@meddler: can we have an open discussion about garen?

Critmaster Garen··15 votes·6,504 views

youve talked about wanting to give him some changes already a long time time ago. in the meantime he received some temporary bandaids to keep him from declining, when he started to drop off from one patch to another. with the general changes to the game, it seems to be that time again.

but the idea of giving his kit some more serious work has been in kindof a limbo of "we want to do something with him, but dont exactly know what" for probably a year or longer now.

before we even start a discussion, id like to ask two things.

1.) who (if anyone) is currently responsible working on him? maybe the person could chime in, if he finds the time. id like to hear your overall opinion first.

2.) when you want to work on him. do you want to keep the villainy passive and improve it, or do you want to remove it and replace it with something else?

maybe we can work something out.

42 Comments

DarwinTheory5 votes

All they need to do is revert the juggernaut nerfs.

Before the Juggernaut rework Garen wasn't stomping high elo or low elo and there were several high profile play Garen players.

The best part was his 2.5 sec silence. People are complaining about not being able to stick to the enemy......well....there's your answer. Give Garen that back and immediately when you're on top of someone they don't get to escape 1 second later and kite you.

Problem solved.

Oh yes and he had a better base MS back then too. And needing his E early damage then having constant damage creep for the next 24 months across the board doesnt help either.

Hipster build1 votes

basically bring back old garen... i wish

I feel like riot made it clear they passed on the garen-ship as evident by their rune decision making in the (fighter patch 8.6) and as such (and i know GC work philosophy since WoW days) so i'll just sit this one out for the sake of my mental energy.

Rouwhorst2 votes

Let's not forget that the entire fighter class feels lackluster. This is due to various effects:

Class and/or item buffs like those of marksman, tank and support. -->Tanks and supports are more useful. As a result the ADC feels untouchable. Increased amount of crowd control, combined with the shift of cc towards skillshots (less mobile champions in the front get hit easiest, whereas mobile adc can evade them.) Addition of new runes lately shifted the favour more towards specialists stats, less towards the somewhat all rounded fighter stats. Splitpushing is a less effective strategy, current focus is more towards teamfights. More vision somewhat grants less power to fighters/assassins as you can less easy ambush a stray squishy. Assassins can easily bypass this with items. The addition of certain new champions/items/runes/things allowed other classes to fulfil the roles of a fighter. An easy example is demolish: turret damage was never the objective of tanks, now they can! Or hydra/sunfire/abilities: waveclear for tanks. Shiv: waveclear for adc. The role they fulfilled is (almost) completely surpassed. And lastly, heavily connected to other points, the war on tanks and on burst/high dmg both did hit the fighters, leaving a thing that is not really tanky nor deals any significant damage.

I am afraid that whenever, if at all, fighters become decent again and the class' problems get fixed, certain fighters that are somewhat playable now become very overpowered then. "fixing" Garen means by my means making him playable in the current meta.\

I'd prefer the entire class to be fixed and then looking again which champions do need work. (I don't deny Garen needs work)

Critmaster Garen2 votes

by the way, this thought has been stuck in my head for a while.

currently the damage on garens spin is

14 + 36% total AD rank 1 to 30 + 40% total AD rank 5

what if we replaced the base damage, and made it

1% max health physical damage + 50% total AD rank 1 to 54% total AD rank 5.

and additonally gave him 1% max health physical damage on auto attacks.

basically give him the extra % damage on spin ticks and auto attacks that he gets from his ult, as physical damage to non villains.

villainy turns the % value it into true damage. the increased ad ratio compensates for the loss of the flat base damage against the villain. at 200 AD on a rank 5 spin, its 28 damage with the extra 14% ad ratio.


against a 600 health target at rank 1, this would be a base of

6 + 33 = 39 damage (new value) per spin vs. 14 + 24 = 38 damage (old value). so similar values.

against a 2000 health target at rank 5, this would be a base of

20 + 77 = 97 damage (new value) per spin vs. 30 + 57 = 87 damage (old value). so also similar against squishies with a 100 damage increase for a full lvl 16 and rank 5 spin.

from there it would scale up significantly better. the 1% damage on auto attacks would give him some extra base damage even when the spin is on cooldown.

