the increased damage to nearest enemy is good. but garen was better while he still had villainy + more tank stats + more damage reduction. he used to be terribly weak early game but could still scale anyway. good garens knew how to play around the weak early game. he is just terribly weak now in any case and worse at high elo while stronger at low elo than he was before the rework.
garen needs a real rework to give him just a little bit more skill expression or have villainy back.
Yeah, overall he was better before. He doesn't even need a rework. He was as strong three months ago as Riot is likely to ever let him become. (But the little things, the smoother movement, Q recognizing AS, True Vision on R, QoL stuff that shoulda been done long ago anyway, should stay of course.) (That was really all that he needed in the first place.)
#LeaveGarenAlone
make his ultimate deal the old magic damage again and put villainy back.
make his spin scale to 10 spins again.
keep the changed passive keep the changed % damage increase on the spin.
increase his w passive to 40 or 50 again.
A lot of garen mains approved the 'rework' and personally i hardly find how garen was suppose to be relevant late game. He was a dead point at all stage on the game while being a terrible juggernout(no Conqueror sinergy and no build on sustain during fight while having low number on early for good number late game which he hardly could use) and also a bad tank (no heavy cc or mobility).
