Thoughts and Discussion: Garen
Garen:
~ Big dude. Strong dude. Big Sword. Strong Armor. Fearless dude. Garen is a simple champion for beginners, but he should still have some kind of actual mastery curve for he can be good in high elo / competitive which keeps him from being oppressive against low elo and beginners.
~ Spin to win? Spin to win! To some form, yes he should have spin to win, but should be made something that is a little more interesting for the player. I am thinking of something like how great weapons special attack work in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (pretty niche game, none of you have heard of it), taking an element of a fun game and implementing it to work in League should mean success (it should/would still feel like Garen).
~ Garen is a juggernaut, should stay as a juggernaut, beefy dude that deals damage, immobility is the balance point for this.
~ Garen needs significant changes, the juggernaut update proved that small changes does not help / fix Garen's issues. The only main thing to keep in mind is that Garen should be able to played for beginners (and I literally mean beginners, the newest of players that have no clue of what they are doing) with that mastery curve which allows for an easier time balancing between high and low elo, this also keeps player interest by constantly learning new things about their champion for longer (mean while mains are mains).
CONCEPT KIT MEANS TAKE EVERYTHING WITH THE SMALLEST GRAIN OF SALT!!!
Perseverance (Passive): Ranks: SCALES WITH KEY LEVELS Every LONG TO MID TIMER seconds while in combat heals Garen for LOW% of his maximum health, the rate decreases by X second(s) for every time Garen remains in combat, decreases by (FOUR TIMES THE ORIGINAL AMOUNT) seconds at a time when in combat against champions or epic monsters, down to a minimum of X seconds. Leaving combat for more than X seconds resets this rate back to its base value.
Decisive Strike (Q): Cooldown: MID RANGE seconds; Range: SHORT Garen stabs his sword into the target enemy, silencing for MID RANGE seconds and dealing VERY LOW to VERY HIGH physical damage based on how deep his sword is into the target.
Casting Decisive Strike while Garen is spinning during Judgement causes the next spin to silence enemies for SLIGHTLY HIGHER THAN BASE DURATION seconds, but does not deal additional damage.
Courage (W): Cooldown: VERY LONG SCALING DOWN seconds Passive: Garen gains LOW% damage reduction for every enemy champion and epic monster within 400 range (max FIVE TIMES THE AMOUNT% damage reduction). This effect is disabled while Courage is on cooldown.
Active: Garen gains slow, stun, immobilize, and displacement immunity for VERY SHORT second and gains VERY HIGH% damage reduction which decays to REASONBLE MID TIER% damage reduction over VERY SHORT second and lingers for a further SHORT TO MID RANGE seconds.
Judgement (E): Cooldown: SHORT seconds; Range: SHORT AND SLIGHTL LONGER THAN SHORT Toggle: Garen begins spinning himself and his sword around, slowing himself by BIG SLOW% increasing to LOW BUT SCALES UP% bonus movement speed over DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME seconds. Garen accelerates his spinning between 0.5 to 5 spins per second over DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME seconds dealing LOW DAMAGE PER HIT physical damage every time his sword hits the enemy, this damage can critically strike.
Garen cannot basic attack while spinning during Judgement and can only spin for a maximum of X seconds at a time.
Toggle - ON to OFF: After at minimum VERY LOW second of spinning, Garen slams his sword to the ground unleashing a shock wave around him slowing enemies down by DECENT AND SCALING% for GOOD CHUNK OF seconds, if he span for at least FULL POWER seconds then this slow is increased to DOUBLE THE ORIGINAL SLOW% for SAME seconds, dealing DECENT TO LOW physical damage.
If enemies were directly struck by this sword then they are dealt an additional DECENT AMOUNT true damage, if this strikes an enemy champion or epic monster then the cooldown is refunded.
Demacian Justice (R): Cooldown: MID TIER FOR ULTIMATE Active: Garen vows to protect the target allied champion marking it with the Vow of Protection, only one champion can be marked at a time.
Passive: Garen deals LOW WITH ABILITY POWER SCALING of target maximum health as bonus physical damage whenever he does physical damage to enemies that damaged his allied champions in the last X seconds, this deals bonus true damage against those that damaged the Vow of Protection.
Garen moves PRETTY HIGH% faster towards the Vow of Protection if it took champion damage in the last X seconds, this bonus is increased to EVEN HIGHER THAN PRETTY HIGH% if the Vow of Protection is on Lux or Katarina.
(Yes, this ultimate is just a straight rework from an execute to being a white knight protector mainly because I find this concept very cool and just makes sense making Garen as a white knight brute being courage to fight for his team in the middle of the enemy team rather than fighting for the sake of fighting, he fights with a purpose, to protect those he cares about! The other benefit for doing this is that it moves Garen's ultimate away from being a Darius clone, which I feel Darius' ultimate is just straight better in every way.)
(This kit I tried to make super easy for new players with mastery elements snuck in. ~ His Passive here teaches new players that tanks should sit in the fight and absorb damage, the longer you sit in the fight the more healing you gain, rather than his current passive that wants the tank to sit outside of the fight avoiding all damage which is very backwards to how tanks should operate. ~ Q grants the importance of hard CC like a silence, is just simply a point and click nuke, and has the importance of getting super close to the enemy as a melee - this mechanic and decision making will also help boost mastery play of whether you should go for the silence or wait for maximum damage. Plus an additional function of using it for a less reliable silence, but it becomes potentially a slightly higher duration AoE silence by enhancing the next full rotation spin of Judgement (just the next spin with the starting position on Q press). ~ W is have it simple through the passive, you want to get close to as many enemy champions as possible for maximum damage reduction. The active is a trade-off by disabling the passive and meant to be more of the skill element, the initial element is cleanse certain crowd control (not all like blinds, suppression, silences, grounds, etc.) and basically block out all damage but quickly decays to a lower value and then that minimum stays for a little bit longer. ~ E I just wanted to make it feel a little more interesting and have the cost as an initial slow and low DPS and then ramps up to a movement speed boost and high DPS over time until turned off. The skill element is turning the spin off after some time (happens automatically at the end of the max duration as well) which slows enemies for a decent length, high radius than the spin radius. If you wait until the spin is at full power then the slow doubles in power for a super slow. Also introduced an aiming element where if you stop the spin at just the right moment you deal bonus true damage to struck enemies that got struck by the sword [like a line skill shot], this range is the same as the spin range which further rewards the Garen player for hitting champions or epic monsters (real threat targets) with the cooldown refunding completely (begins after the toggle ends).)
DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH NUMBER BALANCE HERE!!! It is more-so the fact that this can be balanced in the future just numerically.