JustaNewb1 votes

Atma's Impaler built in without the crit?

Critmaster Garen2 votes

{quoted}

Atma's Impaler built in without the crit?

WITH. if anything :)

fabfan2 votes

This post must be sent in the next "Quick Gameplay Thoughts", Meddler (or another Rioter) must see this and make Garen viable once and for all.

It's not because Garen is a beginner champ he can't be good in high elo !

Demacia Rising2 votes

Warwick is both for beginner and good in high elo. Goes cry into a corner

fabfan1 votes

{quoted}

Warwick is both for beginner and good in high elo. Goes cry into a corner

This is why i think Riot can do the same treatment for Garen. Try to comfort the guy in the corner

Critmaster Garen2 votes

trying again to get the attention of a rioter. id really like to discuss a possible direction for the champions development.

id again start with a simple question: does riot want to keep the villain mechanic or not?

both choices are fine, but the answer would set the basis of what his kit is going to be built on, and what his future strategic niche in the game would be.

if the villain mechanic stays, id like it to be fleshed out, and its targeting mechanism improved. this is surely something that can be done with a little bit of efford. in this case, he should be a strong team fighter who can really wreak havoc on even strong enemy carries. in this case he will need a lot more staying power, and actual in combat sustain so he bulldoze through the enemy team from front to back similar like darius can.

if it goes, wed have to decide what garens role in the game is. in that case, id lean more towards split pusher and a strong champion in smaller skirmishes, while "just" being ok in larger teamfights.

OmegasisX2 votes

I've created a list of potential changes that could be made to Garen and have submitted a copy to Meddler on the Dev Corner page as well.

I'd like to hear what you guys may have to think about these as well, thanks.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/mv6uwJJE-much-needed-garen-update-mini-rework

Garen

KennysDreamGirl1 votes

meddler is on vacation

"No posts for a couple of weeks. I'm going to be out of the office for a couple of weeks so I won't be able to do these posts for a bit, apologies. Should be back mid April."

this is from his last dev post. should be back in a few days to a week

Critmaster Garen4 votes

{quoted}

meddler is on vacation

"No posts for a couple of weeks. I'm going to be out of the office for a couple of weeks so I won't be able to do these posts for a bit, apologies. Should be back mid April."

this is from his last dev post. should be back in a few days to a week

shit. well. maybe riot repertoir picks up on this thread. he was the one to do the garen rework back in season 5 too.

T4underbolt1 votes

First thing first. Make him do something for the bikers DMG and sustain he has. Or better. Give him mana.

Critmaster Garen5 votes

{quoted}

First thing first. Make him do something for the bikers DMG and sustain he has. Or better. Give him mana.

he has giantass cooldown windows as an offset for being resourceless. i dont think you realize what youre proposing there.

giving him mana would come with a pretty hefty buff to his base abilities to compensate. it also would give him very easy access to item 3025 item 3110 item 3004 item 3078 item 3800 item 3001 item 3508

so go ahead. i fucking dare you to give him mana. you think this would be a nerf, when in reality it would come with guaranteed kit buffs and access to some of the best items in the game.

lets meet back here, when you get shit on by a spin with item 2033 at lvl 2 and see if youre still a fan of giving him mana.

as far as meaningful sustain goes, he practically has none. that out of combat regeneration can be bought on every single fighter or tank on demand item 3083 . the ones who dont like warmogs just get any form of lifesteal and clear a minion wave to heal up after a fight. its part of the reason why garen is so shit at taking extended fights. he has 0 ability to keep himself alive past the duration of his w active. all you have to do is do anything to absorb enough of his spin damage, and then just kill him during his cooldown window, when he cant fight back anymore.

a garen cant outplay item 3190 summoner 7 summoner 3 or any form of damage mitigation that negates his spin damage. this is literally all it takes to beat the champion, and why its so impossibly difficult to press a lead with him even when you get ahead.

