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Garen: A Conflict between Design and Gameply

Unlucky47··1 votes·892 views

So, Garen, as we all know, is a juggernaut. I'm not a fan of the subtype simply because they feel unfair to me, but that's not the point. Darius, while being absolute cancer, plays how you would expect him to play. He goes in and dominates people.

But what's wrong with Garen? I want to start off by saying that I'm not a top lane main or anything, but whenever I do go top against Garen, I see the same patterns. Garen, who should be similar to darius in nature, is very rarely what you should expect out of a juggernaut. This is because of his playstyle, and what the game has limited him to doing. Garens one of those champions that, depending on who you're playing, is either really abusive or underwhelmingly passive. I don't see a middle ground. It often feels like I win one trade against garen, and he never touches me again in lane. This makes for a rather boring game to say the least.

Garen, not having a middle ground, is really poorly designed imo. You have this big, beefy juggernaut that is supposed to be a badass, but he plays more or less like a (i tried for 3 minutes to think of a better way to say this) little bitch. You deal a little bit of damage to him, and then he doesnt even bother taking any risk. He doesnt have to. Garen, even though he is a juggernaut, gets rewarded for playing passively.

I contribute this to two things.

  1. His passive. He takes a little bit of damage, and then hugs tower for the rest of the laning phase. For most top laners, they may be able to poke him rarely. But he heals back up by staying out of combat. This takes away ALL of the risk/reward that trading is supposed to have. You think you've won a trade against a garen before, but you knew after he left combat that you were wrong.

  2. His ultimate. It doesnt have any scaling from garen. Riot said here, take an ability that you don't need to build anything for, and it'll work out everytime. AD, AP, Tank, bruiser, full attackspeed, 6 boots. Doesn't matter what you build on him you can still be guaranteed that a half health target will die instantly. This means that with very minimal work, he can win his lane at level 6, 11, and 16 by just pressing 2 or 3 buttons. So why even risk doing anything?

If i was playing Garen, I have no incentive to go out and farm creeps. The only thing I need to do is wait till I level up so my passive heals me for 1% of my maximum health every .5 seconds, and then all in them with a q/e/r combo to instant kill them.

Basically, to sum up, Garens passive and his non-scaling ultimate are not abilities that belong on a juggernaut. The idea of the champion is a heroic, macho knight, but he hugs tower for 10 minutes before doing anything. Garen doesn't feel like Garen.

Thoughts?

19 Comments

tinman 0012 votes

i main garen and hes loads of fun tanky or crit build however hes gets shut down easily there a champs (fighters/assassins) mostly smack him around its so annoying to lane against an Irelia wth item 3078 item 3143 shes more tanky thn you wtf shes not a tank. not to mention Darius u cant even fight tht. i think garen needs a bit of rework some how.

Unlucky471 votes

I just think he should fit his concept but I've never beat a garen as irelia. If you rush sunfire you still do more damage than her because of your ult.

tinman 0011 votes

theses one person tht i have randomly faced 3 times and dicked me so hard wth Irelia i taught i was prego even last night i was molested my a plat smurf Renekton smh

TyroneWatermelon2 votes

Juggernauts are bad design overall. Most if not all(depends on the champ)of their weaknesses are suppost to be low mobility. But what does that apply to half of the game champions(who are melee?) What are they support to do? Juggernauts are a lot more tanky,higher burst and base damage,and there's almost nothing you can do to exploit their weaknesses as a melee champion? Nothing really And then juggernaut mains cry about ranged champions. From what I've seen,Riot only keep in mind (how marksman and mages can react to them)?

Ralanr1 votes

Yeah, juggernauts are pretty damn difficult to fight 1v1 if melee. The longer the fight goes, the more likely it'll be in their favor. Though I've noticed that even melee can utilize hit and run tactics against them.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, juggernauts are pretty damn difficult to fight 1v1 if melee. The longer the fight goes, the more likely it'll be in their favor. Though I've noticed that even melee can utilize hit and run tactics against them.

It's called 'kiting' :P

1 800 Top Lane1 votes

I think that most people do not play Garen how he should be played. Most people build wrong and abuse it, (Crit garen) item 3742 item 3022 item 3065 item 3071 item 3083 item 3009 This build will give you the sustain and damage to jump into teamfights (like Darius). As for his ultimate dealing percentage based damage, Garen is considered a "beginner" champion. Same as Annie.

