garen ultimate

[small board of text + could be filled with minor errors, being english not my native language]

**Clarity and readability **

I think i'm not the only one who dislike the "unclear" mechanics of garen's ultimate. And a lot of time riot put a lot of effort trying to give a better " Clarity and Readability " in thier contents. Accordingly to this all the ultimate related to execution got some easy way to calculate their damage .

• Darius : just check counter and fast calculate in mind the true damage done on max stack ( without need of deep math )
• Chogath : An usefull indicator .. and again easy math .
• Zed got a wonderfull indicator which tell your when your damage is enought to kill enemy marked ( taking in account even enemy resistances )

Garen ulti lack this easy and fast way to estimate his damage , due to being an old champion, and as a consequence of having an ulti which deal more damage the more flat hp the enemy miss : the damage done will be always related to enemy hp, making way more hard to estimate your min/max , meanwhile other finisher move can just estimate their damage regardless of their opponent max hp, but just evaluating the %HP they got ( trought "hp UI", which is accurate enought ) . And actually i don't think that follow your feeling is a viable way to justify this lack of clarity, otherwise even Zed could have no visual indicator but could just " keep dishing out damage until they got the feeling it's high enought to take down enemy ".

** Suggested change **

Why not give him a clear usage of even better some sort of interaction? Could be .. " Enemy inside his vision got a small indicator when garen ulti damage is enought to kill them "

Or even better riot could improve his kit adding a new mechanics that split ulti in 2 different component :

A first one who make him able to cast ulti on target from a medium range, marking them for 4/6/8 seconds ( Visually garen pinpoint the enemy, thematically leading the charge on them ) . And a **second **one who make appear above the enemy head a mark when he suffered enought damage to allow garen to execute him, pressing R again on a close range.

The first part, during the 4/6/8 duration, could be used to add some buff to his mechanics, team oriented . Cause yes, garen kit is way to outdatated and sadly don't fit at all the current meta based of mobility and item's active to force bursty trade.

Like ... " When garen mark the enemy, all the allies around him on the moment of cast gain a burst of speed of 20% ,30%,40% ( less than RG, a nice item that could be great on him ) if moving the same direction of garen for half the duration of the mark and share a black shield like ability based of a % of garen hp, able to eat magical cc until popped " . This way we give Garen, with his linear and old gameplay, a bit more of interaction and teamwise focus. Garen as front line charger became usefull even with his linear approach : he pop ulti, everyone follow up with a burst of speed and can eat max a couple of spell before the bonus shield goes down . Full tank garen bring on table the utility he were missing, giving him a natural RG and a bigger size shield for mates, while dps garen work around a more tactical shield big enought to just soak that xerath's stun dropped on him to peel him away or save the adc from that well placed seju r on their head ( trading both ulti, but forcing garen to use is second activation - the damage one - on the seju )

_[ All value could and should be subject to change. I'm just trying to share my vision, don't focus around the "40% is to much" or similar details who work around numerical value . The focus is trying to give garen a team-oriented utility spell during his ulti first cast ] _

**Conclusion **

The first change were aimed to improve garen ultimate readibility ( being able to know where your ulti damage is enought it's really needed on him, even more if we consider that his damage grow up bigger and bigger based of enemy **flat ** HP ).

The second change try to give garen a team oriented buff during his ulti, splitted in two step. This allow him to translate from a linear champion who bring no utility for team, who miss a reliable gap closer and current tank/bruiser item active's sinergy in his kit into a "battlefield leader" who actually need to be aware of their teammate and got a way to support them, balancing the lack of cc in his kit with a new form of utility . Not only, we give enemy at the same time a way to interact with garen ulti ( being able to see the mark above one enemy head allow them to know that garen will be able to drop ulti only on that target, so they can work around that ).

Give me your opinion , thx for reading :)