I like the direction of the Garen changes generally, but...

E - (Added) Garen now moves 20% slower while moving toward champions he’s hitting with Judgment W - (Removed) Active Tenacity component Q - (Nerf) Silence Duration 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 >>> 1.5 all ranks

WTF

For reference, here are the full changes. Also TL;DR is the three changes above and the last paragraph

So he gets some nerfs and buffs here and there, a neat true damage effect, and is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to kite. One of the main complaints about Garen was already that he was too easy to kite, and you completely gutted any ability to power through the kite. No tenacity, enemies can dash out of spin before ~1/3 to 1/2 of it goes off at all points in the game, and to top it off the self-slow through minions that we've been begging to have removed is replaced with a self-slow when trying to run people down.

"But he has a slow cleanse!" - Which is and always has been nearly useless against a smart opponent with a slow. Your options as Garen against such a player are A) Run at them with Q and get slowed immediately afterwards, or B) Walk at them to save your slow cleanse, while they calmly walk away.

Let me also remind you that one of the things that made him less powerful in higher tiers was the fact that being easily kitable is a much bigger drawback in higher tiers. High level players will probably be much more hurt by the mobility nerfs than helped by the late game buffs. If they were trying to make room for late game power by emphasizing his weaknesses, they overdid it. A lot. Garen should not be more kitable, period. He will have that as a significant weakness for as long as he doesn't have a blink, and Riot should be making sure that that weakness isn't overbearing, instead of emphasizing it.

While I'm at it, why is crit being removed from E? An annoying trend in all the Garen changes since his first rework is that his damage options are only ever nerfed. 20% bonus resists forced you to build expensive tanky items if you wanted to have a functional W passive, and while I'm glad that's gone, so is his (quite fun) crit build. According to Meddler, this is balanced by an alternate hydra path with health, but imo hydra is a trap item on Garen. Yes, you can use it during spin, but you don't want to. Your enemies will likely be on the edge of your spin range thank's to Q's animation, so they'll take lower damage from the edge of the AOE, and more importantly, it has a cast time that is likely to allow your enemies to escape spin range sooner. Also if you think about it there is no actual advantage to hydra-ing during spin. It gives you some burst, but so does hydra-ing before you spin.

Again, I like the general direction of the changes, except for some massive nerfs that make absolutely no sense (he is more kitable). Here's what I want to see with the rework: slow resistance or tenacity during Q (hell, why not both, or anything better than a slow cleanse), actual build options (one step forward with flat resists on W, two steps back with no crit and not being able to live long enough to get to anyone, let alone stick to them), some things to promote skill (whether or not to attack the villain is a neat choice, how about also letting W prevent passive from being removed, since you nerfed it), and FFS can he please shed that f**king self-slow (remember how long Gragas's self-slow lasted? I'll give you a hint, it was a number of patches less than 2).