Garen is a tanky dps champ who has the highest damage output of any champion from levels 1-11. You must use this advantage to dominate your lane. Otherwise, he scales extremely poorly in the late game suffering from the typical choice of having to choose between being tanky and irrelevant, or damaging but squishy. Therefore, you must crush your laning opponent, get fed, and destroy the other team by getting the farm necessary to be both tanky and have good damage. How do we accomplish this? Let’s begin.
Skills
Passive: Perseverance A solid passive that improves your laning sustainability. It is very important to avoid minion aggro to keep the passive on. Remember to allow the minions to lock targets on each other first before farming.
Q: Decisive Strike This has great frontloaded damage and synergy with E. Use it to chase, run away, silence, whatever. It works on towers too so spam it when you are bringing the tower beats. The speed boost duration is much shorter than the time you have to attack, so you can bait champs into thinking your Q is down and then give them the business.
The silence is useful for keeping people trapped in your E for a little bit. You must save it in team fights if they have a channeler (nunu, kat, malz, ww, etc.).
W: Courage This skill is very good when initiating team fights, allowing you to mitigate a significant amount of damage. It can also take off a lot of damage from tower hits when you are diving. The bonus armor and mr is gravy.
E: Judgement 300 damage lvl 1 rofl u mad? This skill…. Yeah this makes Garen OP early on. It gets even better as you level it, but scales off significantly in the late game. Most of your early game will revolve you attempting to land a q-e combo to take away half your opponent’s hp. You can also farm waves ezpz with this once you get a sunfire or some ad items.
Knowing when to end E early is really important. If the opponent gets out of your E range, you have to end it to get it back on CD faster. If you are tower diving and your opponent is low, you have to end it, ult them, and get out of there. It is much more relevant than you would think at first.
It negates slows and reduces the effectiveness on slows applied afterwards. Remember to use it when escaping or chasing.
R: Demacian Justice The most satisfying ult in the game. Nothing feels better than executing a Teemo. Knowing when to use the ult is something that takes a lot of experience, but less than 25% is usually a 100% kill and 35% is borderline. Obviously much harder to execute tanks due to their higher MR.
Move Speed Quints are 100% necessary to keep people in your E in the early levels. It also allows you to pick up a doran’s blade without sacrificing too much speed.
The rest are just great early game runes where you are the strongest anyways.
Masteries: 21/9/0 Early game burst+nimbleness too gud.
Summoner Spells: Flash/Ignite
Flash is OP. Getting a flash-Q will prevent them from escaping with whatever and will lead to several early kills.
Skilling Order: EQEW -> R > E > Q > W
The first skill actually varies a lot between Q or E. First if we have a level 1 jungle battle, you must pick E for the aoe damage. If you are in the duo lane, you must also pick E first because, once again, for the aoe damage, and presumably you are paired up with a stunner. However in a solo lane I will pick Q most of the time because it allows you to zone much better and won’t push your lane when you chase. It is also much better against boots openings because then it is more difficult to keep them in your E. I do pick E first in a solo lane when I get a good bush surprise in top lane and I can just E them for half their life. Never pick your first skill until the last moment!
Since W got buffed to give full stacks, it is now worth getting at level 4.
Item Build:
1) Early game Start: Doran’s Blade 2nd Item: Boots 1
From here on you will be buying a second dblade and merc treads, but the order varies depending on how the game is going and how much money you have when you shop. Rush merc treads if you are having a hard time in lane against an ap champion or somebody with a low cd stun. You can get another dblade if you are ahead and you feel like crushing them, but you must get at least a 3rd dblade if you are behind.
2) Late game In a standard game, you will have 3 dblades, merc treads, and pots and wards at this point. The next item I get is usually a blood thirster. I've abandoned the brutalizer part of the build just because Garen scales so badly he really needs a BF item and IE is just not very good on melee champs.
After this I get warmogs -> atma's impaler -> force of nature. The game is usually over by this point.
In summary: dblade -> boots -> dblade -> dblade -> merc treads -> blood thirster -> atmogs -> force of nature
Play style
Garen is good both in a solo lane and a duo lane. However since his laning is so dominant, I prefer to run him solo top unless I have a truly abusive duo lane partner (ie taric). I like to think Garen as a punisher. If your opponent makes a mistake, you simply destroy him with your retarded early burst damage. Your opponents will have to play extremely passive in order to survive the first 11 levels. Your best matchups are melee champs, followed by casters, and finally ranged dps.
Melee champs are 100% screwed against you. They simply cannot last hit without eating a full combo. Casters will do a little better off but you can bully them early before they get damage and they cannot sustain using their spells to either harass you or last hit. Ranged dps can pew pew you safely, but if they get too greedy on a last hit you will destroy them.
Solo: At level 1 you should harass if you can but it is difficult to have a level 1 fight because of the free bf minion sword that the other champ gets will hurt you badly. Against strong level 1 champs like Lee Sin, you should just last hit. When you get to level 2, things start to get out of hand. You must now aggressively approach the opponent and completely deny them of any last hits by punishing them with a qe combo every time they get close to last hit. Predict when they are going to go for a last hit and PUNISH them for it. You must also zone them from exp range in between last hits by threatening the qe combo. If they get too close…. PUNISH them. From levels 7-9 you should be getting a kill almost every time.
There is a brief ~10 second period of vulnerability when your qe combo is down. The opponent might try to take advantage here and harass you, but don’t be afraid to trade blows if you can avoid minion aggro. Your base ad is very good.
This play style will naturally push the creep wave as they are not last hitting as much and your E will do a lot of incidental damage. This is ok. You are difficult to gank with your movement speed and slow removal and their tower denies them of last hits. It is also very common that you force them to b early because you get a combo on them. A pushed wave will allow you to take the tower down by 50% and put your opponent in a real bad situation.
When going for the kill, the combo is flash, Q, ignite, E, and R. You must ignite early to maximize damage on your R. This will easily kill any squishy from 100% life.
Duo: Herf derf sit in bush and zone out opponents. Lane with taric, always kill, never die.
Late Game: Late game you are the initiator. It is your job to jump in there, separate them, and then stick onto a carry. You must let your team know that you are going in there or else you will suicide. Save your Q if they have a channeler, otherwise just whack someone with it. Do not be scared to initiate fights unless your team is way behind. I believe the most common reason why games are lost is because people do not understand their roles and positioning. Do your job, get in there, and spin2win.
I tend to go, Boots->2-3dblades->Hexdrinker->Mercs->Frozenmallet->Atmas->Funfire->FoN (Vice versa depending on team comp).
Early Hexdrinker is pretty great, nice damage and MR + underrated shield. Hex+mercs+Mr/lvl's+Masteries=110ish MR by level 8-10 if you performed well early game, else by the time you've farmed these items you'll still be lvls10-14 - which personally I feel is enough MR to last till late game FoN (Also hex shield Op). This item build maximizes Garen's early game dominance by removing your biggest threat early on (magic burst deepz). Then get da Mallet cuz Q proc's slow = garentee'd full judgement to face and proceed to build generic Tanky DPS.
21-9-0.
ArmpenQuints/reds. Mr/lvl blues(I use flat cdr page for low magic dmg teams), HP/Lvl yellows.
I'm pretty sure flash/ignite is better than ghost/ignite (as he already has q and usually a ghostblade) and 21/9/0 or some variation of havoc mastery is pretty standard.
Always open boots + 3 pot, otherwise you're throwing away your ridiculous level 1-5 game.
And do yourself a favor and put flat AD runes on all your physical champs.
On July 27 2011 11:05 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: I'm pretty sure flash/ignite is better than ghost/ignite (as he already has q and usually a ghostblade) and 21/9/0 or some variation of havoc mastery is pretty standard.
Always open boots + 3 pot, otherwise you're throwing away your ridiculous level 1-5 game.
And do yourself a favor and put flat AD runes on all your physical champs.
Flash/Ignite is better on Garen
Boots first is only opening.
For Garen, Flat AD Marks make a lot of sense but again, it's an investment. Otherwise, ArPen is still very good.
rule #1 to playing garen,don't pick garen unless u have a partner rule #2 start doran blades(it gives u a superior early game than boots believe it or not~) rule #3 21/9/0 always,dont forget the dodge yellows~ rule #4 ignite flash...plz no fucking ghost rule #5 CAMP BRUSHS!
On July 27 2011 08:07 Truez wrote: I tend to go, Boots->2-3dblades->Hexdrinker->Mercs->Frozenmallet->Atmas->Funfire->FoN (Vice versa depending on team comp).
Early Hexdrinker is pretty great, nice damage and MR + underrated shield. Hex+mercs+Mr/lvl's+Masteries=110ish MR by level 8-10 if you performed well early game, else by the time you've farmed these items you'll still be lvls10-14 - which personally I feel is enough MR to last till late game FoN (Also hex shield Op). This item build maximizes Garen's early game dominance by removing your biggest threat early on (magic burst deepz). Then get da Mallet cuz Q proc's slow = garentee'd full judgement to face and proceed to build generic Tanky DPS.
21-9-0.
ArmpenQuints/reds. Mr/lvl blues(I use flat cdr page for low magic dmg teams), HP/Lvl yellows.
Edit: Masteries n stuff.
Same items as you, except i go 21-9-0, MS quints, arp marks, mres/lvl blues and dodge seals. Them nimbleness es OP. also flash/ignite
Brutalizer early game if you're playing bot lane is very good too.
I don't bother with brutalizer, since ghostblade is really ehh, I never get ghostbuild and think WOW this was useful. I go like 3 dblades-->Blood thirster-->Atmogs with maybe a negatron.
Reasoning: "Tank" garen is really dumb because all he has is burst damage he has nothing that makes him a tank. No initation, no cc. However, with just mercs and level 5 courage you're hitting at 125 MR + your W gives damage reduction, and your armour with just atmas is just as high, and you will probably have dodge yellows and nimbleless. You are already pretty tanky. Garens best trait is being able to burst down somebody under silence, so I tend to maxmize this by going AD spam. You can easily survive the 4-5 seconds you need to (flash) W Q E Ignite R somebody, and once you get that combo off you are useless until next E cooldown, so having sunfire and being in the fight the whole time is just a ticket to dying to any good ranged carry.