Rouwhorst3 votes

That moment you are finally on top of their ADC thinking you will get them, yet the support exhausts you (or they get shielded), causing you to do almost no damage, after which the ADC lifesteals all his HP back and kills you in the process. [zombie-nunu-bummed]

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

That moment you are finally on top of their ADC thinking you will get them, yet the support exhausts you (or they get shielded), causing you to do almost no damage, after which the ADC lifesteals all his HP back and kills you in the process. [zombie-nunu-bummed]

this is the problem. exhaust and shields suck for most fighters. but the difference is, that most other fighters still can keep going after theyve been exhausted.

like a Darius can still keep autoing and stacking up bleeds.

garen is just a sitting duck when hes on his cooldowns. he can stand there and auto attack, when practically every other fighter, skirmisher or marksman in the game can auto attack better than him, while regaining their health pool. and the other champions are just going to disengage.

Teridax682 votes

This I can agree with, and I think one of the fundamental problems with Garen right now is that his play pattern is kind of the opposite you'd want from a juggernaut: ideally, a juggernaut should excel at prolonged combat, becoming more powerful the longer they are allowed to fight. By contrast, Garen isn't actually that good at extended combat, because he mainly relies on blowing all of his cooldowns, and praying he kills his opponent before he runs out of steam and turns into a sitting duck. On one hand, this leads to the unsavory QE Lethality bush combo when he gets ahead, and essentially turns into an assassin, but on the flipside, this also leads to him suffering in more organized play, where his opponent just has to kite or Exhaust him for a couple of seconds to make him useless.

I remember we had an argument regarding Garen and his counterplay, but here I think there's an opportunity to introduce more gameplay to Garen in a manner that could solve the issue of his cooldowns, while also making him more interactive: if he gained the ability to extend Judgment's duration against enemy champions by sticking to them for longer, for example, a skilled Garen player could keep going even after being Exhausted, while potentially giving his opponent more chances to fight back in the meantime if it came at some cost to his upfront damage or CC. More generally, I'd support nerfing some of Garen's more front-loaded power if it allowed him more persistent combat strength, though in his current balance state he may not even need all that much of a nerf to begin with.

Rouwhorst1 votes

Well, one problem is the classification. It came afterwards, champions where not designed around them. Perhaps he was designed as a fighter, but not as a juggernaut. This was the danger of the new classification, some champions were bound to be unclassifiable or classified wrongly. I think that this classification should be handled with care, as long as the champion itself has a viable tactic it is okay. Champions still should not be (re)designed solely around in what category they were placed a few years ago. Let's not confine ourselves to a smaller workspace for the sake of classification.

Teridax681 votes

Sure, but Garen himself was one of the flagship reworks in the Juggernaut Update, so his "new" kit really did come along at the same time as the nomenclature. I also agree that labels should fit the items, and not the reverse, but in this particular case I do think it makes sense for Garen to have more persistent fighting power, and so for the same reasons that juggernauts are typically given strong persistent DPS: as a champion with low range and below-average mobility in a dash-heavy environment, Garen really has to commit to every fight he participates in, and can't really do hit-and-run as well as, say, an assassin or even a diver, i.e. a fighter with lots of gapclosers who can easily reach the back line. As such, it doesn't really make sense to make Garen a hit-and-run champion, or to give him a window of burst followed by a long cooldown, because once he blows those cooldowns, there's nothing he can really do. If you really want to buck the trend of juggernaut design and make Garen a bursty champion with high downtimes, that could be fine, but he'd still need to change so that such a playstyle could become healthy for him, i.e. by giving him the proper tools to enter and exit fights. As it stands, Garen has really high downtimes, but also has nothing to do during those downtimes, which is why he turns into a sitting duck, so something needs to change there in order to improve him.

Rouwhorst1 votes

Should Garen get something for his auto-attacks then? Moreover, what kind of role should he have according to you, teamfighter, splitpusher or something else (like a Bushwacker)?

Critmaster Garen2 votes

{quoted}

Should Garen get something for his auto-attacks then? Moreover, what kind of role should he have according to you, teamfighter, splitpusher or something else (like a Bushwacker)?

this is actually the first thing id like to discuss if riot repertoir shows up to talk. he needs a clearly defined role within a team.

currently i would say hes not a great split pusher, but still better at split pushing and skirmishing than teamfighting.

