if/when Garen gets reworked, I don't want him to play like other juggernauts
a common complaint i see with a lot of players is that garen feels like a worse Darius, because they sorta play similar, but Darius has in-fight sustain and more counterplay etc. a lot of threads I see want to give this to Garen as well; adding fight sustain, making him a sustained threat, etc
so my question is, if you don't like his similarities to Darius, why push him to be more like Darius? While Garen definitely has design flaws, I think he at least has a unique role as the most assassin-like of the juggernauts, as well as being one of the hardest champs to burst thanks to his W. he's very good at killing people in a short span of time once he gets rolling, and i think he should retain that almost assassin or skirmisher-like quality but in a healthier, more up-to-date way, if he ever gets a big-scope rework to modernize him (i know he's getting a new W, but as far as we know nothing else is happening). Also remember that he lacks in-fight sustain because he is by FAR the tankiest up-front juggernaut thanks to W giving him such high damage reduction; i would say only a tank-ulted Trundle is more durable than Garen is late game
one of the biggest strengths to the juggernauts is that they are probably the most varied and diverse subclass; most or all of them play differently from each other despite most of them being very simple, and most of them have unique roles and for the most part they don't step on each other's toes like other classes do so often; darius is different from illaoi, is different from shyvana, etc. my issue with pushing Garen into more traditional juggernaut stuff is that it would make him more like Darius, and i'd rather play up what makes them different. push garen to be much stronger in 1v1s and skirmishes, fights that allow him to make use of his ability to constantly disengage and brute force people with his raw durability, where Darius will excel in bigger teamfights due to his reset potential, sustain, and his heavy teamwide DOT damage once he pops his passive.
if Garen does get in-fight sustain, it shouldn't be related to how many champions he hits like Darius/Illaoi, because he lacks the incentive to hit as many people as possible. this will probably come at a big cost to his immediate durability, but it would give him standard jugg strength of combat healing.
