Why NO ONE Plays: Kindred | League of Legends 

"Why no one plays Kindred" Kindred main: Coz they're suck :v

You forgot kindred's secret passive that is when you pick kindred the enemy team will automatically love their jungler and help him everytime while your team will basically ignore you

Even though I could never play kindred, they are without a doubt the most aesthetically pleasing champs with the coolest character concept imo

Kindred is also one of the only champs where your team makes it harder for you to play the game by playing the game. You mark someone and your team scoops it up before you have a chance to fart in their general direction and you've been robbed of power because your team successfully killed someone quickly.

“Only viable marksman jungler” Ever heard of jhingle?

One really depressing thing is that kindred's thing is getting a lot of range but Senna gets better stats and more range faster and she doesn't even need to work hard for her stacks.

This felt like a compliment lmao.

Not gonna lie, a good kindred is one of the scariest things you’ll find in the jungle

For me my least favorite thing about kindred is how long her mark takes to activate on a champ. There have been an uncountable amount of times that I mark gank kill and don't get a stack because OH, you ganked too early and your mark didn't activate too bad. that and the fact you need 4 marks for the first range increase.

I love Kindred but there is one reason I never play them. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE on the enemy team will actively go out of their way to shut you down, even more than a yi. One game I played Kindred the toplane fiora actively lost top to deny my bottom scuttle crab and got collapsed on. And it's not just when I play kindred. Another game I played mid our kindred jungler got three man collapsed on the top first scuttle EVEN when me and my friend toplane went to cover the Kindred and 2 v 3ed. It became a game of protect Mr President because of how hard the enemy team was focused on hunting them. It's actually silly so I'd rather just play yi at that point. At least I will out heal everyone and be untargetable.

ok wtf, never heard of this channel before and randomly got this in my feed, clicked on it and instantly get called out in the intro. like I'm literally a singed onetrick turned kindred onetrick, like what are the fricking chances??

I'm a M7 Kindred main that goes positive on the champ almost every game and after watching this video I can definitively say I have never had my ego stroked so much.

You nailed it, playing Kindred is indeed like playing on hard mode while the other players are on normal mode XD

A kindred with 10 stacks at minute 20 is unstoppable... Yi: _o kawaii kotto_

Title “how to summon all kindred mains to one video”. Also as a M7 kindred the reason I don’t play her (as much anymore) is anxiety to do good with how flame heavy jungle can be. To be quite honest I’ve almost hung up the ole smite spell completely. Besides all that the video was wonderful and it’s nice to see someone take such a deep dive into your main, and articulate some of your favorite and most frustrating parts with your champ.

it's a champion that requires alot of skill and actual strategy and thinking. in all honesty, when you hear that's hard to play her, they ain't lying. just like lamb has hips that don't lie

A friend of mine started playing league, really loved kindred and didnt rest until he had enough Blue Essence to buy her. Everybody discouraged him from playing kindred since she was difficult, I however did not. I taught him how to jungle as his first role and let me tell you, his first games were terribly frustating, it was damn awful. Even though he was struggling, In the end of a week he had a solid understanding of priority, vision control, map araweness and objective control. When he started trying out other champs the results were very clear. Syndra? Too easy. Aphelios? Not that bad. Zyra? Not a challenge. Zyra especially shocked me, considering how well you need to position with her long cast times. Kindred is the best champion for learning how to think league, as long as you are fine with negative reinforcement.

Kindred, alongside Aurelion Sol and Taliyah, is yet another one of those "I love you so much and I refuse to play you" champs

I mean I feel like most people who pick up Veigar first do so entirely because of his passive, it's only after a game or two that you realize that the ragecage is the real MVP of his kit.

I feel like a good change for kindred is to let her first mark or two be in her own jungle so she can at BARE MINIMUM have a more consistent time getting off the ground.

Story time. When I started league, I thought kindred looked really cool so I picked her up. You know what happened. New player trying to play jungle trying to play kindred.

