proposed scaling adjustments for garen.

here are the problems with the champion:

hes weak early game and gets bullied by most lane opponents. at the same time his largest power spike is ~50% winrate towards midgame from where he drops off like crazy towards lategame (~40% winrate for games that last longer than 30 minutes). so his relatively weak early game doesnt pay off with appropriate scaling. as a result he has no game phase where he feels like a carry.

villainy is as shitty to use for us garen mains, as it can be to play against for his opponents, and there is a simple reason to it:

agency.

most juggernauts have their main steroids attached to mechanics that may offer counterplay, but that the players of these champions have agency over.

has agency over his maiden and his ghouls. he can control when to summon them and at which target to direct them. has agency over his bleed passive. he can chose the target on which to stack up before going all in and spreading the bleed. has agency over her tentacles. where to place them, and where to direct their slams. for all of his bugs still has control over his own kit. can decide who to ult and control the ghost.

even if you want to group them in with the juggernauts have agency over their main steroids. (directing the skillshot that is aatrox q, or urgot with his leg procs)

however has no agency whatsoever over his juggernaut steroid. his only option is to hope that it hits the correct target. if it doesnt, youre kindof screwed, as you will simply lose to and get outscaled by most non villain targets that you should be able to fight on even terms.

on one hand, garens villainy passive decides over if you can fight an opponent and win or not, on the other hand there is absolutely no way to influence which target gets the mark. which makes you feel like youre at the mercy of the rng gods if youre going to have an impact on a game or not.

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so here are a couple of personal proposed changes to fix these issues:

1.) general stat scaling

• garen has 6 lower base ad at lvl 18 than a lot of the other champions of his class. increase his ad/lvl to adjust
• garens base hp at lvl 18 is 2048, while most other juggernauts have around 2200 to 2300 hp at lvl 18. increase his hp scaling by ~10/lvl

2.) slight modification to his w passive

• reduce the armor/mr cap on his w passive from minions and monsters from 40 to 30
• give garen 1 point of armor/mr per takedown (kills/assists) against enemy champions, turrets and epic monster that dont count towards and can exceed that cap

this would give him a way to scale into longer lasting games by increasing the w resist value somewhat without forcing him to sit in a sidelane and push waves for 40 minutes.

3.) modification to villainy

• remove the true damage on garens rank 1 ult against the villain (the bonus on the spin and auto attacks remains)
• rank 2 unlocks the true damage on the ultimate again
• rank 3 fully unlocks the villainy passive and allows garen to chose the villain entirely by himself while hes out of combat, with a mechanic like passive on a ~minute cooldown. another option would be that he can only swap the villain while on the fountain

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overall this should give garen a significant nudge in power towards his currently weak lategame, at the tradeoff of some slight less reliable midgame power.

on the other hand, it would finally give us garen players some level of control over our most important mechanic towards later stages of the game.