Current state of Garen

Laura ß·Jul 23, 2019·1 votes·1,427 views

Presses Q auto attacks you, silences you and proceeds to press E for the spin and there goes half your health. If you stay to fight him during his E you just lost lane, if you run to avoid all his E damage and go in to attack him while his abilities are on CD he still wins because of passive regen and grasp rune. Also worth mentioning how he is able to out damage you while building nothing but defensive items like armor and health, he might be open to ganks unless you or your jungler don't have a stun because he is able to eliminate slows with hes Q all while getting a speed boost himself AND if he gets stunned he can press W at the right time to negate lots of damage.

There is no way to beat a garen 1v1 with a melee champion your only hope is to get a gank to hope to kill him, he doesn't fall of late game either in fact he is even stronger late game once he builds all his defensive items + a black cleaver and executes low HP targets.

19 Comments

Critmaster GarenJul 23, 20194 votes

[{quoted}](name=Laura ß,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=,timestamp=2019-07-23T22:31:50.151+0000)

if you run to avoid all his E damage and go in to attack him while his abilities are on CD he still wins because of passive regen and grasp rune.

his passive regen is disabled for 9 seconds upon taking damage from enemy champions.

like when people complain about the champion and dont even take the time to read his tooltips even once, lol.

There is no way to beat a garen 1v1 with a melee champion

there is a large number of melee champions who beat garen 1v1. especially during the early game. just because youre not able to, doesnt mean its not possible.

read his fucking tooltips for gods sake. most notable his w and its cooldown, and how the passive works. then play around that.

{quoted}

is probably the only melee champion who can stand up to Garen on the 1 v 1 basic atm, Regen negates everyone elses kits.

if youre doing this, look up a guide on darius and learn and practise his combos. dont pick him blind into garen without any practise and expect to win, just because youre playing a counter.

if you play against a garen main with phase rush, without having practise on darius, the garen will eat you alive. its a matchup that darius wins, if you dont fuck up your trading patterns. but you need to learn how to play darius properly first, and execute a fast combo to almost instanlty build 4 stacks.

a lane bullies potential is also wasted if you dont know how to control your lane and use lane freezes against a weaker opponent.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2019-07-23T22:49:09.558+0000)

his passive regen is disabled for 9 seconds upon taking damage from enemy champions.

like when people complain about the champion and dont even take the time to read his tooltips even once, lol.

there is a large number of melee champions who beat garen 1v1. especially during the early game. just because youre not able to, doesnt mean its not possible.

read his fucking tooltips for gods sake. most notable his w and its cooldown, and how the passive works. then play around that.

if youre doing this, look up a guide on darius and learn and practise his combos. dont pick him blind into garen without any practise and expect to win, just because youre playing a counter.

if you play against a garen main with phase rush on darius without having practise on darius, the garen will eat you alive. its a matchup that darius wins, if you dont fuck up your trading patterns. but you need to learn how to play darius properly first, and execute a fast combo to almost instanlty build 4 stakcks.

a lane bullies potential is also wasted if you dont know how to control your lane and use lane freezes against a weaker opponent.

http://prntscr.com/oj573l ok Darius can win the match up but it isn't as lobsided as it should be due to Garen's passive lol The lane starts going = around level 6 because Garen doesn't require a stacking mechanic for his ultimate to be strong, spam trades and he Q's away from Darius's slows until you're vunerable for the all in combo

Critmaster GarenJul 23, 20192 votes

{quoted}

http://prntscr.com/oj573l ok

those last sentences were more directed at the OP.

im just telling him just because darius counters garen, it doesnt mean he can just pick him and should expect to automatically win.

