The Garen "rework" is an abomination

I honestly thought I was reading a terrible April Fool's Day joke when I saw the rework posted.

Now don't get me wrong. I love playing Garen, however he is one of those champions that I'd never pick in a game that I really wanted to win, because there will always a better alternative. There is also the fact that Garen is not a champion who can easily carry or turn around games, and has a distinct lack of ability to make flashy 'plays'. This is a cardinal sin for a champion in a role who is intended to be able to chase down and eliminate enemy carries.

We can begin by examining the core strengths and weaknesses of Garen's kit.

Strengths:

• Manaless
• High Durability/Sustain (with his current passive)

Weaknesses:

• Very Poor CC
• Poor mobility
• No ranged abilities
• Long windup on Q auto attack (deserves a special mention)

Garen's #1 problem since the beginning of time has not been his build paths or even his damage late game, it was his lack of reliability against teams with even modest amounts of mobility or peel. Garen's 'tatic' is to run at the enemy champion with a moderate speed buff and try to auto attack them. The nature of the slow cleanse on Decisive Strike (Q) also puts Garens in an awkward position where they can't catch the enemy champion if they don't activate it, but if they do it leaves them vulnerable to any CC they may have. Fortunately the added tenacity from Courage (W) active helps counter this vulnerability, but only marginally and only in the cases where the enemy champion isn't simply using a gap opener instead. This doesn't allow for much flexibility in Garen's strategy, and flash is tantamount to a necessity for him.

Now lets break down how the rework affects his gameplay:

Base Stats:

• (Nerf) Health/lvl 96 >>> 84.25
  

• (Buff) AD/lvl 3.5 >>> 4.5
  

• (Buff) Armor/lvl 2.7 >>> 3.0
  

• (Buff) Attack Range 125 >>> 175
  

A large nerf for his scaling health per level, with modest buffs on his AD and Armor scaling. I don't understand why they want to cut his health stat so hard. The increased auto attack range is certainly nice for Garen, but not something that's probably necessary or healthy overall. Melee champions are balanced around 125 range autos, with a few exceptions and generally they should remain there.

Passive - Perseverance:

• (Nerf) Regen/sec @lvl16 2% max Health >>> 1.6%
  

Hoy boy down comes the axe. Ignoring other sources of regen to make the math easier, with his current passive it takes Garen 54 seconds to reach full HP. 54 seconds is a long time to be out of combat with champions, enough time to die and respawn, or simply recall and reach most places on the map. In contrast it takes a life steal based champion a good one or two creep waves to heal to full hp. In this same patch Riot is buffing Warmog's to be almost twice as strong as Garen's passive, so its clear that they don't deem this an unhealthy mechanic, yet they don't seem to want to allow Garen's passive to be strong enough to provide him with the sustain he needs to justify not building Warmog's. A highly unnecessary nerf at best.

Q - Decisive Strike:

• (Nerf) Silence Duration 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 >>> 1.5 all ranks
  

I'm not sure where to begin with this one honestly. Why touch his one form of CC? CC that isn't even hard CC. CC that he depends heavily on to land the rest of the damage in his kit. The upshot of this change means that enemies will be flashing/escaping from Garen before he can even finish his E let alone get any extra damage off on his target.

W - Courage:

• (Removed) 20% increased bonus Armor and Magic Resist
  

• (Added) Killing units permanently grants 0.2 Armor and Magic Resist (1 for champions, large monsters, and epic monsters), up to a maximum of 10/15/20/25/30
  

• (Removed) Active Tenacity component
  

Talk about being taken to the dumpster. Didn't Riot say a long time ago that having stacking on his W was a bad mechanic that favored uneven matchups? Either you're winning lane and you're unkillable, or are getting stomped and you're made out of paper. But to add insult to injury, they put a cap on the stacking mechanic, and no less one that scales per level. No other champion in the game with a similar stacking mechanic has any cap at all on how much they can stack it let alone one that scales per level. Whats the upshot of it scaling per level? Unless you max it early, you're going to have to continue farming until very late game to get the most out of your kit. But whats the real kicker on it? Even when fully stacked its going to be weaker than the current passive on most Garen builds.

Since they are taking out so much power from the passive component, surely they must be buffing its active right? Wrong. Completely removed the tenacity component. Remember how we have problems getting to enemy carries on teams with strong CC? Yeah, good luck with that now. And to add even more fun, you're going to be melting even faster than you were before as well. Simply put a bizarre, baffling, unjustifiable nerf.

