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So I think I figured out why laning against Garen feels so draining...

SaltyToplaneGoat··4 votes·849 views

... he suffers from the "Riven Syndrome".

Usually ressourcless champs are gated by their cooldowns. So they shoot their skills and then you have a window of opportunity to strike - so the theory.

Both Riven and Garen have an essential core item that completly eliminates this weakness for them: item 3134 for Riven and item 3071 for Garen . Sure you get the BC a bit later as Garen than Riven can pick her item, but it has better stats, so it feels even more unfair. Also Garen also has sustain, making it impossible to bully him out of lane.

A Garen with a BC has usually 30% or even 35% CDR with runes and masteries and his cooldowns become kinda nonexistant - or at least they become so low that he can back off, wait for them, come back and not even miss one CS.

The moment garen has his item he will be unbeatable in his lane. Sure you can stall and waveclear, but there is nothing you can really do to actually beat him. For trading you would have to find a moment when his Q or E are down, but that rarely happens with all that cdr. And the little damage you do? Either blocked by W and quickly outsustained by the passive + hp reg. Not to mention the free tankyness. before Garen had to build tank items to get stats bonuses. Now he gets them for free. That alone wouldn't be a problem but combined with everything else...

Do you know how that feels? To know that unless this garen suddenly decides to troll or go afk there is no way you are going to get him out of lane? And that not because he is skilled (let's be honest here, garen is not a mechanically difficult champ), but simply because it's how his stats are by default. Sure, teamfights are a different story later but until then laning vs Garen is worse then going against a fed Riven.

No fun, zero interaction, and it just feels draining and unfair. Redo the rework please - Garen as a champ is so old, he needs more than just true damage strapped to his ult to become a healthy champion...

10 Comments

67chrome4 votes

Usually ressourcless champs are gated by their cooldowns. So they shoot their skills and then you have a window of opportunity to strike - so the theory.

Resourceless champions don't have long cooldowns. They aren't forced to wait the time it would take a mana-using champion to regenerate mana to use skills as a trade-off. That isn't the balance mechanic or cost for non-mana skills.

It's usually this: auto-attacks are manaless. Manaless abilities function more like auto-attacks than a standard ability.

The more and more mana-intensive an ability tends to get, the more power it tends to front-load in 1 second: where cheaper abilities (Karthus Q) or manaless things (Riven Q) are essentially auto-attacks.

And resourcelss abilities themselves are designed to be uesed very frequently just like auto-attacks. Vladimir Tides of Blood Rumble Flame spitter Akali 20-button combo forcing auto-attacks for mark detonation Kennen poking things down gradulally, his sustained-DPS ultimate Riven QQQ + AA AA AA Garen Spin to Win Tryndamere Auto-attacking and nothing else Aatrox Mostly auto-attacking and nothing else Yasuo A lot of things that are basically auto-attacking (and hit hard by anti-AA items) Shyvana burning things to death, while auto-attacking them DrMundo Also burning things to death while auto-attacking them Teemo Jax Chogath Vayne have manaless AA bonuses, but mana-intensive burst skills.

Playing vs. manaless champions is pretty much never about waiting for cooldowns and exploiting them, that's generally their stratagy vs. you.

Main way to deal with manaless champions is more resorting to burst trades where you wait for your Q to go off cooldown, smack them with it, then back off and wait for it to come off CD again. Extended battles are what manaless champions are built for 9 times out of 10: and if you do want to drag out a fight, CC (that disables skills) is usually much more detramental to a manaless champion than a mana-using champion, as it will directly hit their DPS by preventing their low cooldowns from growing into a solid DPS advantage.

Ultimately - the main weakness of manaless champions is more they take longer to deliver they're payload than a mana-using champion, or they lack the other mana-heavy expendature of Range. For Burstiness: that's compared to their class. Kennen and Vlad are still bursty, but they aren't exactly Syndra or Annie. Riven and Yasou are also bursty, but not compared to Jax or Fizz: who can unload their entire damage in essentially 1 frame. It's also worth noting that in the realm of melee-squish, pure auto-attackers like Tryndamere can kill slay opponents in a few seconds, so the burst vs. sustained DPS meter is incredibly small come end-game.

Usually ressourcless champs are gated by their cooldowns.

They are not.

You're troubles are from playing into their strength with your weakness, rather than the other way around.

Key to dealing with manaless champions is usually limiting trades to a really short time-frame.

Stephenizgod3 votes

Garen: Q - 8 seconds
W - 20 seconds
E - 9 seconds
R - 180 seconds

With 40% CDR that roughly becomes Q- 5 seconds, 12 seconds, 5.5 seconds, 48 seconds. Thats 5 seconds of being able to do something :I and thats only if you build 40% CDR and this is him at max level. Normally Garen only gets about 20-30% CDR depending on the team he is fighting. In the beginning until he gets Black Cleaver you have 8 seconds to do something about him. He has no gap closer and no escape so once he uses his abilities that is 8 seconds of free damage on him.

