garen needs the warwick treatment.

Critmaster Garen·Apr 5, 2018·4 votes·602 views

just improvements all around that keep him the same at his basis, while building some advanced mechancis into his kit.

and no, it cant wait another year or two. hes an 8 year old champion, who has been at the bottom of the competitive viability for his entire existence.

and for crying out loud, give him some way to stay in a fight. his w active doesnt cut it. he needs some actual in combat health sustain or some other way to deal consistent sustained damage, like every other fighter and carry in this game.

otherwise hell just keep being able to fight for 5 seconds to get subsequently destroyed in the next 9 to 5 seconds when his spin is on cooldown, for the rest of his existence.

he doesnt have or mobility to disengage a fight and work around his own cooldown windows, and even those guys have viable sustain items to trade auto attacks.

14 Comments

bwopApr 5, 20183 votes

ehhh, garen's gonna stay the way he is for now because rito wants him to be a simply beginner champ xd. nothing u can do about that. when a champ is getting a rework you can always rely on garen being the same as always

[garen-swing]

Critmaster GarenApr 5, 20183 votes

{quoted}

ehhh, garen's gonna stay the way he is for now because rito wants him to be a simply beginner champ xd.

Warwick is still a beginner champ, and they managed to put some outplay tools into his kit.

those two concepts arent mutually exclusive.

but what makes garen really terrible to play most of the time, is that hes expected to get into the thick of the fight and doesnt even have close to the abilities that other champions have to actually stay there.

he doesnt have Mordekaiser shield, Udyr turtle stance spam, Illaoi Darius missing health heals, Olaf Nasus lifesteal... you can go down the entire list of fighters and they all have ways to deal uninterrupted sustained damage, while being able to negate incoming damage either by healing or shielding (not just mitigate it).

garens cooldown windows combined with his inability to heal through a fight like everyone else, is mostly why he scales so shitty.

SalamencęApr 5, 20182 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xKar7Pdy,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2018-04-05T01:50:17.367+0000)

is still a beginner champ, and they managed to put some outplay tools into his kit.

those two concepts arent mutually exclusive.

but what makes garen really terrible to play most of the time, is that hes expected to get into the thick of the fight and doesnt even have close to the abilities that other champions have to actually stay there.

he doesnt have shield, turtle stance spam, missing health heals, lifesteal... you can go down the entire list of fighters and they all have ways to deal uninterrupted sustained damage, while being able to negate incoming damage either by healing or shielding (not just mitigate it).

garens cooldown windows combined with his inability to heal through a fight like everyone else, is mostly why he scales so shitty.

There's your problem, he's a juggernaut not a fighter

DragonSheaApr 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

There's your problem, he's a juggernaut not a fighter

Not a viable statement there.

Garen is a juggernaut like the others expect for WW and WW is a jugger-diver and so are Irelia (pre-rework) and Renekton being tankiner than most divers. What Garen needs a means to make his passive work better when he is in combat instead of when he is out of it.

Critmaster GarenApr 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Garen is a juggernaut like the others expect for WW and WW is a jugger-diver and so are (pre-rework) and being tankiner than most divers. What Garen needs a means to make his passive work better when he is in combat instead of when he is out of it.

he might even need a mix of both. without the out of combat heal, hes boned aswell since he has no answer to any form of ranged poke in lane.

ive already brought up an idea like this a long time ago.

remove the armor shred on his spin to free up some power budget. its not 100% neccessary, since cleaver does the same job for him, and the % shreds stack poorly anyway

new effect: each spin that strikes an enemy champion activates perseverance for 0.5 seconds when judgement ends. (maximum 5 seconds)

5 seconds is basically garens cooldown window on his e at 40% cdr. spinning on multiple targets charges it faster to its 5 second cap. this allows the option to cancel the spin early to gain the healing sooner, if needed.

early game during the lane phase, he only has 4 to 5 spin ticks available. this would mean a maximum duration of 2 to 2.5 seconds with his early game passive, that only gives a minor benefit until level 11. so its managable in lane, and a fair tradeoff of armor shred vs. sustain. armor becomes more effective against garen until he has cleaver, but he gains some extra staying power in head on trades for the damage he loses.

midgame at level 11 however, it would just give him a burst of healing for up to 5 seconds, when he has nothing to work with but his auto attacks. especially when hes low on health. it would be comparable to darius q heal, and just give him some way to stay on top of his opponent and in the fight until his cooldowns are back up.

DragonSheaApr 6, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xKar7Pdy,comment-id=00000000000000000000,timestamp=2018-04-05T16:01:00.779+0000)

he might even need a mix of both. without the out of combat heal, hes boned aswell since he has no answer to any form of ranged poke in lane.

ive already brought up an idea like this a long time ago.

5 seconds is basically garens cooldown window on his e at 40% cdr. spinning on multiple targets charges it faster to its 5 second cap. this allows the option to cancel the spin early to gain the healing sooner, if needed.

early game during the lane phase, he only has 4 to 5 spin ticks available. this would mean a maximum duration of 2 to 2.5 seconds with his early game passive, that only gives a minor benefit until level 11. so its managable in lane, and a fair tradeoff of armor shred vs. sustain. armor becomes more effective against garen until he has cleaver, but he gains some extra staying power in head on trades for the damage he loses.

midgame at level 11 however, it would just give him a burst of healing for up to 5 seconds, when he has nothing to work with but his auto attacks. especially when hes low on health. it would be comparable to darius q heal, and just give him some way to stay on top of his opponent and in the fight until his cooldowns are back up.

