Garen Villain System: A Rambling of Thought

Preface: This is simply my opinion and I do not claim any of my views to be fact, only observations.

How the Villain system plays out in games: Garen hits level 6 and who ever got the last kill on the enemy team or has the best KDA is dubbed "the villain" and Garen can now smite them for massive amounts (if they have massive amounts of hp) of true damaaaaaaage! the damage that is causing a lot of discussion right now because of how "op" and "unbalanced" it is. Once Garen smites that character with his mighty smiting sword of smiting justice (or that character dies by other means) a new Villain is anointed and targeted by the smite sword. The target changes but seems to favor who ever got the latest kill on the enemy team or again, who ever has the best KDA.

On summoners rift... the smiting target could end up on a tank that racks up multiple assists in a team fight. While this provides Garen an opportunity to do tons of damage to a champ that normally wouldn't be so affected it might be more viable for Garen to still use his ult on a carry. There are also 4 other champions that can help protect or back up the doomed villain. While this is semi balanced in terms of who gets the R over their head it is still fairly oppressive to the enemy team. It punishes players for doing well without any compromise, Garen WILL do a vast amount of damage to you if he gets the opportunity, which he probably will, and there is almost nothing you can do about it. There is a lot of possibilities that could happen were the mark of the villain to appear on a tank or adc or apc or support as far as strategy on Garen's side but on the villains team is more of a situation leaving the player marked as the villain thinking "well I am going to be useless the next team fight"

On twisted treeline... The amount of damage Garen can drop down is vastly, let me emphasis that, vastly more oppressive on a far greater scope. In a 3v3 setting the villain system greatly punishes the enemy team, if they have a player that consistently does well in team fights they become the obvious focus but now Garen can smite them into the dirt once they reach a tad below half hp regardless of what they have built item wise. The presence of Garen almost forces the villain to avoid him completely or as much as possible in fear of being deleted. If the villain's team falls behind then Garen's R is a tool to keep their team behind, if their team is ahead it is a tool to stop their momentum. There is little to no counter play against it on such a small map where team fights can break out at a rapid pace.

Do I think true damage is "op" or "unbalanced" no, the concept in and of it's self is a workable one that can find niche places in the game. I believe it only becomes "op" when it is attributed to an "execute" skill IE: a skill that is meant to be used on a player with already low health for added effect. Why? because you can't stop it. The only way to avoid it is to become untargetable or invulnerable and not all champs itemize a wooglets or hourglass and an even smaller handful of champions can become untargetable. You can't build against it in the case of Garen's ultimate because typically you would build health to help counter play the effects of true damage; in this instance it doesn't matter since Garen will do true damage based on the percent of health you are missing. The only counter play you get out of it is it will take longer for Garen's team to get you below half health but once you are there you are dead. Instantly. It makes the health and armor and magic resistance you purchased... less valuable.

If nothing you take away nothing else from reading this, this is what you should consider. > The counter to True Damage is building health, in the case of Garen's ultimate which deals damage based on the % of health missing, the value of health itemization decreases drastically as it doesn't matter how much you have because Garen's damage will scale with what you build. Not what he builds, but what you build.

I understand that Riot wanted to buff up their 'juggernauts' and I would say that most of the changes that were made and the items that were introduced are really splendid and fun. Garen's ultamate however.. is a little too overbearing and leaves little room for his enemys to counteract him. (especially on TT)

My suggestion on how to fix this scenario while still buffing the presence of Garen would be this:

Return his ultimate to dealing magic damage that scales off of hp missing, that is his signature move so we don't want to change that... but instead of the Villain receiving true damage make it so that Garen deals an extra 10/15/20% damage to that champion. Maybe even receive extra damage from that champion as well to some degree. This would pit Garen and his Villain against each other without overwhelmingly disrupting the strategies of either side, his ult would be less of an oppressive linchpin execute but his threat to the villain would still increase compared to other foes.

As it stands now Garen has a win rate of about 57-58% and has gone up in popularity since the 5.16 patch greatly. Sad to say but, people tend to play champions that they feel are 'broken' and right now a lot of players including myself think that good old Garen might need to return to the shop for some fixin.