DovahKing1 votes

Yeah, his cooldowns are a very big limiting factor for his late game, and I feel that's a weakness he doesn't necessarily need to have. It feels ridiculous to say resourceless champions HAVE to be cooldown gated when champions like Riven and Yasuo exist in the game, hell Yasuo doesn't even need to build CDR to get CDR!! If Riven's Q cooldown can start on the first cast, I see no reason why Garen E can't. This would greatly increase his scaling with CDR, and reduce his down time in extended fights.

T4underbolt2 votes

People get sht on by his spin anyway. Plus what fighting back are you talking about. He just silences you every 5 seconds. Like where is that window of his weakness. His W can be down but silence makes it unable to fight him. On top of that it's all on low cooldown and 0 resources.

Critmaster Garen4 votes

{quoted}

People get sht on by his spin anyway.

who exactly gets shit on by his spin right now? im really curious.

this is gonna be good.

edit.: oh my fucking god, youre playing the two champions who garen can beat in a matchup when played well. riven and rework irelia, who generally loses against every fighter.

this is precious.

first of all, doesnt demanding to add mana costs to garens abilities make you a bit of a hypocrite as a riven main?

and second, the sad thing is that garen doesnt even stand a chance at winning lane against a properly played riven. there is definitely some pressure on the riven player not to make a mistake early on, but you have the tools to counter every ability in garens kit. when you dont screw up, as riven you control the matchup and decide when to fight and when you dont want to.

garen comes at you with his q, you just hit your e backwards and absorb the damage while getting you out of reach. or you cancel his q animation with your w and walk away.

youre far more mobile than him, and can easily kite out of his range. there is no reason for you to ever take a full spin. eventually youre just going to outscale. both in a 1v1 scenario and in temafights youre just going to be stronger. you also have better roaming than him, so at any time you can just chose to push in the lane and then gank his other lanes.

like even in her currently shitty state, riven is just a far better champion than garen.

T4underbolt1 votes

Did you just told me how to use e against garen? Do you think I'm dumb? And btw it just shows how low knowledge of the game you have. Empowered autos can't be stopped by hard cc. Once it is meant to go off it does. Not to mention if I want to stop his spin I can't. His dumb ability can't be interrupted.you just proved that garen is too strong. The only thing I can do is not fight him and avoid any trades and play defensive because otherwise I get destroyed. This match up is so stupid that my only choice is trying to push and roam which is not really effective because most of the time your mid pushes like crazy. Roaming bot is not an option unless with tp. Still it takes too much time since garen has amazing wave clear and before I get to do something elsewhere my turret lost 75% of hp because for some reason garen can use his Q bonus DMG on turrets and it's cooldown is non existent. In teamfights garen straight up wins because he builds tanky and has uninterruptible spin. He is immortal and can just flash qr the ADC for an instant nuke. No matter if he is fed or not.

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

Did you just told me how to use e against garen? Do you think I'm dumb? And btw it just shows how low knowledge of the game you have. Empowered autos can't be stopped by hard cc.

maybe it was a bug a while back. they tend to happen a lot in this game. but i clearly remember that some rivens were just able to cancel me out of my q animation with their w when the ability animation already started.

even if it doesnt work at the moment, this still leaves your e to gain distance and absorb the q damage. decisive strikes animation takes ages to execute. your shield is instant, and the dash still follows through even though the attack connects at your new position.

what is he going to do then? youre already too far away for him to hit you with the spin.

even later, you can easily take trades with him during spin cooldowns. maybe thats what youre doing wrong. youre too easily intimidated and dont recognize opportunities when you can beat him. at early levels, like 1-3 youre just straight up stronger and can fight him head on. the spin does shit for damage compared to your ability + auto attack chain.

like ive had riven matchups who were really able to play the champion well, and there was basically nothing i could do to get an advantage. they were entirely able to dictate if and when they wanted to fight me. i couldnt make a move on them on my own. maybe you just need more practise.

