Hi, I'm Mcalmic, a Gold II Kled main who climbed from bronze 4 to Gold in my first ranked season with Kled. My goal with this guide is to help you climb out of bronze/silver with Kled.
Quick Overview
Quick Kled Tank Top Build
Summoner Spells
Starting Items
Best Overall Build
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Runes
You can take
Conqueror
with sorcery or resolve secondary into any matchup.
Lethal Tempo
is for when you go
Titanic Hydra
for the massive on-hit damage. If the opponent has 3+ squishies, run
Press the Attack
. If you're in a hard lane like
Fiora
, run
Grasp of the Undying
for safe laning.
All-Purpose
LT (Jak'Sho)
PTA (vs Squishies)
Grasp (Hard Lane)
Conq w/ Sorcery
Conq w/ Inspiration
Conq w/ Domination
Breakdown
Conqueror
is the best all-purpose rune for Kled. He stacks it extremely fast with
Violent Tendencies
,
Bear Trap on a Rope
, and
Jousting
and it gives him healing, which is critical when you're playing a champion who likes to be low.
Conqueror
works well with every build on Kled, so you can never go wrong with taking it.
Lethal Tempo
is the very powerful rune for resistance heavy builds like Jak'Sho. It gives you massive on-hit and sustained AOE damage and allows you to remount quickly because of your resistances.
Do not take
Lethal Tempo
on any other build, because
Conqueror
outperforms it late and
Press the Attack
outperforms it early unless you go for the tank build.
Press the Attack
is the best rune into a team with 3+ squishies for the bruiser or ad builds.
Press the Attack
is very strong before the first item, but it falls off very hard against beefier opponents.
Press the Attack
goes well with attack speed items like
Blade of The Ruined King
or
Stridebreaker
.
Do not take
Press the Attack
if you are going tank or the opponent has fewer than 3 squishies. Other runes outperform it in damage in those cases.
Grasp of the Undying
is the best rune to play safe in lane and scale. Use this in matchups like
Fiora
where you cannot fight her in lane so you can avoid all-ins and scale with the tank build.
Do not take
Grasp of the Undying
if you want to snowball off of lane or if you're going bruiser/AD.
Minor Runes
Key:
Exclamation Points= this rune is good.
Question Mark = this rune could be good, but it's situational to take it.
Precision Tree:
Overheal
- !!
Triumph
!! -
Presence of Mind
Overheal
and
Presence of Mind
both don't work.
Triumph
gives you snowball and clutch heals when dismounted.
!!
Legend: Alacrity
!! - !!
Legend: Tenacity
!! -
Legend: Bloodline
Legend: Alacrity
and
Legend: Tenacity
are both very good. I prefer
Legend: Alacrity
for the extra damage, but
Legend: Tenacity
is great if you're facing a cc heavy team and going bulky.
Legend: Bloodline
is terrible.
?
Coup de Grace
? -
Cut Down
- !!
Last Stand
!!
Last Stand
is perfect for Kled. Always take it for bruiser/tank and you should take it most times for lethality. Only take
Coup de Grace
when you're against 2+ executes and are full ad.
Cut Down
doesn't work because you have the highest base hp in the game.
Resolve Tree:
!!
Demolish
!! -
Font of Life
-
Shield Bash
Demolish gives you a ton of extra gold through plates, letting you snowball harder. Font of life and shield bash don't work with your kit at all.
Conditioning
- !!
Second Wind
!!- !!
Bone Plating
!!
Conditioning is fine, but second wind or bone plating just give you too much value in lane. Second wind is invaluable in ranged matchups and bone plating is generally good.
Overgrowth
-
Revitalize
- !!
Unflinching
!!
Unflinching gives you massive tenacity when you're dismounted, letting you get better comebacks. Revitalize doesn't work and overgrowth is fine but worse.
Sorcery Tree:
All of row 1 is bad.
!!
Transcendence
!! -
Celerity
-
Absolute Focus
Transcendence gives you better scaling and Kled loves CDR. Celerity is bad because you don't run speed, and Absolute Focus is an anti-synergy with your kit.
Scorch
-
Waterwalking
- !!
Gathering Storm
!!
You don't poke, so scorch is bad. Waterwalking is worse than using R for roams. Gathering storm is the best rune because it compensates for your bad late game.
Domination Tree:
!!
Cheap Shot
!! - !!
Taste of Blood
!! - !!
Sudden Impact
!!