The burst damage definitely helps you avoid those problems where its like "oh my whole team is dead except me and I can't kill them, team must be bad".
I think locicero did something similar and I remember thinking how stupid BT would be on garen. But the damage is really insane. BT-->Atmas-->Warmogs would be my go to build into a maybe a negatron, last whisper, infinity edge, something like that.
Garens base AD scaling and burst is insanely high. Like 4.1 AD scaling? Almost as good as a lee sin who hits all his spells, and your base damage is better and its easier to land your spells.
I've been having lots of success with dorans blade first into boots and 2 more dorans into bloodthirster into atmogs into fon. (order depending on enemy team comp). 21-9-0 Armor pen reds, dodge yellows, mr/lvl blues, ms quints.
I go qeew. The early point in w is to get some stacks on it. I start dorans blade and buy boots d blade and brutalizer on first trip back. The brutalizer is for the extra armour pen and cdr you upgrade to ghost blade last and if you're playing Garen the game should be over before you get a complete build. I like atma's and sunfire cape. FoN or early hexdrinker against ap heavy teams. I've never needed speed three boots when i've run nimbleness, tabi or merc treads. Frozen mallet I.E. and Last whisper are good offensive options.
Protip: e will remove your slows. use weq to gtfo of that 4v1 you were about to engage with out burning flash. Going 21-9-0 is my favorite. Nimbleness is good at getting to the carry with out melting, take magic pen in teh offensive tree, its one point, and your ultimate does magic damage plus you're going to like having the 4 points in cool down reduction.
For shits and giggles. magic pen red. dodge yellow. mr per level blues. armour pen quints.
go 21-9-0 with nimbleness magic penetration and cdr in the reds.
Build Sword of the occult and leviathan. now that you're kicking ass its time to get death fires grasp and a lichbanes and a hat. you hit them with dfg lichbanes q e to spin stop spinning with e and hit that r. you basically murder any tank in one combo.
TL;DR be pro play DFG lichbanes AP Garen after snowballing out of control because of your imbalanced early game.
I recommend 21-9-0 everytime. You need the damage to abuse his early game damage, and you can compromise on damage/resists/hp etc through items during the game.
I recommend opening dorans blade if you have a partner and go bottom.
I recommend dorans sheild, regrowth pendant, ruby crystal or null magic mantle or boots if you go top, depending ofcourse.
Flash > ghost.
1. Flash is OP, I recomend flash on almost every champion, and it synergizes extremely well with garen. Garen does not autoattack much, he is a tanky dps caster. Q > E > Tank. Flash + Q is a brilliant initiate.
Health regen quints are if your solo top, armour pen for bottom. Dodge yellows are brilliant, you get plenty of armour from W + items, so dodge is better. Health/lvl or Health regen/level would be 2nd and 3rd pick after dodge. And his item build can lean in favour of armour a lot easier than in favour of magic resistance. Move speed is a no go on Garen once you pass the early levels/elo hell.
The general goal behind Garen is to get as much damage as you can possibly get, while being tanky enough to run in Rambo. Thats all Garen can really do. He is not a tank, nor a tanky dps, nor a bruiser, nor an initiater nor anything else. He is just a rambo.
Wut? I knock down half life on some champions? Well don't mind if i do.
Doran > Shoes (MR or CD) > Brutal > Infinite > Who really gives a fuck?
Garen is clearly not in a balanced place right now. At level one you can auto-atack and Q strike someone wich will instantly give you the lane if you can pull it off.
I only level Q after maxing out E but Q is still hitting for a ton, not to mention the silence and the speed it gives you. You are up and away before anyone turns to ask if they can have their hp bar back.
With his W you can tower dive without any problems, you outrun most champions in this game and nobody can start a prolonged fight with you because there are few skills that do more damage over time then his E spin. That said they can't really go for a poke war either because nothing pokes as hard as Q at level 1. His ultimate just provides that ton of raw damage that you need to bring people down from 100% > 0% if they walk into your combo.
I don't see how he got this strong and how he was overlooked so long. People have been building him tank for too long i suppose.
Garen is also a cruell bastard to feed because when he spins into your team he is just dishing out insane numbers. E deals great single target damage wich just happens to also be AoE.
Ooh did i mention he never ever has to leave the lane unless he feels like it?
On August 07 2011 18:22 Truez wrote: You know with all that sick AD, the enemy team is sure to have no problems bursting you down before you can land your "insane numbers".
It takes approximately 4 seconds from target range to doing your full amount of damage probably killing them. Your W will basically be up for the whole time, meaning if you had a solo lane and merc treads we're looking at ~125/125 resists I'm pretty sure you can survive 4 seconds and then flash out.
On August 07 2011 18:22 Truez wrote: You know with all that sick AD, the enemy team is sure to have no problems bursting you down before you can land your "insane numbers".
If only i had a skill that allowed me to mitigate damage to such a degree that focussing me would cost them so much skills that my team would win anyway.
Garen is naturally one of the most tankiest champions in the game but supposedly he is going to have massive problems surviving whilst just about any other champion can easily survive teamfights with half his hp and half his mitigation.
He has 100+ natural stats on mr and armor and he can activate it to receive a hugh mitigation boost. His basic HP is also quite high. But by all means keep going tank Garen, expecting idiots to dump all their damage on you for no reason whilst you dish out a silence wich is 0.5 seconds shorter then Soraka.
ok I tried soloing garen (top) a few ranked games with Slayer91's build (more or less: dblade, mercs/tabi, +++ dblades, BT, atmas, warmog/mallet, FoN etc)
Basicly stacking a fuckton of AD and then get tanky stuff as the game goes on.
And fuck yeah garen is good. You can bully about anything that is common top. Especially irelia's are crying on that lane against garen. Most of the time I ended up 1v2 because their junglers had to camp top 24/7 so their "solo" can rack up at least some farm after getting spinned to death a couple times. It is recommended to tell your jungler from the beginning to pressure mid/bottom/jungle very hard if you know you will win your lane top.
In teamfights its just hilarious to flash ignite QER ppl. Garen feels lackluster when you dont have a strong initator like ww/ashe/rammus or w/e. But he is so fucking strong when your team can initiate a good fight.
I found out that garen is not only a good anti carry but also a good anti anti carry. When your opponents have akali/noct or something like that then you dont even have to flash/flank w/e. You just stay near the most likely to get killed soon carry and then WTFPWN the assassin that jumps on him.
My end game has been IE, Merc treads, mallet, atmas, last whisper, FoN. Build gives decent hp, really strong attack and with his W he feels tanky enough. what do others think?
On August 13 2011 13:32 wussleeQ wrote: My end game has been IE, Merc treads, mallet, atmas, last whisper, FoN. Build gives decent hp, really strong attack and with his W he feels tanky enough. what do others think?
Oh shit i'm a firebat! 500 posts lol
shhhhhhhh do not ever talk about TL icons or they come...
On August 16 2011 08:59 supdubdup wrote: Garen is a viable top elo pick right now. ;> Have funs.
Garen is barely buffed, he has always been a really strong laner and moderately strong mid gamer.
They gave him 2 slight buffs to what he was already good at, and suddenly he is viable top elo? Ha!
He is slightly better than he was, but hes pretty much as good as he always was, and still has a ton of problems with teamwork/lategame play/filling tanky dps role properly etc etc
..
And on the topic of rewarding skills:
1. Lee Sin ulti into 4 other people, and watch them take 800+ physical each while bouncing in the air :D
Garen on my team rushed tier 3 boots, then warmogs and sunfire. Ugh.
I am thinking of picking up another tanky dps, but I am not really sure on which I could get. Garen seems like a good choice, but why should I pick him over the likes of Jarvan or Trundle?
Garen on my team rushed tier 3 boots, then warmogs and sunfire. Ugh.
I am thinking of picking up another tanky dps, but I am not really sure on which I could get. Garen seems like a good choice, but why should I pick him over the likes of Jarvan or Trundle?
Because if a Garen meets either of those he will shit over them so hard it will put them off from ever going solo top again.
Garen hard counters all the popular solo tops atm.
Playing Garen is like playing a magical settup that crushes support + carry bot. If you have something like that it means that any serious game is yours for the taking.
Garen on my team rushed tier 3 boots, then warmogs and sunfire. Ugh.
I am thinking of picking up another tanky dps, but I am not really sure on which I could get. Garen seems like a good choice, but why should I pick him over the likes of Jarvan or Trundle?
Because Jarvan and Trundle are mediocre solo tops that are also jungle-capable (and arguably better in the jungle), while Garen is the master of crushing either bottom or top lane?
If you want a jungle tanky DPS, then don't get Garen and consider Jarvan or Trundle. If you're not interested in jungling, Garen is probably one of the best to take in either sidelane atm.
On August 17 2011 06:33 robertdinh wrote: Garen is pretty faceroll, when I played him it was easier than playing any other champion in the game.
But I can beat any garen solo top as mundo.
Garen has insane level 2/3 burst, and Mundo doesn't really gain the ability to fight a lot of lanes till 6 off his ulti sustain. Unless Garen walks into like every cleaver, he should have solid control of the lane until then, after which he should just be able to ride the advantage he built up in the first 5 levels.
Garen can not out cs mundo without using his abilities, and each time he does he opens himself up to eating huge damage by mundo for a brief window. Any mundo built right has good burst too. I won't say mundo's burst is better than garens, but matchup wise a mundo played right will outlane a garen up top. From level 1-4 mundo has an edge balance wise, after that they both have their pros and cons, and then at level 11 mundo definitively beats out garen for the rest of the game. But the matchup goes to mundo because from 4-11 mundo can keep up with garen in CS, he just can't get sloppy and go for a bad engage.
I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
Basically if you force mundo to go buy before you after fail ganking him near his tower and burning your flash, you open yourself up to jungle ganks and you give him the chance to get another item and pots. If you choose to back later on when you feel your wave is pushed well that point will never come vs a good mundo. Cause pretty much if mundo has bought and garen hasn't, and garen has blown flash and ignite on a fail gank, mundo can basically bully the lane, keep it right outside of his tower range, and sit in the bushes never letting garen get any exp or gold.