E - Judgment:

• (Nerf) Base Damage per tick 10.0/22.5/35.0/47.5/60 >>> 12.0/16.0/20.0/24.0/28.0
  

• (Buff) Total Attack Damage Ratio per tick 0.35/0.40/0.45/0.50/0.55 >>> 0.47/0.49/0.51/0.53/0.55
  

• (Nerf) Base ticks per cast 6 >>> 5
  

• (Buff) Cooldown 13/12/11/10/9 >>> 9 at all ranks
  

• (Added) Judgment’s spin speed permanently increases at levels 1/4/7/10/13/16, resulting in a total of 5/6/7/8/9/10 maximum ticks of damage per cast
  

• (Added) Cancelling Judgment early returns cooldown of Judgment equal to the remaining duration of the buff
  

• (Removed) Judgment no longer benefits from Critical Strike Chance or Critical Strike Damage
  

• (Removed) Garen no longer moves 20% slower while moving through minions
  

• (Added) Garen now moves 20% slower while moving toward champions he’s hitting with Judgment
  

I don't have all that much to say about most of this one, other than it makes calculating the scaling a lot more annoying, and mauls his early game potential. Goodbye to Garen's Riven and Renekton matchups. One change that I do think deserves special mention however:

(Added) Garen now moves 20% slower while moving toward champions he’s hitting with Judgment

This one really threw me for a loop. I don't really think I need to point out why. Considering all the difficulty Garen has just in reaching his opponent, you'd think Riot would at least allow him to stick to his opponent even just a little bit. But nope. Enjoy your new, shorter silences Garen players. But wait, there's more! You now CC yourself, and make it even more impossible to stick to your opponent for doing exactly what you are supposed to do. Bravo Riot. This one really takes the cake.

R - Demacian Justice:

• (Added) Passive: The enemy champion with the most recent kills is the Villain. Judgment ticks and basic attacks on the Villain deal an additional 1% of its max Health as true damage
  

• (Added) Demacian Justice now deals true damage to the Villain instead of magic damage
  

So this is where the new 'mechanic' Riot was cooking up comes into play. Saying I'm disappointed would be like saying jumping in an acid bath burns a little bit. It really feels like they were just trying to force something 'unique' into the game, no matter how little sense it made or how badly designed it was.

First lets analyze this 'mechanic' from Garen's opponents perspective. You weren't the last person to get a kill. Great. Don't worry about a thing. But now you just got a kill. Good job, you're supposed to get kills, and in fact the game rewards you for doing so. But watch out, now Garen has insane % max health true damage procs on you. Did we forget about true damage not always being a healthy design decision or something? So now you have no way to itemize against your opponents damage, you better avoid getting kills from now on. Sounds really fun right guys?

Now lets see it through Garen's perspective. Short of letting his allies die, Garen has no control over who his kit is going to be effective against. Worse, in a team fight its going to chaotically switch around, so even if he did get onto his Villainous target, it could very easily swap over to another play, without any say from Garen in the matter. Remember when you could play the strengths of your kits based on your own decisions? But this mechanic also introduces another problem for Garen. Lets say a champion like Ahri, Kallista, or Tristana is the current Villian. Good luck reaching them. There are plenty of champions in the game that Garen simply cannot catch unless his opponent misplays horribly. So now you have your passive on a champion you can never reach in a million years, and is completely useless. Does that seem like interesting game play to you? I read a Riot post that said this is supposed to 'encourage Garen's team to help him reach his target', and I almost laughed. If that's how limited Garen's kit is going to be you might as well have another ADC, who can easily do more damage more reliably on your team instead. No one is ever going to get a team built around letting a Garen reach his target, and seeing as how many other aspects of his game play are out of his control, I don't see why anyone would want to play him in the first place.

I don't understand why Riot wants to sacrifice Garen's tankiness and sustain so he can delete an enemy in one spell rotation provided he reaches his target with his very limited kit. It reduces the viability of his niche and makes him even more one dimensional than he was before. I understand that Riot wants to keep Garen as an 'easy to learn' champion. When I heard they were reworking him, I was really excited and hoping that they would introduce something to raise his skill ceiling, while retaining his easy to learn appeal, to give some love to players who play Garen at higher levels. I love Riot and I love League, but it really saddens me to see changes like this proposed to a champion I love so much. I sincerely hope they reconsider this one, and frankly take the rework on Garen back to the drawing board. He deserves better.