Quick Gameplay Thoughts: April 25

That's a little disappointing, hopefully the emotional roller coaster skarner players have been on for the past few years will be ended eventually.

Edit: Thanks for responding!

I appreciate the update meddler. I hope we won't have to wait too long for skarner to get some love. It's less about him being strong and more about being enjoyable to play.

Who needs more work than skarner? He's been neglected since preseason 6. The last time he ever got spotlight, was when trinity force got changed, but even hecarim put him in the dirt then. Even amumu got buffs this season during a jungle pass to buff underperforming junglers, and skarner was just ignored despite being worse.

He needs a VGU, and I know he's not on the priority VGU list (atleast not the most recent one). Can he get something small? He really needs the rek'sai treatment right now, but can he atleast have some strengths to him? His "objective controller" identity is done better by almost everyone.

@Meddler Could you please explain me why do you think skarner is strong? In early game skarner with fervor is weaker 1v1 than malphite...almost every champion can kill him 1v1. It's really frustrating....

There have been tons of Maokai threads over the past week, but the consensus from what I've seen anyway is basically "the ult is slow as molasses and isn't going to help him much, the reduction of his defenses leaves him as one of the worst tanks in the game, the passive in the early game is horrible and too strong late game, the E buff is unnecessary, and his W is practically useless now, because at least his current E can be used to scout and provide a slow if someone chooses to run."

In my opinion, he didn't need a rework, he only needed 3 changes all on his W. After his relaunch, he moved from jungler to top laner, and rather than trying to balance them out, Riot pigeonholed him into a Top, and this new rework reinforces that. The goal was to make him less of an issue top, and that could have been solved with 3 easy steps:

1. Increase the W range.

2. Reduce damage to players.

3. Increase damage to monsters.

Done. That way, he can still be a dependable brick wall in the top lane without out-damaging his opponent by building full-tank, requiring him to build damage to deal damage, meanwhile, he can clear a little faster in the jungle since he currently struggles with single targets, and has better gank potential without having to blow Flash on every engage.

If this rework goes through, he's not going to jungle again, and that's depressing. He'll need to use his ult on cooldown for even a slight chance of a gank working, and as has been demonstrated, you can outrun it, meaning he'll only be able to gank if the enemy is literally hugging a wall, or doesn't know what a minimap is. Needless to say, I'm not a fan. I just want my favorite jungler back where he belongs.

Would it be possible to incorporate them into the champ-select searchbar? Pretty please.

I agree that "get resistances for CS and reduced damage on active" isn't very engaging (and is also less noob-friendly, which garen should be, since it punishes if you can't last-hit efficiently).

What is garen's purpose, his strength, his niche? Maybe he is the best at killing the enemy team's most fed carry, then his W could be something like "reduced damage from the villain". Though being a Demacian, maybe his petricite armor reduces magic damage? He could be more effective against magic damage threats instead of having generalistic defense

When you say nothing planned for Rengar, are you refering to buffs/nerfs or any work at all / just in general. This is the first time in ages a Rioter has commented on him :/

Hi Meddler, if you read this I really appreciate your time. I've played thousands of games in Garen and I'm still struggling to get toward high Diamond or Masters with Garen. In fact, many Garen mains haven't been able to exceed this threshold of low Diamond. Sometimes it's decision making for sure, but we feel like Garen's limitations offer seldom a decent matchup. Although his W has strength lategame, it's absolutely a nonexistant ability in laning phase. This is why if you were to spectate a Garen game in Diamond where the enemy can easily anticipate Garen's approach of attack, Garen loses a lot of trades, even when I know I time my W correctly for example after I see my silence wears off. When a juggernaut simply can't even trade with tanks that are cc oriented like Maokai, Nautlius, and sometimes Zac, you know there is an issue. Even rushing Black Cleaver feels like a losing battle since these above champions, and Shen, who can get Sunfire Cape - punish us even more thanks to the percentile magic/physical damage scaling from the recent addition of 100 health.

Courage of the Collusus is a keystone yet provides greater worth than Garen's W in itself. I'm losing matchups vs a player that has played less than 20 games on Darius, simply because mathematically there is no way to come on top on trades unless Darius refrains from hitting buttons on his keyboard.

