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Garen Needs to be Nerfed. Period.

The JigSAW··13 votes·2,038 views

I seriously cannot fathom the thought process, or lack thereof, of allowing a champion like Garen (a natural tank) to have the abilities of true damage and the overall lane bullying he's possessed since the addition to his ridiculous health regeneration a few patches back. I encounter him in game quite often with a build that's best described as a hybrid ADC/Tank troll build with the usage of his regeneration combined with ridiculous damage to make a fully frustrating experience for anybody who's unfortunate enough to go up against him. Just for this discussion let's remember all the things this guy can do, shall we?

His passive allows him to regenerate health as long as he's not harmed by a champion/turret in a nine second period. Problem is, the amount of health increases every time he hits 6, 11, and then 16. Now, if you have Warmog's and you take damage from a minion it resets the amount of time for the Warmog's Heart (or the now "old" increased health) before you can heal again. Garen has no such problem with his regeneration, so he just heals while taking minion damage. And monster damage, later. This in and of itself is an issue since he's the only champion I know of who can heal while attacked by minions outside Galio's W and even that has a limitation.

Garen's Q: One single ability, with a cooldown of only a few seconds, allows him to break free of all slows, get a burst of movement speed, do bonus damage on his next basic attack, AND Silence the target. All in one single basic ability. The worst part, all of this is on a few seconds cooldown, max!

Garen's W: The rework to this makes it perfectly fine the way it is.

Garen's E: This I have a lot of problems with. His Judgment can critically strike, it does bonus damage to a single target, allows him to spin through minion waves and ticks of his sword can do true damage to a "Villain" in the game. Why the hell does a tank need to have a critical strike chance? And before the swarm of replies about how it is JUST one percent health true damage, each tick does one percent. Each basic does one percent, and then his ult does the ENTIRE damage in true. It all adds up, and frankly, this buff is not required for a champion already way OP for his role.

Garen's R: The only real problem I have with his ult is the true damage aspect, but even that could be bearable if it didn't increase in damage on the lower health the target is only because his damage is so ridiculous even if he builds one single damage item.

The most common troll build with him is an IE, Boots of Swiftness, Sunfire Cape, Black Cleaver, Warmogs, and one other situational item. This allows him to just kill ANYTHING as quickly as an ADC while tanking two or three people's damage in the process. But, rather than just post problems, I have a solution!

Reworked Garen.

Passive: - No more ridiculous health regeneration while taking minion damage, at all levels. He will heal for the same amounts as he did prior, but the level 16 and up regen is removed. So now he has normal tank regeneration, but the bonus healing does not apply on minion damage so he has to wait a few seconds. No biggie.

Q: Remove the silence and bonus damage. The way it is will be fine without those two items since a tank isn't designed to do massive damage and silence anything from fighting back at the same time.

W: Fine as is

E: Remove any critical strike chance and true damage, period. Keep it as is otherwise.

R: Remove -all- true damage/Villain aspects. Allow the increased damage on missing health, that's it.

Garen will still be strong, but he won't be the overwhelming lane bully he is now. I've seen Garen able to tank ADC damage and require an assassin AND an ADC AND a burst-damage mage have to beat him down because of his abilities to silence and speedily move out of the way everytime he's in a fight. Most people I talk to think this guy would be fine AS a tank, but he's able to use his kit and build as an ADC who can tank three people in a fight and that is just too much. Adding true damage is just a further slap in the face to the concept of champion balance, since there is none right now with Garen. You preach to us all the time about how you want champions to be well-balanced, so I ask you to look at the way this guy is designed and ask yourself if this is a well-balanced champion, period. I think we all know the answer to that.

28 Comments

VikingRaid6 votes

Dude Garen is a Bruiser. Also your rework would ruin him.

wIwU0zi0sC5 votes

Also, that rework kit of yours is garbage, so piss off, also as a Garen main with over 2k rank games, this is the first patch in a long time I feel rewarded for trying my best in the game and come out powerful.

Nuclear Waffle1 votes

Trying with Garen. That's a nice joke lol.

Shénzhì3 votes

#Slow-moving Juggernaut

#is not slow-moving.