A few things as an avid Kindred player: the fixes you propoosed would break her early clear making her such a powerhouse early she would be able to full clear with ease while keeping pace with the enemy jungler, who may not be even doing the same. She is really strong and your tweeks will invalidate her stacking mechanic. She is really strong early and she is and has exselent skirmishing at lv's 3-5, being able to take on allot of opponents. I agree with your points that she asks allot of soomebody that would take up the role in the first place but: kiting camps, tracking the enemy jungler and looking after your team are things that every jungler has to do, not only Kindred. She may be demanding but I would argue that Graves, even if you put him with the other Fighters, demands more of the player playing him at every elo above silver to perform at the same rate as Kindred. The demand for you team to pick around you, if you first pick is real and I agree with you there. The trap of fishing for marks is old and I myself have fallen for it many times while I was learning her, but Kindred do not require their stacks to function in the early game. They can be a snowballing early game jungler as much as any other, but she does only bring damage and light utility in her basic spells. Kindred's stacks most of the time are simply a byproduct of a good overall performance with the champion, as you need to invade when ahead and counter jungle with every champion that fills the role if you are able to. TLDR: Kindred are hard as they punish you much harshly for not having down the fundamentals that every jungler demands, still the mechanical skill required to pilot them is not as high as described and they are not the only punishing jungler. She is meant to break early games open and the scaling is icing on top if the game happens to drag on. Amazing video, keep up the amazing work. Found your channel recently and am really interested in what you do here.

The biggest change that needs to happen for kindred is one simple thing. The enemies need to not see your jungle camp marks. Its incredibly punishing when the whole enemy team knows one of your goals and how to react. Playing anything plat or above will result in rotates and so you just need to abandon your camp marks 90% of the time

I think a fun change is how the enemy team sees which camp has been marked! I think it’d be good if the enemy saw three potential marked camps rather than the real one.

Why is it the enemy gets to know everything? They get to know who you've marked and the jungle camps marked. When somebody dies on the map, even if you haven't selected a target or were not a part of the kill, your passive turns off and you cannot select a target for a small bit of time. There is a cooldown to the passive itself, meaning that even if you perfectly kill somebody the second you mark them you still have to wait. With cards stacked against you, why is the design this way? You almost exclusively cannot go and be a laner, so why is it that your existence in the jungle is made to be this uphill battle where even when you are ahead your information is still telegraphed to the enemy? Unless you have reliable teammates, the enemy team can just be semi-aware and stop you. Top lanes will take krugs/gromps/scuttles just so you don't get a mark. It's not even just the enemy jungler who can fuck you over. What is your teammate to do? Stand at the camp and protect it for you? I truly do not believe that the enemy should have both your personal mark information and the random jungle camp information as well.

If I remember correctly, Riot said multiple times that they weren't happy with how Kindred came to be and that it was too much lamb and too little wolf. Then again they say this about a lot of champions but do nothing about it, nah better release 6 new abominations each year

I main kindred as an adc. Her skill ceiling is extremely high but she’s an absolute monster that really makes the word carry in adc fit

Kindred is a weird champ. Coming from a kindred main most of their problems come from build path. They are described as a marks man jungled and it’s a trap thinking that since their release their best build has been an amalgamation of bruiser and marksman items making their build very varied per game but takes a lot of game knowledge to know what to buy.

I installeg league 3 days ago and immediately bought kindred since I love their artwork. Kinda difficult to get into the jungle role this early but playing them is so much fun!

