Charging Momentum: Making Garen the Diver His Kit Wants to Be

Hello everyone, my name is Vynette, aka LizardoftheToast, and i'm here to talk about one of my favorite champions: Garen, The Might of Demacia.

I've been talking a lot with the fine folks on the r/GarenMains discord server and in some other places about what can be done to make Garen feel better both to play as and to play against, and while I myself and not as particularly good at playing the game as some others, I'd like to stress that these points are not entirely my own; instead I am merely acting as a front and posting our ideas here on the boards so that perhaps they'll be seen by Riot for consideration in making the Beyblade of Justice feel better all around.

One very important thing I would like to cover before going forward: despite his classification by Riot as a Juggernaut, Garen's role could only be farther from that if he was a ranged character. Nothing in Garen's kit points to him being a juggernaut in the vein of Darius and Illaoi. Where juggernauts want the enemy team to engage on them, Garen wants to be the one charging into the fray. Where Juggernauts are rife with ways to stay alive in combat and fight multiple enemies at once with low cooldown abilities or massive AoE damage, Garen wants to fight one or two enemies at most (His spin even does increased damage against a single target) and then get out so he can wait for his passive to heal him and his cooldowns to come back up. Where Juggernauts have ways to bring enemies to them and/or KEEP them there, Garen charges towards them at high speed and hopes that his silence and durability will keep him alive for long enough to kill his target and get out. Garen's role is much more along the lines of a Diver than a Juggernaut, and these changes are presented with this information in mind.

Without further ado, I'd like to present some changes we as a community have come up with:

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NUMBER 1: Removing or Reworking the Villain Passive

No, I'm not joking about this. I think anyone who has played as or against a Garen can attest to the power(and, more importantly, the unreliability) of Garen's Ult Passive, Villain. On the receiving end, being the villain feels bad, as even if Garen is behind he can very easily kill his villain provided he is smart enough to get to you; it can feel as if there is next to no counterplay, especially because Villain is (supposedly) chosen on a basis of whoever is getting the most fed on the enemy team in the most recent time. It punishes the enemy player for doing well. Now, on the other side of things, playing as Garen, Villain passive is every bit as frustrating due to it's unreliability for such a strong effect. Due to it's power, a lot of Garen's power budget is locked up in this passive that, more often than not, is completely irrelevant as it often chooses targets seemingly at random (I cannot tell you the number of times an enemy carry has been demolishing, going 10/0 by 12 minutes, etc, but it's the 1/5/3 Blitzcrank that is marked as my villain). It's frustrating to think here is this powerful ability that you as the player have zero agency over on either side.

So what do we do about this issue? It's simple really: either Villain gets reworked into something more reliable, such as marking your target in the same vein as Kindred's marks, or remove the passive altogether and put that power into something else, such as distributing that power among his other abilities (Perhaps make E an ability worth maxing first again), or give him an entirely new passive that's easier to balance around. Which brings me to my next point, and my personal favorite....

NUMBER 2: Adding a Momentum Passive

In all his stories and in his voicelines, Garen is very much the archetype of "commander that is always at the forefront of the battle, charging in to break the enemy line". With this in mind, an idea was brought up where, were we to remove villain, possibly compensate a SMALL portion of the lost damage, and then give him a momentum passive, much like Deadman's or E. Obviously this would work much like those abilities(providing a small speed buff and losing stacks when Garen stops moving to attack or gets CC'd). with the addition that, when he has full momentum, Garen could empower one of his abilities in one (or maybe all) of the following ways:

Q - Decisive Leap: With full momentum, Garen Q becomes a leaping strike that could be used as a once-per-fight gapcloser that he can use to get to his target more easily and reliably land his silence on a priority target. Even remaining classed as a Juggernaut this ability would fit as both Darius AND Illaoi have a Leap on one of their abilities(Illaoi W and Darius Ult both leap to their target).

AND/OR

W - Courageous Charge: Using W with full momentum causes Garen put his shoulder down and charges in the chosen direction (skillshot-based), shoulder checking enemies aside, similar to Ult or E. This would further solidify his identity both as a leading commander that could break up an enemy formation and open a path to a priority target and, mechanically speaking, as a diver that wants to get into the thick of things, take out said priotity target, then leave to let his allies clean up the fight once he's done his job.

AND/OR

E - Judgement (FULL ABILITY REWORK): Now this one is a bit of a doozy, as it involves a lot of changes to Garen's most iconic abilty. What was proposed for E was as follows: -E ticks would no longer scale with champion level, instead keeping a base number of spins at all ranks(let's say 7, as he would start gaining this momentum at around the same time his current spin goes up to 7 ticks). -Instead, Garen could sacrifice Momentum stacks to continue spinning past the base number of ticks, increasing his damage output at the expense of utility. -Putting Ranks into E would increase his the spin's base damage and reduce the momentum cost of each additional spin. This is likely the most complicated of these changes, so i can understand if Riot doesn't want to change this for the sake of keeping Garen a "simple champion".

This Momentum passive would obviously replace his existing Ult passive, and thus not effect early laning, where I believe his current state is fine as it is not the early game where Garen wants to shine. Having something like these to improve Garen's mid-to-late game potential(where his focus has been since the Juggernaut Update) would make Garen a more unique and interesting champion, and give him something to bring to a team comp

NUMBER 3: Full Kit Rework

In a similar vein to the Momentum Passive replacing Villain, three big names for Garen - Adamj, FSat(AKA AMSatellite), and Marine Revenge - suggested perhaps just reworking the entire kit around making this Momentum central to his playstyle. The changes were much the same as they are above, but Garen would begin gaining Momentum at level 1 (though only while Perserverance was active), his abilities would cost Momentum, and with another totally different version of E and Ult:

E - Spinning Slash: Garen spins his sword around his body twice, dealing damage each time to each enemy hit. This ability costs an amount of Momentum based on Skill Rank, has no cooldown, and can be buffered while Garen spins, automatically increasing the number of times damage is dealt. Being hit with four spins in a row would still shred armor. This means Garen can expend all his built up momentum to spin for a long time but loses out on the utility of his other spells

R - Demacian Justice: Works much the same as it does now, except also expends all Momentum, dealing an additional amount of damage based on how much Momentum was expended. If a certain amount of Momentum was used, Ult deals True Damage.

This refocus of Garen's kit would absolutely solidify him into a unique Diver like his current kit wants him to so desperately be. There's not much to say here that wasn't already covered in Part 2, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this massive wall of text, and I hope you have a wonderful day. DEMACIAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!![garen-swing]