Unlucky471 votes

I understand garen is supposed to be beginner friendly, but that was a bad decision I think. Just talking about the character concept and the gameplay alone, they don't match. If they wanted a beginner friendly top laner, they probably shouldnt have used a character that's supposed to be more of an aggressor.

tinman 0011 votes

Illaoi has a less skill cap thn him :/

tinman 0011 votes

i used to build those items full tank only cleaver as dmg but would still get shutdown easy by ppl who go assassins top cough Quinn Fiora or full life stealNasus i was really gona stp playing garen for good then i found an total aidsy build and it mostly wins :)

tinman 0011 votes

also spin to win crit was popular way back was was shown to me by someone else i have only been playing at the start of season 6

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

[{quoted}](name=tinman 001,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WuqALFMy,comment-id=00000001,timestamp=2016-11-23T06:12:11.379+0000)

i used to build those items full tank only cleaver as dmg but would still get shutdown easy by ppl who go assassins top cough Quinn Fiora or full life stealNasus i was really gona stp playing garen for good then i found an total aidsy build and it mostly wins :)

Fiora was made to duel. No surprise you can't fight her.

Big Lincoln1 votes

the ult not scaling off his stats lets him build tankier than other juggernauts to make up for his lack of in-fight sustain. it's not too terrible an idea but i wouldn't be opposed to making his sustain more active to better fit his role

i would rather see them try to push his niche as a crit juggernaut, to be honest.

MLDzXnRRR1 votes

You probably don't play him right. I've won games with Garen even vs better players than me (1tricks/spammers). Going full AD or full tank is wrong. Not having CDR runes is wrong. Building squishy first item is wrong 90 % of the time, unless you get fed from ganks or the other player is bad and dies. Garen decimates Irelia and so on. Starting cloth 5 and you can't die to Renekton, Darius and so on. He has problems only with kiting, being useless in teamfights when the enemy can permaCC and you don't bring much to your team. He is a beast vs champions with channeled abilities - MF, Fiddle or casters - Riven, all the spammy mages, if you can flank them.

Unlucky471 votes

This post was about how I see other people play garen and how he looks like he should be played. I don't play him at all.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

  1. His passive. He takes a little bit of damage, and then hugs tower for the rest of the laning phase. For most top laners, they may be able to poke him rarely. But he heals back up by staying out of combat. This takes away ALL of the risk/reward that trading is supposed to have. You think you've won a trade against a garen before, but you knew after he left combat that you were wrong.

  2. His ultimate. It doesnt have any scaling from garen. Riot said here, take an ability that you don't need to build anything for, and it'll work out everytime. AD, AP, Tank, bruiser, full attackspeed, 6 boots. Doesn't matter what you build on him you can still be guaranteed that a half health target will die instantly. This means that with very minimal work, he can win his lane at level 6, 11, and 16 by just pressing 2 or 3 buttons. So why even risk doing anything? Thoughts?

  1. garens kit being entirely melee focused and him easily being pressured with ranged poke makes his passive neccessary as a safety net in lane, to not get entirely destroyed by any form of ranged poke ablity, by an opponent who is playing passive and avoiding confrontation. even something as simple as olafs axe spam would push him out of lane incredibly fast without giving him a chance to answer that poke.

while i agree that his passive needs changes to make it more versatile to work in and out of combat, removing the out of combat sustain entirely would probably destroy his ability to lane entirely.

here is what i think should happen when theyre buffing garen:

  • passive changed to regenerate a % of his missing health per second. still deactivated when he takes damage by anything but minions (9/6/4 sec cd)
  • for each enemy champion hit by a tick of his spin, his passive activates for .5 seconds when the spin ends (up to a cap of ~5 seconds which is enough to bridge the time between his spin ending and coming off cd at 40% cdr, if he gets a full 10 spin ticks on an opponent)

early game this doesnt make him overwhelming, since the spin doesnt apply a lot of ticks to stack up the regen, and due to the general scaling change to % missing health regen being better when he struggles, than when hes not.

it would also add some decision making to his kit without making him generally more complicated to play. if you stack up the regen and take a lot of damage, you can decide to cancel the spin early to regain some health, but you stop dealing damage yourself.

his lack of in combat sustain forces him into a hit and run playstile which conflicts with his general theme, and his role as a sustained damage dealer. hes not a mobile skirmisher who can dive in and out of combat reliably enough to make the playstile really work for him.

  1. his ultimate has stat independent scaling so he can build like a juggernaut is expect to build. beefy. the idea is that it will always deal the same damage dependent on his opponents missing health, even when hes going for a full defensive build. it doesnt need to change at all.
TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

but he plays more or less like a (i tried for 3 minutes to think of a better way to say this)

Coward. There, less than 3 seconds and I came up with a word for our paragon of justice.

TequilaZombie1 votes

Garen is not a bloody coward. He uses the famous Tatical Demacian Withdraw so he can charge again. Take another 3 seconds to apologize or JUSTICE shall be served.

In the name of Demacia, of course!

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

Of course! It is only cowardice to Noxian scum!

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