It's a matchup where garen will win if both players are equally skilled, until you get to higher skilled players.
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
No, that's the Mundo player being a better player overall. There's nothing to suggest that Mundo has superior creep control inherent in his kit than Garen (you can of course try to argue that, but you haven't done so), so you can't really expect the argument "I freeze the lane in front of my tower" to work, when Garen can do the exact same thing and zone you from there.
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
No, that's the Mundo player being a better player overall. There's nothing to suggest that Mundo has superior creep control inherent in his kit than Garen, so you can't really expect the argument "I freeze the lane in front of my tower" to work, when Garen can do the exact same thing and zone you from there.
Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Mundo controls a lane vs garen much better than the garen can, if he wants he can just avoid last hitting altogether til the lane pushes right outside his tower. Sit in the bush and garen either gets bullied far back or wastes abilities to get in and get out to last hit, in which case mundo will take huge chunks of his life.
On August 17 2011 07:46 robertdinh wrote: Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Explain how you punish him for autoattacking creeps?
You can't cleaver him because he's standing inside a hodgepodge of melee creeps. And if you walk up to use any other ability, you obviously eat a full combo, which is a losing trade for Mundo unless you have ultimate to heal back up.
On August 17 2011 07:46 robertdinh wrote: Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Explain how you punish him for autoattacking creeps?
You can't cleaver him because he's standing inside a hodgepodge of melee creeps. And if you walk up to use any other ability, you obviously eat a full combo, which is a losing trade for Mundo unless you have ultimate to heal back up.
You do realize his combo basically pushes the lane hard, is easy to avoid, and easy to bait out of him right?
I am talking 2 highly skilled players, mundo wins everytime. Garen can't exactly sit pushed up in a lane before the first buy, and even after that it's still not safe. Because of the bushes and having a ranged skill shot mundo can zone him out of the lane, it's going to happen at high skill, the way it happens just depends on which way garen wants to let it happen.
Basically anytime garen silences or attempts to spin, you just kite him and after it's done you take 30percent of his health. He can't do anything about it before level 6, and after level 6 you can stay in lane way longer than him.
I think you are selling mundo short because he is so underplayed in 5s now and 99.9% of the people that do play him don't build him right.
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
No, that's the Mundo player being a better player overall. There's nothing to suggest that Mundo has superior creep control inherent in his kit than Garen, so you can't really expect the argument "I freeze the lane in front of my tower" to work, when Garen can do the exact same thing and zone you from there.
Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Mundo controls a lane vs garen much better than the garen can, if he wants he can just avoid last hitting altogether til the lane pushes right outside his tower. Sit in the bush and garen either gets bullied far back or wastes abilities to get in and get out to last hit, in which case mundo will take huge chunks of his life.
Since a part of me feels like Yango fell for complete trollbait here...
Would you care to share at which ranked elo your way of playing Mundo consistently beats Garen players solo top?
Also, please explain to me (since I'm a scrub at Garen) which of his ranged abilities Garen has to use to out-cs Mundo. Last time I checked, walking up to a creep, hitting it and loling at a random Cleaver that prolly hits one of your own minions is not called "using abilities to not get outfarmed"...
Edit 'cause I got ninja'd:
I am talking 2 highly skilled players, mundo wins everytime. Garen can't exactly sit pushed up in a lane before the first buy, and even after that it's still not safe. Because of the bushes and having a ranged skill shot mundo can zone him out of the lane, it's going to happen at high skill, the way it happens just depends on which way garen wants to let it happen.
Also please share with us at which ranked ELO you frequently see two "highly skilled players" solo top with Mundo vs Garen. I'd love to hear that part.
Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who spams Qs + presses E then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
No, that's the Mundo player being a better player overall. There's nothing to suggest that Mundo has superior creep control inherent in his kit than Garen, so you can't really expect the argument "I freeze the lane in front of my tower" to work, when Garen can do the exact same thing and zone you from there.
Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Mundo controls a lane vs garen much better than the garen can, if he wants he can just avoid last hitting altogether til the lane pushes right outside his tower. Sit in the bush and garen either gets bullied far back or wastes abilities to get in and get out to last hit, in which case mundo will take huge chunks of his life.
Since a part of me feels like Yango fell for complete trollbait here...
Would you care to share at which ranked elo your way of playing Mundo consistently beats Garen players solo top?
Also, please explain to me (since I'm a scrub at Garen) which of his ranged abilities Garen has to use to out-cs Mundo. Last time I checked, walking up to a creep, hitting it and loling at a random Cleaver that prolly hits one of your own minions is not called "using abilities to not get outfarmed"...
My way of playing mundo will beat any garen at any rank in top lane. Unfortunately the game is 5v5 and garen and mundo aren't generally efficient picks composition wise for the team.
unless you get like 2 crits with sadism every time garen goes for a q there's no way a mundo could out-dps garen likewise his combo is nearly unavoidable if you go for a melee lasthit because of the speed on q for garen as for lane control that comes down to individual players' skills but its also very difficult to perfectly consistently freeze a lane at any given point or place in the lane unless you tank some amounts of minion aggro which is deadly earlygame
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
On August 17 2011 08:00 Navi wrote: unless you get like 2 crits with sadism every time garen goes for a q there's no way a mundo could out-dps garen likewise his combo is nearly unavoidable if you go for a melee lasthit because of the speed on q for garen as for lane control that comes down to individual players' skills but its also very difficult to perfectly consistently freeze a lane at any given point or place in the lane unless you tank some amounts of minion aggro which is deadly earlygame
i will test out garen vs mundo with you
I think you mean masochism, and yes, crit masochisms hurt
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth/Garen+Taric? Sion+2nd stun?
Any comp that can play more aggressively? Not like Mundo oozes power when he's not by himself.
On August 17 2011 07:04 R04R wrote: I'm pretty sure a good flash->q->e->ignite at level 3 or 5 will either 70-0 mundo or force him out of lane and make him b. Even if mundo only has to B, that's still a lane advantage for the Garen.
I'm pretty sure a good mundo can keep the lane pushed right outside his tower the whole time, and can punish garen each time he tries to push the lane through to the tower to reset it. I am also pretty sure a good mundo is well aware of the faceroll combos garen has and knows how to stay protected from that. I'm also pretty sure only a low elo garen would go for that combo on a good mundo and completely open himself up to a gank if he blows his flash.
No, that's the Mundo player being a better player overall. There's nothing to suggest that Mundo has superior creep control inherent in his kit than Garen, so you can't really expect the argument "I freeze the lane in front of my tower" to work, when Garen can do the exact same thing and zone you from there.
Garen can't though, mundo has cleave and bushes to work with. Garen HAS to use his abilities to out cs mundo, each time he does he opens himself up to mundo burst for a few seconds. A good mundo simply last hits, same with a good garen, the problem being garen can not last hit vs mundo without using abilities, cause if he just tries to auto attack ill zone him outta the lane anyway, or he will only be equal in cs, in which case i'll destroy him after 11 even moreso than already.
Mundo controls a lane vs garen much better than the garen can, if he wants he can just avoid last hitting altogether til the lane pushes right outside his tower. Sit in the bush and garen either gets bullied far back or wastes abilities to get in and get out to last hit, in which case mundo will take huge chunks of his life.
Since a part of me feels like Yango fell for complete trollbait here...
Would you care to share at which ranked elo your way of playing Mundo consistently beats Garen players solo top?
Also, please explain to me (since I'm a scrub at Garen) which of his ranged abilities Garen has to use to out-cs Mundo. Last time I checked, walking up to a creep, hitting it and loling at a random Cleaver that prolly hits one of your own minions is not called "using abilities to not get outfarmed"...
My way of playing mundo will beat any garen at any rank in top lane. Unfortunately the game is 5v5 and garen and mundo aren't generally efficient picks composition wise for the team.
-You don't want to share your summoner name and server. -You don't want to share your ELO.
You claim that you found a way of playing Mundo solo top vs Garen that you will beat ANY player at ANY rank.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
Most people won't experience the teemo mundo beatdown because we don't want to show it to everyone and have it become fotm. But I was expecting at least better theory crafting, like caitlyn + support. Not friggin pantheon who can't even escape from mundo the moment he gets in melee range.
But this is a garen thread, so i am not gonna talk about teemo mundo bot lane anymore.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 08:04 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:01 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
Panth/taric can not outfarm teemo/mundo, sorry man hate to ruin your world.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 08:04 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:01 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
Panth/taric can not outfarm teemo/mundo, sorry man hate to ruin your world.
What's your handle ingame? The stuff that you're trying to advocate isn't innovative. It's flat out ridiculous. You're giving a lane to Teemo/Mundo vs double CC? At level 3, it's not even fair.
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 08:04 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:01 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
Panth/taric can not outfarm teemo/mundo, sorry man hate to ruin your world.
What's your handle ingame? The stuff that you're trying to advocate isn't innovative. It's flat out ridiculous. You're giving a lane to Teemo/Mundo vs double CC? At level 3, it's not even fair.
I'm sorry but panth and taric won't even make it to level 3 vs teemo/mundo without giving up fb or getting zoned out hard. This is why I love LoL though, you have theorycrafters who believe it HAS to be played a certain way, then the meta changes cause someone does something diff on stream. Sorta like SC2 evolves after people claim certain matchups have to be done a certain way.
I don't understand how panth and taric are ever supposed to catch teemo in that matchup, they cant get close without eating dmg from mundo
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 08:04 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:01 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 07:58 GARO wrote: Don't worry, this guy doesn't lose bot lane with mundo+teemo and he has more experience with the doctor than all of us. I mean, he has secrets none of us can even comprehend about playing a champ who hits q+e then right clicks!
First trolling the dota2 thread, now LoL with his superb 'experience'
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
Panth/taric can not outfarm teemo/mundo, sorry man hate to ruin your world.
What's your handle ingame? The stuff that you're trying to advocate isn't innovative. It's flat out ridiculous. You're giving a lane to Teemo/Mundo vs double CC? At level 3, it's not even fair.
