Crit and Garen - a remnant of the past?

Need Gold 4 Tent··2 votes·1,001 views

Playing URF, I just noted something. Crit (while very fun on URF) on Garen seems like a random scaling that doesn't make sense on him at all. It's like the old ap ratios on ad champs that were just there to... exist. I know crit Garen is a thing on normals as an off build, but his entire standard item pool has no crit on them. His damage items are typically Cleaver or Titanic, maybe a Maw as a situational buy, Ghostblade for more damage-centric Garens, etc... But IE/PD/the crit stuff - they're not exactly great on him. With the exception of IE, the rest of them have wasted stats (attack speed on the zeal stuff, mana on reaver, mana and attack speed on trinity). And without another item to stack crit chance with, IE alone isn't a great item.

Just a thought, I think the crit scaling is a remnant of the past, when there were stuff like old Ghostblade/Atmas which were decent on him, on top of synergizing with IE for a solid amount of crit chance and damage. Not saying if it's bad or good to keep, but anyone think the new itemizations kind of make it outdated at this point in time?

8 Comments

redniwediS1 votes

It's definitely a carry over from when items like Atma's and Yomuu's were solid crit items for bruiser type champions. They were going to get rid of it in the juggernaut update if I remember correctly, but feedback from Garen mains kept it in.

When it comes to balance if Garen's spin crit has any of his power budget attached to it I'd rather see it removed and that power given back to the rest of his kit somewhere. If it's not, and I don't think it is, there's really no solid reason to have it removed.

Need Gold 4 Tent1 votes

fair enough, i suspected as much. the thing is, it's there but it's never being used anyway which is what made me wonder about it. though the 5x IE/boot build in urf is pretty fun to play.

Revali1 votes

Garen item 3031 item 3031 item 3031 item 3031 item 3031 item 3031 Have you seen my damage bruh?

Critmaster Garen1 votes

it doesnt hurt him since it doesnt cut into his power budged. removing this crit scaling would not make him any stronger or weaker.

since the change to ghostblade and now triforce, there isnt really good crit itemization for him, but there is no reason to remove it either. maybe some day riot will decide to put a item 3122 item or some other ad/crit item onto the rift, and this off build will see better days again.

but until then, there is no actual reason to remove it.

besides. riot is actually putting ap ratios back into a lot of kits next patch mostly due to giving these champions synergy with rageblade. and i think theyve even started to tack ap ratios back onto some champion kits before 6.10 when they didnt see harm in it.

Need Gold 4 Tent1 votes

That's exactly my point, remove it and he's pretty much unchanged, which goes to show that it's an obsolete scaling that's irrelevant in the current state of the game. That being said, I wouldn't want it removed anyway, though having some way to use it in a non-troll manner would be nice.

67chrome1 votes

Playing URF, I just noted something. Crit (while very fun on URF) on Garen seems like a random scaling that doesn't make sense on him at all.

Garen's Spin to Win is essentially a really fancy auto-attack steroid. Rather than doing something like Mundo's AD boost or Olaf's AS boost, Garen spins around to AA and gets an AoE bonus on his auto-attacks.

Crit scaling makes sense in that regard.

Also, having crit scaling does open up more itemization options for Garen. Admittedly most aren't useful alternatives unless a game runs past a 3 major item core, but having crit scaling isn't a determent to Garen's kit in any way. Due to Garen's early game being solid and Garen's late game running into issues, having crit scaling on his core damage skill also gives him 1 way to deal with poor late-game with respectable scaling.

It's like the old ap ratios on ad champs that were just there to... exist.

Most AD champions still have those, last time I checked only 8 of the 120+ champions in LoL actually lack any AP scaling.

Which makes sense when you consider ability power is supposed to power abilities. Champions that power abilities with stats not named ability power get extra bonuses along with scaling the power of their abilities (like having more attack damage, hit points, or mana along with more potent skills), which throws off stat balance and stat value, giving AP champions the short end of the stick.

Garen's crit and AD champions having ability power ratios is more about stats being consistent and providing consistent bonuses to champions than it is shepherding players into an optimal build path. Critical strikes are intended to help scale auto-attack damage, which is essentially what Garen does with Judgement. AP is used to scale magical damage, which is what it does on pretty much everyone.

Pupel1 votes

Its actually really helpful for snowballing if you get ahead a second item IE can really put you into a carry potition

Need Gold 4 Tent1 votes

The thing is, the way they made IE now, it's not that great on its own anymore. Since the crit chance and ad got dropped, you'd want to pair it with another crit item, none of which are good on him anymore. I used to like atma's + IE for a solid ~40% crit, and it wasn't too far an off build either.

Now you'd need to grab a shiv/PD/Triforce or reaver... lol ... to get that reliable amount of crit. Banking on 20% is kind of iffy, besides the fact that IE's AD is meh. And if you do invest in a second crit item, that's going a bit far into off-build territory already, in which you'll be missing out on tankiness, actual AD (you got the pseudo damage increase through synergy with IE) and cdr.

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