Garen deserves a large-scope rework

He is beyond outdated, and arguably the worst Juggernaut, a class that has finally pulled itself out of the gutter this season but left Spin2Win in the dust. Garen has a number of issues that need to be addressed; some that have plagued him since release, and some that are a byproduct of the Juggernaut rework.

Since release, Garen has had one main issue; he is hyper-simple to a fault. There is very little depth in his kit, other than Qing slows and Wing hard CC. He has no variety in how he approaches fights, how he engages, how he makes a retreat -- it's all the same shit. Just Q and run, at or away. In a fight, he Qs you, Es you, rinse repeat, and his matchups all essentially boil down to whether or not the opponent can retaliate to his trades, or whether or not they're ranged.

Additionally, Garen has absolutely no niche, only fantasy. And a very vague one at that; spin2win is the core of Garen, but it's self-contradictory. It's an AOE damage spell, but you're incentivized to single out one person. The implication of his best fantasy being a situation where he gets his spin off on 5 people and destroys them is the exact opposite of what his intended character is; a pseudo-assassin anti carry. But he's not even particularly good at that; if you want that out of a juggernaut, Olaf fits the bill far better in almost every situation. 3/4 a second of tenacity and a single instance of slow-cleanse vs 7 seconds of complete CC immunity with ranged permaslows to assist his chasedown. The only one-ups Garen has is being manaless, and the Villain passive, which I'll get to.

So let's talk about what the Juggernaut update did. Overall, massive nerf. Riot completely trashed his early game and made him into a scaling champion, who doesn't scale nearly hard enough to really justify his piss weak laning phase, and added absolutely zero complexity to a champion sorely lacking in it. His silence was halved, his movespeed was nerfed, his E damage was backloaded into level scaling which forces you to wait before you come online. (As an aside, season 8 killed AD Garen with the rune changes, and tank Garen is now his most-- and maybe only- viable build.) Overall, a big splotch. And then, in return for all that, he gets the Villain passive, which is gimmicky and unrewarding while simultaneously being bullshit when you're the one marked by it. It's a very sloppy way to give Garen value from behind, when you'd probably be better off just picking a tank or almost any fighter if you expect to be losing early and wanting to scale up. Since then, Garen's gotten fairly significant buffs on two different occasions, and despite that, continues to be invisible in higher tiers of play and pro play. I would as go as far to say that no matter how much you buff Garen or add little tidbits to his kit, he will never be a pro viable champion, because his kit is too inflexible and too easy to exploit. Nocturne suffers the same issue, really; he's gotten nothing but buffs since season 4, and none of that stops him from fading out a few patches after coming back. And this is because Nocturne - and Garen - just have shit kits.

I don't blame Riot at all for not wanting to address Garen, because he's far too much of a staple of League to actually change drastically without getting some backlash, but he shouldn't be doomed to the current noob-trap starter champion he currently is. Luckily, I think his new lore gives us a direction to push him towards, even if it's only a little bit; we don't currently have an anti-mage juggernaut, so it gives him both a unique role in the game that he won't have to compete for, and compounds on his existing thematic as a foil to Lux. I wasn't really a fan of this the first time it was suggested to me, because of how a different anti-mage turned out ahem, but I'm starting to come around to it, and might make a separate discussion for how I'd do it later.

tl;dr Giving Garen an annual buff or tack-on isn't going to keep him from sinking in 2018 League. Give him complexity, give him a niche, give him the gameplay update he deserves. And he deserves it at LEAST as much as any of the champions currently getting theirs.