I'm sorry but panth and taric won't even make it to level 3 vs teemo/mundo without giving up fb or getting zoned out hard. This is why I love LoL though, you have theorycrafters who believe it HAS to be played a certain way, then the meta changes cause someone does something diff on stream. Sorta like SC2 evolves after people claim certain matchups have to be done a certain way.
I don't understand how panth and taric are ever supposed to catch teemo in that matchup, they cant get close without eating dmg from mundo
Again, what's your ingame handle? I'd be more than happy to test this out with you.
Considering we've seen Taric/Panth lanes in high elo, I've never seen Mundo/Teemo at all. So in this situation, you're the one theorycrafting the possible success of something "new" vs something already established.
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
So they freeze the lane level 1. Panth/Taric are stronger midgame without farm than Teemo/Mundo, and they have to walk into combo range in order to CS.
Panth and taric will die to teemo mundo at level 1. I don't know what you are talking about.
On August 17 2011 08:04 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:01 robertdinh wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 GARO wrote:
On August 17 2011 08:00 robertdinh wrote: [quote]
Name a comp that can't get zoned in bot lane by teemo mundo, or at the very least can't get outfarmed.
Panth+Taric? hurr durr
Thanks for the free FB teemo.
I'm sorry this isn't low elo, people don't just walk into stuns.
P.S. Mundo in front and if they tried to dive teemo they would both be dead .
P.P.S. Panth and taric will get outfarmed so hard by mundo and teemo.
P.P.P.S. If only blind didn't absolutely crap all over panth.
Apparently in his world, Blind means Panth can't spearshot people.
Oh so now pantheon is spear shotting teemo to death? lol We all know that's the source of pantheon ganks, the spearshot.
The sad part is that he actually believes that Pantheon doesn't rely on spears to win the lane. No point in derailing this further if you don't even know anything about the subject matter you're talking about.
Panth/taric can not outfarm teemo/mundo, sorry man hate to ruin your world.
What's your handle ingame? The stuff that you're trying to advocate isn't innovative. It's flat out ridiculous. You're giving a lane to Teemo/Mundo vs double CC? At level 3, it's not even fair.
I'm sorry but panth and taric won't even make it to level 3 vs teemo/mundo without giving up fb or getting zoned out hard. This is why I love LoL though, you have theorycrafters who believe it HAS to be played a certain way, then the meta changes cause someone does something diff on stream. Sorta like SC2 evolves after people claim certain matchups have to be done a certain way.
I don't understand how panth and taric are ever supposed to catch teemo in that matchup, they cant get close without eating dmg from mundo
Again, what's your ingame handle? I'd be more than happy to test this out with you.
Considering we've seen Taric/Panth lanes in high elo, I've never seen Mundo/Teemo at all. So in this situation, you're the one theorycrafting the possible success of something "new" vs something already established.
What is YOUR in game handle and do you play on US? Also you don't see mundo teemo because mundo doesn't fit into optimum 5v5 builds, 2v2 bot lane is a diff story.
It's funny because they're talking about a bot lane in a champ thread that contains 4 champs that aren't the champ in question.
IMO, this should just go back onto Garen and why the terribad people I was playing with when I first started playing ranked called him "Garden." Does he grow flowers for a living?
Top level mundos wont lose to garen solo top. It's so easy to control garens lane. Now galio, that's someone that would give mundo trouble 1v1 solo right now.
I've been going for a couple dblades, phage, straight into atmas, finish mallet, with a negatron in there somewhere - you can either turn it into fon or build LW. You get seriously tanky with this build and it scales very well.
On August 17 2011 12:18 UniversalSnip wrote: I've been going for a couple dblades, phage, straight into atmas, finish mallet, with a negatron in there somewhere - you can either turn it into fon or build LW. You get seriously tanky with this build and it scales very well.
I daresay that Brutalizer is core. Great item for ArPen and CDR. Both things Garen needs early on to shine in lane. Otherwise, fine build. More or less what I go on Garen as well.
I don't know if this has been mentioned or not because I stopped reading backwards after the Mundo Garen solotop arguement.
I prefer to take a point in the w at level 4. The reasoning behind this is at level 5 you're getting a solid 800 burst from auto attack- then q silence - spin. Toss in ignite and you're problebly going to be able to get a kill on a squishy. At level 6 you're aa - q - ignite - spin - ult is definately going to kill squishies. They burn flash you burn flash too. Need to dive to finish the kill? Its K cause you got that w.
I also use the W so I can walk up and Q the tower from level 4-8. If they can't hard cc you under the tower you may be able to bait the enemy into attacking you instead of cleaning the minions. With shield up you're eating less damage. They get less cs and you get to hit on tower, or you just get hits on the tower.
The time to build stacks on w is early/ early mid when garen is at his best. If you wait until 8, 10, or 13 its going to be much harder to build up the stacks on it, and with the recent buff to allow more than 5 stacks you only need one point to make use of the passive. Just my two cents.
ok I have a question, the tooltip for garens Spin says that it scales off critical strike chance as well, but I was wondering if anyone knew exactly how/how much it scaled. In game, I only ever notice it scaling for attack damage and havent seen any numbers to suggest otherwise.
After reading for over half a year now I finally couldn't resist registering here at TL, so I gotta say "Hello everybody!".
I've been playing Garen only after he was so freaking OP (yes, the one with sunfire stacking) in the very past.
Since November last year I followed his nerf / buff progress in patchnotes with great interest as soon as I realized that there was still hope for him to be playable. Imo, right now he is not only playable but even viable (funnily enough, Tree Eskimo is streaming right now playing Garen).
Most things are more or less common sense, but still I am torn apart when it comes down to some decisions.
Runes:
MS Quints (sometimes miss the RAW power of +10 ArPen tho) ArPen reds Armor yellows (running flat, but might try out scaling ones) MR blues (per lvl for sure)
Masteries:
I used to go 21 offense always but Movespeed Quints stack so nicely with 15/0/15 movement speed masteries and the +EXP mastery is so good for that surprise instagib FB at early lvl 2 (push lane a bit, get lvl 2 and just flash -> q -> ignite + spin for FB works almost always).
Item build:
D-Blade stacking for early game madness, no question. But how to follow up? Tbh, I don't really like Brutalizer. Its stats are nice, no question, but I feel like you should not follow up with only +25 AD after you already stacked D-Blades. Imo, Garen needs some more power to tighten his favourable position from early game.
So I have gone two routes after D-Blade:
1. Warmog -> Atmas:
with a spin into 5 enemies during teamfights you rack up kills (or at least assists) for your Warmog's pretty easy. Then, when you finish Atma's, your AD jumps up from 120ish (base damage + Dorans) to 180+. In a usual Garen game, you are unkillable at that point of time. Big disadvantage: there is a time gap where a faster chunk of AD would ensure your killing streak. If the enemy is smart, he might pull off a comeback during the time you need to get your Atmogs.
2. B. F. Sword item -> Atmogs
Regarding the missing AD of route one: with BT or (if super fed) IE you keep melting ppl in one spin but will die from time to time. Lately, I have been prefering this route and was delaying Atmogs god mode for more power.
However, in the end my full build looks like that:
Merc Boots Infinity Edge Warmogs Atmas Last Whisper FoN / GA
This way, I'm still a threat late game so ppl can't ignore me.
On August 29 2011 19:34 little fancy wrote: I used to go 21 offense always but Movespeed Quints stack so nicely with 15/0/15 movement speed masteries and the +EXP mastery is so good for that surprise instagib FB at early lvl 2 (push lane a bit, get lvl 2 and just flash -> q -> ignite + spin for FB works almost always).
Nimbleness procs absolutely dwarf any movespeed you get from the movespeed masteries, and Q being an autoattack means you'll pick up minion aggro when you go in anyway. Ditching nimbleness for 15 util not worth it, IMO.
On a related note, what are peoples' opinions on swifties vs. dodge boots? It feels like if you have all the other sources of dodge (runes + dodge masteries), you can reasonably get dodge procs in lane off minion aggro, and in teamfights off random autoattacks, which is significantly more of a movespeed boost than the difference between boots2 and boots3. Obviously not reliable, but given the armor, the dodge, and the fact that dodge boots cost 150 gold less than swifties, it feels like unless you're against a team where the armor/dodge do nothing (in which case, it's very likely you'll want mercs), dodge boots give you more bang for your buck.
I updated the item build significantly. I've really fallen out of favor with brutalizer as it (and ghost blade) just suck late game. Garen is retarded tanky because of W buffs now so he can rush a BF item ezpz and still be tanky.
edit: god my guide is so ugly too. I need to add pictures and make it pretty.
I just go Dblade -> boots + 2nd dblade -> bruta for laning -> BT -> GA -> moar BT+LW
His AD ratios are ridic and on garen you're so damn tanky with nothing but mercs and GA i dont see the point of getting more defensive shit. With mercs+GA and my runes (armor yellow+scaling mres blue) I have 173 armor and 165 mres with 2.3k hp. Turn on W and you're invincible for 4 seconds. Atmogs could work, but I prefer that earlier BT to really capitalize on Garen's early-mid game burst. And after 25+ minutes, building warmogs generally isn't a good idea as it takes too long for it to charge up fully.
I still go Boots, Blade, Blade, Brutalizer, Phage, Mallet, Atma, FoN. Negatron whenever needed.
Haven't tried BF builds yet but that Phage and Brutalizer is just too gud of a combo when you're solo top. Both items give AD. CDR, ArPen, slow proc. Just seems like more overall utility than a BF sword. :X
^ I almost always use that build too. Ofc Blade and boots are interchangeable depending on your lane opponent. If you don't immediately need the mallet proc it's good to leave it as phage and belt and build something else.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't CDR be pretty good on Garen? Since he has no mana/energy/fury to manage, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to spam abilities?
