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Riot balance team. I implore you, please read this and consider.

RtClick·3/14/2019, 5:50:01 PM·38 votes·16,874 views

So I've played this game nearly everyday since season 6. I am a top bruiser main, with a primary focus on Garen. I enjoy playing bruisers like Darius and Renekton, but Garen is what keeps me coming back. For whatever reason I connect to him more than the other top laners. I like his lore, what he stands for, his voice lines, and of course I love delivering that sweet Demacian Justice. But to be quite honest, Garen needs some love. He just feels so weak in the current meta. In the past, many champions that I could go toe to toe with, or in some cases dominate I now have to play passively against and in some cases give up the lane all together. It's so frustrating laning against champions that I used to be able to go even with or even bully, watch them miss an ability or use it recklessly, use that cd window to go in for a trade, and still come out on the losing end. There's a certain amount of stat checks that are just normal for the game. And I feel like Garen is losing some of those, that he shouldn't. I think the biggest portion of that may be from the celerity change. Garen was one of the few or maybe only bruiser top laners, that relied on and used celerity on a regular basis. Garen lost a significant amount of damage on his Q-E combo from the celerity change. I think for starters, adding the damage back into his kit that celerity gave him would go a long way to help him. I also feel like Garen could use just a slight increase in base movement speed. Garen relies on his ability to run. Whether it's dodging abilities, capitlizing on positioning mistakes, running down enemies. He has no gap close other than his Q movement speed boost. I feel like without Q, Garen should atleast be able to run as fast as Chogath, Mundo, Renekton, ect. Garen feels so much better with alittle bit of movement speed. Can we give him +5-10 and see what happens? I think it could help his itemization and rune selection just a bit, I don't want to have to pick celerity or build deadmans or triforce ect, to catch someone that is not a slow champion. I've also tried to think of some things that could help Garen against difficult high elo matchups, like Gnar, Cass, Teemo, Viktor, ect. Generally his W feels pretty good. But I think rewarding Garen more for a well timed W could help him in higher elo where some of us have mastered that timing. Possibly giving him a 25% CD reduction on his W when successfully timed with an enemy ability? Can you please put some thought into what could be done to Garen to help him out? He doesn't feel like a strong champion right now. His winrate alone suggest that. For a champion whose kit is so simple, it seems like he should be slightly higher than it currently is. If you've read this, I sincerely appreciate your time, I know that there's a lot of stupid posts that come through these boards, but I've tried my best to be objective and honest when thinking of solutions.

Sincerely, Vìciousdelicious

53 Comments

Moody P3/14/2019, 7:03:40 PM19 votes

What Id like to see Garen getting right now is some manner of improvements to early game in particular. Since he doesnt scale he should get back some portion of his early game that was lost in his rework in season 5.

Namely making E better at early ranks so it can be more reliable at last hitting with it, and just generally making his spin stronger since it's arguably the worst ability in his whole rotation, to the point that Garen is much better off focusing on Q burst with items like Trinity Force.

Villainy is unfortunately probably here to stay.

Baron Von Garen3/14/2019, 9:14:40 PM14 votes

What they should do is take out some power from the villain mechanic, like the 1% max health per auto/E tick, and give more power back into his base stats.

He currently gets around 200 less hp and 20 less armor at 18 than other juggernauts, and he gets no scaling cooldowns (His W scaling is almost insignificant and on top of that it's maxed last, which is when Garen falls off).

They also took 5 movespeed off swifties, 5 base movespeed, and 5% movespeed from his Q, which is pretty significant when you add them all together.

The 1% max health from true damage just makes it unfair for people who are fighting against Garen, especially if they're a bruiser/tank. The villain mechanic was supposed to be a way for Garen to contribute to teamfights, since spells like exhaust would render him useless, and on top of that, Garen is supposed to be an anti-carry, meaning not a tank buster.

Keeping the full true damage from the ult itself for villain, getting rid of the 1% extra damage, and giving some changes to his scaling base stats would be good for Garen.

On top of this, I'd like to see more work with the W, the cooldown is just ridiculously long for no reason. I think it'd be a lot better to bring it down to something like 24/23/22/21/20 ---> 14/13/12/11/10, and then just reduce the duration of the damage reduction to last 2 seconds at all ranks, instead of scaling up to 6. That way Garen players have more chances to use the .75s damage reduction/tenacity instead of it being a one-time use in every teamfight.

All of this is assuming that they aren't going to give him an actual rework, which I think he needs.

The Ecdysiast3/14/2019, 6:57:00 PM8 votes

What he needs is a full rework. In fact he, Darius, Mordekaiser, and Nasus need reworks to push them away from being solely stat checks into requiring at least some semblance of skill expression in a fight.

