Patch Chat with the Playtest Team - 6.16, the Pre-Pre Worlds Patch

Omg that's right... I wonder what that skin would even look like. It'd be so cool...

If that's the case, why is Brand (a champion most people see as quite strong) getting buffed next patch (as it says on PBE)

The only players who still consider garen strong are the bronze/silvers.

nobody higher elo says garen is strong..

[{quoted}](name=Riot Aesah,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=relEr8rN,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2016-08-09T23:31:26.850+0000)

I don't think we have any plans to buff Garen. AFAIK there's still a good amount of our playerbase that view him as very strong even though he's not played in competitive, and that's important to take into consideration as well.

its red posts like this that make me just want to leave the game. why do i even bother waiting if youre not working objectively and have obviously no intent to actually balance the game?

his winrate and playrate have been dropping the last couple of month. including at bronze and silver. all as a result of indirect item nerfs. he was genunely balanced for almost a whole year, and now after all the massive changes you did to the game with the mage update, he needs a couple number buffs. that is all. the risk of overbuffing him by making him a little more tanky or reverting the mobility nerfs after his rework is low.

since when do you care how a champion is viewed?

you are buffing a lot of champions next patch who are generally viewed as already strong. brand? vaynes lategame? why does it matter for garen but not for these champions? the only difference is that they are used in pro games.

personally im not going to wait another 2 years until you decide to look at him again. i know im just one guy, and it doesnt matter to your company, but if there isnt something happening before the assassin rework, this comment is enough for me to finally drop this game and never look back. there are many other good games out there that are fun.

garen has been weak for the most part since he was introduced to the game. at some point it doesnt feel like having patience to wait for you to work on him makes sense anymore.

you can say that you have other priorities right now, but you always have other priorities. and it is evident that some champions simply get more attention than others, and you seem to be mostly interested to work on your personal favourites.

Can you talk about what exactly is preventing him from being buffed? As long time Garen player in diamond+ elo (masters peak, d1 multiple season, d5+ in dynamic queue era) I believe he suffers from an overly weak early game. Not even relative to what he "used" to be, but relative to the strengths of other melee champions who completely lack any sort of ability to be a threat out of directly melee range - examples like tryndamere, darius, irelia, jax, who all scale equally as well or better and have the same core gameplay as garen. Bringing kill potential and little else to a team.

I don't think he needs any changes mid-late game in any form, but facts like his Q is strictly the better ability for trading early game because it's damage is both upfront and higher per-skill-rank in terms of what you gain for ranking them in any scenario where the enemy champ isn't completely isolated for greater than 3/4ths of the duration. His Q should be his utility skill but its his best dueling skill cause you need to get out before the silence is off or lose all trades once the enemy can retaliate. His early game is overly frail and the sluggish nature of level 1-3 spin (5 ticks), along with his unrewarding skill paths is super unfulfilling as a long time garen player.

He can't even jungle because of his W not stacking quickly enough on jungle camps, so he's an easily counter picked niche hero, with low role flexibility and a poor early game. He has so many factors working against his ability to reach a point where he can perform consistently at a high level of play, and in my opinion, just needs a small boost to his early or a redistribution of his Q and E damage to make E THE damage skill and Q THE utility skill that makes it more rewarding to play him.

As a final gripe when he was made more kitable by reducing silence, move speed %, duration and base ms from his kit his channel times on his Q could have been compensated in some way but skilled players can often escape from you during the animation, at times the damage has been applied and people can still flash after the ability has 'landed' even though they shouldn't be able to, due to silence.

tl;dr

early game overly weak q > e max for some reason for DAMAGE purposes, when it should be q < e q cast time makes for a frustratingly unreliable ability that makes him struggle significantly more vs skilled players

I am a Garen main, so I am in absolute shock that someone in their right mind would think that hes strong let alone "very strong"? In a state of the game where almost every champ builds an offensive item with a slow (ice gaunt, rylai, frozen mallet) he gets kited to death, literally. He has a non scaling, single target form of CC in the form of a 1.5 second silence, and that is it. He is one of the slowest champions in the game (awful mobility), and his Q that gives him a move speed bonus for a short duration doesn't scale either (no increase in move speed amount or duration), but hey at least his Q breaks a slow, only to be vulnerable to any slow after Q is cast. So his Q only scales in dmg, his W is one of; if not the only, passive stacking abilities that has a CAP, and his E really only scales in dmg anyways in the form of "ticks". I mean c'mon people. The champ is literally just a meat shield, who can absolutely delete the enemy support for Killstealing that last kill (Cause he would be the villain).

