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You know who i think needs a mini-update?

Zerenza··34 votes·1,933 views

Garen

Why? It's pretty simple.

This champion is busted, riot meddler once said(Paraphrasing) that garen's kit is to strong, his kit is oppressive and if at any point he becomes a strong pick in high ELO it means that something is horribly wrong. For this reason and several other's i'm about to go over, garen is kept in a constantly weak state. If you don't know what about why his kit is so strong then continue reading further.

Passive:

His passive gives him increased healing in lane, massively increased healing, if he doesn't take damage for a short time he heals for up to 1% of his maximum health every half second. if he has this 1% healing at level one he'd be incredibly hard to play against, dominating lane by outsustaining his opponent. Luckily he only get's to 1% later in the game, this is a consequence of how powerful a tool this is for him.

Q:

What dingus thought it was a good idea to put a silence on a 4 second cooldown ability that deal's bonus damage, gives increased movement speed and a soft cleanse effect. This ability is overloaded, the silence last's ages, it deals incredible damage and makes it so your opponent in many cases litterally just can't fight back. This is one of the main reason's he's nerfed so badly, it's hard to balance a juggernaut who can yolo dive a back line, half health the squishy and then kill them cause they literally can't fight back.

R:

This ability is absolutely insane, this ability has a rather useless passive in "villain" basically all of garen's abilities deal TRUE DAMAGE to his villain and his villain does reduced damage to him. The reason i call this ability pointless is due to the fact garen can't pick who is the villain, it's based on who's had the most kills, which is thematically pretty cool but in terms of gameplay it makes him either really useless or absurdly strong.

His active ability on this is a targeted execute....that has 175 base damage at level 6 and scales off of...cough....COUGH 28% of the target's missing health! Dafuq?! WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS OKAY?! Juggernaut's should NEVER have execute abilities that are this absurd, at least darius can't one shot you with it he has to stack his passive up first, atleast you can do something about this, but remember when i said garen can yolo dive and kill most squishies? This ability is why, all you have to do is Q a squishy maybe use your E for a bit of extra damage, and you'll basically kill them from half health will no counterplay involved, and all you had to do was click on them. The worst part about this is, if that enemy is marked as a villain, this shit deals true damage. WHAT?! TRUE DAMAGE TARGETED EXECUTE ON A 40 FUCKING SECOND COOLDOWN? No wonder riot keeps this guy nerfed.

For those that dont know this means that at level six if you have 1000 total health and are down to about 300-400 health, your very likely going to die to this ability. Once he reaches higher level it scales off of 50% and has a base damage of over 500, meaning if you have 1600-2000(Many ADC"s have around this much late game) health and are down to half, this ability will one shot you every, single, time.

Conclusion: Look, honestly i like the idea behind garen, but the problem is it was executed(haha) poorly, a juggernaut shouldn't have the tools garen does, and because he has these tools he's kept in a constantly subpar state to prevent from balance issues. I really want to see garen mini-reworked or fully reworked, unlike many i think riot's rework's(for the most part) have been pretty onpoint lately and i think that garen has a good shot at being really fucking cool but right now he's just not.

Note: Garen's E and W i feel are perfectly fine, the rest of his kit though causes major balance issues and prevent's him from ever seeing the light of day outside of an auto filled bronze top laner.

42 Comments

invisiblecat116 votes

The whole idea of point and click true damage that scales with missing Hp is completely stupid He can shred armor with one E, and it will be from his E and Black cleaver It is almost like if his ULT did physical damage he would become broken But I am sick of 1700 true damage being dealt to me when I am under 1/2 hp, while Garen has 1 AD item

IcyPepper4 votes

But I am sick of 1700 true damage being dealt to me when I am under 1/2 hp,

525 +40% missing health

So you were missing 2937.5 health?

That's means you had 5875 health in that example... are you a Mundo main or something?

invisiblecat11 votes

Nope, I am not sure how it did 1700 true damage, but I definitely was not playing a someone too tanky

AmazoX1 votes

I know the problem, Both are correct, It's just that death recap is dumb, That's all.

invisiblecat11 votes

It was not the death recap, I saw it deal the damage, and I had like 1/3 hp

IcyPepper1 votes

Who were you playing? Do you remember what game it was? When it was?

And if you were at 1/3 health (which is a bit more realistic)... you must have had 4406.25 total health. You were playing a tank?