The ability has to be reworked. The feeling of fulling stacking your W is nice, but I feel like the lack of skill I basically provide later on in the game (Hit W while going in) is just devoid of critical thinking. I often get 40% CDR on Garen so hitting the ability as much as possible is a no-brainer.

One small idea I had was having like a rounded square barrier with four walls that lasts multiple seconds- Similar to Fiora's Vitals in Grand challenge. Each wall could soak up an amount of damage. The counterplay is enemies positioning to remove one part of the wall, and then they can attack Garen's HP directly. It would be so cool to juggle positioning with a strong shield like that while chasing the villain. This could also encourage actual trading in lane, as if you run in lane, you're backside wall in the shield will be easily broken, but if you stay you could kite to a wall in Summoner's Rift and use the second shield wall. Further counterplay exists when the enemy could flash behind you to expose your backside for a kill, or even Garen flashing himself to get in a position to use his other walls in his shield.

It's similar to Fiora but since they are both Demacian champions, thematically it could work, and by scrapping the always relevant, always spammed Damage Reduction you can give all elo ranges more counterplay in handling Garen.

Honestly it's your call though. But please do not just alter the stats of W and call it a day. Garen has issues trading with anyone with true damage since it basically removes the ability from Garen's keyboard. And since we'll commonly only have the active for 2 seconds, it feels just extremely, painfully weak.

Sincerely,

~A Passionate and deprived Diamond Garen main.

Hi Meddler, if you read this I really appreciate your time. I've played thousands of games in Garen and I'm still struggling to get toward high Diamond or Masters with Garen. In fact, many Garen mains haven't been able to exceed this threshold of low Diamond. Sometimes it's decision making for sure, but we feel like Garen's limitations offer seldom a decent matchup. Although his W has strength lategame, it's absolutely a nonexistant ability in laning phase. This is why if you were to spectate a Garen game in Diamond where the enemy can easily anticipate Garen's approach of attack, Garen loses a lot of trades, even when I know I time my W correctly for example after I see my silence wears off. When a juggernaut simply can't even trade with tanks that are cc oriented like Maokai, Nautlius, and sometimes Zac, you know there is an issue. Even rushing Black Cleaver feels like a losing battle since these above champions, and Shen, who can get Sunfire Cape - punish us even more thanks to the percentile magic/physical damage scaling from the recent addition of 100 health.

Courage of the Collusus is a keystone yet provides greater worth than Garen's W in itself. I'm losing matchups vs a player that has played less than 20 games on Darius, simply because mathematically there is no way to come on top on trades unless Darius refrains from hitting buttons on his keyboard.

The ability has to be reworked. The feeling of fulling stacking your W is nice, but I feel like the lack of skill I basically provide later on in the game (Hit W while going in) is just devoid of critical thinking. I often get 40% CDR on Garen so hitting the ability as much as possible is a no-brainer.

One small idea I had was having like a rounded square barrier with four walls that lasts multiple seconds- Similar to Fiora's Vitals in Grand challenge. Each wall could soak up an amount of damage. The counterplay is enemies positioning to remove one part of the wall, and then they can attack Garen's HP directly. It would be so cool to juggle positioning with a strong shield like that while chasing the villain. This could also encourage actual trading in lane, as if you run in lane, you're backside wall in the shield will be easily broken, but if you stay you could kite to a wall in Summoner's Rift and use the second shield wall. Further counterplay exists when the enemy could flash behind you to expose your backside for a kill, or even Garen flashing himself to get in a position to use his other walls in his shield.

It's similar to Fiora but since they are both Demacian champions, thematically it could work, and by scrapping the always relevant, always spammed Damage Reduction you can give all elo ranges more counterplay in handling Garen.

Honestly it's your call though. But please do not just alter the stats of W and call it a day. Garen has issues trading with anyone with true damage since it basically removes the ability from Garen's keyboard. And since we'll commonly only have the active for 2 seconds, it feels just extremely, painfully weak.

Sincerely,

~A Passionate and deprived Diamond Garen main.

I thought she was supposed to be a high reward assassin with lower than normal risk (for an assassin) (AKA a beefier, more reliable akali)