All three top row runes are good. Sudden impact is better for ad, cheap shot is better for tank, and taste of blood is generally useful.
Zombie Ward
-
Ghost Poro
- ?
Eyeball Collection
?
You want to snowball, so eyeball collection is by far the best to rack up kills. You usually skip this row for secondary runes because you want the hunter runes and first row for consistency, but if you feel really confident you can skip the first row and go eyeball collection + ravenous hunter.
!!
Treasure Hunter
!! -
Ingenious Hunter
- ?
Relentless Hunter
? -
Ultimate Hunter
Treasure Hunter gives you great snowball, which Kled loves. All the other ones are bad, with the exception of Relentless hunter if you are playing jungle. (Kled jungle is Jank though)
Inspiration Tree:
All of row 1 is bad.
Future's Market
-
Minion Dematerializer
-
Biscuit Delivery
Biscuit delivery is the only reason you take Inspiration second. Along with Time Warp Tonic, it lets you get a quick burst of chase and healing when you're dismounted.
Cosmic Insight
- ?
Approach Velocity
? - !!
Time Warp Tonic
!!
See above. Approach velocity sounds fine, but I haven't tried it yet.
Summoners
Top
Breakdown
Ignite is perfect for Kled. In lane, it extends your damage a lot. Igniting at the beginning of a 1v2 can ensure you get the kill quickly and remount instead of dying. You can also use ignite to cheese the enemy level 1, especially if you have press the attack or lethal tempo. If the opponent doesn't respect your dueling power, you can easily kill them level 1. This is elaborated below in the "Laning" section.
Flash is very good, but not strictly necessary on Kled because he already has a dash and ult. A great way to use flash is to stick to enemies before level 6. When you hit your q, you can try to predict their flash to make sure you stick your q and get the full combo off.
Teleport is good, but the nerfs have made it a lot less necessary. Use it to avoid losing cs and as a splitpush enabler later into the game.
Barrier is a very niche, but very powerful spell to help you win lane. Barrier allows you to get clutch remounts in lane if you use it when you're low. By taking barrier, you have to take ignite because ignite serves the same purpose of improved 1v1 ability, just better, so there's no point in taking barrier unless you want both. You miss out on flash, so you should only take this into immobile matchups that stat check you. Especially useful against champs like Garen or Trundle.
Build
Jak'Sho
Stridebreaker
Lethality
Crit (META)
Color Builds
Tank
Boots
Stridebreaker
Lethality
Goredrinker
Shieldbow
Titanic is a very powerful item on Kled. Unfortunately, it is worse than ravenous in basically every way because ravenous is such a broken item at the moment (see below). Don't build this item until it gets buffed or ravenous gets nerfed.
Normal defensive boots. Take it into ad comps with 2+ auto attackers.
Normal defensive boots. Take it into heavy CC comps or 3+ magic damage.
Ionian Boots are really underrated on Kled. In the bruiser or ad builds, these are really powerful for getting cooldowns up faster so you can get a q off before you dismount, chase the enemy, or just get extra damage. Take these when both defensive boots are bad and you're not going tank or if you want to play really aggressive.
Never take berserker's. It's a trap item. Ionian boots do more damage and Kled already has all the attack speed he needs.
Stridebreaker is a great item for Kled. IMO it's better than Goredrinker right now. You can weave it into your combos during either E cast. It's great for chasing squishies to wait for your E cooldown to come back up. You can use this after the Q yank for an extended slow.
Eclipse gives Kled burst, vamp, and survivability all in one item. It's very, very strong if you can play Kled well. Eclipse packs an insane amount of damage in a single item. It even gives you armor penetration and speed with the passive.
Youmuus is the best snowball item because it gives you crazy damage, chase, and roam to stack up on kills. You should probably sell this late game for another bruiser item if they're not all squishies.
Serpent's Fang fits a lot of lethality in one very cheap item, and is really strong vs a team comp w/ a lot of shields. When bought into the right comp, this can be worth double its price.
Duskblade is only better than eclipse if the enemy team is extremely squishy and you are hard snowballing. In the right cases, though, it can perform really well.
Prowler's is an extremely powerful item against squishy comps and when you are snowballing. Eclipse is usually better but against teams with a high mobility backline who are hard to chase, you can build this item while snowballing.
Goredrinker is the most popular Mythic on Kled, but right now the traditional bruiser build is bad right now. Since they removed the spite passive it's been a shadow of its broken state. The recent buffs have made Goredrinker viable with ad items like Youmuus rush.
