Like I don't meant to QQ Or say OVERPOWERED or whatever but man, Garen is actually really hard to lane against but super easy to play... Does this annoy anyone else...? Just curious is all... Because I for one get tilted by Vsing Garen?
But yeah, please don't take this is Garen being OP or whatever... whether he is or not is a different subject... I am just saying I personally have a hate for how easy Garen is to play but how hard he is to beat.
redniwediS8 votesThere's two types of champions in League; mechanics based and knowledge based. Every champion is a bit of both, but one of those things stands out over the other.
Garen is specifically a knowledge based champion. He has simple mechanics that don't really get harder as you go up in skill, but the knowledge requirement for playing him at higher and higher skill levels goes up significantly. You don't have any mobility, or CC, or really anything besides raw damage and innate defense, and he isn't even that great at dueling, so if you make a mistake without already being ahead you're dead.
The same goes when facing him, though. Garen can't make flashy plays, so instead a good Garen player will wait and watch in an attempt to figure out your patterns. Once you make a mistake he will punish you for it. Depending on the matchup a mistake could be as simple as moving too far away from your turret. If you put yourself in a position that is favorable to him he will do what he is designed to do, which is deal damage.
Garen ends up being very simple and straight forward, and while this doesn't exactly make him flexible it makes him very reliable. He tends to struggle against other champions who are similarly reliable in some aspect of either safety or dueling, so if you need help facing him you should try looking there first.
Annoxis1 votesBe happy in your life, you deserve it.
redniwediS1 votesThanks!
Monkey D Luffy1 votesBut is that okay do you think? like... do you think his gameplay is healthy? whenever I vs him it's really hard to gank him and really hard to fight him... and that his ult does sooo high damage... I just don't know how to beat him... You seem knowledgeable ... any tips in beating this annoying demacian? :C 
redniwediS2 votesGaren has been my main since season 1, so I hope I at least know a thing or two about him.
His gameplay is honestly a little questionable right now. The Juggernaut changes made him a lot easier to play, but didn't really change anything significant about how you play him. If you don't feed early you just end up stronger late game.
His speed was nerfed a bit though, and considering the speed of some of the newer champions Garen often ends up in a situation where half the time anyone he catches simply melt, and the rest of the time he can't catch anyone. It's frustrating on both sides, but this is more of a conversation for another day.
As I said in my first post you will want to go for someone who is either really safe or is a great duelist, at least until you understand how to fight him properly. Karma, Gnar, Kennen, and Jayce are all great picks if you're taking the safety route, and Darius, Rumble, Pantheon, and Poppy all duel with him really well.
The big skill each of these champions have, no matter which list you're going with, is their ability to zone Garen. If you know how to freeze a lane you can easily force him to choose between a very unfavorable fight or a ton of missed CS. He does scale pretty well with levels, but if you scale harder with items he will quickly be unable to fight you by himself.
Just keep in mind most people who main knowledge based champions spend a lot of time learning their bad matchups. I personally can do reasonably well against most of the champions I listed. I won't snowball, but I can survive until later on in the game when I can roam around and fight other people instead. Most people don't practice these matchups though, so you should do just fine.
MoonToonEx2 votesThis.
Garen teaches you so much about the game. You have less to think about when using YOUR champ and that allows you to learn to focus on the enemy and other gameplay elements.
Guyy Fieri2 votesYes Garen is a strong laner. However, he isn't the best team fighter as he lacks any hard CC. Unless you are someone like Trtndamere who is also built for the lane specifically, don't sweat it. Concede your laning phase, don't feed, farm what you can and then just make sure you're there for team fights as you should be more relevant than Garen.
Ladrac1 votesThere has to be some easy to play champions, especially for the new players. I got tilted when I play vs Nasus for example, because my champions for top are mostly tanks that cannot stop alone Nasus. And when I saw that all the damage that I do vs him its healed back (from his passive) very fast, I got tilted and I feel weak and useless xD
Monkey D Luffy1 votesI don't know... I don't like that argument I feel like new players should get better tutorials... it's just Garen ugh... He's such a massive tank, I find him super hard to gank... his ult damage... he's just so frustrating... I don't know ):
rtbf613690731 votesI know this thread is a little old now but as a garen main I can understand that he is frustrating to play against. However, he is pretty easy to deal with if you know how. First thing would be his two biggest weaknesses are CC and kiting. Thats why, in my opinion, 
is his hard counter (not teemo if you know what your doing, but if satan knows what he's doing, your fucked). Garen has only one gapcloser excluding flash, and early levels it doesn't last long. One of the main reasons he's tanky is his passive so you need to be able to poke him down every 9-4 secs to stop him healing, depending on levels.
But as redniwedi said, a good garen needs good game knowledge but Garen's kit is mainly good for sticking to people and doing damage to isolated targets then running off, like a skirmisher. It's frustrating playing against a champion that always beats you, but I would recommened switching it up. Maybe play garen for a while to understand him better? I'm only s3, but i find the biggest strength for Garen is that people underestimate you because your garen. In higher elos, that stops, but in the lower elo's people believe that it's just a garen, nooob champ, i'll wreck him and then get demacia'd in the face.
But he is an excellent champion to learn with. If you always struggle against him, I would recommend mixing it up. Play garen, or play teemo or kayle, or go a different lane and just avoid him.
Monkey D Luffy1 votesI can see where you're coming from, Kayle is alright against Garen, Garen is just very overwhelming :( Thanks for the tips though. I think I'll have to look into better anger management too...
Killyark11 votesThere is no "easy" champ in LOL but "simple"champ. If Garen is that much easy, why there is no "one champ player" been to challenger using only Garen? If you played Garen at least 100 games, you will realize how suck is this champ.