Garen is lacking mechanics

Delebru·Aug 24, 2016·8 votes·1,218 views

I feel like Garen is on the weaker side of the toplane roster atm, especially in higher divisions (Gold+), simply because he lacks mechanical depth. I understand that Garen is supposed to be a beginners champ but there can still be mechanical depth without the champ being too complicated. A champ should be playable in all divisions and just buffing stats would make him op in lower divisions. So some extra kind of extra mechanic on him seems like the only solution.

I´ve thought about two possibilitys:

give his Q extra damage when his passive is up
his passive not being able to get canceled while W is active

21 Comments

Critmaster GarenAug 24, 20167 votes

garen can be buffed to being viable in plat upwads without being op in lower divisions.

since his rework, there was almost no difference in winrate between plat and silver/bronze. it was a 2% difference at best. even now that hes suffering at plat, hes actually not even strong in bronze and silver anymore.

i dont think making his q deal more damage with his passive activated will make him stronger at high ranked play. that sounds like a change that makes him rather stronger in the lower divisions where his opponents dont remember to poke his passive down.

there are a couple of options to buff garen.

buff his lategame spin damage. he feels like he deals nowhere near enough damage to be relevant when fighting anyone but the villain lategame. certain adc will just facetank him in melee with lifesteal. his highest winrate build right now includes an infinity edge, because its the only way to compensate for lacking damage.
revert the nerfs to his mobility by increasing his base ms by 5 and his q ms by 5%. the removal of boot enchants and swifites nerfs hurt his ability to make plays.
buff his lategame defense to compensate for the repeated nerfs of his defensive itemization.

any of these should work.

DelebruAug 24, 20162 votes

i would totally agree with those changes although i believe his problem is more about his early game in late game he should be supposed to take down the villain so lacking damage on other enemies should t be that big of a deal

tinman 001Aug 24, 20165 votes

thts a good idea i play garen alot i find tht mid game hes pretty weak and can get shit on easily

Heroic ThomAug 24, 20164 votes

Well, Garen mains should be considered real people, too. And everone needs a little love from time to time, so why not give Garen some changes to spice his simple, but still enjoyable mechanics a little. So yeah, have an upvote. Garen For Demacia! Garen

SohleksAug 25, 20163 votes

The combination of those tweaks is interesting.

I like 1 because it specifically buffs bush Garen :)

KippidAug 24, 20162 votes

ur builds lack not garen. garen is op when u play him right

OneMustFallAug 24, 20161 votes

Something about giving any sort of buff to a champ who presses R and gets 30% free true damage makes me cringe. Nerf that and buff the other stuff, you got a deal.

BerkaykpAug 24, 20162 votes

ofc his ult is a bit unfair towards the villain and that damage could be gutted down but thats the same with veigar or cho ult

VivaLaKittenAug 24, 20163 votes

it only does that to the villain and is easily avoided if you don't get close to him while you're the villain

Rito GumsAug 24, 20161 votes

Garen is weak yea only in the laning phase, but the thing is that he can kill adcs and squishy champs in 4 seconds while they need like 10 seconds to kill him

DelebruAug 24, 20161 votes

only if he´s atleast a bit feed on the other side he has big troubles catching up to targets, is very predictable due to his easy kit and his passive in early lane feels like non existent and doesn t give him really much sustain against poke

MatezoideAug 24, 20161 votes

Garen's stats were actually pretty fine, but suddenly he had a decrease in higher divisions across patches.

Someone here said it is because of a bug, but i do not recall any details.

Critmaster GarenAug 24, 20166 votes

{quoted}

Garen's stats were actually pretty fine, but suddenly he had a decrease in higher divisions across patches.

Someone here said it is because of a bug, but i do not recall any details.

its really just a boatload of indirect nerfs on his items over the course of the season.

the mage update alone removed a large part of mobility from everyone, by deleting boot enchants. a lot of slower melee champions dropped in winrate with that patch.

they just removed boot enchants without really dealing with the fallout it caused. champions who dropped in winrate as a result never got compensated.

spirit visage lost 15 mr on that patch aswell.

everything that happened, from the health and damage nerf to cleaver (even if it was made cheaper), to the resistance nerf on spirit visage, the health nerfs on dead mans, steraks, warmogs, the cost increase on sunfire, the cost increase and ms nerfs on swifties, the removal of veteran scars % health scaling.

everything together hit his lategame effectiveness. it stacks up to a significant nerf. when almost every single item he buys gets hit in some way, then its no suprise hes falling off so hard. he has a weaker early game than pre rework without really getting a decent lategame out of it.

MatezoideAug 24, 20161 votes

Ah, alright.

I knew that the itemization changes hurt him, but i thought a bug was also related.

My appologies, i must have gotten his case confused with another champion.

NovaDiskSep 23, 20161 votes

His passive used to be bugged but they fixed that like a year ago.

VivaLaKittenAug 24, 20161 votes

some people like simple champs leave them be, not everything needs to be fancy and complicated I love Nasus Amumu and Udyr gameplay so simple a kitten could play them

DelebruAug 24, 20162 votes

amumu and udyr can both do big plays, and it´s not just about the simplicity of his kit, it´s more about the predictability of his kit

VivaLaKittenAug 25, 20161 votes

what . . . what does "big plays" have anything to do with people liking unique playstyles of the old simple champs I never said anything about any of those champs besides they have simple playstyles

"some people like simple champs" lots of people like these champs the way they are and don't want them becoming fancy updated champs just because theyre old

BladerWarriorAug 25, 20161 votes

then how exactly would you define a "simple playstyle"?

MagicFlyingLlamaAug 24, 20161 votes

I was considering Garen recently because he is currently almost rage-inducingly boring to play. What is this, pong?

Give him a resource bar and passive: Moral. Moral increases or decreases based on actions within a distance around garen, and applies some buffs to himself and allies. This would replace his rather one-dimensional passive (rewarding you for not doing anything?..) This would be more thematically suitable.

Switch his silly spin for something along the lines of a built-in titanic hydra passive, with an active that increases attack speed for the next few attacks.

Change his ult, which like the old poppy, contains way too much of his power budget and makes balancing the rest of his kit dificult. His ult could, for example, give all nearby allies a movement speed boost and 60% tenacity, with duration based on his moral bar. Sort of an aoe mini-ragnarok. Since garen has a long history of bravely running away, making it only work while moving towards enemies is not at all needed.