@meddler: About the planned garen rework

[garen-swing]

recently a rioter dropped onto reddit with the comment that garen is beeing eyed for another mini rework in the future. apparantly theyre not entirely clear what direction they want to take the rework in.

so here are my own 2 cents.

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#STRATEGIC NIECHE:

first of all the big question is, what kind of role is garen supposed to play in the future that sets him appart from the other juggernauts?

currently, his villain mechanic is supposed to define his strategic nieche as a anti-carry who hunts down snowballing assassins, skirmishers, marksmen, apc and even other fighters. do you want to preserve this mechanic, or do you want to replace it entirely?

OPTION A: keeping the villainy passive

if you want to preserve this mechanic and keep it as his defining strategic nieche, i guess i speak for most garen players, when i say that we need a just a smidge more control over the mechanic. the largest issue with it is how in many cases the villain passive ends up on undisireable targets (for example on the enemy support and other non priority targets), binding a large portion of his power budget in a pretty useless manner.

best case for us would be if we could choose the villainy target ourselves of course, kindred style. though i understand if thats not going to be possible.

there need to be more factors taken into consideration other than who snatched the most kills on the enemy team in the last 5 minutes to determine the largest carry threat.

OPTION B: replacing the villainy passive

if you dont want to preserve the mechanic then the obvious question is, what now? what kind of role is he supposed to play? if he is not going to be the anti-carry anymore, then many garen mains would probably prefer him to take a more direct carry role.

ive seen ideas floating around to make garen into the "skirmishing juggernaut". he is slightly more mobile than his class mates, and the recent addition of a fiora-esque parry to his w definitely showed that this would not only be a fun direction to take him in, but also adds to his skill ceiling. skill expression is still a facet of his gameplay that needs to be improved.

one other thing that sets him apart from all the other juggernauts and is entirely unique to his kit is his crit scaling. if you ask around garen mains, one of the most popular and fun builds for garen revolves around (no bias). building on his crit scaling would definitely be an option to set him apart from other juggernauts and give him that lategame scaling as a carry that he needs. the only thing holding him back right now is simply the lack of item options. most critical strike builds leave him rather squishy and force him into undesirable attack speed builds.

the ability to build as your big offensive items and from there straight into a defense, while reaching critical strike values of 50% to 70% would be the dream.

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#INDIVIDUAL ABILITIES:

in this section i want to focus a bit more on the ups and downs of every individual ability, what to keep and what could be improved.

DECISIVE STRIKE:

great ability in general. i dont think this needs any numerical or larger mechanics changes. the slow cleanse adds some micromanagement to a relatively simple empowered auto attack.

but the only and anoying caveat is how painfully slow the animation is. its probably the factor that holds it back the most as a play making tool. while the slow and telegraphed animation is fine in the early game to add some counterplay to the ability in lane and give his opponents some time to react while theyre locked in a 1v1 situation with garen for ~10 minutes, it shouldnt hold him back later on in the game when the pacing changes to larger skirmishes and teamfights that involve more team support and peel.

ive already posted this in different places, but id prefer if the speed of his q animation would scale up with his base attack speed, to make the ability scale into a proper auto attack reset and play making tool around midgame/lategame.

this would impact higher level play more than the lower divisions, since animation cancels become more important the higher you climb in rank, and garens opponents are more likely to react to his plays in the half second the q animation plays.

it would also be thematically consistent. as he levels, he spins faster and executes his q faster.

COURAGE:

since the addition of the parry mechanic, the ability is pretty much perfect as it is. its his biggest play making tool and the passive resistances give him more choice in itemization than the % mechanic ever did (please dont change it).

the only change id make to it is to turn the passive resistance mechanic into an infinite stack mechanic with a soft cap.

.3 armor/mr per unit killed until 15 resists .2 armor/mr per unit killed until 30 resists (reached at 125 units compared to 120 with current scaling) .1 armor/mr per unit killed without cap

why? infinite stacking is fun, and this would only really kick in super lategame. garen right now has a generally very weak early game, and his lategame scaling could definitely be improved to make up for it. this would be one way to do it.

JUDGEMENT:

this is garens core ability and pretty much irreplacable, so ill keep it short.

• the mechanic about level scaling spin tricks. probably the best change that came out of the juggernaut rework for him. keep it.
• the isolation damage on his spin. kindof hidden power and could be communicated better. but otherwise makes his spin more interesting, and rewards good positioning and decision making (do i want to spin on one person for high single target damage or many enemies for overall more aoe damage but less damage to individual targets?)
• the armor shred. this is a part is honestly kindof uneccessary considering how desirable cleaver is as an item for him already. if you want armor shred on garen, you can just buy it comfortably. this is a part that can be removed and uneccessarily takes up power budget.

DEMACIAN JUSTICE:

another character defining ability with a decent level of skill expression. believe it or not, but against non villains hitting an ult close to the sweet spot of execution without ulting the enemy too early and let him live, or ulting too late and waste damage and time is actually not trivial.

proper timing on this ability is key to make optimal use of it. ive seen pro players on their streams play around with garen on rare occations and constantly miss the executes on their ults in those games, because they ulted slightly too early, which resulted in the enemy escaping.

the only thing that should be touched, if anything is the villainy passive.

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this is all i got for now. if you managed to read through this entire wall of text, then congratulations. you deserve a cookie.