Boards›Gameplay

@Riot Give Garen some love please?

SecondComing·9/9/2016, 11:24:58 AM·5 votes·492 views

The Might of Demacia is in a very poor (Third World-like) state right now. His Juggernaut update had some good points (spin speed increase, villain mechanic) but overall, it made him rather weak and not a worthwhile pick in most cases.

The gutting of his Health and Health growth made his early game incredibly weak, really easy for him to fall behind. The 'scale into late game' concept (Judgement reaching max spins, passive really doing work, Courage lasting more etc) is nice but, that's all that he got going for him really. The counter 'balance' was over the top. Not all games reach late game; many are decided much earlier. There are a lot of popular top laners- Darius, Fiora, Maokai, Illaoi etc who are strong in ALL phases of the game, not just late. Also, they happen to have that 'in-combat' sustain. Garen's passive is barely noticeable early (and pretty easy to constantly deny; unless you want to miss cs and fall behind) and while it is pretty strong later on, Warmog's essentially gives a free Garen passive (full power) to those who can meet the requirements, bringing Garen again on the losing side (it is a good item for him but he doesn't gain as much as the others). Subsequent nerfs after the Juggernauts patch made him pretty much the easiest champ to kite.

Buffing his armor and auto attack damage was nice. But there aren't really attack speed items to consider (Trinity Force mana components, BotRK really not that good on him imho) save some marksman items-which, again, aren't ideal. The nerf to his W was pretty disastrous. The % increase was much nicer than a flat amount. If at least, it didn't have a cap, we may had something. And the removal of the tenacity was also bad- Garen wants to absorb cc for his team. The justification from your part about not liking 'built-in tenacity' didn't quite cut it. Irelia has a much stronger version which is permanently off cd (Garen's pretty significant) and the recent changes didn't do much to help all the frustration Irelia creates as a champ.

Look at the Battle Training. Ashe, Ryze and Garen. All considered 'basic'; the easiest champs for their role one can learn. But the first 2 also happen to be prevalent in the highest level of play (Ashe had to be nerfed, Ryze is having a resurgence lately) but poor ol'Garen struggles in obscurity. Same with champion updates. Poppy, Fiora, Gangplank (and basically every champ that had a big update so far, just stressing the ones who share top lane with Garen) became very strong and stable meta picks. Whenever the first 2 seemed to fall out of favor, you buffed them even (GP has been hit hard, deservingly so, but still he's pretty strong on his own right). I know, each champ was a different case to get a big update. But end result was, more champs that are more worth picking than Garen; and they already were many. Looking at Darius alone, he is both a better damage dealer AND tank than Garen; stats alone, level 18. I remember Riot's official statement being "We don't want a game where champion X is better than champion Y in all things champion Y does so you won't have a reason to pick champion Y over X." Currently, many champs do that to Garen. Also, because of how he plays, the difference between good and bad Garen players is rather thin most often than not (very few and small windows to show knowledge of the champ, like when to activate Courage to get the most out of it or when to commit with Judgement/Decisive Strike).

In other words (TL;DR), I'm not saying make Garen the most imbaOPbroken champ ever. Just give the players more reasons to pick him other than liking him as a champ.

4 Comments

PermabannedGaren9/11/2016, 6:23:59 PM2 votes

People need to stop suggesting making Garen tankier as a way to fix him.

Garen is already far tankier than most of the other juggernauts.

Garen's problem is that his damage might be the worst of all the juggernauts, while being among the most limited in its radius, as well as having no in-combat sustain (which also makes him one of the worst duelists among the juggernauts), unless of course he's attacking the Villain. Now, that's not to say that Garen is the worst juggernaut. I think that Nasus for example is probably worse, but this thread is about Garen, and fuck Nasus.

The Villain mechanic needs to go. It's a stupid crutch that doesn't actually fix Garen's problems. It just makes his damage against one person ridiculous, but if that person is the ADC Garen is still so easily kited and short-ranged that it won't matter. It's a win-more mechanic. If Garen and his team are ahead then it's extremely impressive, any small comeback you make is shut down by the fact that the fed Garen is now able to kill you faster, and he can't be peeled because then his fed team will kill you. If Garen and his team are behind? He just gets kited and is useless.

He needs to be made better in duels. Among juggernauts, he is one of the most limited in range of his abilities, doing primarily single target damage compared to Illaoi or Darius. Why is it then that those two champions are also far better in 1v1s? Even if we include Riot's official list of juggernauts and not just the ones released as such, Garen is probably the single worst duelist among juggernauts.

Nasus Darius Mordekaiser Illaoi Trundle Olaf Shyvana Udyr Dr. Mundo Volibear Yorick

All of these champions are better than Garen in a 1v1 (except maybe Volibear, but I doubt it), and it's not hard to see why. Other than Shyvana (who gets good scaling with attack speed and has a lot of sustained damage and on-hit effects, plus her build can easily support a blade of the ruined king) all of these juggernauts have sustain in combat or steroids that make their dueling far superior.

Let's compare him to Darius, generally considered the best top lane juggernaut at the moment.

Darius has a passive that simultaneously applies a strong DOT effect and gives him a huge AD steroid, up to 200 AD late game. His Q heals him in combat, and his E provides a pretty substantial 25% armour penetration. Furthermore, his ult is a big boy true damage execute that deals around 1,000 burst true damage late game with five stacks (and boy is it easy to stack against Garen).

Garen has 30 armour and MR and 30% damage reduction for six seconds as his only dueling steroid. That sounds nice and all, but the utter lack of a steroid to give him damage against people with any bulk (except the Villain mechanic, which I'm not including because, as I said, it's stupid, unpredictable, and cheesey) means he will be doing baby damage to anyone who does build any (like a juggernaut), and his ult as an execute is strictly inferior to Darius' unless, again, Garen's enemy is the Villain.

So Darius not only is far more useful in team fights due to his higher AOE damage, potential for resets, and okay utility, but he's far better in a duel as well.

Now let's talk about their power curves. I can not think of a single lane match up that Garen does better than Darius against except for Riven. His early game is essentially worse in just about every way against basically the majority of opponents. Even against ranged top laners, who tend to counter juggernauts, Darius at least has some options due to his Q's range and his pull. Garen has to farm with his dick in his mouth, and just accept that the enemy Quinn or Teemo is going to deny him. The same is also true of Illaoi.

But maybe Garen outscales them? Nope, as I outlined before he is both less useful in team fights as well as weaker in duels.

So why would anyone pick Garen over Darius, beyond just liking the champion? There isn't really a compelling reason.

Garen needs to lose the Villain mechanic so that some power can be given back to his kit and stats. He should be retooled into the duelist juggernaut, who singles out one enemy and smites them with Demacian justice. This would still fit the theme the Villain mechanic was trying for, but without having to rely on a crutch mechanic to do it.

As for how to do this? Honestly, I don't know. I wish I could think of a good way to fix Garen, but I honestly don't know if I can. I've thought about maybe making his E apply on-hit effects, but that might be too busted.

Jo0o9/9/2016, 11:51:06 AM1 votes

They just need to remove his W and give him an actual ability in its place. That'd go a long way.