League Of Legends' new champion Kindred will be going live later this week. To prepare players for their arrival, Riot Games has released a champion spotlight video that runs down their abilities and strategies behind them.
Kindred, made up of a white Lamb spirit and black Wolf spirit, is the manifestation of death in League lore. Their passive, Mark of the Kindred, reflects their status as a sort of grim reaper. Kindred can select an enemy champion from a pop-up window and mark them for death. If Kindred kills the target or assists in their death, they'll receive a permanent bonus to their basic attacks. This mark takes a few seconds to activate so you can't just slap it on targets right before death.
Wolf will also periodically mark jungle monsters for death. Every other player, friendly or hostile, will know what creature has been marked though. This makes Kindred vulnerable to ambushes. On the other hand, enemies don't know whether Kindred is actually going for his marked target or not. They could be wasting time by setting up a trap. Meanwhile, they're leaving other objectives on the map open to attack.
Dance of Arrows, Kindred's Q ability, lets them leap to a nearby location and then throw auto-targeted arrows at up to three enemies. The dash component to Dance allows Kindred to hop over walls, which should make it very easy for them to traverse the jungle.
Kindred's W ability, Wolf's Frenzy lets them passively build stacks of Hunter's Vigor while moving. Once they have a full set of stacks, their next basic attack steals health. The active component of Wolf's Frenzy will split Wolf off from Lamb and attack enemies in the nearby area. While Lamb stays in this area, their cooldown for Dance of Arrows is significantly reduced. If they leave this zone, though, Wolf will come back to them.
Mounting Dread (E) is Kindred's prime ganking ability. Kindred slows his target and, if he can hit the enemy three times in a short period of time, they'll be hurt for a percentage of their max health. The high damage of the ability makes it ideal for taking down larger jungle minions as well.
Their ultimate, Lamb's Respite, prevents all units in a given area from dying for four seconds. Their health will freeze at around 10%. Once the ability expires, affected units will be healed. If your ally is knocked out of the area, though, they'll lost the benefits.
Riot admits in the video that Kindred is a complicated champion. They're very squishy to start so they have to kite jungle camps early on to stay alive. Hunting Mark of the Kindred targets, meanwhile, can be very risky especially if you venture into the enemy's jungle. Bringing friends on the hunt is recommended, though you can't always count on cooperative teammates in solo queue.
Kindred will launch alongside update 5.20. This will be the fourth champion added to LoL this year, following Bard, Ekko and Tahm Kench. Kindred won't be available in the 2015 Worlds, currently underway in Europe.
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