Essentially, I'm just shooting for 150 bonus AD or however much I need to one shot creep waves with my spin. The only items worth the slots though are tiamats, bloodthirster, and last whisper though Bloodthirster is hard to farm and tiamats has mana regen.
If you have problems keeping BT farmed up, try Infinity Edge. It's only 20 AD less, but crit chance works on judgmente which let's you "minicrit" pretty often (judgment damage is applied in 6 ticks, so 1 tick every half second. Let's assume you're dealing 900 total damage with judgment [even a pretty tanky build can achieve this easily], one tick can crit for 150x 2.6 = 390 damage). It synergizes very well with Atma's crit chance and Ghostblade (if you build Brutalizer into it).
For a general build, I assume that you are not picking Garen vs. tanky teams. You should have at least 2 targets that are likely to stay squishy the whole game.
I pick 21/x/x masteries, 25 Arpen, 13 MR / AR for runes, and my endgame build usually looks like:
Mercs / Tabi Mallet (let's you stick to ranged ADs even if they have Phantom Dancer und early Phage is boss) Atma's Infinity Edge Ghostblade (I prefer this) / LW + 1 enemy depending defensive item (GA is fine, but I prefer good old Sunfire if split pushing or Randuin's Omen)
Combined with your W passive you are pretty much unkillable and make the enemy carry's life a misery. Once you connect, they can neither flash nor run away.
Admitted, Garen is probably not the strongest lategame bruiser, but thanks to the ratio changes he is not completely useless anymore. However, you should obviously try to get ahead in early game. There is nothing better than to farm decently while killing enemy top 3 times and then ganking other lanes and make the enemy be like "wtf?! how u solo double kill bot lane in one combo?!".
Wow that's amazing. I was not aware that judgement could crit. Thanks. Garen is so fun and yet easy to play :3 I love phage and bilgewater too. Mostly I'm just building whatever I have the money for. I'm still losing games, but it's genuinely not my fault these last few games.
Since you're a tank shouldn't you be going 9/21/0 masteries though? Taking armor pen.
unless they changed it the crit only applies to bonus damage
so if you have like 80 bonus damage from a bloodthirster and level 5 spin and you spin on someone and the tic crits, you will deal 210 + 112 + 112, not 210 + 112 * 2. It's not really very good
On March 17 2012 08:46 Hidden_MotiveS wrote: Wow that's amazing. I was not aware that judgement could crit. Thanks. Garen is so fun and yet easy to play :3 I love phage and bilgewater too. Mostly I'm just building whatever I have the money for. I'm still losing games, but it's genuinely not my fault these last few games.
Since you're a tank shouldn't you be going 9/21/0 masteries though? Taking armor pen.
edit: crit really changes everything :0
The thing is that Garen is not supposed to be the main tank. He has no CC to protect the carries (silence is for the offensive use so your victim cries and rages in pain while hitting the flash button ) and no real initiation. He is a typical bruiser that falls off lategame but makes up for it with a great early game. Abuse it and start snowballing to victory.
If I get to lane at top and I see the chance for Garen (read: you know what you are up against), lvl 2 kills are common (21 offensive mastery required though): hide in the river brush, wait until top laner comes from blue, AA -> Q -> AA, there you have it: the enemy is forced to play passively at 50% HP (even if he started coth + 5 pots). As soon as you get lvl 2 flash -> Q -> E -> ignite garentees you the kill. While playing Garen, you will get the feeling for when your combo is lethal, same is true for the ultimate. After a while, you will know if an enemy player is kill range.
Try 21 in offense and 21 in defense. Both have their uses, but I'd take offense over defense with Garen anytime. It lets you start with 31 flat ArPen + 10% Arpen which combined with Ghostblade should reduce the armor of a squishy carry to 25ish or something - KABOOOM!
In addition, more AD (both scaling and flat), more crit damage (hence the 2.6 instead of 2.5 factor when getting IE) and especially Executioner mastery is like LOLOLOL with Garen ultimate as it nukes even harder (I take 10% magic pen mastery too, only for his ult [and sometimes sunfire cape] and the cdr). It's getting really hilarious when the enemy has a Cho'gath that stacks armor in top lane and suddenly you nuke him for 300+ magic damage at lvl 6 and finish the deal with ignite.
€dit:
On March 17 2012 09:32 UniversalSnip wrote: unless they changed it the crit only applies to bonus damage
so if you have like 80 bonus damage from a bloodthirster and level 5 spin and you spin on someone and the tic crits, you will deal 210 + 112 + 112, not 210 + 112 * 2. It's not really very good
Yes, my bad. Excuse me. Base damage doesn't count, seems like im too tired already.
However, with the ratio buff to 1.4 and 150-200 bonus AD, you will still notice a a higher damage increase when going for IE instead of BT that raises even further when you combine it with other crit items (Atma's should be a staple on Garen IMO).