On September 01 2011 14:02 Requizen wrote: Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't CDR be pretty good on Garen? Since he has no mana/energy/fury to manage, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to spam abilities?
you are 100% correct with that hence why brutalizer is so great on him a lot of people go ionian's on him too but that's preference
On September 01 2011 14:02 Requizen wrote: Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't CDR be pretty good on Garen? Since he has no mana/energy/fury to manage, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to spam abilities?
it's good but you don't have the item slots for it. you want to take advantage of his ridic AD scaling and his natural tankyness so that's why you build the dblades+brut and mallet+atmas. I really really like BF sword builds 'cause it's too funny to see your spin do 500+ dmg a second, but the mallet+atmas stuff is probably safer.
On September 01 2011 14:02 Requizen wrote: Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't CDR be pretty good on Garen? Since he has no mana/energy/fury to manage, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to spam abilities?
it's good but you don't have the item slots for it. you want to take advantage of his ridic AD scaling and his natural tankyness so that's why you build the dblades+brut and mallet+atmas. I really really like BF sword builds 'cause it's too funny to see your spin do 500+ dmg a second, but the mallet+atmas stuff is probably safer.
21/9/0 is mandatory on garen with arpen/arpen/dodge/flat mr
There's 0 argument on this.
Build-wise it's nice to have some set paths but basically you build to fit the game, never cookie-cutter on garen because there's so much difference in his roles in different comps.
On August 29 2011 20:04 TheYango wrote: On a related note, what are peoples' opinions on swifties vs. dodge boots? It feels like if you have all the other sources of dodge (runes + dodge masteries), you can reasonably get dodge procs in lane off minion aggro, and in teamfights off random autoattacks, which is significantly more of a movespeed boost than the difference between boots2 and boots3. Obviously not reliable, but given the armor, the dodge, and the fact that dodge boots cost 150 gold less than swifties, it feels like unless you're against a team where the armor/dodge do nothing (in which case, it's very likely you'll want mercs), dodge boots give you more bang for your buck.
Dodge boots are really underused IMO. I get dodge boots on Jax/Singed (two obvious choices since I take dodge masteries with both of them, and they both benefit hugely from increased dodge chance), but I've even started trying them on WW/Udyr when I get the chance to play those guys in top lane against other physical bruisers. Random nimbleness procs are fun on WW when you're chasing someone down with Blood Scent and get a huge random speedboost from dodging a creep attack, and also on Udyr when you're in bear stance and again dodge said creep attack.
Is it me or is garen the best pubstomper in the game atm?
I am taking a break from ranked till the season ends so i am trying out diffrent champs and garen seem to roflstomp normal games without a sweat. I have yet to fail a lane with garen and I was: solo, solo top, 1v2 top, duo lane without support/with support, mid - evrey single time i crushed the lane.
He level 2 power is unmathced in game and if you are laneing vs melees they are fucked and if you manage to land q on ranged squishy he is dead on level 2 with ignite.
Its even easier to get fed on him then on annie mid
For the record, Garen/Mundo plays out as Mundo trying to safely last hit with cleaver until 6, while Garen gets freefarm but can't actually aggress Mundo without eating too many cleavers. Mundo is scarier late game imo though.
So I think I get the item buying order, but when do you sell stuff? I quickly find myself running out of slots, when do you sell your first Blade? While working on Atma's?
Should you still take ignite vs a strong top laner such as renekton or Lee Sin? I feel that the powergap is closed by them if they take exhaust and you take ignite
hm. I agree in the part that if garen doesnt get fed hes not that great when it plays out to late game unless hes been farming like a beast. Imo Garen isnt that great because If he doesnt get fed he falls off hard lategame. I also find that a duo ranged slow lane can beat a garen/taric lane, I just dont see what they can do about it.
I like to play garen as dps at the start and then get hp for atma. For spells i get flash and exhaust for slow and help at 1v1 at top where you should be. For items i start with dor blade or shield depends on enemy then get boots brutalizer and frozen mallet this gets you nice dmg slow and hp combined with passive of courage where you get armor enought for 50% dmg reduction. After this just get what you need
On September 12 2011 08:19 Akuemon wrote: hm. I agree in the part that if garen doesnt get fed hes not that great when it plays out to late game unless hes been farming like a beast. Imo Garen isnt that great because If he doesnt get fed he falls off hard lategame. I also find that a duo ranged slow lane can beat a garen/taric lane, I just dont see what they can do about it.
They can't move while stunned and thus will lose atleast half their hp?
Garen+Taric bot lane works really well, but only if the other team doesn't have Ali or to a lesser extend Janna as the support. Those two can really eff up your Taric stun+Garen follow up combo and without that combo you're pretty screwed since it'll be hard to cs without taking a bunch of ranged harass every time you try.
On September 13 2011 21:02 arb wrote: i edge on Garen is so much fun, when you Q people for like half their health. lawl.
Also do the crits from his E scale off the bonus crit damage from iedge?
I believe that they do, but the whole formula is really weird because only the AD factored bonus damage crits, at least back when I played Garen, it's admittedly been awhile.
On September 14 2011 23:11 Koenig99 wrote: So how much did the nerfs change Garen? Wont have a chance to try him until tomorrow.
well on paper he is weaker until he goes back the first time. After you go back and come with boots and 3 dblades your stronger. I think it will lead into more passivity at early levels into a better mid-lategame.
On September 14 2011 23:11 Koenig99 wrote: So how much did the nerfs change Garen? Wont have a chance to try him until tomorrow.
well on paper he is weaker until he goes back the first time. After you go back and come with boots and 3 dblades your stronger. I think it will lead into more passivity at early levels into a better mid-lategame.
You need at least 50 bonus AD before the after-patch Judgment does as much damage as the pre-patch one, and if you want to have the same damage from Q + E you need significantly more (the math is complicated because Q scales off of total AD so Garen's AD from leveling up comes into play).
You however are 100% definitively weaker with 3 dblade + boots after this patch goes up.
On September 14 2011 23:11 Koenig99 wrote: So how much did the nerfs change Garen? Wont have a chance to try him until tomorrow.
well on paper he is weaker until he goes back the first time. After you go back and come with boots and 3 dblades your stronger. I think it will lead into more passivity at early levels into a better mid-lategame.
You need at least 50 bonus AD before the after-patch Judgment does as much damage as the pre-patch one, and if you want to have the same damage from Q + E you need significantly more (the math is complicated because Q scales off of total AD so Garen's AD from leveling up comes into play).
You however are 100% definitively weaker with 3 dblade + boots after this patch goes up.
yeah its true:
ratio buff: 0.2*3=0.6 damage nerf: 10*3=30 30/0.6=50
so its even worse. You need to go back at least 2 times to have the same/more power than prepatch. Riot really wants passive gameplay hard.
If only those EUW servers would come back online so I could try how hard that nerf really hits...
However, maybe we just have to play Garen with other masteries / rune setups.
Quints + yellows = +11 flat bonus AD? Starting with Doran's Blade and +3 bonus damage from offensive tree it would be 50+ (24 x 1.4) = 83,6 dmg per tick on judgment lvl 1.
Or perhabs he should be played with defensive masteries now (9/21/0 probaby) going something like D-Blade -> Boots [-> Brutalizer in between?] -> Infinity Edge -> tanky.
He will not be the wtfinstagib champ in the early game anymore but is still scary and punishes overextending (the enemy now has to eat 3 spins instead of 2 to become dangerously low).
Or I am just too excited about the nerf and Garen is still roflstomping from lvl 1-11.
Anyone here to share some experience post Riven-patch?
I'm under the impression that Judgment crits are bugged...
I first noticed that normal hits were dealing ~120 damage and crits were doing ~230 or so, and I thought, "Wow! Does Judgment crit for double damage? I remember they used to crit for 1.5x damage only". Then I thought that the Infinity Edge I was carrying might have been responsible for bigger Judgment crits, so to make sure, I later made a practice game and tried it out again.
At one point in testing during the practice game, it seemed like normal Judgment ticks were doing 34 damage, and crits were doing 36 damage... later on in the game, normal ticks were doing 45 damage, while crits were doing 46, meaning crits were adding pretty much no damage at all.
As far as I can tell, either IE Unique Passive is affecting Judgment in weird ways or Judgment crits are having some form of connection with Bonus AD. Can anyone else confirm?
IMO...... Garen with tanky items makes him near unkillable and very annoying. It also forces everyone to run away whenever tanky Garen comes out of nowhere, with a threatening aura....
On October 02 2011 14:32 Seeker wrote: Quick question:
I'm confused how to play Garen
Is he a tanky hero? Or is he an AD hero?
IMO...... Garen with tanky items makes him near unkillable and very annoying. It also forces everyone to run away whenever tanky Garen comes out of nowhere, with a threatening aura....
But do ppl play him offensively? Is he dps?
I'm confused :/
You don't really want to build him completely tanky because then he's completely ignorable.
2 dblades, bruta, atmogs is generally enough to let you do a ton of damage while still being extremely unkillable.
I normally just Q then E (Well, Auto -> Q -> E, if they are facechecking), but I've noticed on streams that sometimes good garen's will specifically activate Q, then E, and use Q's attack once E has finished. Thoughts on this?
Does activating Q first but not using it increase your movespeed so it's easier to get a full E off? Does the Q at the end have a larger range than auto's, as well as making it safer for you to trade after your skills are on CD? I'm assuming this is the general idea, but I haven't put much thought into it.
I get in circumstances where they can be killed you will want to land your Q first and then E so that they can't just flash out of your E, but I do that each time... I'm thinking maybe the other way I mentioned is better.
Also, anyone got any little random tips of stuff that might seem obvious on him. Through watching tree Eski I learnt the little 'camp brush in river and if they come up from blue buff, AA -> Q -> AA as they walk into brush' trick.
Also picked up the idea of tanking minions to get a nimbleness proc, then running into brush to come out even faster than they expect (makes the nimbleness proc less noticeable). Thought this was a really cool trick, as I'm not exactly into the game enough to come up with these things on my own.
So i've been going full ad runes on garen solo top and done pretty well. I don't get why people would prefer using arpen/dodge/mr/ad quints on him when you need to abuse the shit out of his early game damage. Am I missing something here?
