I'm a Garen main who keeps having to face crap like Frozen Mallet/Black Cleaver Gnar/Teemo, Vaynes who emote spam and get fed outside of lane, and all sorts of other crap that leaves a nice feeling of helplessness in you. It's particularly bad when you manage to work out what you have to do to survive, but then your team dies to your laner anyway and all your work was for nothing. Between the items that don't really work all that well and the masteries that were not designed to really help Garen he gets kited and destroyed pretty much regardless of build. And this says nothing of all those direct/indirect movement speed nerfs he got, and how all his old early game power got wrapped up into a passive he can't even control.
And in spite of all of this all I can say to season 8 is bring it on. It might be the worst experience ever for a Garen main but I don't care, I'm going to play Garen anyway as a big middle finger to every champ that innately counters him. I'll figure out how to play him regardless of the state of season 8, and those people who play the easy mode top laners will learn fear.