Riot is buffing Garen in a wrong way
I'm just posting with a proper permission from the original author, Gemada de Taric of the brazilian forum.
Copied text from reddit of user ANX_Shadow who helped author the topic to translate into English.
Here's the link: http://boards.br.leagueoflegends.com/pt/c/mecanicas-de-jogo-e-balanceamento/bboj4ed5-riot-estaa-buffando-garen-de-maneira-errada
The following buff is happening in PBE:
- Targets hit by 4 turns of Garen, will have 25% of their armor removed
Yes, the buff is cool, and will make it very useful in TF's now along with the Black Cleaver. But Garen's biggest problem, which has made his win-rate fall, is somewhere else. Let me explain:
With the Colossus class rework, much of Garen's early game power was transferred to late, such as his Q's movespeed, the resistances from W's passive, a lot of E's damage, in addition to the reduction of silence on Garen's Q.
With that, Garen is now losing match-ups where he used to be the COUNTER of many champions, like Riven and Renekton, for example. But until then, you could just try to deal with it.
But here comes the recent moment, where items like Frozen Mallet and Rylai are being extremely used in several champs, causing a PermaSlow crisis in almost every game.
Garen is a colossus that should be countered by the use of CC's to prevent him from reaching his targets, and Garen ought to find a way to get over those obstacles.
But now, something that should just counter him, it's literally nullifying the champion. Perma-slow throughout almost the entire game, makes him never be able to do the only thing he has to do: hunt and destroy the Carry.
So summing up, in addition to his Early being weak against many champs of the top, his mid and late is also destroyed by the perma-slows on League. That is why I think that buffing his damage in late game is not the best alternative, since it will not fix the current problem of it.
What I think Riot should do about it is:
Increase the initial damage of his E so it can stop being so useless in the first levels.
Buff his Q. Something I think would look good on him against PermaSlow would be something like this:
When removing slow effects with decisive strike, Garen is immune to new slow effects for X seconds
But would not that be overpower? Nope, because he would only be able tho activate this effect after removing a slow effect, this would force Garen to have a good timing of his Q, to use it at the perfect time, to take maximum advantage of this, increasing the SkillCap of Garen players , And the difference between Mains and Casuals.