Yet a few patches ago, Gnar; who is a ranged, tank, CC machine, with decent mobility, who, oh by the way! does % health damage too actually gets a buff??? Huh? Who was part of that group that said "Ya know what... We need to make that ranged, tank with lots of CC and % health dmg even stronger!" #gnarbuffs?

[{quoted}](name=Riot Aesah,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=relEr8rN,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2016-08-09T23:31:26.850+0000)

I don't think we have any plans to buff Garen. AFAIK there's still a good amount of our playerbase that view him as very strong even though he's not played in competitive, and that's important to take into consideration as well.

Hi I am FSat, gold II (so admittedly average when it comes to general skill) but I have more than 2 years of practically Garen only, over 400k of mastery points with him and I did write one of the most viewed Garen guides on the Mobafire network so I like to believe that I know what I say when it comes to the champion and his current situation. Here is my 2 cents. The playerbase who considers Garen to be too strong is likely made up of those who just dislike the champion in general, without actually putting out any relevant information on why he is so strong to them I can see the competitive issue being important here because post juggernout patch Darius did show up in competitive quite a bit of times while Garen did not at all... I normally am against balancing a champion based on its spot in the competitive scene, so in Garen's case I'd rather point out that we have some serious experts on him apart from myself who believe his early game is a bit messy and needs tuning, and give above all reasons, techincal and actual reasons on why that is... MarineRevenge being one of them (likely the best), has a very big and detailed comment right around here that I agree with and that should be taken into consideration, not just to say "ah yes he is right let's fix Garen's early game", but to figure out reasons why the mains think he needs tuning and confront them with the "playerbase" likely just saying "oh Garen is op, Rito plz remove from game" Because I completely agree on most of the things MarineRevenge pointed out I won't waste anymore of anyone's time repeating what's going on, just scroll, find the comment and let's hope someone at Riot notices that we got a point, not just a complaint. Have a nice day you all :)

Hey, I am a diamond player in both LAN (Coconattsu) and EUW servers; that also plays mostly Garen ever since I joined the game in Season 3 as the first champion I played, reaching around the top 10 spot of Garen players in the lolskill leaderboard (currently #125).

While the ranking doesn't matter at all, it's just proof that I care about the champ and I know exactly his state in the meta, and I'm not biased when I say he is bad right now. We know Garen very well, an immobile tank that scales into a monster as the game progresses and destroys anyone that gets close, AT LEAST this is how you advertised him and the others when you reworked them in the Juggernaut update.

I never saw it this way, yes his late-game did improve significantly, but it's not like he is a monster compared to other champs that DO have mobility and bring more to the team, and as the meta has changed it has gotten worse especially with these problematic items called Frozen Mallet and Rylai's crystal scepter, items that are really strong right now because of the power and utility it gives, and make Garen completely useless unless you have up, and even then, if they have flash themselves well you're done unless you have enough damage to burst them down in the duration of the silence or if it's a squishy target marked as a Villain.

I do believe besides his early game weaknesses he needs something ELSE like, (just an idea), a 1.5 slow immunity on his Q when activated, or at least a slow reduction; a little more speed when running towards the Villain, something like this to compensate his speed nerfs.

Just adding a little more to the topic, MarineRevenge speaks for most of us and I completely agree with his points.

Isn't that the intended use, though?

{quoted}

last i heard urgot is a marksman, so WHERE WAS URGOT IN THE MARKSMAN UPDATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? Is this a discrimination since urgot has a physical disability ?

He got 30/40/50% damage reduction on his ultimate instead of armor and magic resist, which was quite a significant buff.