Garen needs a niche that works for him

And being an anti-carry doesn't.

One thing that stands out about the juggernaut group is that most of them, in theory at least, have a very clear case where they excel - a time where picking one of them is clearly the best choice. is a teamfight beast/multikill machine, exceeds at counter-engage, removes enemy tank from the game, are the heavy pushers/tower destroyers, is for diving and destroying enemy carries, and are the premier junglers of the bunch with an emphasis on objective control. And of course, being the magic damage monster he is. The ones that I feel have the least reason to justify picking them beyond being numerically powerful are ( belongs here too). They're basically just raw stats and mostly unavoidable melee damage. Very aged designs.

In Garen's case, there are two reasons why I feel the 'anti-carry' theme of the Villain mechanic suits him poorly and does little to carve out a role for him to play. The first is that an anti-carry does FAR more to carries than what Garen is afforded; they are built to completely and utterly ruin their day and prevent them from playing the game. The only true anti-carry we have in League is the crab god, Urgod. Between his ranged permaslows, his lock-on snipes, % damage reduction and throwing a champion of his choice into his own team for easy kills, he is the epitome of "fuck you" that you would expect. But Juggernauts aren't afforded this; they're required to reach melee range of their targets in almost all cases, and they don't often have the tools that they would really need. In reality, it just sort of pushes Garen to be a sort of assassin-type guy, giving him just a little bit more damage in the hopes that free extra damage will help him stat-check the poor ADC who has the AFK support.

The second reason is that, insofar as the restrictions Riot places on Juggernauts, we already have an anti-carry in the form of Olaf, and I would argue he does it far better considering how he actually shows up in competitive whenever a carry needs to get dumped on. He can prevent ALL peel and self-peel where Garen can only cleanse one slow, and he's equipped with the tools to prevent carries from escaping with mobility or movement speed thanks to his potential for axe permaslows. When it comes to being an 'anti-carry' in the sense that you just run a poor sucker down and bash their heads in with damage output, Garen is trying to compete with someone who was there first -- and failing miserably at it. Right now I would label Garen as more of the assassination specialist of the bunch; he relies usually on either flanking or flashing onto someone out of position and trying his best to kill them with his damage before executing them and running away. But this doesn't feel particularly fitting either; a guy with hulking armor and a sword as thick as his torso is encouraged to take pot shots?

Given the recent Demacian lore update, I've actually come to be fascinated by Malicious Metal's proposition of a more 'anti-mage' role for Garen, seeing as his armor is meant to negate magic around him and the nature of his silence already counters casters. But I'd like to actually do it a bit differently, and to give him some means of working a bit more for his team. Something like changing his W to briefly redirect a portion of all magic damage dealt to ally champions to himself, or to outright reduce the effectiveness of magic damage dealt to anyone around him, which gives him the means to protect ally champions who can run into fights with him, or to give him a means of protecting someone who's retreating. At the same time, he needs a tool that directly promotes him actually going INTO a fight and taking hits, but I think that could be resolved with a return of his tenacity. So, here's my rough idea for reworking just his W to add a bit of depth to a champion who sorely needs it, taking ideas from a couple of Garen posts I've seen lately.

W: Courage Garen enters a defensive stance for .75 seconds, blocking all disabling and providing a magic shield to himself and a portion of that amount to nearby allies for 2 seconds. If Garen blocks any disabling ability in the first .75 seconds, the shields are refreshed and extended to 5 seconds and Garen gains X% tenacity for the duration.

I think a magic shield would be more visible than % damage reduction and easier for his allies to appreciate and notice his contribution. So Garen can now shield multiple allies , but it requires him to face tank the enemy team or play bodyguard for his own to maximize its effectiveness. The tenacity is supposed to help him run mages down even better, given that many of them are equipped with hard CC. I wanted to move away from the damage reduction because I hope that any rework Garen gets will provide him with in-combat sustain in place of it, but I can understand if this is too far a shift from the ability's current purpose. In addition I feel like Garen is sorely lacking in utility even for a Juggernaut, but being a champion whose theme doesn't permit anything beyond all-melee fighting, I think looking to provide more team-helpful utility is the best choice to keep him consistent with his character.

Let me know what you think. I know that he needs big changes to the rest of his kit, too, but this strikes me as a solid start to rebuilding him.