On October 18 2011 00:17 spacemonkey4eve wrote: So i've been going full ad runes on garen solo top and done pretty well. I don't get why people would prefer using arpen/dodge/mr/ad quints on him when you need to abuse the shit out of his early game damage. Am I missing something here?
How about the fact that armor penetration is worth quite a lot given Garen's high base damage physical abilities? When your armor pen is reducing their armor to zero, it's generally doing a lot more than flat AD would.
Dodge is there because dodge procs are absurdly strong for forcing your combo onto people--even if they normally have movespeed parity, Q onto them, pick up creep aggro and get a 10% MS boost from the dodge proc.
On October 18 2011 00:17 spacemonkey4eve wrote: So i've been going full ad runes on garen solo top and done pretty well. I don't get why people would prefer using arpen/dodge/mr/ad quints on him when you need to abuse the shit out of his early game damage. Am I missing something here?
I haven't run the numbers, but pretty sure armor pen is better. Smart opponents will often start cloth 5 pot, in which case you're getting full value out of your runes. I'm thinking the only time you wouldn't be getting near full value is when your lane isn't running flat armor yellows, which isn't very likely.
Personally I run arp reds and 1 quint, and 2 movespeed quints. Altho I might look into swapping out the move speed in place of something more damage focussed
Just tried tanky garen. I didn't do too bad but my team lost and I felt my damage was really low. Warmogs, mercs, GA, and atmas. I felt like I had low damage but I did my part initiating and moving carries away. Still I'd have liked more damage. Will try more damage next. I like his ratios. Atma's looks really strong: 70AD on the passive when I have a fully charged warmogs and am level 18. I was laning against a shen, died once in lane to shaco, but shen didn't get the assist :D. Shen is annoying to lane against. I needed more damage to lane against him. Next build to try?: hexdrinker, phage, last whisper, BF sword->bloodthirster, Bilgewater cutlass all look ok. I'll probably get phage for sure and the rest I'll base on how the lane is going.
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.
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.
So looking at the break even point, it looks like early game, just grabbing an early brutalizer and then some tankiness seems best early (stacking AD early doesn't do as much, but the armor pen is still very good) Later, IE and more tankiness and ghostblade? For tankiness items, Aegis, Randiun, FON, GA all seem particularly effective. CDR would be convienent but doesn't come in very many useful forms outside of bruta/ghostblade and Randuin's. The cdr from those two should be alright though - hit the ghostblade active after your stuff is on cooldown and wail away until it's back up.
No funfire garen anymore. Once you commit to a huge item like an IE, the synergy IE has with other AD / Crit items is just too good to be dicking around with magic damage. Triforce could find a place if you're filthy rich and aren't looking at tank items, but the AP and mana are completely wasted, and the sheen proc is mediocre at best on Garen. On PD, the AS isn't as good as it could be - ghostblade does it better (you only need AS for a short period of time while your QE are on cooldown. Ghostblade still gives crit, gives this "short period of AS", and gives other stats that the PD doesn't.) LW can work late game, but you've committed so much to flat armor pen and LW makes that investment shitty. 2 big offensive items and 3 big defensive items is probably where you want to find yourself in a "final build" situation anyway.
I'm going to be trying out: boots [dorans to taste] Brutalizer Some combination of Aegis / Chainmail / Negatron / GA parts / Warden's Mail / Hexdunker Infinity Edge Some combination (choose 2) of Randuins / FON / GA / Maw (if hexdunker) Ghostblade
Lifesteal has never been something Garen has been particularly desperate for - his passive should top him off when roaming around / stalling / dancing about later in the game. During a fight, raw resists to synergize with his new W seem awesome (as opposed to the flat health he preferred before)
On August 16 2012 05:33 sylverfyre wrote: So looking at the break even point, it looks like early game, just grabbing an early brutalizer and then some tankiness seems best early (stacking AD early doesn't do as much, but the armor pen is still very good) Later, IE and more tankiness and ghostblade? For tankiness items, Aegis, Randiun, FON, GA all seem particularly effective. CDR would be convienent but doesn't come in very many useful forms outside of bruta/ghostblade and Randuin's. The cdr from those two should be alright though - hit the ghostblade active after your stuff is on cooldown and wail away until it's back up.
No funfire garen anymore. Once you commit to a huge item like an IE, the synergy IE has with other AD / Crit items is just too good to be dicking around with magic damage. Triforce could find a place if you're filthy rich and aren't looking at tank items, but the AP and mana are completely wasted, and the sheen proc is mediocre at best on Garen. On PD, the AS isn't as good as it could be - ghostblade does it better (you only need AS for a short period of time while your QE are on cooldown. Ghostblade still gives crit, gives this "short period of AS", and gives other stats that the PD doesn't.) LW can work late game, but you've committed so much to flat armor pen and LW makes that investment shitty. 2 big offensive items and 3 big defensive items is probably where you want to find yourself in a "final build" situation anyway.
I'm going to be trying out: boots [dorans to taste] Brutalizer Some combination of Aegis / Chainmail / Negatron / GA parts / Warden's Mail / Hexdunker Infinity Edge Some combination (choose 2) of Randuins / FON / GA / Maw (if hexdunker) Ghostblade
Lifesteal has never been something Garen has been particularly desperate for - his passive should top him off when roaming around / stalling / dancing about later in the game. During a fight, raw resists to synergize with his new W seem awesome (as opposed to the flat health he preferred before)
Pretty much how I played Garen after they nerfed Atma's + Warmog's combo.
Boots + 3x Pot -> 1-2 Doran's blade -> Brutalizer is always core for me. From then on, I decide on how the game is going.
For defensive items, Randuin's Omen is the very best choice against AD from my experience. Many people forget about its passive slow chance that applies to the attacker. A random slow proc let's you keep up even without flash ready which is even stronger on Garen since he has no gap closing mechanic but only "hurr durr lemme run to ya I wanna beat ya up lol".
Against MR, I found Force of Nature only to be really useful when I had like 3kish HP; the regen passive was not really noticeable otherwise. However, with the new W giving a % based armor / magic resist bonus, this could be the choice to go now.
Maybe
Boots 2 Ghostblade Aegis Randuin's Force of Nature Infinity Edge
?
You have all around defensive stats and since your job is to skill the squishies, 50ish flat armor pen should be sufficient.
As far as FON, I've always found it to be a pretty niche item, since most games you just don't need to stack MR to those levels (by that late in the game, it's USUALLY the AD carry that's your biggest fear.)
Becuase of his new W which now lasts 6 seconds at rank 5, you can build DPS/Tank items and be a really strong anti carry and main tank.
I generally open, boots 3. Into heart of gold, followed by Hex/Phage.
Later on chain vest-- Atmas, Mallet, Maw Guardian Angel.
This build with armor runes provides an immense 250+ arm 200+ mr with close to 300 ad.
The new garen has makes defensive items 20% stronger which is absolutely so powerful.
Snowballing your lane is no longer needed in order to be a team fight threat. If you do, a proper build to counter their carries is basically one of the strongest tanky dps i've played.
I was skeptical about the changes but after reviewing it. I would not be surprised to see him picked up or banned alot of future LoL Tournaments.
After getting owned by a jungle Garen once and watching StV playing him a couple of times, I think Garen jungle is *really* good.
Speed: jungle Garen's speed is decent. at rank 3 his E can clear wraiths and wolves with ease; the bigger monsters can be taken down with Q. Gank: chase with Q. You are immune to slow and you have tenacity through W. Once you are in melee range, E's damage is ridiculous (not to mention a follow up with R) Sustain: crazy. While a lot of junglers need to go back and heal after a full clear, Garen can just walk around finding gank opportunities while he regenerates like a madman.
I have yet to seen his late game so I am not sure how well he transitions, but right now I think Garen is a good pick for the jungle role.
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
Tried it yesterday, I used cloth armor 5pot then went back and got boots and long sword and gankgankgank for me lol. I skilled EWEQ then R>E>Q>W (but got a leash so that might be your problem)
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
Tried it yesterday, I used cloth armor 5pot then went back and got boots and long sword and gankgankgank for me lol. I skilled EWEQ then R>E>Q>W (but got a leash so that might be your problem)
I tried it again in a normal game against pretty bad people. Starting boots was okayish with a good leash. As soon as E is rank 3, wraith and wolves just melt. Other than that I just ganked a lot. Spin to win is fun, gotta try it out against some better opponents.
Build was something like Boots + 3, 2 dorans, brutalizer + tabi (not quite sure what boots to get though) -> Aegis -> GA. Was really fed so I was pretty much invicible with that build, damage was too low though, gotta build more damage i guess ^^
You're definitely really tanky with just an Aegis and two dorans + your W. Fun to play, now i'll spam some games with him to see if he really has some potential
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
The game I watched of Saint it looked like he opened brawlers+pot into super early avarice blade. Don't know if that's his standard, but it looked like it worked.
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
The game I watched of Saint it looked like he opened brawlers+pot into super early avarice blade. Don't know if that's his standard, but it looked like it worked.
Really? Could he make a full clear with that start?
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
The game I watched of Saint it looked like he opened brawlers+pot into super early avarice blade. Don't know if that's his standard, but it looked like it worked.
Really? Could he make a full clear with that start?
I'd imagine he'd need a hard leash on blue and save smite for red. wolves blue wraiths wolves red might work, im pretty sure he'd get really low.
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
The game I watched of Saint it looked like he opened brawlers+pot into super early avarice blade. Don't know if that's his standard, but it looked like it worked.
Really? Could he make a full clear with that start?
I'd imagine he'd need a hard leash on blue and save smite for red. wolves blue wraiths wolves red might work, im pretty sure he'd get really low.
Gotta get a friend with me in a bot game and try that. Dunno if starting brawlers is really that good though, crit can be kinda meh
On August 16 2012 22:18 zodde wrote: Only tried jungle garen vs bots (aka no leach) so i might be way off, but boots + 3 start was really rough. What is saint using?
The game I watched of Saint it looked like he opened brawlers+pot into super early avarice blade. Don't know if that's his standard, but it looked like it worked.
Really? Could he make a full clear with that start?
I'd imagine he'd need a hard leash on blue and save smite for red. wolves blue wraiths wolves red might work, im pretty sure he'd get really low.
