Personally, I'd rather sacrifice Garen's W passive and the Villain mechanic entirely, if both allowed Garen more visible power and better gameplay options elsewhere. W was advertized as a tool for newer players to learn how to farm, but what Garen really needs are tools for more skill expression and better outplay potential at higher levels, not more training wheels. At this point, I think we're also generally aware that the Villain passive adds little in the way of real gameplay, giving Garen no additional agency, and mostly just resulting in some arbitrary amount of extra damage if Garen happens to be in range of a certain target (which he's not guaranteed to have any impact on to begin with). As such, removing that should be able to afford him more interesting power elsewhere.
Things I'd like to see on Garen instead with the power this could open up:
- Total invulnerability in the first moments of Garen's W active, i.e. total CC and damage immunity. This could mean a shorter duration on the initial buff (e.g. 0.5 seconds instead of 0.75), and perhaps a reduction to the duration of the remaining buff, but I think total immunity could give Garen more options overall.
- Removing the little extra animation on the Q-enhanced autoattack. It adds only very little real counterplay, and instead mainly serves to make Garen a little less satisfying to play than he deserves to be. It's worth noting that having such a downtime on Q is particularly bad for newer players, who find themselves having to deal with inconsistent autoattack animations when trying to trade or last-hit.
- Judgment providing additional spins, rather than armor reduction, if Garen manages to land multiple spins against an enemy champion. I think it's okay for Garen to have large downtimes if he plays poorly, but otherwise I don't think it makes sense at all for him to just completely run out of things to do in the middle of a fight. Garen needs more things to do in combat, and this could be a clearer way of rewarding good play as well.
- Keeping Q and W at a fixed duration, and having their buff's strength increase, and/or cooldowns decrease with rank (or, in the case of W, decrease even more). Once again, Garen often finds himself running out of things to do in fights, and one of the reasons for this is that his Q and W end up with bloated durations and similarly large downtimes. Neither effect's increased duration really enhances Garen's gameplay, counterplay or the like, so in the end he ends up with some amount of persistent power, but nothing he can really do with it to enhance his gameplay. Shorter, punchier effects could work wonders on making him more satisfying to play, both by giving him stronger individual effects and better potential for clutch use of them, especially if he can use them more often.
Just to illustrate a few of these points, here are some specific iterations of Garen's kit I think could be more interesting:
- Q: Garen cleanses himself of slows, and gains 35% bonus movement speed for 1.5 seconds at all ranks. Additionally, his next basic attack while empowered deals 50% AD increased physical damage, interrupts the target and reduces their armor by 25% for 1.5 seconds. This has a 9/8/7/6/5-second cooldown, beginning on cast.
- Q would provide similar amounts of total mobility with the reduced cooldown, but Garen would have more control over when to use it, as well as more frequent cleanses. Increased AD on basic attack would be less painful early, but would scale better overall (including with crit, as opposed to the current bonus damage), and the interrupt means Garen would still be able to cancel channels, but wouldn't be able to perma-disable targets with a reduced Q cooldown, providing more counterplay overall. Additionally, moving the armor reduction from E to Q would make sense, as it would have Garen mark a target to focus, both for himself and his team.
- W: No passive. When activated, Garen becomes immune to all damage and crowd control for 1 second. This has a 22/19/16/13/10-second cooldown.
- Concentrating all of Garen's active defenses into just one second of total immunity could make for a much clearer effect than damage reduction and Tenacity, and could allow him more options versus certain CC types that Tenacity doesn't interact with. With the above cooldown range, the total amount of potential damage reduction would be similar, if a little higher early. As with Q, would allow for more clutch-immunity plays, and therefore more skill expression.
- E: Garen spins 12 times in 3 seconds, dealing 25/31.75/36.5/43.25/50% AD physical damage to all nearby enemies with each spin. If a spin hits at least 1 enemy champion (could maybe also work on large monsters?), Judgment's next cooldown is reduced by 0.75 seconds, reduced by cooldown reduction. This has a 9-second cooldown at all ranks, and Garen can reactivate Judgment to end its effects early.
- Having Judgment reduce its own cooldown, instead of reducing the target's armor, means Garen would have a clear path towards doing something exciting in combat if he plays well. In this particular case, if he keeps spinning onto a target, he can reactivate the ability sooner, encouraging him to work around enemy abilities and use his own defenses to stick to opponents. If Garen plays particularly well, and lands all spins, he could potentially have perma-uptime on Judgment. A more consistent number of spins would make Garen's rewards and counterplay similarly consistent, as opposed to the current gimmick where his spins increase at certain level milestones.
There are probably things that could be done with his innate and ult, but these changes I think could make him a much more functional and fun champion, allowing him more options in combat while still preserving a measure of counterplay and meaningful downtimes.
