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Garen rework to to give more interactive gameplay around him and to balance out his power curve

UoL NicknameMy·2/24/2019, 7:51:13 PM·4 votes·2,652 views

Garen since the Juggernaut rework faced multiple problems that not let him feel like Garen. Before that, he stomped lanes with his E and wasn't really beatable in lane, but afterwards, he was useless. Nowadays he basically looses every lane, then is way to strong in the midgame and destroys everyone and then falls off lategame again. This is a balance that is very frustrating for Garen players and enemies of Garen. I want to fix that so Garen feels overall more balanced and more fun to play as or against.

First, to prove my point, lets look at the current winrates for Garen over time: Lolalytics.

As you can see here, Garen only wins 25% of the games that last 15 minutes, means he looses most lanes and then looses games. If he somehow gets through that lane tho, his winrate rises to over 50%, which proves that his midgame is way to strong. That is very bad balancing.

Also, for me, Garen has an identity crisis. If I think about Garen, I mainly think about the power of his spin, but it is currently so weak that everyone goes for builds that focus more on his Q because the damage of Q is way to strong if ranked up. I try to fix that by shifting power from his Q to his E.

You can find my Garen rework here. I started theorycrafting about it over a year ago and it smoothed out over time through multiple people's inputs and thoughts how Garen should be. I still improve it now and then with new ideas.

Helpful to understand those changes is this spreadsheet I created for the changes which calculates all damages for every existing version of Garen in the past and compares it to my changes. Do note tho that also other aspects of Garen changed over time which can't be calculated in terms of damage.

Lets go through my whole rework and why I changed certain aspects about Garen.

Base Stats:

  • Health changed from 616.28 (+ 84.25) to 615 (+ 85).
  • Attack Damage increased from 66 (+ 4.5) to 68 (+ 5)
  • Armor increased from 36 (+ 3) to 36 (+ 4)

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  • Health changes exist to clean up his numbers, which are a bit silly at the moment.
  • Attack Damage increase exists because the way I changed Garen is with more scaling impact on abilities and more AD amplifies that, plus for a Juggernaut, Garen's AD currently is rather low.
  • Armor is changed because of the Courage changes and Garen having too low armor for his class in the first place.

Decisive Strike:

  • Cooldown changed from 8 seconds to 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 seconds.
  • Movement speed duration increased from 1.5 / 2 / 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 to 3.5
  • Silence duration changed from 1.5 at all ranks to 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2
  • Bonus physical damage changed from 30 / 65 / 100 / 135 / 170 (+ 40% AD) to 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 (+ 10 / 25 / 40 / 55 / 70% AD)
  • Fixed a bug where Energized effects wouldn't apply correctly.

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  • Cooldown now changes with level to offer opponents a bigger window of counterplay earlygame to make up for his increased damage on Judgment, but also to make his lategame stronger.
  • Same goes with silence change, lower silence duration early allows more counterplay while giving Garen lategame more impact.
  • Movement speed change is so Garen has a bigger chance to withstand range matchups which he always looses badly.
  • Damage is overall lower because of more damage on Judgment, Lategame the damage is the same or more tho if investing in some AD.
  • The bug with Energized effects is that they would trigger in the middle of Garen's Q and don't let him benefit of their bonus effects. For example, Rapid Firecannon's bonus range is not applied and Statikk can never crit, even if at 100% crit chance.

Courage

  • Passive resistances removed
  • New Passive: Garen reduces incoming physical and magic damage by 15% from champions outside of 450 (edge to edge) range.

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These changes have multiple reasons:

  • First, it makes it easier for meele champions to deal with the increased power of Garen's earlygame.
  • Second, ranged champions now no longer make Garen completely unplayable unless they want to play risky and stay inside the range, which gives Garen the option to counterplay them.
  • Also makes Garen stronger against kiting and poke later so he doesn't fall of as hard.

Judgment

  • Cooldown changed from 9 seconds to 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 seconds.
  • Number of Spins changed: 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 at levels 1 / 4 / 7 / 10 / 13 / 16 to 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 at levels 1 / 4 / 10 / 13 / 16
  • Damage changed from 14 / 18 / 22 / 26 / 30 (+ 36 / 37 / 38 / 39 / 40% AD) to 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 (+ 40 / 42 / 44 / 46 / 48% AD) (+ 1% of target's maximum health)
  • Now always deals 33% increased damage against monsters
  • Armor Reduction changed from 25% after 4 hits to 5% per hit, stacking up to 6 times. Now is refreshed by any kind of Garen's damage.

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  • Cooldown change same reason as for Decisive Strike
  • Spin number change is one of the biggest things that change his power curve, one more spin early increases his damage potential a lot in lane so enemies just can't stand brainless in his spin. With skipping the level 7 rankup it also weakens his former too strong midgame by a lot.
  • Damage change also improves the earlygame and lategame through increased importance of base AD and less base damage once leveling up. More base damage at level 1 increases the potency of the spell at level 1.
  • Target's maximum HP damage shifted to Judgment from Villain passive to improve levels 1 to 5 and overall smooth out the damage, as Villain mechanic can be very frustrating to play around. (Also makes it able to be increased if only hitting 1 target and gives a boost to jungling)
  • Permanent damage increase against jungle monsters allows Garen to consistently successfully jungle.
  • Smoothed out armor reduction helps out against tanks since the Black Cleaver nerf hurt Garen really badly and also helps him more with the damage type change of his ultimate.

