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Garen Jungle Could Use Some Help, Suggestion and Reasoning Inside

MarineRevenge··6 votes·1,026 views

Hi, I'm a Garen main. With the new season i've been playing a lot of Garen again and trying to find viability for him in the Jungle when I inevitably get my secondary role in the dynamic queue.

The account i've been playing on most is my Alt, Moon Marin. As of this moment the account is Diamond 4 53LP and i have a 63% winrate on Garen over 35 games so far this season on that account. Here is the op.gg where you can review my match history and see some of the Garen jungle games (of course I am unable to omit the non-garen jungle games and not every game is garen jungle) http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=moon+marin

After playing a fair amount of Garen jungle to experiment with things so far this season at a respectable rating I have found a few core issues with Garen Jungle that could use some help.

The biggest issue is his Stacking mechanic on W, it is very very hard to stack your W without completely ignoring your laners. Most of the time my jungle garen matches last in the range of 25-30 minutes. Almost all of those games I have been unable to reach 120 CS even in the ones where I do well and have snowballed. This effectively means jungle garen is never capping his W resistances in games shorter than 30 minutes and has noticeably lower W stacks compared to lane Garen in most games.

The other core issue i've noticed is Garen has an incredibly hard time clearing the jungle at early levels, his rank 1 spin is quite bad but even later ranks of spin don't feel very effective at clearing any of the camps other than the wraith camp. This would be fine if he had a safe clear to compensate for his slow clear, but his passive is effectively nullified until level 11 as a jungler.

I think Garen would benefit greatly if large monsters granted him 4 stacks of his W (compared to 1 stack for minions, wards, small monsters, champions, etc) which would grant him 1 flat armor and 1 flat magic resist per large monster. Considering the average camp is 3 monsters (blue, red, wolves) you'd walk away with 6 stacks or 1.5 Armor/MR after each 3 monster clear. In the sake of wraiths you'd get 7 stacks for 1.75 armor/MR, golems would grant 5 stacks or 1.25 armor/MR, and gromp would grant just 1 armor/MR via 4 stacks to your W. This would allow Jungle Garen the ability to become both more resiliant in the jungle early to help him keep himself healthier while clearing, and allow Jungle Garen the opportunity to max out his W stacks effectively without ignoring his team mates completely or over-taxing them by taking significant farm after a gank attempt in their lanes which I have to admit I am very guilty of whenever I secure a kill on the opponent because I am very aware of how crippling this weakness is for jungle Garen.

The only other potential buff I could see jungle Garen needing without being unfair is enabling his passive to not be cancelled by monsters starting at level 1, then his level 11 boost to his passive would just be an increase to the healing and cooldown when taking damage from enemy champions or epic monsters (drag/baron). Though I suspect if he was able to gain W stacks far more efficiently in the early clear after his first back and a point in his W the significant extra early armor would probably be enough to sate his early weakness and let him get by till 11 without too many issues.

Garen Jungle is a weak ganker and since his rework is a hero who needs to scale, so making his early clears safer and his ability to stack W easier as a jungler wouldn't remove his biggest weaknesses as a jungler. Considering the viability of Ranged hero's in the toplane, the safety of mid lane and no real place in the bottom lane it would be very awesome to see Garen's only potential secondary role have a bit more support.

I have also posted this same information on reddit the link to that thread is here if you'd like to add to it : https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/453z19/garen_jungle_could_use_some_help_suggestion_and/

7 Comments

JavelinJoe1 votes
  1. Don't go Garen Jg.
  2. If you have too, Tax a lane when you gank
MarineRevenge1 votes

"Don't go garen jungle" isn't a very well thought out rebutle and does not disqualify my suggestion's and reasoning from consideration in any way.

JavelinJoe1 votes

Garen is not meant for it. Yes he can survive a jg role, but that is off meta, so there will be parts that wont get the full effect. it is the trade off. Think of it this way, ALL junglers can function as laners, but not all Laners can function as Junglers.

MarineRevenge1 votes

{quoted}

Garen is not meant for it. Yes he can survive a jg role, but that is off meta, so there will be parts that wont get the full effect. it is the trade off. Think of it this way, ALL junglers can function as laners, but not all Laners can function as Junglers.

Garen has received support for the jungle role in the past (search the patch note history if you would like to see for yourself) and I see no reason why he would not still if the case was made for it.

KrugLyfe1 votes

Ew a garen player

redniwediS1 votes

Have you tried not going IE? Or not going Cinderhulk? Getting both of those right off doesn't seem like the best idea.

I would suggest either Warrior + IE or Cinderhulk + Black Cleaver. You don't seem to get a whole lot of extra health alongside Cinderhulk by the time the game ends, so it doesn't seem like you're going after the best item combination.

I like your suggested buff to his passive, however the W buff might be a bit much. You also have to think about how the changes will effect lane Garen. His W is fairly balanced for the lane right now, and taking a jungle creep from time to time might upset that balance. I obviously don't know the numbers on this but it's something to keep in mind.

I think the passive change would at least be able to cover for the slow W scaling.

LegenDariusGaren1 votes

I made a post regarding the W stacking on Garen. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/bug-report/ZINaExAr-riotrepertoir-major-bug-on-w-stacking-on-garen

However, RiotRepertoir did not check back with an answer.

On a side note, I wonder if maxing Q in lane might be better than E. When does E out-scale Q? Q does 30, 55, 80, 105, 130 + 140% AD. E does 15, 18.8, 22.5, 26.3, 30 + 34.5-37.5% AD

At 100 AD, Q damage ranges with each point in it as 1: 30+140=170 2: 195 3: 220 4: 245 5: 270 E damage per spin goes from 1: 15+34.5=49.5 2: 54.1 3: 58.5 4: 63.1 5: 67.5 At 5-10 spins, these become 1: 247.5-495 2: 270.5-541 3: 292.5-585 4: 315.5-631 5: 337.5-675

At 200 AD, Q damage 1: 310 2: 335 3: 360 4: 385 5: 410 E damage per spin 1: 84 2: 89.4 3: 94.5 4: 99.9 5: 105 At 5-10 spins 1: 420-840 2: 447-894 3: 472.5-945 4: 499.5-999 5: 525-1050

Clearly, it only out-scales when the spin count is closer to 10, thus level 16. At level 9, Q max vs E with 2 points at 100 and 200 AD would look like Q: 270 and 410 E: 378.7 and 625.8 And Q with 2 points vs E Max Q: 195 and 335 E: 472.5 and 735 Overall, Q does 75 more damage when maxed. E does 93.8 (100 AD) and 110 (200AD) more damage when maxed.

But since Garen is hardly in spin range for the entire duration, E will do anywhere between 67.5-472.5 and 105-735. Although, it is closer to the middle of that range since that is the usual amount of time they are in spin range. My point being that since you have to wait till your spin count hits closer to 10, at which both Q and E will have been maxed out, is it not better to get that 75 more damage off immediately and guaranteed, as opposed to hoping the enemy stays in spin range for all 3 seconds so that you deal about 100 more damage on your spin.

Clearly, maxing spin against someone like Renekton, Irelia, Teemo, Pantheon, Jax to name a few might be better because of their kit, but in terms of damage output, would you not think that Q might be better to max? AA, Q, and Spin away with the speed boost as they try to chase you.

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