Clever thinking, Rito.

It's completely not working as part of his design. He may just need momentum instead of flat movespeed. Maybe they just forgot to update [Q] movespeed to only work while running towards enemy and not away. Momentum or not, if the Villain is ahead; instant full Momentum. Then he becomes terrifying.

R1101 votes

When Riot said slow moving they meant that the champion has no dashes. They don't have the ability to engage from 1200 units away like Jarvan with EQ + R.

Just wanted to clarify this.

MCBiggah992 votes

This had to be said, thank you mate. They're making tanks more and more damaging, from Shyvana to Skarner to Garen, and it's frankly disgusting to play against.

Toastey2 votes

100% agree. Riot has to decide and draw a clear line between damage dealers and damage sponges. Letting a champion do both is ridiculous.

On top of that, Garen used to have a meaningful power curve. He was a lane bully who excelled in mid-game skirmishes, but fell off in the late game. Perfectly acceptable. Then Riot said, "We have to throw tanks a bone!" After the Juggernaut patch, Garen no longer has a power curve of any sort. He's just strong all game long. He doesn't even have meaningful choices or target selection anymore thanks to the Villain passive. Build one damage item, then build full tank, then run at the Villain. Will literally work all game long, not losing, but gaining efficacy as the game progresses.

redniwediS2 votes

Garen is not a tank. Why do people not understand the difference between tanks and bruisers...

MCBiggah992 votes

{quoted}

Garen is not a tank. Why do people not understand the difference between tanks and bruisers...

Irelia is a bruiser, Darius is a bruiser, Garen ISN'T a bruiser, he has WAY too much innate tankiness to be classified a bruiser. He's just a Shyvana case where tanks can do insane amounts of damage.

redniwediS1 votes

Tankiness isn't what classifies a bruiser. It's the balance between CC and damage that decides that.

Garen is a fighter, and tanky fighters are called bruisers.

MCBiggah991 votes

{quoted}

Tankiness isn't what classifies a bruiser. It's the balance between CC and damage that decides that.

Garen is a fighter, and tanky fighters are called bruisers.

Bruisers are slightly less tanky tanks who can take care of carries with their increased damage, but can't get headstrong because they'll get taken out when they rush in. Garen has the damage of a bruiser and the tankiness of a fulltank, he can get headstrong, rush in, get a kill and get out alive.

redniwediS2 votes

No... Tanks have high CC but medium to low damage, where as bruisers have high damage but medium to low CC. The tankiness literally has never had anything to do with the difference between these two terms.

Also Garen can only do that if he is against a low CC team and is a few levels up on the highest level enemy.

Toastey2 votes

10/10 for everyone forgetting that Riot literally erased the champion class "Bruiser" and inserted their own term "Fighter". They are literally one and the same.

Defensive tanks should not be dealing even medium damage, at least not in the late game. That's obnoxious and unfairly favours defensive itemisation.

Offensive tanks (also known as off-tanks, fighters, or bruisers) should have some damage to their name, some CC, but should be inherently kitable and peelable. New Garen is neither, unless you want to waste hard CC on him--in which case the enemy ADC gets to free hit all fight while your whole team is desperately trying to tear Garen from your own ADC.

The whole Villain thing is a mechanic literally designed and engineered to create gold swings and comebacks. In the absence of an allied gold deficit, it becomes a mechanic that (un)intentionally stifles any hope of a comeback. The new Garen is a lot like the old Irelia: build one damage item straight into full tank, and you become a target impossible to kite, impossible to peel, impossible to burst, and nearly impossible to DPS--all while while killing the enemy carry before they can get a full spell rotation out. Except with new Garen, you literally have auto-targeting. You don't even have to think about who to focus. The game actually just straight up tells you who to kill next to maximise gain, and then it gives you a true damage execute to get the kill.

People who think Garen is fine in this state must honestly be looking at Garen in a vacuum. They treat the issue as if Garen is constantly in 1v5 odds, in which case, yes, he is perfectly fine. But with his entire team behind him---actually, even with just a support and a carry behind him, he quickly becomes overwhelming. Start looking at 5v5 scenarios and you quickly see why Garen is 100% unfun to play against.

