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For the love of all that is holy, rework Garen!

TetsuTeito·12/30/2017, 10:38:48 PM·3 votes·828 views

Hear me out, I know Garen's not the most insane broken garbage out there, but let's just look at the pros and cons of Garen for a second here.

Pros Silence, with a flat 8 second cooldown, but most Garens rush Black Cleaver so that's brought down to 6.4 seconds Armor reduction True damage against high priority enemies Can be tanky and doesn't have to build tanky Best lane sustain in the game. Just back off for a couple seconds and oh look I'm full health again. A good Garen doesn't have to leave lane until he wants to buy something. Bad Garen might base once or twice in the entire laning phase, and still be winning lane hard. Good engagement and disengagement (his Q and his E) AOE waveclear No resources (Mana, Energy)

Cons Low Attack Speed, but his damage is reliant on his abilities anyways No hard CC (stuns, roots, knockups, etc)

Any other cons aren't worth pointing out, as they're true for really any champion (such as being weak to CC) This guy is one of the most annoying things to lane against, especially if you're trying to get a feel for a new champion. Garen is one of the easiest champions to deny the enemy farm with, since as soon as you get close to his minions he'll q in and E which is always a positive trade for him since he can just heal up anything you do to him with his passive. On top of that, he doesn't have to build like a tank and lose damage, as he's already tanky enough from his kit plus the new runes. Unless you're rushing lethality (and even that won't always help if you aren't building damage to back up the lethality), he will win every trade. Once he hits 6, he will always out trade you 1v1. Soon as you get low he'll just press his magic boom button and you're history, regardless of whether you're a villain to him or not. If you're a villain he can just q in and hit R mid game and there goes your carry. If your team focuses him, you're going to lose because while you're doing that their damage dealers are wiping you out. If you focus their damage dealers he'll spin around in your team and go press r onto your carry. Now no, he's not busted completely. In terms of top lane winrates he barely makes the top 10. He can be countered, but he's still just really annoying to play against and toxic to the game. Playing against a Garen is one of the least fun lanes to experience. If you try to fight him, he'll back off and heal it all back, while you keep all the damage and now have to play safe because he's already back with full health. If you play passive, he'll just free farm and at 6 dive you. Heck, some Garens will poke you under your turret and run off to heal it right back up, then when you're half health dive you and finish you off. I once faced Klepto Garen. Let me tell you... Fun fact. Kleptomancy still procs through Shen's W. However, I digress. I also understand that League needs simple champions for the new players to get a feel for the game, but you can have simple AND balanced champions. What do you guys think?

2 Comments

Hyquiem12/30/2017, 11:02:07 PM1 votes

Look if they rework him it would be a waste of time other then making a better bruiser. Though his silence and ability do just spin slash on your face is disgusting and that’s what needs to be changed

Skeletoaster1/26/2018, 10:47:43 AM1 votes

He needs a rework, but not because he's overpowered, it's because he's underpowered and his kit doesn't have a consistent purpose. As it stands right now Garen is an obnoxiously tanky assassin who can splitpush but gets kited around very easily. That design doesn't make any sense.

And the reason I say he's an assassin is because he has such insanely high AD scalings, in addition to crits on his abilities, that you are losing so much value from his kit if you build tank. Truthfully he's not really a tank champion. He has an HP scaling but that's only out of combat, which doesn't service a tank type champion very well, and furthermore his ultimate is an execute, one of the highest damaging abilities in the game potentially - no tank would have an ability like that.

Garen has very little skill expression to his kit, skilled players on other champions have mechanics they can use to outplay him, which is why he's strong in low elo but horribly weak (to the point of being considered a troll pick) in high elo. For example, if you decide to pick Garen in a Challenger elo match, you're basically deciding to lose the match, and you'll probably get flamed, because Garen sucks against educated players. But if you pick him anywhere between bronze and platinum, he can be pretty strong if the players don't know how they're supposed to deal with him.