Legacy Hydralpha13 votes

I feel that Garen slipped under the radar for a lot of people discussing mini-updates (me included). He definitely has his issues, one of the biggest I feel is that he's TOO simple. Garen is a very straight-forward and easy champion, which by itself isn't a bad thing. It gives new players a simple champion to play, but in turn he loses the access to certain tools many other champions have. Garen is only mostly good at killing one target, but he doesn't even get to choose who that target is. Maybe it's the fed ADC who can shred him fairly easily, or maybe the support who accidentally took a kill.

Garen just doesn't have a lot of depth or options, and hopefully a mini-update could be very beneficial for him. I feel like being the juggernaut assassin should stay his niche, but I feel being an anti-magic/mage juggernaut would be much more fitting to his lore and identity (He wears magic-absorbing armour from Demacia). This sorta shows in his current kit through his silence, but that's the only true anti-mage tool he has.

Zerenza5 votes

He shouldn't have a silence at all, the idea of "Juggernaut/ Assassin" is extremely bad for design. By design a juggernaut is supposed to be a damage dealing psuedo tank, they go into the team and wreak havoc on them. An assassins job is to kill a single key target, if you combine those your left with, well, garen. Garen's ability to yolo dive a back line and one shot an ADC is unmatched and that's exactly why he's kept so weak, fizz and ekko tank builds are basically garen, high damage, hard to kill, hard to get away from. It's just not good gameplay and causes his basic design to be extremely oppressive.

He should simply be a juggernaut, all juggernauts can kill squishies but none of them can do it with ease unless their fed. In my opinion the perfect Juggernaut is Illaoi, sure she's a pain to lane against and she can feel broken but her entire kit is full of counterplay, dodge, run away, CC. She even tells you to do exactly that but people still complain because they just don't, a juggernaut should punish player's severely for making mistakes, but not make it impossible for them to do anything at all, like garen does with his silence.

Edit: Not to mention, Garen should punish his enemies for making mistakes, it makes sense being the "Might of Demacia" that he punishes player's like a true keeper of justice and law in demacia.

TheSingularity1 votes

Definitely agree with the silence. It's an extremely frustrating spell to be hit with especially if you play something like zac mundo or rumble.

The fact that this aspect of his kit is SO VITAL to his kill potential screams of how shit the rest of his design is. Without it I'd just hit back, I could jump away if I had a jump. He would never win a trade.

But his E is also problematic in it's design and synergy with Q. Namely it punishing you for not having minions around. Let's say you're a a spell caster like mundo zac or rumble, and garen rushes in, ans QE. You lost the trade the moment you got Q'd. Because you know you won't win the trade, and likely die if u sit around to hit back after silence.

So you're forced to run, towards tower and in most cases away from minions resulting in even more damage to be taken.

A fair comparison would be irelia's E that punishes you for winning. Garens E punishes you for fleeing fight that you've already lost

NovaDisk1 votes

Right now, Garen's not a Juggernaut.

A Juggernaut is an extremely immobile, fairly tanky champion that can wipe out your entire squad if you ignore them or fail to kite them. They're basically a Melee Control Mage which zones the enemy team off melee range. Darius and Illaoi are both excellent examples of Juggernauts.

Garen is a diver, much more similar to Renekton.

Garen and Renekton are both durable, semi-mobile champions whose goal is to dash in and 100-0 a vulnerable target, then serve as a frontline after they've finished their job.

The only difference is Renekton is better at it, with better mobility, a true stun, and stronger 1s burst. Garen can CONDITIONALLY have better burst, if the target he is trying to kill is already low, or is the villain.

I think people need to get the idea out of their heads that Garen is a Juggernaut, because he's not. He's more of a slow diver.

Jar Jar binks l5 votes

Add Volibear to this list too and Mundo

Sasogwa4 votes

A single target execute is hilariously weak as an ultimate compared to real teamfight ults. Amumu's for instance A speed boost + cleanse + silence is pretty good, but you're blatantly lying on the CD. It's 8 seconds CD at all ranks. Can only get down to 4.8 seconds at best with 40% cdr. His W is crap, it's just a little bit of bonus tankiness (worse than poppy) and a small %damage reduc for a few secs. And then his spin. Some AOE damage, not incredible, decent synergy with BC. That's it. Garen is abusable as shit, in no way can he ever be dominant. If Garen is ever dominant/a strong viable option it means he absolutely crushes to the dumpster his good matchups. Because his bad matchups are abysmal right now.

Garen's kit isn't oppressive at all. He's insanely predictable, easy to kite, doesn't bring any crowd control for easy kills or anything.

Not sure if sarcasm or trolling right here.

Oh you also blatantly lied on the CD of his ult. It's not 40 seconds, it's 120/100/80 seconds.