I entered the game because I love Kindred and have been playing them main as a new player And watching this video, I will give a resounding "yes, this." One of my big things is the big things I struggle with is how the enemy gets to know where your jungle marks are, and they're always inside of the enemy jungle. Their ability to see those marks makes them totally crash in on those areas to deny you your marks, and they almost always have an advantage on getting to them first because it's...in *their* jungle. I feel like something that'd make them a bit more forgiving to play is having a few of the marks appears in *your* jungle. You still have to hunt them down, and you're still dependent on your marks, but it just means every now and then you get the advantage on getting to your mark before the enemy jungler. Or maybe potentially give increased move speed while moving towards your mark (like with Soraka towards low health allies). As it is now feels soooooo so tilted *against* Kindred. You're completely dependent on the marks to function, and the marks are specifically encourage a pure-aggressive playstyle to invade the enemy jungle, which Kindred is too squishy to survive if they come across anyone, at least early on before they can burst the enemy enough to come out on top. They have great wall-jumping ability, but I've found most champions in the jungle have lunge and CC type stuff that locks me in place and squishes me like a bug. I joke to my friends "once I see a champion on my screen, it's already too late." Kindred is what I refer to as bad "artificial" difficulty. Their challenge doesn't overtly come from a wise use of your skillset and the skills being hard to use. Quite the opposite on that front with Kindred, really, I think their actual toolkit is very good and easy to apply. No, the difficulty comes from an unfair slant against them as a champion mechanically. The fundamental things to make them work are gatekept behind a passive fueled by stacks that are obscenely easy for your enemy to deny you. Playing against a Kindred as a jungler, it is *so* easy to just get to their mark before their do, kill that camp, and then slide back to ganking. Maybe even run into them and lock them down with a CC to seal their fate. The fact that I'm a very new player and can *easily* shut down a champion's route to basic viability is...well I think that speaks volumes.

This is absolutely right. I pick Kindred on Aram and I feel like an absolute beast, unkillable and with so much damage. Yet on the rift, every time I pick him ( I have like 11 games) I get an enormous surge of anxiety. I feel like literally everyone can kill me and getting marks is impossible.

Kindred is actually pretty beast at botlane. I got my mastery 7 on them because of it. Your early game damage with press the attack combined with your "E" instantly deletes your opponent. Your marks are also pretty consistent since you will cycle your mark with the enemy support and adc. The "w" passive also acts like a fleet footwork without the movespeed which boosts your survivability. The only downside is if you can't get ahead enough you will lose to heavy late game ADCs like jhin and vayne

I love Kindred and everything about them, but "playing the game on hard mode while everyone else chose normal difficulty" sounds about right. I have to do so many things right and have the stars align to have a team giving me backup, whereas the enemy just picks Jax or Rammus jungle and has roughly the same impact simply by walking at me and pressing their button whenever they see me. I love that getting marks feels meaningful, but at the same time I'm looking at a champion like Senna, who starts out at higher attack range, has an easier time collecting stacks, gets more bonus range from those stacks, additionally also gains ad, crit and lifesteal from those stacks and unlike me doesn't stop gaining more range at a certain point either. It's like those two champions are from completely different games.

The issues start to crop up at 2:23 when u start discussing their scaling. The origin of that issue is that Kindreds abilities have anti-synergy against champs. Their Q gains cdr while W is active but W deactivates when you chase a champ outside Ws radius. W deals current job dmg which would encourage you to engage with Q with it, but it's actually E that provides the CC needed at the beginning of a gank. However E's final proc deals missing health which encourages using it to finish a fight, and worst Q and W do not help stack E. Their passive encourages counter jungling without on-comand single target burst to act as a safety smite, hard cc, nor any sort scouting mechanic. Their kit is kinda a mess with conflicting goals

1. Her Q could lock in target in the beggining of the cast, right now if she loose vision in the middle of the Q no arrows are shot 2. Her W vision could be way better. 3. Her E could mark and give vision even in bushs Those could be some quality of life buffs imo

And to think: I'm a newbie Supp main who is learning JNG with Kindred. I like playing things on hard mode...

I feel like a good way to fix this problem is to allow Wolf to get stacks from their own jungle monsters if Kindred doesn't have a lot of stacks after a certain amount of time.