T4underbolt1 votes

It was an intended and stupid change made by riot that allows empowered attacks to go through no matter what. So what I just mitigated silence DMG? Most players don't use spin right away. They make sure they are in range. Riven having an obvious way to get out of range makes the reaction obvious too. Don't use your spin. And how am I supposed to trade during spin cooldown. First this cooldown is low as hell. Second his Q will be up mid my combo to screw me up. Third garen will block all the DMG with w before he silence me and stop all my further DMG. Better now I'm out of gap closers and his spin is back up. Fun times. Even with BC cleaver garen cooldowns are still better and I have no time to make a decent trade. Anything I will do he will heal with passive. And I'm only stronger 1-3 and even then I'm not because he can disengage with silence and don't fight first 3 levels. My only choice is to do nothing and try to survive. If I fight him I auto lose the lane. If he fights me I can at best mitigate DMG and stay defensive. His spin has low cd so his wave clear is hundred times better than mine. Untill I buy one full item my wave clear sucks since it's scaling from bonus ad unlike garen total ad.so I can't even roam because he will take my tower. There is no way to win that lane unless I would play against mentally disabled person who spam keyboard like crazy without thinking.

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

It was an intended and stupid change made by riot that allows empowered attacks to go through no matter what.

technically every single ability in the game is executed, as soon as the animation starts. the fact that you could stun garen out of his q animation was always weird, but it worked for a while.

i mean right now, he has an irritating bug where the cancellation or the end of his spin cancels his movement commands, and he just randomly stops at times.

at other times people were able to flash his ult, even the animation already started. that shouldnt be possible either.

So what I just mitigated silence DMG?

yes? now what does he have left to threaten you? you already gained distance. if he then wants to get back in range and spin on you, you just w and walk away. rivens rank 5 e with some cdr has the same cooldown as garens q. if youre just patient and dont play like an idiot, youll hoit a point where he practically can not deal damage to you.

First this cooldown is low as hell.

its literally 9 seconds for his spin. and his q has an 8 second cooldown.

do you see what i mean? his cooldowns are almost the same as yours. as long as you dont just randomly blow them on minions and use them in reaction to his engages, he cant do shit to you.

hes also automatically pushing the wave when hes spinning.

yes, unless youre beating him at lvl 1-3 because hes dumb enough to try and fight you, youre probably not going to kill and snowball against him until midgame. but you dont need to. you just scale better than him. with initial advantage its easy to gain control of the lane at early levels, and just scale up until you can fight him.

T4underbolt1 votes

You ignored every argument that didnt fit you. I am unable to win lane vs garen because this dumb easy to play and high reward champion is an auto win. My cooldowns are much higher than Garens. But what a garen main can know about riven's cooldowns. You only care you can point and click and kill people. You dont have to fight in the laning phase at all. You can play passive all game and win because your abilities scale great without building any meaningful amount of AD. You can build a cheaper tank items instead and have the same result of oneshoting someone wiht QR like I do having to build full dmg squishy and doign my combos properly. If i stun someone I expect that person to have their current actions interrupted.

LOGIC says that if you are stopped from doing something you should not be able to continue what were you doing while getting stunned. Riot doesnt follow that logic because their lovely tanks are having fun abusing yet another thing. I dont scale better than garen. To scale better I need to go full dmg runes and lethality build which currently is unviable in any scenario. And even then I risk getting denied by simple 0/10 support because he has balanced amount of shields. So I cant fight a tank nor oneshot priority targets. Whining about garen being bad is just like janna mains whine about her being skilled to play champion. You have the easiest time of your life in the game yet you still complain. EASY TO PLAY CHAMPS SHOULD BE SHT. For gods sake I hate riot and all of you who are casuals who only care about getting free wins because riot thinks that kids are more entitled to win the game by mashing keyboard with immortal champions than someone who takes a risky to play champion and needs to perform his combo properly according to situation.

Mimr1 votes

His Q should become something with a skillshot really. I know this is a 100% HotS copy paste but something like Tyraels Q (throws sword and can then teleport to it's landing spot) would fit him very well I think.

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

His Q should become something with a skillshot really. I know this is a 100% HotS copy paste but something like Tyraels Q (throws sword and can then teleport to it's landing spot) would fit him very well I think.

this would probably make everything worse. theyd have to rebalance him around suddenly being a diver, and theyd probably put a larger cooldown on it. means hed have even worse issues to take fights.

yea, he could get there. but but if he cant kill his opponent in the time for one rotation, hed have shit to work with.