Big Lincoln3 votes

. This ability is overloaded

garen needs an update but hyperbole doesn't help your point

junglerboy163 votes

I think his real issue is that he's just too simple to succeed.

In every way he is just a simplified counterpart to Darius. AA reset, AoE damage, targeted execute, some sort of healing, etc. His failure is that unlike Darius he lacks any meaningful method of skill expression by either him or his opponent beyond "Stay away from him."

When fighting Darius, both him and his opponent have multiple opportunities to assess the state of the fight and decide what to do. How many bleed stacks does Darius have on me and does that mean I can trade a little more or back off for now? Should I juke away from his spin and avoid damage and his heal or press close to him to finish him off instead? Am I tanky enough that I can take the hits and not risk dying to his true damage? Can I juke his pull and keep kiting? Do I have enough bleed stacks on them to execute? Did my passive trigger giving me the upper hand in the fight? Should I risk backing away slightly for the extra spin damage and heal and risk them escaping?

Meanwhile for Garen it's just: Do I have hard CC to peel him off? Can I kill him before he runs away and regens? or for Garen, did I do enough damage to execute them or should I run away now?

LegenDariusGaren3 votes

His Ult scales to 40% at level 16, not 50%. Just about everyone has scaling magic resistance now, so it deals less damage. So many great magic resistance items exist now, that his R has to be used as an overkill against most champions now. Having said that, the only change Garen needs is to his W.

Looking at the trend of Poppy Warwick Galio , and comparing it to the passive on item 3111 ( reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds, polymorphs, and immobilizes by 30%), I think that Garen's W active will now be an aoe polymorph. Think of it as being an aoe channel that grows in size and polymorphs everyone caught at the end of it. They can move the damage reduction to apply the same way it does with Warwick and Galio.

Saianna2 votes

For everyone jumping on Garens ultimate dealing true damage, I'd like to point out few things:

  1. On relase his R dealt true damage, which was later reworked and nerfed to magic damage. And overall Garen was thrown into dumpster for over 2 years.
  2. Darius exists and if there's anything even more annoying than Garen, then that has to be Darius.
  3. Chogath exists
  4. Garens damage with scalling with missing hp is only OP on paper. Cause in 90% of uses target would be either dead with 1-2 basic hits or this ultimate deals jack shit of damage. There's never a fine line where it comes out satysfying.
macromite2 votes

I stand for the don't change garen.

Him being in a state where he is a never play is not a bad thing, infact him being so simple is actually pretty important for the new player expierience. a lot of the bad features percieved are for that to actually work.

NovaDisk2 votes

This logic doesn't work. There are many, many champions with very easy to learn and simple kits who are viable at any ELO.

The problem with Garen is that League is all about burst and mobility, and Garen has neither (E is not burst damage and R doesn't do damage unless they're already low).

macromite1 votes

how many juggernauts are in that category? a few, but then remove the ones you need to understand moba's to play and learn and you end up with just garen.

juggernaut is a more complex class, simple in premise but with many things that require consideration while playing, garen needs to be simple enough for that to work.

NovaDisk1 votes

Here's the problem, you're saying Garen is a Juggernaut.

A Juggernaut can squadwipe a team that ignores them or fails to kite them i.e. Darius or Illaoi. Garen can't do that.

Garen is a durable frontliner that wants to oneshot a squishy then frontline for their team. Garen's a lot more similar to Renekton than he is to Darius. He jumps on one target, blows them up, and absorbs damage and skillshots whenever he's not diving. Although Garen's rework was billed as a 'Juggernaut', he's not, he's a fighter.

macromite2 votes

Here's the problem, you're saying Garen is a Juggernaut.

So you are a dunce. glad we got that over with immediatly.

A Juggernaut can squadwipe a team that ignores them or fails to kite them He jumps on one target, blows them up, and absorbs damage and skillshots whenever he's not diving.

There is more than one type of juggernaut, good job on noticing that, but I have to cut your marks for not understanding that even though a character does not fit your percieved understanding of a role they can still fit the role.

Here is a list of juggernauts that fit the style you think they are meant to fit.

  • Darius
  • Illaoi

Here is a list of the rest of the juggernauts.

  • Nasus
  • Mordekaiser
  • Trundle
  • Olaf
  • Garen
  • Shyvana
  • Udyr
  • Dr. Mundo
  • Volibear
  • Yorick

Juggernaut essentially is any class that is meant to build defensive and still do significant damage, and they also generally have a very real weakness to getting kited. not all of them are squad wipers, Udyr Garen Volibear , and some of them aren't even that weak to getting kited, Shyvana DrMundo Yorick .