I wish I could play Kindred, her thighs are built different. Sadly I am a typical bronzie who is easily stressed by the structure of the game and the mechanics of fighting in general, right clicking and using abilities in correct order and all that. Consequently I need easy champs like Fizz to ensure I am not overwhelmed (most humans learn best under a moderated, healthy level of stress).

kindred is completely fine, they are just very hard to play. i made a mistake choosing them as my first ever jungler but i had a break and learned jg with lillia, then i came back to kindred when i had some picture of jungle and started learning the champion itself. it is hard but rewarding :D and im glad i didnt give up and im still getting better ^^

Haven't even watched the video but In summery? Map awareness and basic logic. Stare at the map and it'll flat out tell you where The Kindred are most likely going to go next to get the stacks they need. This includes the scuttle that they get after their first camp. Continue to apply this for the remainder of the game to make even Death cry Tears of The Goddess.

Just gotta say, thanks for referring to Kindred as them and not just "her" becauae they're technically two individuals.

Jankos: Am I a joke to you? Also, the thumbnails you make look really good! Keep it up!

This is a really good video man! And I don't know about the intro in other videos, but I thought it was great, you really gave a good explanation of the jungle and marksman position before you began explaining about Kindred

Really enjoyed the video! Good quality and very informative! Not just critiquing the champ but also giving suggestions on them, really like the format. Subbed

I love their lore and voices, I really hoped to eventually play them.

I think you also should do a series Like: Why everyone plays xyz (e.g. Akali, although she has a really Bad wr

I started playing kindred recently and of course YT reccomends me this video after i searched for guides lmao. Love your videos, even if its on the little older spectrum. Can't wait for your next one

I love that you gave an actual solution to the problem and didn't just complain. As a kindred main, excellent video!

Remove the cd on each champ you can mark so you can mark down one feeder repeatedly.

this is the first champion I really learned to play. Life has been so much easier playing other champs lol. she is still my favorite chamo though!

This video motivated me to play kindred since it made me know that im doing alot of progress in the really short time I've been playing her Vars said it takes hundreds of games to understand how to get your marks from your enemy jungler safely and how to maniuplate ur passive etc etc I learned all that in a really short time This makes me really happy and super motivated Vars also enlightened me more about kindreds limits and weaknesses

7:44 "Primordial Evil" lol That sounds like a badass way to rename it for a monstrous skin

literally happened 6 hours with my friend : Me : "yo i marked jax dont kill him Friend : Ok *kills him* Me : fam tf

I tend to play her when I play Aram. But not in Summoners Rift.

Platinum one trick Kindred there. Picking kindred in duo queues and being provided someone you can trust in, play around a half side of the map, with the synergies and backup you need is something that makes Kindred an excessively strong pick. And then, there are moment my premade is off, and I decide to queue up alone. THAT is basically flipping a coin and pray I'll have what it takes in my games to pop off. Thus leading to throwing LPs away most of the time. After investing like 3500+ games in the champs (playing them since day 1, before and after rework on passive) I can probably say I master the passive system, I can track where the next marks are gonna spawn, I know who and when to mark people, I know my damage from minute 1 to the last minute, I know what lanes and laners I can gank depending on picks and lane status, when to go for objective or invades. But it's not always enough to perform well in my games. Playing Kindred makes me equally feel like I'm being the hunter, and the prey. Enemies will always be there to contest any mark at any moment, but no matter how many times I ping, even in advance, where I'll need assistance people will nearly always ignore me. They have no idea what my champ does and require in game, sometimes I've even seen high platinum people flash out of my ult after being cast for 2 seconds cause they'd get low inside. Playing Kindred is not like playing Dark Souls and rely only on "gitting gud". Your own or your team's macro will ruin more often than your gameplay will. And still I keep picking them in every game, solo, duo, flex, just because I fucking love how it feels when you get to the point you can three shot priority targets. Or snowballing to the point I have 3 levels and one and a half item on the enemy jungle main that I spent half game invading and solo killing with little to no counterplay. Or when I fed my ass off, and carry fights just by pressing R at the moment I had to.

Glad to see some Kindred love. I am one of those people who can't find a main even after 2 years yet I always find myself coming back to Kindred and having fun. The learning curve is pretty scary, but it's a fun one and the reward is hard to put in words. Play them if you feel even a little inclined to do so, you will not regret it.

