Garen needs a new Passive
I will go through this as fast as possible to make it less troublesome to read.
Garen is currently classified as a "Juggernaut" which means that he is a not very mobile champion but if he manages to get in your face, he will destroy you.
In my experience of playing Garen, kiting and peeling is often what gets me, but I really love building Infinity Edge, Cleaver and then going full tank to destroy my enemies. He works best in a team that can initiate for him and soak up damage. In my eyes, his best friends are Amumu (in jungle), because he can engage from a long range and deliver some heavy AOE CC (his utlimate) and a tank support like: Braum, Thresh and More Particularly, Leona because of her AOE stun and heavy slow. This allows Garen to get in and deal his damage while (probably) not facing a lot of peeling and kiting.
While all that sounds great, do you know what doesn't sound great? His Passive.
His passive encourages Garen to hit and run, not fight for extended periods of time. Let's look at another Juggernaut, Darius who probably has one of the most stupidly broken Passives in the game. Assuming Darius' team also has Leona and Amumu (sticking to that), Darius can get in and even chop up a tank really fast, because his passive allows him stay in a fight for a LONG time and it rewards him for it. Also, Darius gets a lot more sustain than Garen in a teamfight because of his Q healing everything. Isn't that nice?
Proposed Idea: Goals: Garen's new passive has to be unique, it has to reward him for being in a fight. If Riot wanted Garen to be the opposite of Darius, who is an offensive Juggernaut that is rewarded by extra AD for himself by staying long in fights, why not let Garen be a defensive Juggernaut that rewards both him and his team for staying in fights? You can clearly see that after Garen's recent buff, in which he became a tank shredding Monster.
Idea #1: All of the Juggernauts have ways of sustaining themselves while fighting, so let's change his passive to a bigger version of Grasp of the Undying. Makes sense, right?
After 2 seconds in combat with an enemy champion, Garen encourages his allies to fight longer. The next time Garen deals physical damage he will heal for 50+100% of his total Attack Damage and heal his nearby allies (including pets and minions) for 50+50% of his total Attack Damage +20% of their missing HP. Cooldown: 20/15/10 seconds (reduced every time he ranks up his ultimate). Reduced by 1 second for every visible nearby enemy champion within a 900 range radius of Garen.
This change helps Garen's team and the cooldown ensures he doesn't become a healing bot. Also, before you say it, this does not encourage support Garen, since the heal will be worthless early game and he will still have to deal with kiting from a half decent support.
Idea #2: Protector of the weak (or something like that
When Garen is near an ally (non champion) with under 20% of their HP, Garen's W will also onto them when he activates it. If Garen is near an allied champion with under 30% HP, the first 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5./3 seconds of its active component also make Garen immune to crowd control. This buff wears off immediately if Garen moves too far from the allied champion. If Garen deals enough damage (put a threshold here) to an enemy while his W is active, he will heal himself and any ally affected by Garen's passive for 100% of Garen's AD plus 1 extra hp for every 5 hp the ally is missing.
What do you think? I couldn't come up with any more ideas, just these 2. Riot has said that they want Garen's kit to be the opposite of Darius, and if Darius can have an insane selfish offensive steroid, why can't Garen have a defensive one that encourages him to be near his team and make him much more useful overall?
Thank you for reading and as always, post your thoughts below :)