Shieldbow is a pretty janky item. I find it to be a worse version of eclipse. The optimal way to build Shieldbow is lethality, but you can go for a Navori Quickblades build for fun.
An Entire Section for Ravenous Hydra because it is Broken right now
RAVENOUS HYDRA
The main reason Kled is so broken in preseason is that he is one of the best champions at abusing ravenous hydra. This item allows you to double down on Kled's greatest strength: his laning phase. Converting a massive lane advantage into a middle/late game advantage used to be hard, but now you just buy ravenous hydra and get 40 stacks and 1v5. Ravenous Hydra is so broken it will probably be nerfed soon, but as of 13.7, it is absolutely insane and you should rush it first item almost every, if not every single game on Kled. UPDATE: STILL BROKEN RUSH IT FIRST ITEM EVERY GAME.
Skill Path
Standard
Lvl 2 Melee Fight
Kled
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Kled
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Laning
Level 1 Cheese
Kled can cheese the majority of champions level 1 by waiting in a bush, waiting for them to walk past, then hitting them with a q. AA them back to their tower. This will almost always cost them a flash or an early kill. The only champions you can't do this with are Trundle, Darius, Tryndamere, Rengar, and ranged toplaners because they can just turn and kill you or run. If the opponent doesn't know that Kled beats them, you can get a free kill like in the video at the top. Your goal level 1 is to poke the enemy, not miss cs and not get dismounted in order to set up a kill level 2 or 3.
Level 2
Level 2 is your first power spike. You usually level E, but don't level anything until you want to fight because W triggers whenever you auto anything, including minions and it has a long cooldown when you can't really fight. Wait for a fight to get a point in w if they don't have a lot of escape or are brawling with you, and get E in all other circumstances. You can go for a short EQ trade or all in. If you don't feel you can kill them, poke them some more for level 3.
Level 3
Level 3 is your strongest spike in lane. You get access to your full combo with stickiness and damage. Keep track of when you level so you can surprise engage. You can go for an E -> Flash all-in to kill if they have flash because q range is longer than flash range. if they flash, just E2 after them if you have q on them and it's a free kill.
Level 6
Your ult is great for jungle skirmishes and roams to mid. If their mid is pushed in, you can try to walk to river and ult behind them to cut them off. You can coordinate mid dives for free kills. You also get to extend your combo with a second q after you ult to chase the enemy.
Combos
Key
AA = normal auto
Q =
Bear Trap on a Rope
Q2 =
Bear Trap on a Rope
pull
W1, W2, W3, W4 =
Violent Tendencies
E1 = first cast of
Jousting
E2 = second cast of
Jousting
EQ =
Bear Trap on a Rope
during
Jousting
Long R = long range
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
Short R = close range
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
Conq = 12 stacks of
Conqueror
PTA = 3 stacks of
Press the Attack
LT = 6 stacks of
Lethal Tempo
Reminder: Feel free to weave in
Ignite
any time during these combos. You can flash during E or EQ for a surprise long-range engage.
Level 2
Trade/All-In EQ -> AA -> AA -> Q2 -> E2 -> AA -> AA (Conq/PTA)
Sticky All-InQ -> AA -> AA -> Q2 -> E1 -> AA (PTA) -> AA (Conq) -> E2 -> AA -> AA
Level 3
Trade/All-in EQ -> W1 -> W2 -> W3 (PTA) -> E2 (Conq) -> Q2 -> W4 -> AA -> AA
Sticky All-In Q -> Short R -> W1 -> W2 -> Q2 -> E1 -> W3 (Conq/PTA) -> W4 -> E2 -> AA
Flash Teamfight Dive E1 (Flash during e so you're on their backline) -> Q -> W1 -> W2 -> W3 (PTA) -> E2 (Conq) -> Q2 -> W4 -> Short R -> Q -> AA -> AA -> Q2 -> AA
Abilities
Breakdown
Skaarl is the defining feature of Kled's kit. Kled effectively has two healthbars: his and Skaarl's. Skaarl takes damage for Kled and all bonus health gets put into her healthbar. When Skaarl’s healthbar goes to zero, Kled is cleansed of cc, immune for a short period, and becomes dismounted. When Kled is dismounted, he has a longer attack range, his
Bear Trap on a Rope
instead becomes Pocket Pistol a shotgun that knocks him back, he has 80% ad, moves very quickly towards enemies but much slower otherwise, and he becomes unable to use E or R. Kled can build up courage by killing minions, hitting towers, hitting epic monsters, or hitting/killing champions. When Kled gets to 100 courage, he becomes immune for a short period again and Skaarl returns, healing him, returning him to his mounted form, and resetting the cooldowns of
Jousting
and
Bear Trap on a Rope
. Kled, when played well, effectively has three healthbars. The remount mechanic gives you “invisible” extra health that enemies might not expect. Use this to bait enemies into engaging you or win fights.