Understand a role before you make a claim on it.

NovaDisk1 votes

Dear Diamond Player, You are a Dunce, and don't understand the game. Sincerely, Level 30 Normal Ranger.

Good meme. Sit down kid.

macromite1 votes

There is no correlation between the skills your learned getting to diamond and the understanding of roles, apparantly.

NovaDisk2 votes

Garen absolutely needs some work.

He's useless against opponents that know how to abuse his weaknesses. Given his current kit, if Garen was balanced to have a 50% Win Rate in say, Masters, he'd need like 200 HP, 10 movespeed, and probably some extra damage to boot. Obviously if his numbers were changed in such a way he'd be absolutely broken in low ELO.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

There's also little to no ounterplay to garen other than staying the fuck away.

PB4UAME1 votes

Kiting, CC, heals and shield at the right time to fuck over his ult, item actives, etc.

There is a lot more to that, especially when you also factor in that he's a pure melee, his only defense against slows is at the start of his only speed up/gap closer, and that the range you have to stay out of is. . . 220 spell range, or just slightly more than his auto attack range.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

"Other than staying the fuck away"

It helps to read the entire sentence.

"Little to no".

Counterplay being not close to a champion isn't healthy counterplay.

PB4UAME1 votes

Except you just ignored everything else I said.

Want me to do a run down some of the counter-play to every ability he has?

Passive, hit him once every 10 seconds. Boom, he can't use it until he's level 11 if you do that little. Bonus points go to DoT abilities, especially when paired with liandry's or DFT which will keep it down for much longer, and need far less application. Swain, Darius, Morde and Teemo are very good at doing this top lane, coincidentally, Morde is Garen's worst match up, Teemo is within the worst five, and Darius is in the worst 10-- by winrate according to LeagueofGraphs

Hit him once every 7 seconds 11-15 and once every 5 seconds after that-- granted, lategame is where it shines, and its basically a free Warmog's Heart, though, admittedly not quite as strong.

Q, If he uses the ability, you want to avoid or mitigate his next attack or wait five seconds. Additionally, when it is on cooldown, Garen has no recourse to any CC, not even a slow so kiting becomes very effective. Wait for his sword to flash when he tries to engage, and unload your CC after that to easily peel Garen away from yourself or teammates.

W, Same tricks that apply to any similar such ability, try and bait it out, or wait it out (usually maxed last so it only lasts 2 seconds until lv. 8, and stays at 3 seconds until lv. 14) Doesn't give it's full passive component until Garen has reached 125 cs as well, so he won't have as much resists if you can keep him from farming early on. All of his counters are able to bully his lack of range in lane to keep him low on CS. If you have some solid harass or can just poke from a bit beyond, oh, 220 range, you can keep him from full accessing his resists for quite a while.

E, This has some built in counterplay. For starters, it only does full damage if he's hitting a single target, despite being a PBAoE ability. Secondly, it only shreds your armor after you've been hit for 4 hits, so dashes, blinks, knock backs, dispositions, or flash will all save you from the shred and the majority of it's damage. Additionally, you can stun, knock-up, suppress, or otherwise CC him, then simply walk out of its 220 range and have your armor emerge unscathed. Also, if he is moving into or through a target, including minions, he's slowed by 20% during Judgment, so kiting him into summons, monsters or even minions is an effective tactic for disengaging from a Garen.

R, Well, for starters lets address the Villain mechanic. This is about the only place where the "Counterplay being not close to a champion isn't healthy counterplay" comment actually applies. The villain mechanic is dumb, and should never have been added. If you are the villain you will take extra %hax hp true damage when fighting Garen and all you can do to avoid this (other than counterplay to simply avoid taking damage from Garen in general) is well. . . to wait for it to recalculate the villain, or for someone else to become more villainous due to a kill streak, or to die to Garen.

As far as the active goes, the main counterplay is to disengage when you're getting low. However, beyond that, if you're an AD champ, buy a hexdrinker and you'll completely nullify his ult unless you're the villain. Yes, the MR is not effective for any of the rest of the damage he does, but the passive shield is enough to block his rank 1 ult unless you were so low he could have killed you with an auto attack, and the shield has a lower cooldown. Maw is an even better counter to his ult, of course. Now, there are also some general tactics to avoiding obvious executes (let's be honest, you know when a Garen ult is coming) for one, you can use burst heals or shields either as the target themself, or an ally. Defensive abilities can also be useful here, but, if the target is the villain, damage reduction will not apply and only health gains, heals, or shields will matter.

