@Meddler: In advance of possible buffs, what is Garen's strategic niche?

Wobly·11/3/2016, 1:03:13 AM·8 votes·1,195 views

So Meddler recently said that Garen would be in consideration for some buffs in patch 6.24 or 7.1, which seems reasonable given that he's on the weak side.

My question is, since Riot's talked so much about every champion having a strategic niche, and using buffs and nerfs to accentuate a champion's strengths and weaknesses rather than smoothing them over, what exactly is Garen's strategic niche among Juggernauts? Illaoi has AoE, Yorick and Nasus are splitpushers, Darius is the reset Juggernaut, but what exactly is Garen's thing? Why do you want players to pick him instead of one of the other juggernauts, and how is that going to affect the buffs he'll get?

32 Comments

Critmaster Garen11/3/2016, 2:22:26 AM6 votes

with the rework they wanted to make him the anti carry. he was supposed to be able to fight someone whos being spoon fed by his team, or generally just snowballs out of control.

he was supposed to get stronger, when someone on the enemy team starts to snowball, to give him a chance to shut that person down, and get his team the shutdown gold, to get back into the game.

you were supposed to pick him into particularly snowbally assassins and ad carries who tend to rack up a lot of kills.

which kindof works when hes not generally undertuned like hes now. but gets really weird in even games, or when the enemy team has more than 1 carry who split the kills between them.

the villain mechanic starts to land on completely the wrong champions, or it lands on the enemy when garens team is ahead, and the enemy just managed to make a comeback.

the enemy vayne is wrecking your team? too bad. she might have dealt 99% of the damage, but someone else got the lasthits on 2 of those kills and is now the villain.

Marshbouy11/3/2016, 1:05:09 AM1 votes

Being the ambusher

Big Lincoln11/3/2016, 1:30:53 AM1 votes

being a worse version of Darius, basically

honestly Garen doesn't even play like a juggernaut, he's burst oriented and not a sustained threat and he wants to kill one dude and then back up and wait for cooldowns + passive. compare this to every other juggernaut with infight sustain and relentless amounts of damage and low cooldowns

but you can't really rework him too much because all of his abilities are iconic to him besides maybe his W so he's in a tight bind

Veraska11/3/2016, 1:31:02 AM1 votes

His villain mechanic is his niche, youre supposed to take garen when your opponent has a hard carry like riven or darius (someone who when they get fed they get a lot of kills) garens job is to neutralize those champions

AL00011/3/2016, 3:22:16 AM1 votes

Actually... his early phrase is pretty hurt by range and burst champions. His mid is his strength due to better item such as item 3071 and item 3068 OR item 3742 combo with Villain mechanic.

His late is the real problem... it's hard to dive into the frontline due to strong CC and pokers.

He needs some buffs of them

345ms again
30% tenacity reduction again.
AD per level <<< Most items are defensive and need some AD to make up for again viable after the BC nerfs.
Armor per level <<< Teamfight phase especially against pokers
HP per level <<< Teamfight phase especially against pokers
Villain Mechanic against Top Laner... I mean why ADC or Sup as Villain at level 6 and then for 5 mins? Villain Mechanic needs to be more random and short. Sometime your team didn't understand why you focus on Tanky Supporter. ;\

You can see that Darius's stats is much better than Garen. Darius also survived in teamfight phase much longer.

look at his patch history

V6.20 Perseverance BUG FIX: Fixed a bug where Rift Herald Rift Herald couldn't disable Perseverance after it 'ranked up' at level 11.

V5.19 Judgment BUG FIX: Dealing 1% of Garen's maximum health instead of the Villain's. Demacian Justice BUG FIX: Dealing 1% of Garen's maximum health instead of the Villain's.

V5.18 Demacian Justice REMOVED: Killing Garen accounting when determining Villain. REMOVED: Killing champion clones accounting when determining the Villain.

V5.17 Stats Movement speed reduced to 340 from 345. Decisive Strike Bonus movement speed reduced to 30% from 35%. BUG FIX: Enhanced attack not triggering against structures. Courage NEW EFFECT: Garen gains twice the bonus resistances per enemy unit kill (0.5 and 2) on Howling Abyss, Twisted Treeline, and Crystal Scar. Judgment NEW EFFECT: Attack commands while active will make Garen get slightly closer to target.

Tychusfindlay91911/3/2016, 2:09:44 PM1 votes

For the love of god make him have some sort of in combat sustain. Out of combat sustain is for skirmishers if anything.

Tychusfindlay91911/3/2016, 3:10:53 PM1 votes

Garen's strategic niche is failing to impersonate Darius 8)

oSEXYPLATYPUSo11/3/2016, 1:03:48 AM1 votes

sustain juggernaut ?

DeathBurst11/3/2016, 7:37:40 PM1 votes

EDIT: Actually, just read Critmaster's comment, it's more detailed.

I think it's intended to be the anti-"protect the Kog team-comp" champion, with his Villain passive. You can hit really, really hard the Villain, and if the enemy team is centered around only one hyper-carry that you can assume will reliably be the Villain, Garen could theoretically be used against that.

In practice, though, I don't think it works well, 'cause the Villain passive only counts kills, and that's not a reliable enough way to get the passive on the hyper-carry. Moreover, Garen is ALSO supposed to be a Beginner Champion, so he cannot be too specialized and has to be at least an average pick in most team comps.