Yeah He would need in fight sustain and the means to get into fights with some clear counters(which I think just need to be better defined while his engage is the real issue) First of all he needs baseline tenacity if he is to be able to chase better. overall I'd say that Garen need good early game damage, poor ability scaling but good/stat scaling in order to force him to some damage has his tankiness is higher than most juggs. having Garen needing to get crit and make it increase overall damage instead of it procing extra damage would make crit garen more viable and like you said in your newer post. Make his AA's hurt when his attacks are on cooldown.

Critmaster GarenApr 5, 20183 votes

{quoted}

There's your problem, he's a juggernaut not a fighter

first of all, juggernauts are a sub class of fighters. so by definition, all juggernauts are fighters.

second, all the champions i listed there (with the exception of warwick) are classified as juggernauts.

Bobloser3555Apr 5, 20181 votes

You cant have everything, Garen has the best sustain out of fight you cant have him have WW sustain in fight too he needs to have some weaknesses and I say this as a Garen main. We have enough champs that sustain in fight and Garen is pretty unique the way he is don't kill diversity.

Critmaster GarenApr 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

You cant have everything, Garen has the best sustain out of fight you cant have him have WW sustain in fight too he needs to have some weaknesses and I say this as a Garen main. We have enough champs that sustain in fight and Garen is pretty unique the way he is don't kill diversity.

well first of all, i did say they should remove the armor shred on his spin in return. cleaver is practically a core item on him anyway. so there is a tradeoff in damage to the extra sustain.

otherwise every melee champion with some form of lifesteal has sustain in and out of combat with champions. usually even better than garens sustain. you can also literally buy garens passive on any fighter or tank: item 3083 . so theres that.

compare him to Nasus who can heal off minions out of combat with champions, aswell as in combat both off his passive. id say nasus has better in and out of combat sustain than garen. garen doesnt even come close to regenerating his health pool as quickly off his passive as nasus does off a couple auto attacks and q's on minions.

garens early game passive is barely existent. on top of that, he has even lower range than your average melee champion. even when nasus cant walk close to minions, he can still farm by e max. Olaf has his axes, Illaoi has range on her tentacles, Yorick can extend past his auto attack range by sending his ghouls. DrMundo his cleavers. other strict melee ranged champions have higher mobility to compensate. like Renekton and Riven who can dive in and out of enemy range.

Garen is one of very few exceptions of fighters who is at the same time not very mobile, and entirely restricted to melee range in his entire kit. and hes not a good jungler like Udyr Shyvana to be able to avoid matchups where he gets outmaneuvered and outpoked, which is basically every matchup.

really thats his weakness and why he gets more power in other parts.

i think allowing him to activate his passive for a couple of seconds in combat, with the condition that he hits enemies with his spin and manages to stay on top of them is fully justified. once he made it into a fight, he should be able to stay there and not deal damage for 2 or 3 seconds that gets entirely absorbed, and then he dies because the only thing he has left are weaksauce auto attacks as a champion who doesnt build to auto attack, and doesnt have inbuilt auto attack steroids.

Bobloser3555Apr 6, 20181 votes

why you explain all this which everyone knows already? Garen is fine in low elo and probably also in higher elo against some enemy compositions. it comes down to opinion to want him changed, but he is not under powered in general for the average skill levels.

Critmaster GarenApr 7, 20182 votes

{quoted}

why you explain all this which everyone knows already? Garen is fine in low elo and probably also in higher elo against some enemy compositions. it comes down to opinion to want him changed, but he is not under powered in general for the average skill levels.

hes really bad right now, and kept dropping off over the last couple patches.

part of it has probably to do with conqueror. garen is unique as a juggernaut in a sense, that instead of in combat sustain and heals and shields, he has damage reduction and frontloaded defenses.

this also means, that part of his survival mechanism is just ignored now, and if he cant decisively win a fight within the first 5 to 6 seconds, he will always lose.

squishier targets often just absorb his spin with heals and shields and then blow him up afterwards when he has nothing else to fight them with.

Bobloser3555Apr 11, 20181 votes

personally I dont like the conqueror rune at all, the true damage can be very op in certain situations and makes tanks almost useless in 1v1 fights and I agree that it is a severe threat to Garen.

redniwediSApr 5, 20181 votes

Honestly, Garen needs one big change that can be summarized in one short sentence.

He needs to be a Diver, not a Juggernaut.

Critmaster GarenApr 5, 20181 votes

another option would be to fully embrace his crit scaling, build critical strike into his kit and make his auto attacks fucking hurt, so by midgame hes still a threat when he doesnt have his spin ready.

add critical strike chance to his w passive and make it stack up to 30%, so he gets to 50% with item 3031 or something like that.

basically make garens ideal item build something like item 3031 item 3071 item 3053 item 3742 item 3065 item 1001

off that basis you could just pick fleet footwork for some extra in combat sustain.

his q would need to be normalized. means instead of being able to crit, it would need a crit scaling like Xayah e. just a flat damage increase off crit chance and crit damage. otherwise it would create too much variance in the abilities damage.