Demacian Justice

  • Villain-Mechanic removed
  • Damage changed from 175 / 350 / 525 (+ 28.6 / 33.3 / 40% of target's missing health) magic damage to 60 / 70 / 80% of target's missing health physical damage

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  • Villain removed because it promoted an unhealthy gameplay pattern for Garen where he had to oneshot the enemy backline as a Juggernaut as they were most of the time the villain and it also felt kinda bad for the player who was the villain, as he had no real counterplay against it.
  • To understand the damage change, please look up the damage comparison. Summing it up: Less damage against squishies, more damage against tanks.
  • Change to physical damage to better synergize with the rest of the kit and stop Hexdrinker from being an easy hardcounter purchase.

So yeah, I am finished now, a huge wall of text which desribes every aspect of my Garen rework with full argumentation and proofs for arguments given. What do you think about the changes. Do you agree with that Garen's current spot is unhealthy for the game? Do you agree with the proposed changes or what would you change if you could? Feedback always improved my rework over the latest years and more feedback can only help to get it better and better, because no rework is perfect. Thanks for any comment.

15 Comments

Critmaster Garen2/24/2019, 10:53:44 PM5 votes

[{quoted}](name=UoL NicknameMy,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Wgf1JA5V,comment-id=,timestamp=2019-02-24T19:51:13.465+0000)

If he somehow gets through that lane tho, his winrate rises to over 50%, which proves that his midgame is way to strong.

https://www.op.gg/champion/vayne/statistics/bot https://www.op.gg/champion/jax/statistics/top https://www.op.gg/champion/veigar/statistics/mid

just want to point out, that its not unusual for a champion to have a far above 50% winrate during certain game phases. its usually a mark of scaling champions to start out weaker and then reach high winrates (almost 60%) towards lategame.

garen peaks out at what? 51% for games around 25 minutes? thats far from "too strong" even for that game phase. its also to note, that early game power tends to be more valuable than lategame power, since most games dont last longer than 30 minutes.

however, i do agree that his power curve is completely messed up and he shouldnt fall off towards lategame at all for how weak he is early on. infact, he should be scaling much harder and reach around 55% winrate for long games, and not 40%, for how weak his early game is.

ill read through the rest now.

Critmaster Garen2/24/2019, 11:07:45 PM4 votes

im finished, and this one is a big no.

Villain-Mechanic removed

mainly because there is absolutely no compensation for this in any of the other changes, nor any replacement mechanic that would keep him at least at the same power level.

all you proposed there for his q, w and e are mainly power shifts. the abilities deal a bit more damage at early ranks for higher early game cooldowns, and his w passive basically becomes useless against melee champions throughout the entire game.

villainy ties up a huge portion of garens power budget, and without any compensation to this removal whatsoever, youd just be dumpstering the champion.

youre severely underestimating how much of his ability to be even a champion on the field and not just some glorified cannon minion is in villainy currently. and not just in the true damage on the ultimate, but also the 1% max health true damage on auto attacks and spins.

To understand the damage change, please look up the damage comparison. Summing it up: Less damage against squishies, more damage against tanks.

im also confused by this. garen doesnt just need to be able to fight tanks. he also needs to be able to fight squishies. he should be able to fight marksmen when in melee range, he should be able to fight Fiora Yasuo Gangplank and other squishies on at least even terms.

putting more power into tank shredding (which didnt even happen in those changes) doesnt help him, and i can tell you right now as a garen main, if you took power away from me to fight squishies, id just build more damage and items like item 3078 item 3142 more often to compensate.

Soul Dealer2/24/2019, 10:11:36 PM3 votes

Got my upvote for the sheer amount of work you put into this good job

Critmaster Garen2/24/2019, 11:24:10 PM3 votes

in my opinion in his current state what garen really needs is just a massive buff to his lategame. not even a power shift. a weak early game wouldnt be as bad if he didnt drop off like a rock past 30 minutes.

also work on the villainy passive. either to be replaced by a different mechanic, or it needs to be changed in a way that we have some form of control over the mark.

i already proposed a couple of changes in that regard and the simplest solution would be to let us freely chose the villain upon reaching rank 3 on his ultimate. this would at the same time be a lategame buff and give us some control over the mechanic that we have to rely on so much to even have an impact on a game.

Danyoja2/25/2019, 3:35:03 AM1 votes

I actually like W change I feel that it should be the reverse where anything inside should be dealing reduced damage (I know this might make him oppressive, but so is Jax and Darius and I'm sure garen can't take either of them even with these changes up close). I feel like if we are going to remove the passive armor/mr then the W could use some more than damage reduction. I think that his W should put a small aura around him that intimidates his target, which grounds them and makes them take (some type of bonus damage on his next Q or R they can be different from each other)