Garen is currently performing as usual for a champion who's countered by team coordination in high elos where such coordination is the norm. To give him more flat stat buffs, like your suggested MS boost, would just exacerbate the problems he has in lower rank solo queue. It would do no help to him in high ranks because losing to team coordination isn't about his stats. It's about his lack of versatile mechanics in exchange for just high numbers.

As we saw with Mordekaiser back in 2015, the only way to make such a kit, one that relies entirely on stat-checking, viable against a coordinated team is to make the stats so unreasonably high that you can just body any attempt at counterplay against you-- the exact same way these champions win against any non-counters in a dueling matchup.

The change you've suggested to his W is kind of already there. A well-timed W gives you a small window of a lot more defense than the rest of the duration.

And where you said:

For a champion whose kit is so simple, it seems like he should be slightly higher than [his win rate] currently is.

That's generally not how it works. Win rates dip down at the extremes, for two different reasons. A champion that has a very high skill floor will dip down in win rate if their play rate is high, because people who lack experience will drag it down. But they'll have incredibly high win rates from mains because they have a high skill ceiling. That is, once you have the necessary experience with them, you'll get a lot out of them.

Conversely, a champion that has essentially no skill floor at all, like Garen, will dip down because they have a very low skill ceiling. No amount of practice with Garen will get you as high a win rate with him as a high skill floor champ like Katarina. Because there just isn't anything in his kit to express that experience. Because he relies just on stat-checks instead of skill-checks, increasing your skill with him does nothing-- you still can't increase the stats, and you can't spin better than a brand-new Garen.

The best way to increase his performance for people who have more experience with him would have to be a complete rework, to give him abilities that can actually express experience with him. But as he is, he should be performing poorly at high ranks, because that's where his stat-checking isn't enough.

Daddy Ants3/14/2019, 7:32:36 PM5 votes

Garen needs larger scale work than a few number changes.

Ten Summer Suns3/15/2019, 5:12:28 AM4 votes

I remember when Garen used Mana, and I used to play Top-Lane Alistar. Back when Veigar broke games with a Deathfire and an Ult. Garen is the OG.. and new champ releases and new kits just kind of take him out of the spotlight. He lacks hard CC that other fighters have for one thing. Also, many fighters are being thrown multi-cast abilities that help close gaps and peel. Garen's bio makes him seem like a war machine, comparable to Katarina. But where Kat dances so freely around the field, Garen seems so stationary and "omega". It's as if Garen is supposed to be the Omega champ.. the one hero that struggles to fight fantastic foes with nothing but his human heart and courage.

Horse Grenades3/14/2019, 8:22:20 PM4 votes

Garens kit is so linear, it becomes problematic when too strong, and underwhelming when too weak

Kaisha3/15/2019, 6:05:20 AM3 votes

RIOT doesn't care. They really don't.

Boreas IX3/14/2019, 11:34:07 PM2 votes

Riot hates everyone that isn't forking out money for Korean skins. And their only solution to the game is damage and hard ping features like invulnerability and knockups.

They also don't give a shit about the forums.

Wùkong3/14/2019, 10:48:49 PM2 votes

Wukong hasn't seen a decent change for years and has been nerfed to the ground at this point and you are crying over a champ that can 1 shot Wu

LordGeovanni3/16/2019, 6:44:18 PM1 votes

Garen like most fighters is weak in the current meta. But garen isnt weak.

Literally Kappa3/15/2019, 12:24:17 AM1 votes

Garen is fine he has a good winrate through all ranks. https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/garen/iron (iron up) https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/garen (plat up [aka the important ranks])

Serika Zero3/15/2019, 10:11:16 AM1 votes

I hate Garen. let's say you play better than him, and you kill him 2-3 times. And then your team isn't doing amazing.

Now Garen does true damage to you, fucking stupid, he gets rewarded for losing.

even worse if you get kills from roams, now you can't even lane against him anymore. And unless you are a tank scaling off hp, you're gonna have a bad time.

CoolKnightST3/15/2019, 11:24:33 AM1 votes

I think the solution would be improving how his Demacian Justice passive works:

  • In my opinion it should still pick random but Garen should be allowed to switch targets. Extra bonus could be that the icon with the highest bounty & kill on it are bigger or have a slightly different color. I believe a system like that would also stimulate new players with addressing prioity targets he needs a shutdown.
  • Secondly, Garen should recieve bonus momentspeed while moving towards an Villain.
  • An bonus would be that it's possible to have more than one Villain marked. Let's say one enemy is so far ahead over everyone else. This target should automaticly be marked as Villain while allowing to mark someone else as a second Villain. This would make things intressting when Garen is behind.
DrippyBrownHole3/15/2019, 2:32:32 PM1 votes

If Garen is weak now it would be the first time in League history

He can use some time on the bench honestly