See, the problem with the entire Juggernaut patch is that Riot reworked these champions with a themed goal in mind: if these champions can slog through the front line and all the CC and finally break past to the carries, they'll be handsomely rewarded. That sounds fine and dandy on paper and in vacuum, but realistically, these Juggernauts will only have to deal with a fraction of the CC and damage that they were designed and equipped to withstand. No competent team would spend their entire spell rotations of damage and CC on a single off-tank who is literally making a beeline for the carries. If they did that, they'd have no spells or damage left to deal with the rest of the Juggernaut's team.

Long story short, you can blow absolutely everything on the Juggernaut and die to their team, or you can blow everything on their team and die to the Juggernaut. Any attempt to ration damage and CC between the two will just result in your half-committed decisions being heavily punished and your whole team dying. Any attempt to pick a team without 15 stuns will result in the enemy team dancing on your corpses all game long.

I'll say it again for clarity: The Juggernauts only have to deal with a fraction of the damage and CC that they were designed and equipped to withstand.

Ser Garland1 votes

{quoted}

Irelia is a bruiser, Darius is a bruiser, Garen ISN'T a bruiser, he has WAY too much innate tankiness to be classified a bruiser. He's just a Shyvana case where tanks can do insane amounts of damage.

He's a CCless tank. If it wasn't for the damage He wouldn't do anything.

Meep Man2 votes

Garen is, in my opinion, something new Riot is trying. A Melee, Ability Carry. Instead of Melee ADC, they are trying Melee Caster Carry. Regardless of what he is, his ultimate might need a cool down nerf/base damage nerf (aka reduce flat damage to something thats not 175/350/525).

76Summers2 votes

Garen isn't a tank anymore the tenacity removal insured that..second of all he is the most kiteable champ in the game and third of all you did nothing but make garen shit in your "rework" take your salt somewhere else

SlaktarTasken2 votes

I've played about 8 games with rework Garen in them, he carried in 7 of them completely overshadowing the ADC in all matches so far, and don't give me that BS:

"You don't know how to play against him"

Garen plays exacly the same as before, he has an extremely predictable kit, but whereas I could easely deal him before, he utterly obnoxious to deal with now. If the old strategies don't work, then what the duck are we supposed to do now?

LoL aint life2 votes

Yeah yeah, just stack your tears somewhere else becuase you got fucked in the butt by a Garen due to your lack of skills.

His early game got nerfed drastically, so his late game could be decent. Plus, if you aren't able to peel off Garen of your carries, then it's your fucking fault if he's able to kill them since he has no real gap-closer or initiation tool. Plus, he almost got nerfed in every fucking spell except his E, just so we could allow him to deal true damage on ONE PERSON AT A TIME.

I love how you're trying so hard to get him gutted with your changes. "No more silence" Fuck you. He's not someone like LeBlanc or Kassadin who just blink at you, and destroy you in 0.75 seconds. Garen deserves his silence, so he can still be a threat late game, which was the whole paint of the rework.

Your thread is so fucking bad, I'm convinced you're just trying to parody the QQ threads with Garen or something. No seriously, because if you were serious about this, then you serious need to get better at this game.

Slamurai Jack2 votes

[{quoted}](name=The JigSAW,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v0IG9rVL,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-22T13:04:08.512+0000) My Solution for Garen.

Passive: - No more ridiculous health regeneration while taking minion damage, at all levels. He will heal for the same amounts as he did prior, but the level 16 and up regen is removed. So now he has normal tank regeneration, but the bonus healing does not apply on minion damage so he has to wait a few seconds. No biggie.

Q: Remove the silence and bonus damage. The way it is will be fine without those two items since a tank isn't designed to do massive damage and silence anything from fighting back at the same time.

W: Fine as is

E: Remove any critical strike chance and true damage, period. Keep it as is otherwise.

