Ideas for Garen to make him not useless: Permanent buffs for killing villains + Infight healing
As Garen is now, he's overshadowed by Darius, who can do his job up to 5 times. He's also overshadowed by Illaoi, who has huge, repeated, aoe burst. He's even overshadowed by Nasus, who eventually scales to the point where his Q is basically a Garen ult's worth of damage every 2 seconds. Garen needs something to make him useful given his current kit, so give him some benefit, either offensive or defensive, for being the hero and slaying villains. This whole "1% max hp true damage per hit" thing isn't really...impressive, and his ult is, well, his ult, but he needs more to him than that. Other juggernaut picks are useful outside of slamming R. Garen isn't, but he could be.
Also, his passive sucks for a juggernaut, and so does his W. Juggernauts don't rely on infight defenses. They rely on infight healing. Voli auto-heals when his health gets low. Darius hits people with his axe and heals for hitting more enemies. Illaoi heals when tentacles hit enemies. Mundo has massive regen on his ult. Nasus has spell vamp. Trundle heals from people dying around him, saps health from ulted targets, and can increase healing by 20% by using W. Even Olaf has some on W. What does Garen have? "If you stop fighting for 5 seconds, you'll gradually regen". This passive is outdated for what Garen's meant to be doing. He needs infight healing, not some off-brand Warmog's or a lil padding from W.
need a lot more set-up than Garen, to compensate
he's due for one eventually