Garen needs a new Passive

DarkPh0enix··4 votes·836 views

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 :)

10 Comments

TTK Dreadnought1 votes

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?

I'll be happy with a grasp style passive on him. would rather he get it than mundo.

I just hate having to be in lane as garen and have to take a few steps away for the passive to function when i could simply just go to base and TP back in. If i want the lane-regen i'll take mundo.

DarkPh0enix1 votes

His passive is not worth it in lane.

TTK Dreadnought1 votes

his passive heals 0.4%/0.8%/2% max hp every second compared to mundo's 0.3%.

so while its better stat wise than mundo, its simply the issue that its out of combat sustain which makes it feel pointless.

whenever i play against garen, i simply hit him with an AA while farming simply to keep his passive offline. if you can trigger grasp every 4secs, what's stopping you from keeping garen's regen offline? And hit him enough he's gonna recall instead of sitting in lane because he cant regen in the first place to sit under tower and soak nearby XP...

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

Looks good. Right now I love it already. Garen should be rewarded for sticking to a fight besides armor shred.

Teémò1 votes

You could just proxy as garen after a few levels. Get farm steal from the jungle it's part of a top laners job. Because he'd be regenning It would mean any jungler if they want to stop you their going to have to chase you, but you'll have gained a good amount of armor and such that they just can't. I never play garen He's just dull to me, but if you want some map pressure as garen I'd suggest that.

King of Demons1 votes

I don't see the issue? He is a champion you can take a bad trade on because it's Garen-teed that you'll be on a higher HP than the enemy after your passive kicks in.

DarkPh0enix1 votes

His regen in the early game is only ever so slightly better with his passive on. If you get dropped to 200 HP, it is not worth it sticking in lane and waiting to regen.

BastionKross1 votes

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?

I would change the AD scaling to HP scaling, since Garen is still a juggernaut and he likes his HP items. The only big ticket AD item that works on him would be IE, and that's only if he's ahead and can afford to build damage instead of tanky stats.

DarkPh0enix1 votes

Juggernauts also like their offensive items, and the AD scaling was put for 2 reasons

  1. Juggernauts suffer from %HP damage and this is a way to keep Garen from building TOO much HP. Also, if he has 4k HP and the heal equals 10% of his HP, a 450 health heal every 5 seconds in a teamfight is OP.

  2. Garen really, really, really likes his infinity edge and Garen should be encouraged to go for a more damage oriented build.

BastionKross1 votes
  1. You can always change the ratio numbers so that there won't be a 450 health heal.

  2. A damage focused Garen functions about as well as a damage focused Darius or Voilbear or Mundo. His W puts him in a better position than most juggernauts as far as the free resists and DR it gives, but he's still going to die far too quickly. He's gonna get poked to death in lane and murdered in teamfights without a majority of tank items.

Garen is a juggernaut, not a fighter. Too many AD scalings just aren't a good idea unless you're like Darius and have some sort of gimmick that gives you free AD. In fact, Garen doesn't have all that much synergy with IE outside of the AD and his spin critting (and that's only a 20% chance unless you get crazy and build more crit items).

Hell, a quick glance at champion.gg says that IE isn't a part of Garen's frequent build or Garen's highest winrate build. It's just not something Garen usually wants.

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