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Fixing Garen and his undesicive W

Nice1337··1 votes·310 views

tl;dr: Garens W is changed to a stance system. Offensive Stance keeps current play style; Defensive Stance allows him to protect the backline.

Garen always seemed a bit bland to play which even got worse through his rework. Before he did a fine job in protecting carries from assassins with his long silence. His only function in team fights now seems to try to stick to the villain or maybe a carry until he his dead. But sticking to someone got even harder through the rework. I as well thought that Garen needed a rework but the current form did very little to improve his gameplay.

Especially his W seems to have very little impact on the game after the removal of the ccreduction on it. During most of the game it's a 30% damage reduction for 2 seconds on a 24 second cd which basically only helps to reduce burst combos which you can anticipate. Putting points in it also seems to be very unrewarding as it will only increase the duration for 1 second.

My suggestion for the W is a stance change between offensive and defensive while giving him short time benefits during activation and an slightly altered skillset.

Reworked W: Cooldown lowered by a bit. Maybe 12 seconds. No stacking armor and magic resist. Offensive Stance: Upon entering the stance Garen gets a 30% ccreduction for 2-6 seconds and passively 10-30% increased ad. (maybe crit chance instead of ad)

Note: Basically tries to embrace the current playstyle of diving the enemy back line and killing a carry or villain.

Defensive Stance: Upon entering the stance Garen gets a 30% damage reduction for 2-6 seconds and passively 10-30% increased armor and magic resistance.

Notes: More importantly this stance also changes his abilities with the aim of protecting the backline: Desicive Strike: should be a sweep of his sword in a semicicle which throws enemies aside. Now targets ground. Knockback scales of W. (Imagine the swing of a baseballbat) Judgement: gets a little slow component on enemies. Maybe 10-20% upon level of W. Slows Garen for 20% while moving towards enemies. Demacian justice: I am not sure if it should be altered at all. Maybe a snare with duration based on current %HP(Full duration on full HP) A few swords fly towards the target trapping it inside. The offensive Ult form should definitily feel way stronger and I fear that defensive ult may be to powerfull for escaping ganks and initiating.

Abilities should use the same cooldown unlike Jayce or Elise as he doesn't get an alternative skillset.

The main target of these changes is to make Garens gameplay more diverse and maybe allow him to be played as a support or jungler. Planing ahead how you will fight in team fights by managing your current stance should also be an interesting factor.

Obviously as this is a bigger change I have no idea if the numbers are balanced and it should just show my thoughts

I am not a native speaker so I hope everything can be understood.

5 Comments

AyRe CoNteMpT2 votes

none of this helps him protect his team lol. also, really unneccessary changes that make garen, a champion who is very straight forward and still very hard to play properly, a mess like all the current champions. why would you want to make a mess?

garens biggest problem is his early laning because there hes just super mega weak but then he hyperscales and its pretty good that way.

my only concern with him is the short movementspeed buff. i would like it to have some sort of interactive mechanic that increases its duration. for example, it increases movementspeed for 1.5 seconds and if you hit decisive strike on an enemy, it refreshes the duration.

this way you cant just Q and run away for extra duration and you cant escape/chase with it forever, but if you actually get to reach your enemy, you retain the movementspeed for some more time which allows you to stick.

this is really all that garen would wish for without anything else having to be nerfed again

Nice13371 votes

Why would giving him 2 forms of cc not help him protect the carries? At the start of the fight you could either knock the enemies into your team with a flash engage or stick to your carries and knock away enemy fighers or silence and kill assassins and carries who come near to you.

With the slow on judgment you turn into damaging slow field which enemies have a hard time to escape from him while your team can fire into it.

By the way his early game is another point of discussion and doesn't seem to fit to well in here. I don't know what fair numbers would be but his switch between offensive and defensive can obviously also help in lane. By starting a trade in offensive stance by charging towards your enemy you can get some bonus damage in. As soon as you notice he his trying to return damage you can still switch to defensive and reduce the return damage while making it hard for the enemy to stick because of the slow on judgement. Obviously the stance chance shouldn't have the current 24 second cooldown. Maybe 12.

Like I said changing the ult is probably not a good idea. So basically the changes are a more impactful W and in defensive stance some crowd control. This doesn't make his currently simple kit to complex while making him more interesting to play.

AyRe CoNteMpT2 votes

you see, garen is absolutely fine the way he is. its cool you have ideas and all, but this doesnt make him better or cooler or more unique. hes really just GOOD now and should be left alone

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

you see, garen is absolutely fine the way he is. its cool you have ideas and all, but this doesnt make him better or cooler or more unique. hes really just GOOD now and should be left alone

^

while your proposal sounds interesting, they would never use the numbers you described. it would end up with a nerf in either stance.

plus, if you replace the silence with a knockback, he has no tools to keep people in spin range anymore. he doesnt want people away from him.

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