Boards›Gameplay

Why can't Garen get some love so that he is capable of fighting more than just Melee's

Ra1d·3/16/2015, 10:24:59 PM·34 votes·2,938 views

I'm a main Garen user, and yes i heard it all "Garen's a no skill champ, Garen's for noobs" blah blah blah, Garen is a great champ and I know he was designed to be effective early games, but that effectiveness doesn't really show anymore. I enjoyed the buff he got in season 4 to hi passive, but he suffers because the rest of his kit allows him to get easily kited by ADC's and mages with moblity . I'm not saying he can't fight them. I've fought with and beat every champ that they've thrown at me. I've also been beat by nearly every champ. Poor Yi can't do anything against Garen in any portion of the game. Amumu's just there to cry with Yi and Riven. Honestly I enjoy my games as Garen, but he needs more to be able to be put to use the way he was originally intended to be. A damage dealing semi who can jump in and lead the fight.

If you have any ideas on what could be done to improve his gameplay, please comment your ideas and upvote. I hope someone in Riot sees this. Garen needs some love. And not just from .

80 Comments

WeFlyNoLie3/17/2015, 1:58:29 PM6 votes

As another Garen main, I can say he's in a pretty good spot. Currently the only issue I really have with him is the self-slow he gets when using his E. I don't and never have seen the point of this and wish they would remove it.

Everything else about him is fine. If they want to increase his skill ceiling and add some more things to him, that's fine, but I believe he really is in a good spot right now as far as fighters go. He has clear match-ups that he should win, that he should lose and ones that are up to the skills of the player and lane opponent. You just need to make sure you build him appropriately to the game. I see you like to build item 3156 . Honestly this isn't a very good item on Garen. If you need MR, get item 3065 , this will blend with your passive and give you insane amounts of health regen.

The only AD items I would build on Garen are ones that give you armor penetration as well. item 3071 item 3142 item 3035 You can build item 3031 if you're super ahead, but I very rarely get this. That said, those are all the AD items you should ever need. You should have carries doing the real damage and Garen's base damage on his skills are high enough that you shouldn't need to build a lot of AD. You should focus on getting your one or two AD items to start and then build tank items from there to make use of his passive MR/Armor gain from W.

item 3068 item 3065 are core. item 3083 is also good. item 3075 for heavy AD teams and item 3512 if you want to split push.

Garen's a champion that requires good itemization. You need to build to meet your opposition and focus high-priority interruptable targets with silence and Flash QER their ADCs. Hope this information helps.

Edit: I also noticed you don't take flash as Garen...You're missing out on one of his best combos without it. As a champion with only a movespeed boost, Flash is a necessity in this meta.

Erijian3/16/2015, 10:43:32 PM5 votes

The difficulty of a champion like Garen is that we see him as a great beginner champion. He's easy to pick up and easy to understand, so he does bring a lot of positive to the game even when he isn't necessarily a strong champion at the competitive level.

If we wanted to make him more healthy for competitive play we would have to start weighing the costs of adding complexity to his kit via new mechanics and probably adding more points of mastery in his gameplay which probably means making him overall more demanding to play.

One of the biggest things I've learned working on this game is that it is rare for any decision to be completely free of costs or tradeoffs. Almost every change we make that has a benefit also has a cost and we always have to weigh them against each other.

In Garen's case we would have to understand the costs we would have to pay in his simplicity in order to make him a healthier competitive champion. I can say right now, that there are no immediate plans for work on Garen, but you're definitely on the mark when you say that if we do go and change Garen we would need to try our best to preserve his low skill floor while still increasing skill ceiling (which is extremely difficult to do).

Sincerely, Statikk in a Q&A eight months ago.

In my opinion I think Garen's simplicity makes him easy to pick up, but hard to actually master due to him being so predictable.

Personally I'd just like to see some QoL buffs in regards to the removal of his self-slow, and maybe some adjustments to his Ultimate cooldown.

Pucking Purrfect3/16/2015, 10:41:39 PM5 votes

Inb4 Garen is fine comments and downvotes.

Nucleophilic atk3/17/2015, 12:19:47 AM5 votes

My biggest problem with Garen is his AA animation. Thing is awful. If they say he is for new players, why make him stupid hard to cs with early lol.

Oh Hai Marc3/17/2015, 1:06:33 AM3 votes

im sorry, but Malzahar is now mobile???

Xtremey3/16/2015, 10:43:01 PM2 votes

no he gets love from Lux

MrSc0tty3/17/2015, 2:29:22 PM2 votes

Here's the problem:

"I'm Garen, let's wrassle!"

"Kay, you're gonna use your skills and I'm gonna"

"Lol silence bitch RAAAAARAAAARAAARAAAAA DEMACIAAAAA"

you have been slain

If you can't counter Garen by getting away from him with mobility or cc * before * he can get to you, you can't counter Garen due to his point and click silence.

Until he doesn't have a silence as soon as he's capable of doing anything else in his kit, he can't really have more in his kit.