R: Remove -all- true damage/Villain aspects. Allow the increased damage on missing health, that's it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So glad people like you don't get to balance champions.

fasega2 votes

Garen has never been a tank as he has no cc and requires damage to be effective. The rework simply enabled him to do the damage he needed to not be ignored in teamfights. As far as op I don't think so as he gave up laning power for a better late game and most people seem for forget they removed his tenacity on the W making him very easy to kite and peel. It really just people are use to facetanking his ignoreable damage from before the rework and refusing to kite making him seem godlike when he is just finally in a good spot.

wIwU0zi0sC1 votes

Your tears feed me.... Demacia!!!

Agidyne1 votes

This thread reeks of Bronze.

I'm sorry, I just lost some braincells reading through the proposed changes.

If anything, they need to revert back his Courage to his old state because atm, it's just a piss poor ability in general.

The Fast1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The JigSAW,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v0IG9rVL,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-22T13:04:08.512+0000)

I seriously cannot fathom the thought process, or lack thereof, of allowing a champion like Garen (a natural tank)

Stopped reading right there. Garen was literally never designed to be a tank. Ever. Lmao

Zaghyr1 votes

Garen is fine, and the suggestion for removing silence and damage from q is just retarded in so many ways. Garen is a fighter, not a tank, tanks have initiation and cc. Garen.......doesn't. He is a bruiser/fighter and that's it.

TheVishual1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The JigSAW,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v0IG9rVL,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-22T13:04:08.512+0000)

I seriously cannot fathom the thought process, or lack thereof, of allowing a champion like Garen (a natural tank) to have the abilities of true damage and the overall lane bullying he's possessed since the addition to his ridiculous health regeneration a few patches back. I encounter him in game quite often with a build that's best described as a hybrid ADC/Tank troll build with the usage of his regeneration combined with ridiculous damage to make a fully frustrating experience for anybody who's unfortunate enough to go up against him. Just for this discussion let's remember all the things this guy can do, shall we?

His passive allows him to regenerate health as long as he's not harmed by a champion/turret in a nine second period. Problem is, the amount of health increases every time he hits 6, 11, and then 16. Now, if you have Warmog's and you take damage from a minion it resets the amount of time for the Warmog's Heart (or the now "old" increased health) before you can heal again. Garen has no such problem with his regeneration, so he just heals while taking minion damage. And monster damage, later. This in and of itself is an issue since he's the only champion I know of who can heal while attacked by minions outside Galio's W and even that has a limitation.

Garen's Q: One single ability, with a cooldown of only a few seconds, allows him to break free of all slows, get a burst of movement speed, do bonus damage on his next basic attack, AND Silence the target. All in one single basic ability. The worst part, all of this is on a few seconds cooldown, max!

Garen's W: The rework to this makes it perfectly fine the way it is.

Garen's E: This I have a lot of problems with. His Judgment can critically strike, it does bonus damage to a single target, allows him to spin through minion waves and ticks of his sword can do true damage to a "Villain" in the game. Why the hell does a tank need to have a critical strike chance? And before the swarm of replies about how it is JUST one percent health true damage, each tick does one percent. Each basic does one percent, and then his ult does the ENTIRE damage in true. It all adds up, and frankly, this buff is not required for a champion already way OP for his role.

Garen's R: The only real problem I have with his ult is the true damage aspect, but even that could be bearable if it didn't increase in damage on the lower health the target is only because his damage is so ridiculous even if he builds one single damage item.

The most common troll build with him is an IE, Boots of Swiftness, Sunfire Cape, Black Cleaver, Warmogs, and one other situational item. This allows him to just kill ANYTHING as quickly as an ADC while tanking two or three people's damage in the process. But, rather than just post problems, I have a solution!

Reworked Garen.

Passive: - No more ridiculous health regeneration while taking minion damage, at all levels. He will heal for the same amounts as he did prior, but the level 16 and up regen is removed. So now he has normal tank regeneration, but the bonus healing does not apply on minion damage so he has to wait a few seconds. No biggie.

Q: Remove the silence and bonus damage. The way it is will be fine without those two items since a tank isn't designed to do massive damage and silence anything from fighting back at the same time.

W: Fine as is

E: Remove any critical strike chance and true damage, period. Keep it as is otherwise.

