With few exceptions i really wonder what you think. Will be viable in higher levels of play because the only reason i think you would pick him now because he is lane bully and does damage (but why don't you pick Irelia). Thanks if you if you answer and also to any Garen player.
RiotRiotRepertoir9 votesIt really depends what 'higher levels of play' means to you.
He will still have some strong lane matchups due to how overbearing he can be for certain melees, albeit fewer good matchups than before most likely. However, he'll also be more valuable in matchups against tanks like Maokai or Shen. Whereas before, you could pick these tanks, stack some armor in lane, and count on Garen being useless later on, but that should be less true now. Since we're moving him toward more of a carry, Garen doesn't lose when he goes even anymore.
I can't say whether he'll be an LCS pick or not, since they tend to value very particular character profiles and don't often pick pure melees as often, but hopefully he can be a strong pick in Masters solo queue. Internally, I've got Masters and Challenger players telling me he feels really strong now, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!
AnimaticStranger1 votesIt really depends what 'higher levels of play' means to you.
He will still have some strong lane matchups due to how overbearing he can be for certain melees, albeit fewer good matchups than before most likely. However, he'll also be more valuable in matchups against tanks like Maokai or Shen. Whereas before, you could pick these tanks, stack some armor in lane, and count on Garen being useless later on, but that should be less true now. Since we're moving him toward more of a carry, Garen doesn't lose when he goes even anymore.
I can't say whether he'll be an LCS pick or not, since they tend to value very particular character profiles and don't often pick pure melees as often, but hopefully he can be a strong pick in Masters solo queue. Internally, I've got Masters and Challenger players telling me he feels really strong now, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!
Thanks.
AnimaticStranger1 votesIt really depends what 'higher levels of play' means to you.
He will still have some strong lane matchups due to how overbearing he can be for certain melees, albeit fewer good matchups than before most likely. However, he'll also be more valuable in matchups against tanks like Maokai or Shen. Whereas before, you could pick these tanks, stack some armor in lane, and count on Garen being useless later on, but that should be less true now. Since we're moving him toward more of a carry, Garen doesn't lose when he goes even anymore.
I can't say whether he'll be an LCS pick or not, since they tend to value very particular character profiles and don't often pick pure melees as often, but hopefully he can be a strong pick in Masters solo queue. Internally, I've got Masters and Challenger players telling me he feels really strong now, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!
Also while you are here i need to ask 2 questions 1)How high of a damage do you expect him to deal ? 2)Do you feel that he isn't just weaker version of Darius or other way around ?
RiotRiotRepertoir3 votesIt's hard to say precisely how much damage I expect of him now as an absolute, but as a comparison, I'd say "more than before if he builds 2 damage items (Black Cleaver, Ghostblade, Sterak's, LW).
I don't think he's just a weaker version of Darius, but they do have their similarities. If you lined up 3 immobile champions next to each other and said "kill them as fast as you can," I think Darius would (and should) win the race. If you said, "that guy over there needs to die," I think Garen would win due to his superior mobility and lower ramp-up time than Darius.
Retillin1 votesIf by "superior mobility" you mean his speed boost on his Q, is the movement amount changed at all vs live? The 35% increase. If so, with the amount of soft cc in the game, what do juggernauts bring to the table vs someone like a Trundle support?
AMYS GRAVE1 votesMy guess is that they will find they need the villain to be the priority target, and the fact that they can't control who the villain is means it will at least occasionally be on a low priority enemy. Because of this they will pick a champion whose damage is more targetable so they can focus who they need to.
Of course I'm no challenger player so I'm just spit-balling here.
RiotRiotRepertoir5 votesIt's certainly possible.
As a comparison point, remember when Gnar was released and everyone was basically saying "Riot wtf big Gnar is too unreliable to ever be picked at high level play!"? Now, maybe Gnar's just OP or something, but as we know, he's definitely seen his fair share of play, even at the highest of levels.
I guess what this means is that players can learn to live with or manipulate champions' unreliabilities in ways that more consistently provide a favorable outcome to them.
Guardman1 votesIt's certainly possible.
As a comparison point, remember when Gnar was released and everyone was basically saying "Riot wtf big Gnar is too unreliable to ever be picked at high level play!"? Now, maybe Gnar's just OP or something, but as we know, he's definitely seen his fair share of play, even at the highest of levels.
I guess what this means is that players can learn to live with or manipulate champions' unreliabilities in ways that more consistently provide a favorable outcome to them.
This quote right here encompasses all of my problems with the Garen rework and why I dislike the Villain mechanic.
I don't like playing champions like Gnar because of their unreliability. But I do enjoy playing Garen because he is very reliable if you know what you are doing. The villain mechanic introduces a huge amount of unreliability that you have no agency over to a reliable champion. Unlike with Gnar where you can at least choose when to go in with Mega Gnar and some reliability over his transformation, the only way Garen has any control over his Villain mark is if he feeds the champion he wants marked.
And even then it adds no interesting gameplay decisions as most of the time the villain mark should have no influence on who Garen goes after as one of three things will happen:
The mark will be on a target he doesn't want to go after. In which case the mark should be ignored.
The mark is on a target he can't reach. In which case the mark should be ignored.
The mark is on a target he can reach and does want to reach. In which case he was going to go after that enemy anyways.
OneSmoothDude1 votesTry to think of the Villain mechanic as a straight buff, instead of only looking for all the ways that it might not be game-changing. That fact is, this mechanic buffs Garen so he is able to do tons of true damage to a given enemy.** This is never a bad thing.** It's all in how you use it (as Repertoir mentioned with Gnar's transformation). This doesn't change Garen's abilities in any way except make them more powerful, so unlike Gnar's unpredictability, Garen's has no downsides. Only buffs.
The way I see it, there are two possibilities:
AMYS GRAVE1 votesGnar actually has some interactivity to control your mega gnar form. If you skirt the edge of combat and only AA sparingly you can keep yourself at ~90 ish rage in order to get your form change on demand. That interactivity is hard to do but it helps distinguish great gnar players from good.
If Garen had some kind of interactivity with the villain mechanic i would absolutely agree with your Gnar analogy here, but if that interactivity exists i have overlooked it somehow.