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How to survive a Garen

lavacrush·1/22/2016, 3:17:54 AM·2 votes·1,530 views

First off, this isnt a rage post about "AHH GAREN IS SO BROKEN BLAH BLAH BLAH!"

Instead I'm asking what I can do about it? I just had a game where I went 7/1 in lane as Zed vs. a Vel'koz and Garen was 8/0. Our top, renekton, just got beat hard. The only thing i told Renekton all game was "I believe in you" and hoped he would become inspired, instead he died like 15 seconds after. For the rest of the game Garen was able to 1v3 and my full combo did maybe 1/6 of his health.

Now to the actual question. When I'm put in a circumstance where Garen gets a lead, what should I do to ensure victory? How should I manage lanes, team mates, etc. to get rid of the threat? Looking back I realize that I should have roamed top to take some pressure off the Lizard, but I didn't. Late game all I could do was ping him a few times and hope everyone went in (he would be alone because he knew he could, in teamfights I focused and ) Whenever a vital team mate would be caught out it became impossible to take Garen on. My build path can be found here

Any tips/advice on how to play around Raidboss Garen would be appreciated, Thanks!

8 Comments

Maple Crusader1/22/2016, 3:24:41 AM2 votes

Roam top to kill Garen, he's relatively gankable. Go kill the rest of his team to snowball harder. Garen can't solo your whole team. Get Guardian's Angel if his ult is a problem. Once his ult is down, Garen loses a lot of his strength as a tanky picker.

AlwaysByMySide1/22/2016, 3:27:14 AM2 votes

{quoted}

First off, this isnt a rage post about "AHH GAREN IS SO BROKEN BLAH BLAH BLAH!"

Instead I'm asking what I can do about it? I just had a game where I went 7/1 in lane as Zed vs. a Vel'koz and Garen was 8/0. Our top, renekton, just got beat hard. The only thing i told Renekton all game was "I believe in you" and hoped he would become inspired, instead he died like 15 seconds after. For the rest of the game Garen was able to 1v3 and my full combo did maybe 1/6 of his health.

Now to the actual question. When I'm put in a circumstance where Garen gets a lead, what should I do to ensure victory? How should I manage lanes, team mates, etc. to get rid of the threat? Looking back I realize that I should have roamed top to take some pressure off the Lizard, but I didn't. Late game all I could do was ping him a few times and hope everyone went in (he would be alone because he knew he could, in teamfights I focused and ) Whenever a vital team mate would be caught out it became impossible to take Garen on. My build path can be found here

Any tips/advice on how to play around Raidboss Garen would be appreciated, Thanks!

If you roamed top against a fed Garen that was building armour and health (along with that hot Black Cleaver/Sterak's AD), best case scenario you might get his flash. Worst case scenario he kills you both, probably starting with you since you're in all likelihood the villain.

You can't do much about Garen 1v1 as Zed without seriously outplaying and poking him down. He's just too tanky and deals too much damage to squishies like you. But you're a better play maker. You should have tried to snowball bot lane through roaming and pressuring, and maybe killing their jungler in his jungle if you're ahead and your jungler is doing well.

As for build path, Blade of the Ruined King was good for damaging Garen (and is good on Zed in general), but Hydra was a no go. You get Blade or Hydra, not both. Also, no berserker's greaves. You want swifties to roam and catch the carry, Merc's to fuck off CC, or Ionian's to get 40% CDR if you don't have CDR in your runes. Speaking of which, if you're snowballing on Zed I'd recommend youmuu's for a first item, followed by Black Cleaver. Gets your CDR really high early on, helps your team deal with the fed Garen, and still allows you to explode squishies. After that get Blade of the Ruined King (I'll leave when you get boots up to your own discretion). You're going to want a Lord Dominik's Regards to do more damage to Garen during team fights, or, you could say fuck Garen and get Maw of Malmortius to make you more survivable and do more damage to squishies. Last item should be something like GA, or, if you're a huge badass, another offensive item.

In general though, don't really fuck with Garen personally once he starts getting tanky. You can keep him off of carries with your E's slow, since he needs to walk up to people to do damage, or if your team is peeling well you can just explode their carry. Don't ult him unless he is seriously out of position and a sure kill.

Also, I have to ask, was your team all physical damage champions (support doesn't count, nor do champions who do a modest amount of magic damage like Miss Fortune or AD Ezreal)? Because if so, that would make fighting Garen extremely hard.

This is all just IMO. I'm not a great Zed player, and maybe some Zed mains will disagree, but I do play a lot of Garen.

Slythion1/22/2016, 3:27:58 AM2 votes

How long was your game? Many juggernauts fall off in the later parts of the game (they become strongest mid-game) as damage dealers begin stacking up on armour pen items (especially if you're zed). Garen is a powerhouse for sure. If he gets a decent lead it'll be difficult to kill him for awhile due to the simple fact that it's a lot easier to tank up than to build dmg items i.e: DrMundo . As for build, if lucian and velkoz weren't a problem for you, it would've been a better idea to go right into the lord dominiks instead of the blood thirster (you already have some lifesteal from bork anyways). As I said, when the juggernaut of their team becomes fed to the point where he is uncontrollable, you have 2 options.

Hope he is alone and see if you can shut him down as a team or...
Wait for the late game where you can begin damaging him again. People like Garen lose their dominance as his only real threat is his execute. He won't be doing damage to anyone without sacrificing tanky stats for damage stats or (in Garen's case) you are the villain. Don't fight Garen as the villain if he's doing well, that would be just asking to die.

Craft Zeppelin1/22/2016, 3:25:04 AM1 votes

That will be making a disengage comp when you see that damn thing picked. Before our mundo jax popularity, I used to pick syndra against teams with darius or garen and knock them back like pinballs