I dont want her to be easier because if kindred gets popular she will be patched and I hate my champions gettimg touched by rito. Actually one of the Main reasons why I chose Kindred and Lillia as mains

I just felt in love with them yesterday xD Dam RU-vid! I didn't even search anything!

I enjoy kindred a lot, recently picked her up in season 10 and now i use her quite regularly. She’s very fun to play with her needing to invade enemy jungle for mark’s. It’s such a thrill doing all the calculations in ur head and figuring out no enemy can do anything from you taking the marked gromp while everyone is playing aram bot

Used to watch your maplestory videos and just stumbled across this lol Nice video c:

As a 500k kindred, I think you are heavily underestimating their early game strength and somewhat overestimating their reliance on marks. Kindred is an above average early game duelist with low cd Q and kiting around walls. In most games 4 marks by 10-15 mins is sufficient not to be useless and 7 allows you to carry. Four marks allows you to not explicitly play around stacks and 7 means you don't have to think about them except in convenience.

Been waiting for this 😁

Learning a hard champ can be one of the most rewarding things in the game, azir, Aurelion Sol, kindred, all of these champs are a pain in the ass to learn but that’s what makes them fun. Especially watching someone else suffer trying to play them.

I used to play kindred a lot, and the reason I stopped was the team comp problem. Very rarely does your team need another ADC, and usually as a jungler you fill the gap of either AP, tank or assassin in the team. I do pick them in or against tank heavy team comps, where having another ADC in your team makes a lot of sense, or when I get an AP/melee botlaner. The power reliance on marks is true as well, specially noticeable when your team is on the backfoot, getting priority in lanes to contest marks or being able to kill someone from a losing position is very hard. So it really does feel like a feast or famine champion, where winning games get snowballed easily but losing ones are very uphill.

When I started playing 2 years ago I just picked cool looking one champ and that's how im M7 kindred now.

I feel like in general she needs better survivability.

I love this kind of video format I hope you make more

I absolutely love Kindred, as a premise, their background, the voice acting, one of the best ultimates in the game (especially if you bait enemy smites on major objectives), the mobility and the passive that goes so well with the theme. Despite my loving the champ so much i am so bad at them and in general a bad jungler. I just get shat all the time and am really unlucky with the stacks on the enemy champs. If you lose early you might as well just forget invading the enemy jungle to take camps. I always pick her on ARAM though if she is available by chance hahah

The most interesting design and gameplay-wise characters are so badly balanced that it's infuriating. F kindred, fated to never be good.

Another issue that could be plaguing Kindred is the mark spawn mechanics of her passive. The marks kindred can get are random in location but on the enemy's side of the map, which means that the enemy jungler knows where to path to shut down a Kindred. If they made changes similar to the ones made for the Omnistone keystone, like that the mark is more likely to spawn near where Kindred is currently located, it would make both the mark acquisition be faster and more reliable, and also easier to track where Kindred is. I'm not sure if that would be a perfect solution, but it would certainly help.

Thanks for your videos!

a form of adjustment is maybe reducing the mark timing from 8 to 6 or 5 seconds as its so long and even when it looks completed it doesnt give the mark as the marked enemy died too quickly and maybe changing the mechanic where everyone can see marks as its just an invitation for a 3 or 4 man collapse from whatever side scuttle is marked maybe it could be a little icon on the bottom left of the camp to say "this camp COULD be marked but idk go check" maybe thats too much change idk

I had a 43% winrate at first. Now I have a 65% winrate with Kindred. Pretty difficult champion, and worth the effort for me.

I'd love to see "Why no one plays Taliyah" I feel like it'd be pretty easy

do a reverse series on why some champions are so consistently popular. interesting to see an analysis of their kits and how it survives meta changes or at least adapt to it

your voice brought so much nostalgia from back when i was playing maplestory

me after enemy jg firstpicks kindred: a scorpion that is faster that the fastest man alive and can make you his little dog or a turtle that is faster then the fastest thing and he makes u play "why are you hitting yourself" just by standing there.