In terms of numbers, dismounted Q gives 5 courage per pellet, or 25 in total and each auto gives 15. Minion kills give 4, and tower attacks give 5. Pay attention to your courage to calculate if you should go for a fight when dismounted.
Here are some attack combinations that get your remount:
5 autos and a perfect q
4 autos and two imperfect q’s
7 autos
Learn these well to pick good fights.
Bear Trap on a Rope (Mounted Q)
Kled's
Bear Trap on a Rope
is his bread and butter ability. It has huge damage, a pull, and a slow at the end. When it attaches, there's a circle that slowly gets smaller. You should do everything you can to stay in the circle because the pull does most of the damage and has grievous wounds and a slow. Always max this first because it gives you a lot of damage and it also upgrades your dismounted Q.
Bear Trap on a Rope
will stay on targets who flash if they stay in range.
Bear Trap on a Rope
stays on champions that become untargetable, like Vladimir pool, Yuumi attach, or Ekko ult. It will also pull champs out of dashes, like Talon parkour.
Bear Trap on a Rope
gives true sight for the entire time it's active (like
Jousting
), so you can stab champs like Akali even if they're in stealth.
Pocket Pistol (Dismounted Q)
When dismounted, Kled's
Bear Trap on a Rope
turns into a ranged ability that fires 5 shots in a cone and knocks him back. It holds up to two charges. Each shot gives you 5 courage, so you should use this along with your autos to remount. Q lets you jump over walls. If you stand next to a thin wall and Q away from it, it will knock you over the wall. This is great for chasing enemies who flash and escaping. You can also use Q to knock yourself into the enemy if you are slowed to chase. You can Q Flash to surprise low health enemies so they can't react and will get killed by the Q. A tech to remount faster is to Q the enemy with your back to a wall you can't Q hop over to shorten the animation.
Violent Tendencies
gives Kled 175% attack speed for his first four attacks.
Violent Tendencies
automatically triggers whenever you attack and gives Kled a large part of his damage. Don't level it until you start fighting, because you can't control when it goes off and you'll have a window of low damage if you try to attack a minion and it goes off.
Violent Tendencies
won't trigger on jungle plants, though. You level
Violent Tendencies
second because it deals the second most damage when leveled. Against
Counter Strike
or
Spirit's Refuge
, or other champions that have a dodge, EQ them to bait for them to activate their block and it ends before hitting them with
Violent Tendencies
. If they don't fall for the bait you can attack once and wait until the ability ends to hit the rest.
Jousting
is how Kled gets on and sticks to enemies. It's a dash that you can recast if you hit a champion or Epic monster. You can cast
Bear Trap on a Rope
during either cast it during
Jousting
to animation cancel the
Bear Trap on a Rope
. The first
Jousting
is a regular dash, but the second will cross walls and extend long distances to get you to your target; you can also cast it on dead targets you hit with the first E. You can
Jousting
before you predict your enemy will flash a wall and chase them over it. Use your
Jousting
to dodge high power abilities. For example, if you EQ a Fiora and they
Riposte
your
Bear Trap on a Rope
pull,
Jousting
behind them. You can do the same with Sett's
Haymaker
and deny him a lot of his damage.
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
is a very long range ult that gives kled ramping movement speed, shield, and max health physical damage on a target. As soon as you reach a certain range of an enemy champion, it will lock on, making you follow them through walls. You can wall hop with
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
if you have vision of an enemy through a thin wall.
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
is great for securing picks. Although it might seem like a teamfight engage ulti, you only want to engage a 5v5 with it if your team is very ahead. The main use is to engage on picks or to gain a large advantage in 1v1s by interrupting channels, cancelling their auto attack, getting a shield, and doing damage.
Fiora
Bear Trap on a Rope
Violent Tendencies
Jousting
Chaaaaaaaarge!!!