Well xypherous did a lot of answering community questions on the Garen remake. He's supposed to be able to scale better now.
Also he says top lane is poisonous because it's too snowbally.
Garen's getting number tweaks. Mostly he does less max damage and more minimum damage. His silence is shorter. His Q gives 35% movespeed instead of 15% but only lasts 1.5 seconds instead of 4. His E lasts shorter and has a lower ratio. It still avoids minion collision but now garen gets slowed moving through minions 20%. His Q now has the slow reduction. His W lasts 1second less(2 seconds) but adds more armor than the old one as soon as you get some armor and mr. And his ult is now going to be the highest cooldown ult in the game at rank 1? No more spin ult bug.
I'm just going to call that garen's going to be easier to kite. Can't believe I was scared for a second.
On August 14 2012 01:01 obesechicken13 wrote: Repost from the troll garen guide.
Well xypherous did a lot of answering community questions on the Garen remake. He's supposed to be able to scale better now.
Also he says top lane is poisonous because it's too snowbally.
Garen's getting number tweaks. Mostly he does less max damage and more minimum damage. His silence is shorter. His Q gives 35% movespeed instead of 15% but only lasts 1.5 seconds instead of 4. His E lasts shorter and has a lower ratio. It still avoids minion collision but now garen gets slowed moving through minions 20%. His Q now has the slow reduction. His W lasts 1second less(2 seconds) but adds more armor than the old one as soon as you get some armor and mr. And his ult is now going to be the highest cooldown ult in the game at rank 1? No more spin ult bug.
I'm just going to call that garen's going to be easier to kite. Can't believe I was scared for a second.
But whatever the changes will be, I will wait for the official numbers before I start either cheering or crying.
I just hope his early game isn't weakened. Garen went from release op to never played to almost perfectly fine (granted he just crushed certain matchups and was pretty faceroll) to never played again.
IMO, in times of top lane bullies like Rumble & Darius, Garen's "almost perfectly fine state" would have fit in there.
Garen is a tanky assassin. The assassin part is really reliant on flash since his gap closer is really bad. But if he can close the gap onto the squishies, 2.5 second silence is enough for a kill on a squishy with his full combo+ignite. 6 seconds of 30% dmg reduction makes it safe to go high dmg items such as ie, bt. i believe his full combo in terms of single target damage with items such as ie and atmas is on par with talon with bt and maw.
But that of course is his late game, garen suffers from all skills, including summoner flash being crucial to him playing his role. This creates the lvl 18 syndrome where every single skill needs to be leveled for him to be useful. Unfortunately, most games are decided by then. Garen's biggest problem is being kited to death, they actually made it worse for him in the early game where his movespeed buff scales with levels. Flash is required to close that gap, without which garen will spend most of the fight cced trying to get to the squishy hes trying to kill.
Garen is now THE tanky assassin with enough burst damage to kill squishies and tanky enough to absorb alot of damage...at lvl 18...with flash up. Before that though, he needs to choose between being an aoe dmg tank and lvl w, or lvl q for diving carries in exchange for risk being blownup instantly. His single target burst damage for an tanky dps is relatively unmatched because of his freedom to build dmg items. But unfortunately in terms of the role he plays (diving enemy carries), there are others that do this better, namely irelia, nocturne, jax and malphite.
For all intents and purposes, his original role of trying to shut down weaker top lanes was taken away. Now hes a tanky ad caster made for the late game. Its unfortunte that ad caster and late game might as well be oxymorons.
On August 14 2012 01:01 obesechicken13 wrote: Repost from the troll garen guide.
Well xypherous did a lot of answering community questions on the Garen remake. He's supposed to be able to scale better now.
Also he says top lane is poisonous because it's too snowbally.
Garen's getting number tweaks. Mostly he does less max damage and more minimum damage. His silence is shorter. His Q gives 35% movespeed instead of 15% but only lasts 1.5 seconds instead of 4. His E lasts shorter and has a lower ratio. It still avoids minion collision but now garen gets slowed moving through minions 20%. His Q now has the slow reduction. His W lasts 1second less(2 seconds) but adds more armor than the old one as soon as you get some armor and mr. And his ult is now going to be the highest cooldown ult in the game at rank 1? No more spin ult bug.
I'm just going to call that garen's going to be easier to kite. Can't believe I was scared for a second.
But whatever the changes will be, I will wait for the official numbers before I start either cheering or crying.
I just hope his early game isn't weakened. Garen went from release op to never played to almost perfectly fine (granted he just crushed certain matchups and was pretty faceroll) to never played again.
IMO, in times of top lane bullies like Rumble & Darius, Garen's "almost perfectly fine state" would have fit in there.