I love champ's that no one plays, because if you master them the opponents won't know how to deal with all of your tricks

Great video, well thought out and reasoned! I will say you could use a disclaimer that you are speaking only about solo Q though, or maybe a section related to how the champion is doing in pro-play, because kindred is a viable pick in pro right now. Maybe you could talk about what makes them effective in pro but less so in solo Q games. Just a thought :) looking forward to the next video!

This was a great analysis

All negative motivation can be negated with one simple word: THICC

I call myself a Kindred main, M7 Kindred, they are my highest point champ but I still fucking suck on managing them correctly, I have good moments, but I'm still nowhere close to master them.

Great video!!

The enemy can see the neutral target mark at the moment it appear, maybe adding a delay to being able to see which target is marked could at least make easier to stack the passive

"Why no one plays kindred" Kindred isn't played because her clear feels bad because her w sustain is to poor and doesn't really help her clear. Her champion is featured as playing as the two hunters of death but wolf has nothing to do with the kit to be honest. Kindred's ult takes to much knowledge to know when to use and her her passive requires your team to play with you but in the most popular elos, plat and down, kindred's mark feels more like a chore than anything because her team doesn't play around her champ. In order to raise kindreds popularity (without a full rework), i would say that her W needs a change or at least a visual rework to make wolf FEEL like hes there, her passive needs to let her see marks BEFORE the enemies 5 or so seconds, that way she can path to it before the enemy team, or her ult needs to be changed to keep everyone alive then do a burst of damage to enemies that is a % of the overall damage prevented that way people aren't scared to play her and messing up in team fights.

Can you do Lissandra? I love her but rarely anyone plays her.

Kindred is really good if you know how to counterplay the enemies own objectives, that also means giving some early drags if it's a champ that can lvl 4 the drag like you can. So Rift or an invade is always a great option once you know where the enemy is. Also, people don't know that you can manipulate the spawns on the marks which leaves new players at a total disadvantage on trying to learn them.

My fix would be.. two marks of the kindred. Both granting a common stat and a unique stat bonus each.. like for example both stacks would provide 1% Target current health as true damage to kindreds basic attacks and skills but lamb marks increase AS while Wolf marks increase Crit. Additionally the marks can be activated separately.. at any time, only one mark can be applied to any champion and the other mark will appear in camps amd the kind of mark that you can apply will alternate between wolf and lamb..

More accurate title: how to attract every kindred main on youtube.

I just wish Riot allows Kindred's passive mark camps in your own jungle

I mained Kindred whole last year. I have to agree with your points. The one thing I would like to have done to them, is for Wolf to reveal his scouted area when W is on. They are the eternal hunters afterall. Wolf could then scout the bushes and Kindred would gain the advantage in early game against bush-ganks.

I think that the main problem comes from stacking the passive since the mark is always in the enemy jg. I think it would be great if (a small part of the time) trying to get a mark wasn't a death wish...

Coming from a kindred main, it’s bc they’re bad, a good kindred is godly but a bad or even okay one literally just loses the game. When I don’t play jungle and have mine pick kindred i drop everything I’m doing and make sure they’re at least decent or I dodge 😞

The other day I got called a meta slave cuz I play Kindred :p

Maybe they can do something that ties into the "Accepting vs Fleeing from death" they have going on in the lore. Something where Wolf can hunt down fleeing champions and execute, perhaps?

Great video as usual

Hey at least she's one of league's best waifu

No one plays her? Dude, she's abused so hard in high elos, mostly because of her q and r.

I agree with many points of the video, and as a kindred main I really like it. Except maybe the part at around 5:45. Kindred is actually not that weak early, she can easily duel champs like Lee Sin and Elise due to her superior Movement-capabilities and her very very higher sustain damage if you survive past an early point. I was especially surprised when you said that Evelynn would "bring the pain early" to Kindred. Evelynn is extremly weak early, with low damage, low health and low mobility. The only thing Evelynn has earlygame is clearspeed, which Kindred is very good at keeping up with.

Vars has now done a video on all of my mains and I am convinced I'm a masochist.