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Garen's not as weak as people believe, but he could use a little buff

Bboy Shy·8/8/2016, 10:23:32 PM·2 votes·832 views

I mean, look at the average Garen build now:

item 3071 item 3068 item 3065 item 3742 item 3083 item 3111

I mean, of course Garen is going to be lackluster all game. First, his early isn't that great anymore with the Juggernaut rework, and people are building him like a Tank, who are falling off a lot late game due to carries getting to their 6th items. Plus, with only Black Cleaver as his damaging item, he'll deal almost no damage, as eve ADCs can lifesteal through his damage (if he even gets to them first)

Garen is a Juggernaut guys, he isn't a Tank. Building item 3068 doesn't work on him anymore, as it has been nerfed, and Garen scales a lot more with AD and Health.

Usually, my Garen build gors like this:

item 3071 item 3142 item 3053 item 3111 item 3742 item 3065

Alternative offensive items: item 3156 item 3022 item 3748 item 3031 (tho I really prefer Youmuu for its good armor penetration, high AD and active that solves a lot of Garen's sticking problems)

Alternative defensive items: item 3143 item 3075 item 3026 item 3083 item 3102 item 3512

Seriously, this build is just great. Sure, it doesn't solve his early game problems, but man, do I feel powerful late game with it. With this build, you easily get 300 AD, 150 Armor and Magic Resist (with his W passive), and you gain over 3k+ health. While you may be less tanky than the full tank build, you are still very durable and your damage is a lot higher with this build.

To get around his "weak early game", it's quite easy. Usually, most Gares max E first. Don't do that. You should only put a point on your E when you gain a new spin, so every 3 levels (maxing i at level 13 since you'll still take E at lvl 2). Then, every other level, you put a point on your Q or R, then finally max W last. This is how you should put your points:

1: Q 2: E 3: W 4: E 5: Q 6: R 7: E 8: Q 9: Q 10: E 11: R 12: Q 13: E 14: W 15: W 16: R 17: W 18: W

With this, you'll have a much better early game with a very high Q poke, while still getting great powerspikes with your E spin and rank getting higher at the same time. This is the most optimal way for Garen to level up his spells.

Though I do agree he feels way too underwhelming right now, since the rise of items such as Rylai's or strong ADCs with utility like Ashe or Jhin. However, his late game feels great, especially with this build. However, his early game is way too weak, even Riven can fuck him up early. Some small buffs he could use without getting too overwhelming could be:

Q movement speed increased to 35% from 30% E AD scaling increased to 36/37/38/39/40% from 34.5/35.25/36/36.75/37.5%

These buffs are just little bump to Garen as it'll help both his laning and late game. Early game, he could get his Q damage a little easier and allows him to be more slippery (plus, 5% MS late game ain't much compared to early game with the lack of boots around.) Plus, it'll reward Garen more for buying some early AD instead of relying to base damage in order to deal damage. It'll buff Garen's AD builds, while leaving his tank builds intact.

Thoughts on this guys?

2 Comments

YSeT9iEzJK8/9/2016, 12:14:13 AM1 votes

Some of the things you say I find very questionable. Darius is a juggernaut too and his build is very similar to Garen, however Darius puts out insanely high damage output even with just a black cleaver as his damage item.

Juggernauts are supposed to build pretty much full tank and STILL deal HIGH melee damage.

But you buff suggestion is what he needs.

He just needs buffed...

Hermitthedruid8/9/2016, 12:51:39 AM1 votes

Garen's in a good spot, I wouldn't touch him. He needs to be weak early to balance out his crazy damage later. However, he could use a QoL buff by indicating R execution on non-villians.