People need to stop complaining about Garen, no one complained about him before the Juggernaut patch and they changed nothing about his laning phase, in fact they made it worse by lowering the damage on his E, removing the bonus armor and mr on his W plus the tenacity, and lowered the MS boost on his Q and his base MS. Plus they are about to nerf his laning phase AGAIN by removing the stacks of Villainy for killing him... Unless you are the Villian, you are facing a weaker version of old Garen who no one seemed to complain about other then that he required no skill... There were plenty of champions capable of dealing with him then and they sure as hell are still capable of doing so now. Instead of posting 1000 threads calling him OP why not try finding out what works actually works against him and try using that.

redniwediS2 votes

Honestly it doesn't feel like that to me. For reference I always pick Nasus into Garen and force him to deal with me the entire game. Garen, even with high CDR, does have a window of opportunity of significant size between spins.

Stephenizgod1 votes

This ^ there are plenty of champions capable of dealing with Garen if people would actually try to find his weakness instead of immediately calling him OP.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

I'm not calling him op, he's just a massive pain in the ass to deal with - especially since he is mechanically so simple that it doesn't even feel like a contest of skill...

Stephenizgod1 votes

You are calling him OP... you never directly say it but saying things like "he is unbeatable in lane" , "nothing you can really do" , "feels more unfair" , "impossible to bully him out of lane" , "unless this garen suddenly decides to troll..." i can keep going if you want, but these are all calling him OP without saying "OP"... Not to mention they are all wrong... You can beat him in lane quite easily, you can also bully him out of lane by constant poke to stop his passive, his W has a 20 second cool down so he cant block all the time, etc. It is possible to deal with Garen, its more likely your strategy and tactics are the problem rather then Garen himself. Try picking Cho'gath against him or Nasus, i always have trouble with these two. Any ranged champion with mobility or CC shits all over him completely unless you play stupid, Nidalee is also a good pick with her long range and that execute. Hell, Fiora straight up wins if you Riposte correctly, like nothing he can do really... she can parry his ult so even if she is the Villain... Darius currently fucks him up because Darius' ult is faster then Garen's so if you cast at the same time Darius will kill Garen and cancel his ult.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

OP would be if he was not only hard to bully out of lane but if he was also winning by default. THAT'S OP.

Of course you can stall and simply clear minions while being careful untl teamfights start (from there on it's a different story anyways) - but doing that until then is pretty much everything but a fun gaming experience.

A few selected champs can do well against him , no doubt, but the majority of the toplane cast will be forced into the passive play pattern unless they can count on heavy jungle support .

Stephenizgod1 votes

Do you know how that feels? To know that unless this garen suddenly decides to troll or go afk there is no way you are going to get him out of lane? And that not because he is skilled (let's be honest here, garen is not a mechanically difficult champ), but simply because it's how his stats are by default.

Right here... you just said that by default due to his stats he cant be bullied out of lane...

Sure you can stall and waveclear, but there is nothing you can really do to actually beat him.

and right here you claim even farming and stalling doesnt work, saying he is unbeatable...

So you did call him OP...

Redo the rework please - Garen as a champ is so old, he needs more than just true damage strapped to his ult to become a healthy champion...

Right here is where your entire post is BS. First off if Garen is beating you then you are not the Villain which means he is not doing True Damage to you. Second, his base MS and his MS% boost on his Q active were nerfed plus they reduced his silence to 1.2 seconds at all ranks (it was 1.2/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 seconds), his E's damage was lowered a lot after rank 1 and only does full damage if he is hitting a single enemy with his Judgement. Furthermore his W now requires you to build up stacks of Armor and Magic Resist to a maximum of 30 each (fyi he needs to kill 120 enemies to reach full stacks; so he wont be at max stacks until around 12-15 min i believe) and he lost his Tenacity upon active making him weak to CC. Old Garen got a lot more bonus resistances out of his old W then this new W gives him. So overall he is less tanky.

What does that mean? New Garen's early game is weaker then Old Garen's and it doesn't get better until later in the game. Why is Garen seemingly such a problem? because people see him erase the Villain and automatically think that it is what he is doing to them, little do they know the reason they are dying to him is because they think he is a tank... They removed alot of his tank and made him into a true Bruiser, old Garen was a Fighter first and a Tank second, new Garen is true to his original purpose.

And that not because he is skilled (let's be honest here, garen is not a mechanically difficult champ)

Btw less mechanics (or less required skill i suppose) means he is easier to deal with, not harder, so you are basically calling yourself less skilled then someone who plays Garen...

Jupıter1 votes

Okay, this would be a great post about balance, and a place where people can comment about changes to fix this, but it's too subjective, written from a rather angry standpoint. If it was an objective post with balance suggestions and such, with a well thought out explanation, it'd be a great post.

YossarianSensei1 votes

Garen's annoying right now because he's overtuned. There's nothing mechanically broken about manaless champs.

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