Open Discussion on Garen - Improvements, Enhancements, Updates, & Reworks

Hello to everyone concerned with the current condition and state of the Might of Demacia,

My name is OmegasisX and I have been playing League of Legends for a couple years now. I started off not knowing much about the game, nor its characters, but was inspired to play because of one of my best friends. I am currently in Gold 4 (Solo/Duo) & Gold 5 (Flex 5v5), but, through general game and champion knowledge, have the ability to consistently compete (and do well) against high gold, plat, & sometimes even diamond players (depending on which ranked system is queued up).

As I have seen many others players on these forums describe their distaste of the way Riot has handled treating one of their most beloved (or not) champions in League of Legends, and seeing how that champion has actually become my best champion to play with competitively (over half a million mastery points with a near 50% win rate - lower elo games depend on how well your other teammates can do or not) I wanted to bring a positive change to his playstyle as well as professional playability.

As many of us know, Garen suffers from a few major issues:

1. His lack of a clear engage makes his teamfighting relevance not very strong:

At best, what Garen has to offer is armor shred, damage, a 1-use silence on a single target for 1.5 seconds, & a finisher. That's it. He has no way to remove targets physically from the vicinity, nor does he have anyway of reliably getting to the backline to remove priority targets. If Garen builds standard Black Cleaver tank, he relies on his teammates to do well to carry teamfights and win games.

2. His lack of mobility makes him easily kitable, without much counterplay:

As Riot has said before, Garen will always be a champion that can be kited. I'm not saying he shouldn't. But what I am saying is that he should be able to face off against those kiters with some consistency.

Garen is a melee champ. That means there will always be inherent disadvantages for him against ranged matchups and champions. But other champions, like Riven & Yasuo, have ways to get close to ranged champions to be able to fight against them. Garen has no such ability. Therefore, in order for him to be on par with basic fighting principles in League, he needs to have his engage mechanic looked at (and possibly reworked).

3. His early level & laning phase presence is weak. Really weak.

We all know Garen's passive and how it works. We know (as champs playing against him) that we need to keep it off. And we know (as people playing as him) that even if it is on, it's not very strong (at least in the early levels). This presents the inherent issue imbedded in the way his passive is structured - Garen is weak in the beginning of the game. Where other champs, like Akali, can heal themselves all the way back to full health with a few auto attacks, Garen has to wait quite a while for his healing to get him there, AND he has to wait quite a while for it to come back on if it's turned off. That being said, his passive IS much stronger in the later stages of the game, but sometimes he isn't able to do well enough to get there properly. With this in mind, it would make sense to enhance his early level SUSTAIN capabilities so that he can remain relevant during the early stages of the game without being considered OP.

I personally have created a list of potential changes that could be considered by those in charge of champion reworks and "maintenance" to enhance his teamfighting relevance as well as his 1v1 capabilities (the link in this article):

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/mv6uwJJE-much-needed-garen-update-mini-rework

Any feedback considering these changes (either positive or negative) would be greatly appreciated, and please feel free to leave suggestions of your own, as the true intention of this post is to have the voices of the Garen fans and players be heard by Riot so that appropriate steps can be taken to improve and enhance the champion we know can be much better.

Thanks for reading this far and for listening. Maybe together we really can get Riot to hear us this time.

OmegasisX