R: Remove -all- true damage/Villain aspects. Allow the increased damage on missing health, that's it.

Garen will still be strong, but he won't be the overwhelming lane bully he is now. I've seen Garen able to tank ADC damage and require an assassin AND an ADC AND a burst-damage mage have to beat him down because of his abilities to silence and speedily move out of the way everytime he's in a fight. Most people I talk to think this guy would be fine AS a tank, but he's able to use his kit and build as an ADC who can tank three people in a fight and that is just too much. Adding true damage is just a further slap in the face to the concept of champion balance, since there is none right now with Garen. You preach to us all the time about how you want champions to be well-balanced, so I ask you to look at the way this guy is designed and ask yourself if this is a well-balanced champion, period. I think we all know the answer to that.

What if I told you garen was better before the champion update than after as someone who consistently plays Garen

The JigSAW1 votes

I'd have to say you are being mostly honest, since most of the changes just make him more of a target for the nerf guns (as he rightfully should be) and frankly, he was annoying enough before but manageable. Now, he's a menace.

Also, I've checked on some of the histories of the people making those immature bronze/"get better" comments, and they have significant investment in keeping people like Garen from getting changed: They can't win without those types of easy steamrolling champions. So you think the update is worse, can I ask you what aspects of it you dislike most? Also, what about the suggestions made, in all fairness?

TheVishual1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The JigSAW,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v0IG9rVL,comment-id=000f0000,timestamp=2015-08-22T17:12:45.747+0000)

I'd have to say you are being mostly honest, since most of the changes just make him more of a target for the nerf guns (as he rightfully should be) and frankly, he was annoying enough before but manageable. Now, he's a menace.

Also, I've checked on some of the histories of the people making those immature bronze/"get better" comments, and they have significant investment in keeping people like Garen from getting changed: They can't win without those types of easy steamrolling champions. So you think the update is worse, can I ask you what aspects of it you dislike most? Also, what about the suggestions made, in all fairness?

I think true damage is a dumb mechanic on everyone, his ult should never do true damage (as neither should Fiora do percentage true damage). I think on-hit true damage is the only balanceable kind as you can counter it with aspeed slow and building health. His old ult was great against health stacking tanks and now it's great against... everyone. He does too much damage now while building 100 percent tank and doesn't feel like the same pure tank he used to.

Garen filled a great niche prior to the 5.16 patch because of his silence and innate tankiness; you could stop champions with invulnerability skills and dashes (for example Fizz, vlad, leblanc, etc) from using them and let your team focus them down. You also had the ability to zone for your team and split push if you needed to.

One of the biggest nerf to garen IMO was to his W, which gave him all his tankiness. Instead of scaling off the items you bought and becoming an actual juggernaut, now you get a dinky 30 mr and armor after farming for awhile. The tenacity reduction on his W prevented him from getting completely locked up but he was still gated by the fact he had no gapcloser and only a movement speed buff.

The only good change I think they made this patch was making judgement tick faster. It does more consistent damage and its hard to get kited as much. The problem is that was the biggest counter to garen prior to the patch... interrupting his judgement or kiting it out and then attacking when all of his abilities were down. Now if you get rooted/slowed you can just cancel and it's back up right away because the CD is so low in lane and the new cancellation effect.

TL;DR

If you really want to know what I would change without reading anything prior, I would revert all of the changes except the change to his E tick if riot thinks he really needed a boost. He was super strong as a tank/disruptor before patch just no one knew how to play him/build him the right way. Now he does a metric fuckton of damage with an overloaded kit like everyone post rework (look at Fiora, skarner, etc.). He's really unfun to play against cause his kit has a low skill floor (which was balanced before by his lack of damage) and it's hard to punish him with the recent changes to itemization, with this patch buffing him quite a bit.

Though to be perfectly honest after 5 years of playing the game, the juggernaut updates overall were some of the worst balance changes I've seen the entire time... my least favorite patch thus far

LordGeovanni1 votes

true damage belongs on tanks more than anyone else but in small sustained amounts but garen is bull ish because of his execute and adc scaling

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