Gotta get a friend with me in a bot game and try that. Dunno if starting brawlers is really that good though, crit can be kinda meh
it sounds like something that might only work if you get a lucky crit or two, and you know you're not going to get counterjungled. So pretty much a build perfect for solo q.
lvl 3 E makes small camps melt, granted (but the way up to champion level 5 is painful). But early buffs are a pain in the ass and I couldn't do a full clear even with a heavy leash at blue (had to use smite on it so it wasn't ready for red) and even then it felt pretty slow and I took a lot of pain.
However, I like him a little bit more on the lane than before, not only for his new passive. I just realized he gained the 20% resist increase passively with a single point in W. I thought you'd have to kill minions still but now gain % increase instead of flat (1 creep = 0.5 % or something, so 40 creeps = the full 20%), but hell yeah, not needing to farm creeps for the bonus is pretty strong.
Regarding defensive items: Randuin's is pretty much set for me vs AD. I struggle vs AP however. Aegies + Mercs doesn't seem to be enough when AP carries have 50+ flat spell pen (Runes + Abyssal + Sorc Boots and maybe even Haunting Guise).
And sometimes I feel too slow to really catch up in time. Anything you guys build for extra MS?
Again I only watched one game, so I don't know if this is his standard approach to it, but when he started brawlers his team invaded enemy red, took it, then he went to his own blue and cleared from there. Having his team helping with one buff and then leashing a second makes it a lot easier and safer, obviously.
That said, he didn't have his smite for the blue, so it's probably safe regardless. Don't think you'd be able to gank on that first clear, though - go back, get avarice, gank if they're slow lanes and wait for boots otherwise. Avarice, HoG, Brutalizer, Phage looked like his early item goals.
Garen seems like such a strong lane bully vs melee toplanes, you can freeze the lane with your passive so easily, and then you win trades really hard if they go melee with you, and you are super hard to gank because of your w and q.
Just beat a jax o_O I thought for sure I would lose the lane hard, but Demacia strikes again.
I basically go for a max arpen build, since his E deals multiple ticks of damage, so building armor against him hurts.
I've been running AD marks/quints to help with his early game, but I'm considering running arpen to see what it does.
I go 19/11/0 masteries, getting as much AD and ArPen as I can from offense, then getting veteran scars + indomitable from defense for trading and tanking minions in lane.
I've been going:
boots + 3/4 pot -> 1 or 2 doran's -> brutalizer as early-game core
Then:
merc treads -> hexdrinker -> maw vs. AP ninja tabi -> chain mail -> sunfire against heavy AD OR ninja tabi -> chain mail -> warden's against an auto-attacker top lane (jax/irelia/yi/trynd) pickaxe -> last whisper if they stack armor, or if i'm winning phage -> frozen mallet if we need more cc
then lategame:
youmuu's last whisper boots some combination of Maw/Randuin's/Sunfire/Frozen Mallet depending on whether you need armor, MR, health, or CC other situational items: Aegis, FoN, guardian angel(?), black cleaver(?), bloodthirster,
On August 17 2012 04:56 Slayer91 wrote: " basically go for a max arpen build, since his E deals multiple ticks of damage, so building armor against him hurts"
This doesnt make any sense. Armour is a flat % reduction to your damage. If E did all it's damage in 1 second armour wouldn't be any better or worse.
Ah, my apologies. I thought armor was calculated a bit differently.
People have still been stacking armor against me though, so I think brutalizer is still a good opening. Not sure about using arpen marks/quints though.
Armourpen is also not the best against armour stack because it's cheaper to buy armour than to buy armour pen. Armour pen is more effective for increasing your damage at low levels of enemy armour getting from 20-->0 is better than from 40--20 for armour pen I believe.
On August 17 2012 03:12 little fancy wrote: lvl 3 E makes small camps melt, granted (but the way up to champion level 5 is painful). But early buffs are a pain in the ass and I couldn't do a full clear even with a heavy leash at blue (had to use smite on it so it wasn't ready for red) and even then it felt pretty slow and I took a lot of pain.
However, I like him a little bit more on the lane than before, not only for his new passive. I just realized he gained the 20% resist increase passively with a single point in W. I thought you'd have to kill minions still but now gain % increase instead of flat (1 creep = 0.5 % or something, so 40 creeps = the full 20%), but hell yeah, not needing to farm creeps for the bonus is pretty strong.
Regarding defensive items: Randuin's is pretty much set for me vs AD. I struggle vs AP however. Aegies + Mercs doesn't seem to be enough when AP carries have 50+ flat spell pen (Runes + Abyssal + Sorc Boots and maybe even Haunting Guise).
And sometimes I feel too slow to really catch up in time. Anything you guys build for extra MS?
AP's are IMO better when they get mpen and AP than when they just go straight AP + sorc boots but you have to remember that every bit of gold they spend on mpen is gold they're not spending on AP. Combine that with the fact that guise and abyssal have defensive components and the AP's shouldn't be beating you that much harder.
Hexdrinker should be really good vs. AP. (Aegis mercs hexdrinker) If that's not enough I dunno, that's like 100 MR from items right there, and another 60 from base+runes. You might be taking bad trades? even vs. 70+10% mpen (the most they can realistically get with this build) you still have like 80 MR left over after all that pen.
Don't be in a hurry to upgrade your hexdrinker into Maw. Maw is more about slot-efficiency than cost-efficiency (it's average cost-efficiency of an upgrade, whereas hexdrinker is VERY cost-efficient.) work on whatever you consider your core offensive power.
If you're stacking flat ArPen, avoid getting LW unless you REALLY need it. LW is anti-synergistic with flat armor pen - you generally want either one or the other. If you recognize early that you are going to need LW (urgot is their AD or everyones buying armor and someone has an Aegis, or taric is on their team, etc) then skip the flat armor pen items and get LW instead, not in addition.
On August 17 2012 05:54 Slayer91 wrote: Armourpen is also not the best against armour stack because it's cheaper to buy armour than to buy armour pen. Armour pen is more effective for increasing your damage at low levels of enemy armour getting from 20-->0 is better than from 40--20 for armour pen I believe.
it's my understanding that most top lanes have at least 30+ armor, so armor pen seems worth it to me.
6 from mastery 13 from armor seals 11-19 depending on champ's base stats
anyway I'm seeing a bunch of current high-level garens get brutalizer, and I've had success with going brutalizer first, so I think that's at least a decent opening.
Yes, but flat armor pen is at its most powerful when you're reducing their armor to precisely 0. You can get up to 31 from runes and masteries, but then itemizing for it further is difficult.
Brutalizer is definitely great - and ghostblade works well as a later item. But when they go buy a chainmail + ninja tabi, your armor pen is not scaling as well as their armor is, and you're running out of sources to get it as well. (At this point, you've basically done your job though - you've greatly delayed their combat effectiveness by forcing them to buy a ton of early armor before core items. Take this as a victory.)
Some people used to run literally +40 Armor runepages vs. garen (and pantheon) because if they could survive early, garen scaled poorly enough that it didn't matter what they had to do to survive the laning phase and come out with roughly even CS. Hopefully with new garen, he doesn't drop off so hard that this is a wise option for his opponents.
has anybody tried a crit centered build? i've played around with a few builds and i've had decent results with most of them, but haven't found one that felt decisively better than the rest
On August 17 2012 15:25 goldenkrnboi wrote: has anybody tried a crit centered build? i've played around with a few builds and i've had decent results with most of them, but haven't found one that felt decisively better than the rest
Garen's typical build already has tons of crit... unless you also want to build IE.
On August 17 2012 13:13 sylverfyre wrote: Yes, but flat armor pen is at its most powerful when you're reducing their armor to precisely 0. You can get up to 31 from runes and masteries, but then itemizing for it further is difficult.
Brutalizer is definitely great - and ghostblade works well as a later item. But when they go buy a chainmail + ninja tabi, your armor pen is not scaling as well as their armor is, and you're running out of sources to get it as well. (At this point, you've basically done your job though - you've greatly delayed their combat effectiveness by forcing them to buy a ton of early armor before core items. Take this as a victory.)
Some people used to run literally +40 Armor runepages vs. garen (and pantheon) because if they could survive early, garen scaled poorly enough that it didn't matter what they had to do to survive the laning phase and come out with roughly even CS. Hopefully with new garen, he doesn't drop off so hard that this is a wise option for his opponents.
lol not many top laners sacrifice a lot to get a tabi and a chain vest. I don't think new garen scales better than old garen, although he does without damage items. (Thus the regen garen build I've been patenting, regen quints masteries 2 x dshield into warmogs//Fon into randuins//LW regen alll day erry day never die!)
Also crit is a really poor dps increase on spin compared to what it's like on auto hits it's still not really worth building. It's like a 40% increase on a tick of spin? AD carries are getting 100% or 150%..
I've never built garen with crit nor ever seen a successful crit garen build. I've seen a lot more recently but I've been too busy trucking them in lane with my imba regen and being way more effective than them trolol.
On August 17 2012 15:25 goldenkrnboi wrote: has anybody tried a crit centered build? i've played around with a few builds and i've had decent results with most of them, but haven't found one that felt decisively better than the rest
Garen's typical build already has tons of crit... unless you also want to build IE.
...?! what else is in the typical build besides ghostblade?
So you're going to just do 0 damage? You have +60 AD there or so, after you have atmallet. How are you going to be ANY kind of threat in a teamfight? Garen isn't a CC-bot, he has to bring damage to the table or the AD carry doesn't even have to kite you, they can just shoot you while moving vaguely away while not worrying if they get a few scratches.
Tanky DPS means you need to provide some amount of DPS. With your core of mallet GA, in midgame you'll do less than 1k damage with your combo + a few autos to someone with 0 armor.
All of the builds suggested so far are a balance of AD/crit and resist items. Yours is like... all tank items and almost no damage.
Edit: Well, all the builds except for Speed Garen. But not everybody can be Caller.