The lane starts going = around level 6 because Garen doesn't require a stacking mechanic for his ultimate to be strong, spam trades and he Q's away from Darius's slows until you're vunerable for the all in combo

the lane starts at lvl 1. if he wastes his q on a minion and/or lets you walk up and auto + w him, you can literally just start orb walking and auto attacking him until you have 5 stacks, ignite him, and win.

i play both champions, and i have experience on both champions on either side of the matchup.

darius wins extended trades, garen wins short trades. if you run ghost + flash and get him into a long lane, or if you run flash + ignite and keep him in range after he used his q, you win decisively.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2019-07-23T23:05:13.033+0000)

those last sentences were more directed at the OP.

im just telling him just because darius counters garen, it doesnt mean he can just pick him and should expect to automatically win.

Garen's just received too many buffs recently to the point not many people can manage him, I can handle Garen's fine up until around level 11/13 then they just become a splitpush-never dying teamfight nightmare kinda guy but that's probably more attributed to people not knowing how to lock down champions

I think he needs some adjustments but only smalls ones, probably most around his silence/passive

arowin242Jul 23, 20192 votes

alright, so there is a reason why garen is almost never seen in pro-play / high elo game:

Garen has THE most counterpicks of all champions IN THE GAME.

lemme name a few:

Yorick Darius Jax Urgot Jayce Kennen Riven Mordekaiser

first of all his weaknesses:

engage - garen has no true way to hard engage - he relies on his enemies misposistioning and running up to them in order to damage them, either that or burning flash.

burst - garen's damage is in bursts unlike other juggernauts whom all prefer longer fights, garen cannot fight for long as his cooldowns are rather long, even with 40% CDR.

Conqueror - this rune is the bane of his existence - it gives the enemy healing, and provides true damage which ignores his armor/MR also it ignores his W.

reliance on ignite - without ignite garen's early kill potential is non-existant

outscaling - garen damage scales on levels yes, but his build path and his kit makes him far weaker late game than quite allot of the other champs. buying item 3036 item 3135 or your own item 3071 will go far to reduce his effective tanking. all of these items are often build later in the game, which in turn softens him up to being blown up again.

rune choice - garen has 3 main keystones: grasp, phase rush and predator. grasp fixes his laning, but falls off. phase rush is the best for general gameplay if you know how to abuse it, predator allows him to fix his engage problems a bit.

build path - garen's build path is extremely predictable, which leads to him being easily countered.

simple gameplay - garen's gameplay is VERY simple, this leaves loads of ways to outplay him / deny him.

weakness to ranged - garen really suffers here, ranged champs can kite him, interrupt his passive in lane and generally scale better.

kiting - garen and other juggernaut's main weakness: garen can only use his Q to try and reach you or has to burn flash / disengage.

there are probably more but i think i made my point.

believe me, once you get some more experience you will look back and laugh at garen, poor guy cant get any rest at all! while he might seem super OP at first, that feeling quickly fades once an ashe just completely kites you to ninth circle.

if garen, at any point of the game gets out-damaged in a 1v1 then he will be completely useless for the rest of the game, this guy not only falls off hard, once he loses his lead it is gone forever.

TLDR: learn the matchup and how to counter our favourite bayblade-meme-demacian. once you do that, every lane or game against him becomes freelo unless you are playing against Riste ( the only guy to OTP garen into challenger)

That's all.

Lionheart IJul 30, 20191 votes

Im not sure if Garens Build Path is that predictable. Im a hard Garen OTP with more than 7 million+ Points overall on him (just 1.87 million on my main). My Build path is Sorcerer's shoes, Youumus, Steraks, Cleaver, Sunfire and Spirit. And this works pretty well ^^

arowin242Jul 30, 20192 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lionheart I,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2019-07-30T10:45:49.981+0000)

Im not sure if Garens Build Path is that predictable. Im a hard Garen OTP with more than 7 million+ Points overall on him (just 1.87 million on my main). My Build path is Sorcerer's shoes, Youumus, Steraks, Cleaver, Sunfire and Spirit. And this works pretty well ^^

congratz on making it that far! on the side note i'l explain what i mean with a predictable build path.

just about any garen build includes item 3071 and item 3068 and then continues the trend of building tanky / a little extra damage.