On August 15 2012 10:42 LazyFailKid wrote: Damage adjusted to 20/45/70/95/120 (+0.7/0.8/0.9/1.0/1.1 total Attack Damage) from 50/90/130/170/210 (+1.4 bonus Attack Damage)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO isn't this a massive nerf?
Total AD, it means now crit scales better.
I have no idea whether or not the number is better though but I doubt it is a massive nerf.
Eh. Garen's Q is still fine. I think they're lowering the ratio on E according the xypherous but it's not in the patch notes. He looks good but I still see no way for him to beat jayce.
Did some math, the breaking point on the old E overtake the new E is 121.85 bonus AD.
IE gives 80 AD, Ghostblade gives 30 AD, I think these two are probably core for Garen now due to crit scaling better.
Then you have three situational offense items, Atmas/Last Whisper/Maw. Overall it seems his E actually does quite a bit more damage because at level 18 he has 115.05 base AD and that now has the potential to crit for 3 times in addition to his bonus AD.
Q now crits too I believe, if his Q crit and E crit 1-2 times, that is actually a cabbage ton of damage that you might be fine with just those two damage items and go defensive items after finishing those.
It's just a feeling, but reading the patch notes makes me all in all more happy than sad. I just have to try how hard he can bully melee champs in top lane. From the numbers, it seems slightly weaker so maybe no more lvl 2 flash -> Q -> E -> ignite kills anymore :/.
However, it seems like you need to have a pretty high level to make full use of all spells now (just like Icysoul said earlier). I still think I will max E first, but W having a 6 second long active at lvl 5 makes it pretty interesting. I mean, 6 seconds of -30% damage and -30% cc duration sounds pretty insane, but we will see.
On August 15 2012 20:13 little fancy wrote: It's just a feeling, but reading the patch notes makes me all in all more happy than sad. I just have to try how hard he can bully melee champs in top lane. From the numbers, it seems slightly weaker so maybe no more lvl 2 flash -> Q -> E -> ignite kills anymore :/.
However, it seems like you need to have a pretty high level to make full use of all spells now (just like Icysoul said earlier). I still think I will max E first, but W having a 6 second long active at lvl 5 makes it pretty interesting. I mean, 6 seconds of -30% damage and -30% cc duration sounds pretty insane, but we will see.
I did some math. His base damage value is actually buffed by a small amount assuming you do not build AD. So your level 2 combo still works.
On August 15 2012 17:05 warscythes wrote: Did some math, the breaking point on the old E overtake the new E is 121.85 bonus AD.
IE gives 80 AD, Ghostblade gives 30 AD, I think these two are probably core for Garen now due to crit scaling better.
Then you have three situational offense items, Atmas/Last Whisper/Maw. Overall it seems his E actually does quite a bit more damage because at level 18 he has 115.05 base AD and that now has the potential to crit for 3 times in addition to his bonus AD.
Q now crits too I believe, if his Q crit and E crit 1-2 times, that is actually a cabbage ton of damage that you might be fine with just those two damage items and go defensive items after finishing those.
Once you add in the fact that crit scales better, the breakpoint is even higher when you get crit items. And I'd get defensive items before even finishing IE (maybe brutalizer -> defensive core of some kind -> IE -> more defense -> ghostblade or LW)
@vs Jayce, if you hit him with your Q before he gets his E off, you can sit on his face for a while. I don't think it'll be a terribly hard matchup for Garen, the original lane bully.
On August 15 2012 10:42 LazyFailKid wrote: Damage adjusted to 20/45/70/95/120 (+0.7/0.8/0.9/1.0/1.1 total Attack Damage) from 50/90/130/170/210 (+1.4 bonus Attack Damage)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO isn't this a massive nerf?
Total AD, it means now crit scales better.
I have no idea whether or not the number is better though but I doubt it is a massive nerf.
Let's assume that Garen gets all ArPen on runes and stuff and has no bonus AD unless he buys items, and levels E ASAP. Here's a damage comparison of old E and new E as well as bonus AD break-even point:
(all damage values are per second, I'm not showing decimals) Level | Old E | New E | Bonus AD BEP ..1......50.........59...........13 ..2......50.........62...........17 ..3......90.........95............9 ..4......90.........98...........14 ..5.....130.......133...........6 ..6.....130.......136..........12 ..7.....170.......172...........5 ..8.....170.......176..........14 ..9.....210.......212...........8 .10....210.......216..........21 .11....210.......220..........34 .12....210.......224..........47 .13....210.......228..........59 .14....210.......232..........72 .15....210.......236..........85 .16....210.......239..........98 .17....210.......243.........111 .18....210.......247.........124
IMO, this looks more like a buff than a massive nerf, especially as you start levelling past 9.
EPT
) and no real initiation. He is a typical bruiser that falls off lategame but makes up for it with a great early game. Abuse it and start snowballing to victory. 
