After the dust of the Juggernaut reworks has settled, I've been thinking:

HayRoss·Oct 4, 2015·2 votes·382 views

Is Garen going to forever be the lesser Darius?

He's always just been a little bit weaker. They are VERY similar champions, but Garen has just always been the lesser pick. Darius has seen massive coverage in worlds, while Garen hasn't even shown up. Why pick Garen when there is just a definitively better option? Darius is just flat out better in every way. And I'm not saying this because I think Darius is far better than Garen because I main him, but the exact opposite. I main Garen, and personally, I just don't see how he's in any way better than the dunkmaster. I still love playing Garen, but Rito had a chance to put them on par, and while Garen certainly became more powerful, he's still just behind Darius. Or am I just going crazy over here?

Seriously, am I correct or am I just a gibbering old man in the corner?

9 Comments

KiharonOct 4, 20151 votes

I would say Garen is the more defensive version of the two. Garen has things in his favor:

No mana
Massive OOC health regen (not too massive early, but still good. combined with no mana, makes him not need to back late except to buy)
Slow removal and speed up in the kit
Silence
Free tanky stats
Further on demand damage reduction
Great stacking of Black Cleaver (to boost ADC damage)
Temporary ignores unit collision
% max (E, to villian) or missing (R) health damage (sometimes true)

Romans VI XXIIIOct 4, 20151 votes

LOL sad part is darius out does some of these things.

Mana - Darius might as well not have mana cause he can spam everything and never go OOM.

Massive HP restore landing a Q that can be spammed since it cost nearly nothing and has a low CD ( actually more useful than Garens Reg cause u can get it when it matters, in a fight)

AoE Displacement, arguably much better than a 1.5 sec silence, and better offensively than MS buff

Passive Stacks Black Cleaver, as it is now Physical damage

Massive amount of true damage while building tanky due to the massive amount of free AD from passive.

SO yea, garen my be slightly more tanky, but Darius can still soak up more do to his massive amount of healing, mean while dishing out more damage while hes at it.

KiharonOct 4, 20151 votes

Mana - I haven't played Darius enough to really say how fast he OOMs, especially after the Q change. However, that change indicates that Riot wants to make sure that he will go OOM if he is spamming.

Darius Q does provide some, potentially large, healing, but it scales off of missing health (so is not as effective keeping him topped off) and requires him to hit enemies with the Q blade (which is already dodgeable and is narrowing on PBE, doesn't help him heal between fights, and requires him to be in danger to get). As you noted, Darius has better in fight healing, but instead is more vulnerable to being poked down and can't heal up while pushing after a teamfight.

AoE displacement - Arguably is the key word here. There are definitely situations where it is useful, but with the change with the rework to not pull back from flash, the slight bounce back, and the pending slow nerf, the pull is not the giant ability it used to be. Garen's silence on the other hand, can keep the enemy from flashing/dashing/blinking away for a small time (or in fact cast any spells).

Black Cleaver - Yes, the passive stacks cleaver now, but that is only once every 1.25 seconds, and only to whoever he managed to land the blade on or auto attack. Garen E stacks on everyone in range 5-10 times in 3 seconds.

I think the massive amounts of damage from the Darius passive, and especially the true damage from his chaining ults, are often overstated. In the best case, they can be amazing. However, I feel like those moments turn out to be more rare and less extended than people make them out to be (though I don't have a lot of experience to really back this statement).

I am by no means trying to call Darius bad, but I do think there is a reason to pick Garen over Darius, as the OP was questioning.

HayRossOct 4, 20151 votes

It sounds good on paper, but still, if Garen really was an equal counterpart, wouldn't we see him at world by now?

KiharonOct 5, 20151 votes

Not necessarily; pro play has a very different set of strategies and patterns than solo queue. All it means is that Garen doesn't fill a role in any of their preferred strategies and team comps.

I was simply highlighting things that I perceive to be relative strengths of Garen compared to Darius. I never said he was an equal counterpart to Darius, and, in fact, I would say they are unequal, but not one completely better than the other. It is tempting to try to compare them and find one as objectively better than the other because they fulfill the same broad role (juggernaut, fighter, bruiser, w/e you want to call it), but they do so in different ways. These differences are what should make one sometimes better and sometimes worse than the other. If there are no cases where Garen is better than Darius, then perhaps Riot should take a second look at finding more ways to differentiate them so that each can be sometimes better than the other.

HayRossOct 5, 20151 votes

{quoted} If there are no cases where Garen is better than Darius, then perhaps Riot should take a second look at finding more ways to differentiate them so that each can be sometimes better than the other.

Then let''s take a look at every possible case. In what situations would Garen be better than Darius in?

KiharonOct 6, 20151 votes

vs poke/seige (easier healing through passive if you can OOC long enough)
vs slows but no snares/hard cc. even vs hard cc, Garen is probably preferable for taking the cc than Darius.
vs predictable burst/focus, he can W for reduced damage taken
Might be a better split pusher with the passive healing and speed to run away (haven't really tried this, so I can't comment on it's effectiveness)
Kit leans slightly toward picks/small skirmishes (bonus damage to single targets on E, no reset on ult, passive heal only between fights), whereas Darius prefers larger fights (better healing from Q blade, longer ult chain [less of an issue post-16], and longer duration of Noxian might due to more targets to apply it to)
when there are priority targets that need to not get spells off to run away (silence that LeBlanc/Zed/Fizz and they can't just dash away, where you could after a Darius pull)
when an additional person to get to the back line with the speed up on Q, and can blow them up if they are low, especially if they are the villian (his ult can kill a low max health villian from around half health late game)

I didn't aim for an exhaustive list, so there may be other situations, and I wouldn't say that Darius is necessarily better in all situations other than these. I would wager that in the large majority of cases, where one is actually better than the other, the "lesser" pick could work almost as well

Lost ROct 4, 20151 votes

Darius is attack, and Garen is defense. Garen's meant to last longer in fights and focus on whoever has the most kills, and Darius is meant to crush the weaker champions and use his burst of power to finish off the heavier ones. Darius has no mobility boost, but he can prevent the enemy from escaping. Garen has no crowd control, but he can chase enemies like nobody's business. The strength of Darius' ult has to be built up and is most effective on the weakest opponents. The strength of Garen's ult is based on how much HP his opponent is missing, deals true damage to villains, and is meant to be a tank buster otherwise.

They have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the scenario.

Uva9x6gDhCOct 4, 20151 votes

Garen has some mobility. Getting in range as Garen is much easier. Darius's pull might as well not be there because it just doesn't fuckin work half the time even if they are in range.