishy marksman, in which scenario you'll need to tank up a bit with item options such as cleaver, etc. Believe it or not, both builds on Kindred do a tonne of damage. The reason you build crit is to increase your power spikes, not because the other build doesn't do enough damage. You can still solo crit carries with the other build, the only reason to build the crit build is to capitalise on power spikes and end the game sooner rather than later. Which is very valuable in solo queue. Issues with this build include the fact that it lacks a lot of early AD (warrior patches this up) Kindred has great bonus AD scalings that shouldn't be ignored. Especially when you get enough attack speed from your Q, path bonus etc. On top of this, you're squishy as all hell, if you get CC'd and don't get your ult off it can be game losing, so remember this and play more complacently. However, to stop talking smack on it, this build is solid, especially in solo queue.
- The second option is a more traditional CD/AD build, making use of cleaver/tri.
This is the build path that I personally prefer and will take most of the time. It still does great damage consistently throughout the game, scales better towards the 6th item slots and means that you will never be a liability to your team's layout. (Unless you desperately needed a tank) This is something that cant be said for the crit build, which can sometimes put a strain on your team if built in the incorrect moment. Kindred has great bonus AD scalings, so grabbing warrior, cleaver/tri and other AD items are really amazing on Kindred. However, towards late game you do feel having less attack speed, so grabbing PD is a good option as it gives defensive stats and the attack speed that you'll be missing. Generally speaking this build also has the option to build more defensive options, such as thornmail + tabi + randuins and as such can become more of a bruiser than a true marksman, whilst still dishing out an insanely high amount of damage, being able to solo kill most champions in the game, even when built more tankily. This is partially due to red smite though, so don't get too cocky without it. You typically want to build cleaver when the enemy team has champions that can build armour, or if your team is a little armour heavy. Situationally with both builds grabbing an LW isn't a bad idea if you're too heavily stacked with AD. You typically grab Trinity force, (which gives has awesome synergy with your Q, being able to readily prock sheen) if you're super ahead or if the enemy team has no good options to deal with you, this pays homage to the crit build by spiking harder than they can react to.
Now. There will be people who will ask questions about boot choices, Jungle item choices, etc. so I'll quickly address this now. You always go Warrior. Always. The only exception to this rule is when they have 2-3 tanks but even then warrior is typically the better option. Its the most hyperefficient item in the game. Period. On top of this, Kindred makes great use of the +60 AD that you get and also the 10% CDR you get. It's amazing. If you don't trust me and still haven't changed to it. Try it. It's literally Kindred's bread and butter. 9 times out of 10 you'll want to take red smite. The only times you don't want to take red smite is when you will get more value out of vision than the duelling presence. Which is rare, and only really a factor when you're very far behind, versus assassins/invaders. For boot choices, you simply decide between Tabis/Merc/Beserkers based on each game. If they have AD threats you go Tabis. If they have AP threats or CC threats you go Merc Treads. If they have neither, and you're ahead you go Beserkers. Simple enough, right? You can build Mobis some games where you will be constantly chasing around the enemy jungler trying to provide more pressure than them, or if you have to race them to get stacks. I'd like to take a moment to mention as well that late game you want to buy red elixirs most of the time. However, if you're struggling with CC and need more hp/tenacity going iron is also a nice option. Also, you always start Machete now. ALWAYS. the 15% attack speed it grants is simply way too good. You never start talisman now, literally. NEVER. LW is a good item choice when the enemy team is going to begin stacking armour, deciding on which item to go is as simple as deciding if their healing will heal more damage than you will gain by building lord doms. But you also have to consider that you reduce the healing of other carries/supports as well. Which is really nice. Your lifesteal options are pretty cut and dry. Sometimes you'll need to pick up lifesteal. Build BT if you don't need CDR and will overcap if you build deaths dance. Build Merc scim if you need MR and the enemy team has important CC to remove (for example Malzahar.) Maw if you just need MR. And Deaths Dance if none of the other rules apply.
I'll include a twitlonger to an item set that I personally use and recommend you check out. It contains every item choice for Kindred, alongside build examples. Seriously, using itemsets is a great idea, especially when you can share them now. http://tl.gd/n_1sqasba
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For the remainder of the guide, I'll be posting it in a Twitlonger that'll be linked. The reason for this is simply that I'm running out of characters on Reddit. The final topic that I'm going to be covering is how to play Kindred. This will go over when to pick Kindred, matchups, early game (including pathing), mid game and the late stages of the game. I hope you guys don't mind, but it's the best solution I could come up with. I hope you've enjoyed the 'guide' up until this point and will enjoy the rest of it over on Twitlonger. Keep all discussion in the thread though.