IF theyd put another mechanic on his q, i was thinking something more along the lines of letting him leap thin walls at the first second of his q.

like similar to how Sion can leap thin walls in the last stretch of his ult, or how Riven can jump thin walls with her third q.

it wouldnt make garen more mobile than a juggernaut should be, but it would give him more angles to enter and exit fights. as an example, imagine JarvanIV makes a great play and hits a 5 man ult. what does Garen do to follow up? literally your only option is to flash in there right now.

with a change like that to his q, he could be able to jump in there and join the fight.

Demacia Rising1 votes

It's called a blink in LoL bruh. Garen with a blink... shudders

chipndip11 votes

Idk what they want to do with him, but if it isn't some major game play update, it won't do anything in the long run, so why bother asking?

JustaNewb1 votes

Thinking back, Garen was released as a fighter, not as a Tank or Juggernaut. If he got on top of you he ruined your day, and there was almost nothing your team could do to get him off of you. You either had to, as his intended target, pray that you out played him personally - or that your team managed to break you free of him. (Alistair was your friend.)

He built around this idea, having to inherently build fairly tough to survive his "All In" play style. Once Garen was in, he was staying there until whoever he wanted was dead, and then he started in on someone else.

Sadly they broke the Fighter, and Juggernaut, class by first removing such things as Atma's Impaler. (Which they have now released far more powerful items for ADCs, Mages, and Assassins... but not for the Fighters again yet.) While they gave BACK Sterak's, a pale copy of some older item effects, they then altered items such as Black Cleaver back for the Auto Attacking fighters, as they benefit the most from it.

This leaves the Stick And Stay fighters in the dirt, and while it is nice that Spin to Win isn't a thing any more... Garen really cant shift his Niche like Jarvan has.

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

Thinking back, Garen was released as a fighter, not as a Tank or Juggernaut. If he got on top of you he ruined your day

juggernauts are a sub class of fighters, and its still what hes supposed to do. its what juggernauts in general are supposed to do.

garen should be just as threatening as Nasus or Udyr Darius etc. when he gets on top of you.

but in reality, he just isnt.

JustaNewb1 votes

Well, my meaning is that there was no serious differentiation back when Garen was released. He was a tough fighter with no major gap close. He traded that for the idea that, once he was on you, you were in very dire straites. Incidentally Nasus has a slow, Darius a grab, and Udyr a stun+MS boost. Garen gets the MS boost... and that's it. There are too many MS items that are now simply core items for every class EXCEPT the Juggarnauts, bacause they can guarantee a gap close. Thus even with a silence, welllll.. they dont need skills to walk away from him, generally very quickly.

Udyr and Nasus were always pains, and like Garen amplified their own toughness. Around Darius release the Sub Classes were being fleshed out, and Garen was lumped in with Juggernauts, but without the guaranteed gap close the rest have.

All I really meant. Itemization has abandoned Garen, because he punished you because most methods of escape required skills. Nerfing his silence, and putting MS on damn near every ADC and APC core items...

Critmaster Garen1 votes

maybe today?

fabfan1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=f4WWZZfk,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2018-04-14T22:37:42.381+0000)

maybe today?

I will try to ask to Meddler in the next "Quick Gameplay Thoughts" to see this post tomorrow. It will be 3 years now that I see a lot of Garen Main trying to help him and desperately waiting a response from Riot, I can not stand it anymore i must do something.

I follow your post for a while now and i don't know how Riot can ignore them but keep it up, i support you.

Hyquiem1 votes

{quoted}

I will try to ask to Meddler in the next "Quick Gameplay Thoughts" to see this post tomorrow. It will be 3 years now that I see a lot of Garen Main trying to help him and desperately waiting a response from Riot, I can not stand it anymore i must do something.

I follow your post for a while now and i don't know how Riot can ignore them but keep it up, i support you.

Explain pls.

Hyquiem1 votes

Top lane does not really appeal in skill then on picks. I basically never saw one trick unless Jax on toplane.

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