youmuus' steraks and visage are also often seen on garen sorc shoes are not mind you (i take it you build them for sunfire + ulti damage?)

the thing is garen is always gonna build early AD/HP into some tank items, its his only option really. as far as i know only Riste (NA garen challenger OTP) goes consistently outside of standard garen items (but even he builds them quite often still)

per example riste will often rush a bami's cinder (for proccing phase rush) into either a triforce or dead man's plate. then later on he will buy steraks and one of the armour pen items, in his last youtube vid, he even build mercurial scimitar. (veigar matchup)

most garen will never even consider these items for buying, so the enemy pretty much already knows: yup he's gonna build black cleaver into sunfire and visage yup. so they either build items that counter HP stacking (botrk) or armour (last whisper, mortal reminder, LDR or black cleaver) or they just build a frozen mallet or rylai's and simply kite garen into non-existence.

henceforth my reasoning why his build path is predictable.

That's all.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

Darius is probably the only melee champion who can stand up to Garen on the 1 v 1 basic atm, Regen negates everyone elses kits.

Urgot potentially?

Illaoi also a maybe?

I couldn't think of any better matchups, he's certainly overtuned right now lol All garen's just flash Q E R the ADC in fights then run away

SuicidePlankJul 23, 20191 votes

{quoted}

is probably the only melee champion who can stand up to Garen on the 1 v 1 basic atm, Regen negates everyone elses kits.

potentially?

also a maybe?

I couldn't think of any better matchups, he's certainly overtuned right now lol All garen's just flash Q E R the ADC in fights then run away

Kled maybe now, but since he can basically oneshot mini kled I suppose not.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Kled maybe now, but since he can basically oneshot mini kled I suppose not.

I think Kled has a reasonable chance with ignite from 1 - 4 but then it's Garen favoured as all you have to do is spam trades and regenerate lol

TakaDamaJul 23, 20192 votes

Not sure if this still applies, but at level 9 Urgot will actually outdamage Garen no matter what Garen builds as long as Urgot's W is maxed then. Maybe smart use of Garen's Q might help, but Urgot will win in a pure slug fest.

Darius is similar, although for him it's about proccing his passive.

Illaoi is a bit difficult to measure; Garen's Q does threes times the work as a way to clear tentacles, as a silence when Illaoi ults, and as a MS steroid to avoid tentacles and her E.

However, the biggest issue I have with Garen is not his damage or even durability with Courage. It's his passive; even before level 11, it gives him incredible staying power in lane, so even if you get him low in a trade, he can hug tower and heal back every little bit of missing health. You can't really dive him as a well-timed Q will prevent you from flashing out of turret range and allows him to kite away more easily. You can't push the wave to him as that allows him to farm in relative safety. The only thing you can do is to let the waves meet away from his tower, and that still doesnt stop him from healing and staying at tower to try again later.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Not sure if this still applies, but at level 9 Urgot will actually outdamage Garen no matter what Garen builds as long as Urgot's W is maxed then. Maybe smart use of Garen's Q might help, but Urgot will win in a pure slug fest.

Darius is similar, although for him it's about proccing his passive.

Illaoi is a bit difficult to measure; Garen's Q does threes times the work as a way to clear tentacles, as a silence when Illaoi ults, and as a MS steroid to avoid tentacles and her E.

However, the biggest issue I have with Garen is not his damage or even durability with Courage. It's his passive; even before level 11, it gives him incredible staying power in lane, so even if you get him low in a trade, he can hug tower and heal back every little bit of missing health. You can't really dive him as a well-timed Q will prevent you from flashing out of turret range and allows him to kite away more easily. You can't push the wave to him as that allows him to farm in relative safety. The only thing you can do is to let the waves meet away from his tower, and that still doesnt stop him from healing and staying at tower to try again later.