NovaDisk1 votes

Which happens to be pretty easy if your support isn't a potato.

General Esdeath 1 votes

Didn't they remove the reduced damage part from his R passive?

Shadow Hazard1 votes

I honestly think that he borders much closely into the territory of needing a vgu personally.

Lynxonyx1 votes

Singed shrug

JESUSSAYSNO1 votes

Honestly, his ult is the only stupid part about his kit. It feels super unfun to play against.

There's those games where you pop the fuck off, and are constantly villain. It feels super bullshit that the enemy team has a spell literally designed to shut down the strongest player on the enemy team. At rank 3 it can easily be above 1k true damage and a well placed Garen ult will just end the game on a point click by removing a fed carry from a fight. It's especially a problem for ADCS, sustain mages like Vlad (my main) and Swain, and just about any champ that has a fluxuating health pool in a fight, that relies on lifesteal or some form of on kit healing to survive fights. Because all of a sudden, because of the Garen pick, you're no longer safe at the 50% you can safely float at against every other champion.

Like I can be rocking a teamfight, doing tons of damage, kiting Garen even, he doesnt need to touch me with Q or E once, and piggybacking off of other champ's damage, he does 1.2k true damage at a decent range.

It just feels bullshit when it happens. I don't think Garen is strong, I don't really find him problematic to play against generally, but he can do some bullshit. Kill range for you if you're the villian is stupid high, considering how tanky he builds. But lets be real, that's his only strength as is.

I do think a rework would be good. I don't see how they can balance him when he has such a linear kit.

hhaavviikk1 votes

try playing garen in ARAM with infinity edge black cleaver and the rest tank items, you will be melting squishies, it's even better against mages since you snowball to them and they are presented with no counterplay after the snowball hits because silence

Randomonium1 votes

Anyone feel like Garen should be the anti-mage juggernaut like Gallo is the anti-mage tank?

Zerenza1 votes

I don't because he's the "Easy to play" juggernaut, which means he should be playable into most comps similar to other cheaper champions that are for new player's.

AmazoX1 votes

What if they took some idea's from Sonya's kit in HotS?

AllThoseInFavor1 votes

he exists with his current kit so that new players have a basic champion to learn on. He's not for even level 30 normal matches, hence the comment about pro play. He's just a stat smashing jugernaut that is kept bad so that his incredibly basic kit doesn't become overpowering. We can't go around making every champion viable for ranked with a high degree of counterplay and complex mechanics. There has to be somewhere to start. Some training wheels. He's not a problem in anyones ranked matches and he's far from broken. Leave him be

Zerenza1 votes

Warwick, Annie, Caitlynn, Soraka, Sona, Poppy,Teemo. There are several Easy to play champions that are still viable and fair that teach people the basic's of said role without being completely garbage in ranked. In addition, none of these champions are complex but all of them all see play in LCS and in High ELO, even challenger. They all also teach the basic's of each role pretty well and some such as Annie are designed to make lane phase easy for new player's while still being very VERY effective in high ELO play without being to oppressive.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

i agree that he needs a mini rework and some added depth to his kit. id like something done with his w mainly and his passive, maybe something with his q. not a full kit rework quite on the level of Warwick but in the same spirit of preserving the general theme of the abilities, while adding some layers in terms of mechanics, and give him a little bit of outplay potential in return.

that being said, his passive and R are absolutely 100% not the issues with his kit. and theyre by far neither too strong nor reliable to eat up too much of his power budget.

his r is a downgraded version of Darius and Chogath ult, even against the villain.

his passive is nonexistent in a fight, and mediocre to bad in lane.

comparably, both - Chogath ult and sustain passive - are better than garens already. like the amount of health and mana sustain cho gets out of just last hitting minions massively outshadows the health regeneration garen gets when his opponent fails to occationally poke him.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

also fact is, that hes not deliberately "kept" weak.

as evident by the attempts to buff him with the addition of the armor shred to his spin for example.

its just that streaks of indirect nerfs kept him declining. if they didnt want him to be a decent champion, they would have directly hit him in the month after the jugg rework, when he actually was decent except for the absolute highest levels of play.

and the armor shred buff itself was doomed to fail from the start, since it didnt add anything new to his kit, considering that cleaver was already pretty much core on him.

they did try to make him viable with his current kit. it just didnt stick.

TimX24968B1 votes

lol. Riot has also said that buffing him to make him viable in higher elos would make him obscene in lower elos, while doing some kind of rework that would fix this would knock up his mechanical complexity and possibly injure his popularity.

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