Let's Talk about Garen, the Might of Demacia
Introduction: Garen is a fairly iconic champion for the League. He popularized the term "spin2win" and there are many jokes about Garen waiting for you in bushes (Doombots was a nice nod to these two facts).
Released back in mid-spring of 2010 as the 50th champion to enter the League, Garen has practically seen it all. He's been around to see the rise and fall of many metas; the dominance of tanks, mages, adcs, etc. But while some champions have been updated or reworked entirely as time went on to keep them on par with newer champions, Garen hasn't had the same luck. The most often quoted reason is that, as a T1 champ (450 IP/260 RP), Garen is just too simple / meant to be simple for first-time players so he can't have a kit that's complicated.
The Basics:
Passive - Perseverance Garen will regenerate 0.4 / 0.8 / 2.0% of his maximum health every second if he has not been hit with an enemy ability or taken damage from any source (excluding minions) in the last 9 / 6 / 4 seconds.
At Level 11 or above, damage from non-epic monsters will no longer stop Perseverance.
Q - Decisive Strike ACTIVE: Garen breaks free from all slows affecting him and gains 35% movement speed for a few seconds. Additionally, his next basic attack within 4.5 seconds will deal additional physical damage and will silence his target.
W - Courage PASSIVE: Garen's bonus armor and magic resistance are increased by 20%.
ACTIVE: Garen gains a defensive shield for a few seconds, reducing incoming damage by 30% and granting 30% crowd control reduction for the duration.
E - Judgement ACTIVE: Garen rapidly spins his sword around his body for 3 seconds, dealing physical damage each second to enemies within range. Minions take 75% damage from Judgment. Garen ignores unit collision while spinning, but moves 20% slower when traveling through minions.
Judgment can critically strike, multiplying the total AD component by (Garen's critical strike damage modifier − 50%).
R - Demacian Justice
ACTIVE: Garen calls upon the might of Demacia to attempt to execute an enemy champion, dealing magic damage plus additional damage based on his target's missing health.
**Analysis: ** The first thing that's pretty clear is that Garen was made in an age before mobility became the norm. Before him, it was a rarity reserved for a select few champs like Corki or Ezreal. However, since that time we've seen mobility extend far beyond that to the point where every lane has multiple champions that have some manner of dash/blink/jump, or have the inverse with a pull.
Perseverance With the update to his Passive, Garen can rapidly regen his health in the late game, allowing him to continue fighting long after other champions would have to disengage and return to base. This makes him a solid siege-champ.
The passive update at Level 11 that removes non-epic monsters from the list of targets that can break his passive is interesting as it comes too late to be a benefit to Jungle Garen, and doesn't keep him regening through Baron or Dragon attacks.
Decisive Strike His Q has a flat 8 second cooldown, with the MS duration scaling from 1.5 seconds to 4.5 at max rank. This is the only source of engaging that Garen has, and at low levels it's pretty weak in that regard. However, the silence is very useful for interrupting channeled abilities (Katarina's ult, Malzahar's ult, etc).
One possible change that I think would open Garen up to some more complex / meaningful choices in gameplay is make it a two stage ability. On cast, he throws the sword. On reactivation, he charges to it. Obviously the silence would end up getting axed in such an event, but it would allow Garen to better close gaps and initiate. As a knight, Garen is meant to get into a fight as quickly as possible and this lets him do that in a more impactful way.
Courage The biggest problem I have with this ability is the cooldown. Leona's Eclipse is very similar. Its effective duration is six seconds with a flat 14 second cooldown, as opposed to Garen's scaling up to 6 seconds with a 24/23/22/21/20 cooldown. I understand that when built tanky, this gives Garen extra tankiness but it still feels wrong to have an ability that relies on the enemy to attack you for it to be meaningful which lasts two seconds and has a cooldown of 24 seconds. This extends to other similar abilities. It feels unsatisfying to activate an ability that's meant to make you tankier and have it go to waste because the enemy didn't attack you.
As an off-tank, Garen could benefit greatly from some kind of shake-up to this ability, perhaps a taunt to force a target to attack him for a duration. This change, like the change to his Q, would open Garen up to more meaningful, active plays. At the moment his kit requires little to no active engagement, no finesse in choosing when to activate his abilities. QWE, QE, QWE. So by giving him a taunt (which fits thematically as a knightly challenge), Garen can now assert himself in teamfights beyond just spinning around and waiting for someone to acknowledge him.
Judgement Only problem with this is the self-slow. It needs to be removed.
Demacian Justice Anyone who has seen me post in Garen topics knows this little schpeel. The basic problem of Garen's ult is its incredible weakness early on. At rank 1 it has a mind-boggling 160 second cooldown. The common explanation for this is "Oh, it's an execute. If it's up too often, it's oppressive." Darius has an execution ult capable of multiple castings that deals true damage on 120 second cooldown. Garen's ult deals about 475 damage to a target missing 1,000 health at Rank 1. Factoring in average MR for a top lane champ, you can expect this to come down to about 300 damage. Darius' ult will do that much damage with max stacks of his passive, and given the conditional nature of both of these circumstances, I feel the comparison is justified and reasonable.
We could just bring the cooldown down to 120/100/80, but I feel the ult still lacks for something. Its purpose right now is to be a tank-busting ability, but tanks will naturally have magic resist to mitigate the increased damage for loss of health. The other problem with just reducing its cooldown is that it still lacks a secondary of many other similar ults have, such as Darius' reset or Yasuo's armor shred steroid. Another way to add meaningful effect would be whether or not the target is killed by the ability. If it is, perhaps it could generate a short AoE blind/slow/stun, something like .75/1.25/1.75. Obviously the ult would have to lose a little power for this, but given the power of some other ults with secondary effects I don't think it would have to lose much.
I have some other thoughts, but I figured the wall of text was a start. So what are your thoughts?