I just posed forward the best people to counteract him in lane under those circumstances but it's not as black and white as those scenarios with minion waves jungles blaa blaa blaa but yeah I think most of the issues comes from Garen's passive being on the strong side atm, hopefully they'll nerf it minorly or something but people treat Garen as a joke champion rn - have for years due to his simplicity lol

Critmaster GarenJul 23, 20192 votes

{quoted}

I just posed forward the best people to counteract him in lane under those circumstances but it's not as black and white as those scenarios with minion waves jungles blaa blaa blaa but yeah I think most of the issues comes from Garen's passive being on the strong side atm, hopefully they'll nerf it minorly or something but people treat Garen as a joke champion rn - have for years due to his simplicity lol

garens passive is almost non existent during the early game.

the only buff he received recently was a scaling buff that kicks in at later stages of the game. overall shorter windows in which his damage reduction is unavailable when he already has 40% cdr, and more armor/mr that he can farm up on minions.

neither apply to his early game.

garen overall is fine. he has slightly above 50% winrate with still a low overall pick rate. nowhere near deserving of nerfs.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=0000000100000000,timestamp=2019-07-23T23:13:26.520+0000)

garens passive is almost non existent during the early game.

the only buff he received recently was a scaling buff that kicks in at later stages of the game. overall shorter windows in which his damage reduction is unavailable when he already has 40% cdr, and more armor/mr that he can farm up on minions.

neither apply to his early game.

garen overall is fine. he has slightly above 50% winrate with still a low overall pick rate. nowhere near deserving of nerfs.

Ye that's why I'm saving he poses a threat around level 9 and upwards due to that's when the passive starts kicking in, he can be a big issue when it comes to being unkillable for some comps but Morde's much more on the mantle to be nerfed before Garen

TakaDamaJul 23, 20191 votes

nods if League of Legends was ever as black and white as something like Rock Paper Scissors or Pokemon, I would have quit long ago. (Nothing against Pokemon, just saying I prefer strategy in-game as opposed to strategy pre-game).

As far as his passive goes, I would actually like to see it ramp up during fights instead of away from them, as the name Perserverance suggests tirelessly working towards a goal, not giving up and waiting for another opportunity later.

Perhaps something like: 'heals 2% of his missing health per second per nearby enemy champion?' Gives him more staying powers in fights and forces him into more of a lane bully role as opposed to one that can play passively when he wants to.

DanyojaJul 24, 20191 votes

I don't mean this paragraph to sound insulting or mean in any way and just hope its more informational and if you happen to already know all this I respect your decision.

Pokemon has plenty of in game strategy. Double switching or switching into a predicted attack is vital in competitive . Choosing to sack a Pokemon to get turn advantage is huge. The move set are equally as important because there are a few meta sets that each pokemon can learn staller, attacker, revenge killer etc. Also the strategy each mon can bring can be interesting as well do you go condition heavy (if so which one as only one condition can be applied at a time), maybe fast attackers with spikes and rock support. While Pokemon is more akin to a card game as pose to league active on the fly combat I gotta to defend the dedicated EV/IV competitive pokemon trainers out there.

TakaDamaJul 24, 20191 votes

This is fair, though I did suggest that Pokemon is based more on pre-game strategy as opposed to in-game strategy; your team and their movesets, EVs/IVs, items, abilities, etc are determined before going into battle. For a team to be functional, you'll also need knowledge of the format's key threats and who on your team can counter or check those threats.

In game, the strategy involved relies on evaluating probabilities, keeping track of vital information such as movesets, items, and abilities revealed, and being able to outthink your opponent. Which, while this is valid as far as strategy goes, seems a bit more luck-based to me than League.

Critmaster GarenJul 23, 20192 votes

{quoted}

is probably the only melee champion who can stand up to Garen on the 1 v 1 basic atm

oh by the way.

Trundle literally just presses r and wins. i dodge most of the time i see him.

PyrosanJul 23, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Re7KxAA6,comment-id=00000002,timestamp=2019-07-23T23:22:23.246+0000)

oh by the way.

literally just presses r and wins.

Oh yeah I completely forgot about Trundle lol He hard counters Sejuani also so I try to mindblock him out as much as possible