I haven't lost a game with regen garen yet. (not in ranked tho) HP regen quints armour/mr/ad or arpen 21 defenseive with hp5 mastery start boots of dorans shield 2 doran shield into warmogs//FoN//Randuins//LW. Atmas last item. You have "0 dmg" but your base damage got buffed and ult ignite as well is still strong so you actually do decent damage and are almost unkillable and push everyone out of lane with your imba regen LOL. (46 hp5 at level 1 with passive and dshield)
Basically if you're playing garen and building heavy AD I feel like you're playing a nerfed garen. I had my glory days of garen with BT/LW/warmogs/GA stuff but now its just flat out nerfed so might as well abuse the things that got buffed. (30% tank steriod, 30% cc reduction, better base damage and regen in lane that doesnt get knocked off every time a creep ai bugs and hits you)
The problem with crit on garen is it's only like 40% increased damage on spin when it procs, so you're building crit on a champ that benefits less than crit than say AD carries, so why bother? You already have to worry about incoming damage enough that it doesn't make sense except maybe I can see IE being viable over BT and then atmas lategame but even that seems silly.
Part of the idea is that you never have to back except for items so you hit 18 faster, which takes advantage of greater spin damage l0l. I think I got the replays but they're probably not very valuable hah.
This is my garen history: (item build not in order) Game 1: Jungle garen, got fed, mercs, dblade, IE, GA, hexdrinker. 4/4/9 Game 2: Top garen, bruta, dblade, GA 5-7-8 Game 3: REGEN GAREN dshield tabi wardens mail warmogs fon thornmail 7/3/3 Game 4: chain vest LW Randuins FoN warmogs tabi 16/5/10 Game 5: Randuins Warmogs LW Mercs nega/vest 10/2/13 Game 6: 2x dshield Randuins Warmogs LW 9/1/5
On August 18 2012 01:54 Slayer91 wrote: The problem with crit on garen is it's only like 40% increased damage on spin when it procs, so you're building crit on a champ that benefits less than crit than say AD carries, so why bother? You already have to worry about incoming damage enough that it doesn't make sense except maybe I can see IE being viable over BT and then atmas lategame but even that seems silly.
butbut. Q crits too. D: and those spin crit procs are deceptively strong too i feel like. like, everybody talks about how e got nerfed so hard, but i honestly haven't really noticed that big of a difference, especially when going crit/AD garen
the build that i've found the most success with would be boots+3 0-2 dblades depending on how badly i want brutalizer brutalizer ^v(interchangeable if necessary) boots 2 frozen mallet atma's ghostblade IE
i've never had to get a 6th item yet, so not completely sure what i want cause i was never able to test it. I was thinking PD, for extra movespeed + crit, but idk idk. could also get an earlier avarice somewhere in there for the extra crit and gp10 before upgrading to ghostblade. like maybe after phage or before phage or something
Full page of garen victories, 0 losses. The ranked games are ranked 5's though. The first on the list was a 4v5 for the first 35 minutes of the game until our volibear support reconnected and farmed bot lane super creeps because graves kept backdooring LOL. I have replays I think if anyone wants to see them.
Also atmas is a pile of crap it feels like might be worth just going IE. IE is pretty good at garen probably better than BT now. Having some auto attack DPS is great for when you don't want to waste QE on some bruiser when their carries are too pussy to go in.
I dunno darius passive is really annoying so you have to give up even more cs than usual to heal up with passive but the plus side is darius is easily ganked and he has no sustain so if you can trade once regen to full then you can possibly force him out of lane.
Garen needs a fast level 9 more than anything in the early laning phase so losing some cs is better than having to base often.
On August 19 2012 09:46 zodde wrote: So, Slayer91, you're just relying on his base values for damage and just always regen, never die?
Yep Too many people have better AD scaling now anyway. Renek, Wukong, heck even lee has better scaling and look at his lategame. Gotta abuse what garen has. 6 second 30% damage reduce? Yes please! Good luck killing 200/200 armour 4.5k hp garen with randuins slow and 30% reduced damage who can run away and come back 20 seconds later at full hp. (go farm a lane instead of coming back to base np)
According to some math your ult actually does more damage than your combo of QE at level 16 with targets missing 1500 hp or so. (with small amounts of bonus AD) Pretty ridiculous.
I get LW and IE for damage but I only get IE as last item and only if I don't need more tank stats. I guess the more tanky they get the more damage you want, but in general they have at least 2 squishies.
Pretty key point here is that regen is really significant in lane but later on when it's not always amazingly good at the very least it's basically a free stat on warmogs randunis and dorans shield anyway so the only time you pay for regen really is on FoN. So that means in situations where regen isn't useful (you somehow get focused down and can't regen and come back in) you still were as tanky or more tanky than someone who stacked pure tank stats and where regen is useful (long teamfights, they tend to go long because you're so tanky, and any poke situations) you're completely unkillable.
BTW You can't beat jayce in lane as garen, you can just about lane because of your regen but holy shit I wouldn't pick him into jayce again, Jayce OP.
What do you run for reds? I've been sticking to flat armor pen right now. It's ok for early damage and I'd rather take 15 ArPen than shitty tertiary defensive runes (armor reds give like only 8 armor or so...).
I tried your build two games now but couldn't really say anything about it because the rest of my team stomped my lane like I did and it were silly 20 minutes surrender (Boots 2, Double D-Shield, Warmog's). It's true so far that no one can really kill you, but I want a game with full item build first so I can see if my lategame damage is at least relevant to have the AD carry run from me.
After 21 in defense, what do you use the other 9 points for?
Thank you very much. Except for reds I did it just like you.
10% armor pen is nice but I feel like the 4 points in attack speed before are useless on Garen and I'd rather use CDR to increase the damage output via my abilities.
On August 19 2012 21:31 Slayer91 wrote: Your ult actually can do more damage than your combo against targets at low hp.
While this is true, does that warrant spending 5 points on an ability you're going to use once a teamfight? I genuinely don't know, that's why I'm asking.
What order do you skill nu-Garen in lane, Teut? Not sure I've ever played a single Garen game before in my life, but REGEN GAREN might be just what I need to spice up my top lane play.
Edit:
On August 19 2012 04:23 Slayer91 wrote: Full page of garen victories, 0 losses. The ranked games are ranked 5's though. The first on the list was a 4v5 for the first 35 minutes of the game until our volibear support reconnected and farmed bot lane super creeps because graves kept backdooring LOL. I have replays I think if anyone wants to see them.
this build works on all top laners tbh i think it's even better on champs with good lategame presence, like riven, jax, and warwick it's just a really solid way to spec top lane, since you'll rarely be at a low enough health to gank, and it will render harass ineffectual
I have no idea how, but it somehow works that Regen build. Although the damage is really lacking sometimes but that could be because I was missing my 6th item (IE).
However, I was never going to die and had at least enough damage to kill their carry and in most cases their support, too. After that you have 50% HP left and can join the remaining fights in the background.
But if this is so strong, I don't get why I don't see any Garen in competitive play . Probably because there are just too many other "better" choices?
Well the problem is garens always had a strong early game but he doesn't now and he's one of those heroes that needs to get fed to be useful because he relies on scaling off his ridiculous tank steriod on W to be effective because his damage scaling is actually really bad for a brusier. (his base damage is ok though)
"I have no idea how, but it somehow works that Regen build." Exactly how I feel :D
Hey guys, with Xypherous posting about garens buffs I went and did the math because I actually thought his damage was kinda nerfed.
Level 18 Garen: Spin does 740 Damage. At levels 1/3/5/7/9 E damage is (rounded): 640/516/400/285/228 dmg OLD GAREN: 630/510/390/270/150
Break even points in bonus AD: Level 1: 18.2 AD (AD reds+quints+mastery give you just this actually.. intended?) Level 3--9 approximately the difference in total damage (taking into account the difference in scaling, and then multiplying it by 3 to get the total damage) Level 18: ~120 AD
So you see old garen with any amount of AD from runes/masteries/dorans in early game DID do more damage but later on you need quite a bit of damage to break even with new garen. Since the scaling is hit armour pen is a lot better on new garen which is why you should probably use Armpen reds and also it explains why regen garen works so well with just a LW and last item IE: Your damage doesn't go up that much (1.1 AD scaling per second isn't even that much better than auto attack scaling..) but you can improve your trading by being tankier and regenning inbetween CDs, and later on you have ult for damage and the 30% steriod on W is one of the strongest tank steriods in the game if you are already really tanky.
The idea which I read from the riot poster was that you're supposed to build flat pen and crit and stuff so they want people to use fancy builds like ghostblade because "scaling" on crit went up and they give you the shiny tank steriod "so you don't blow up". What riot doesn't seem to realize is that a 30% scaling on tank stats is MUCH better if you're really tanky in a teamfight because it takes way more burst to kill you. In a 1v1 situation against sustained DPS well yeah it's gonig to be good to get some damage to balance your stats because no matter how tanky you get the W is only making you live 30% longer but in teamfights being "unkillable" and being able to burst an AD carry even if it's not his full HP pool means a lot while being able to 1v1 someone in a teamfight is pretty worthless which is why the ghostblade/brutalizer stuff isn't great. Why do you want a few hundred extra damage on 1 spin when you can double your EHP and still burst someone say 70% as much?
The better scaling with armpen might explain why I crushed in a taric garen lane even without going full damage. Also Garen is really lane phase reliant right now the new guys like jayce and darius zone him and xin still crushes him. If you're losing lane as garen you're pretty screwed because you need to get high level fast to make use of your base stats and you want lots of farm to become unkillable to make up for initially doing less damage than the other bruiser.
I'm also not sure the whole regen garen is completely optimal that 3 regen you get in defensive tree is pretty tiny and I'm wondering if the 6 armpen and executioner (for your ult) and 10% armpen in offensive mean going 21 offensive is better. I'm also considering max CDR build with ludicity boots and kindlegem or brutalizer with the defensive tree/offensive tree CDR because of 50% uptime on max rank W, nearly 100% uptime on Q speed buff, and a boost to E DPS as well. CDR indirectly gives you CC reduction from uptime on W and the ability to use Q to break slows more often.
Hm. Now I want to bring this Regen Garen build to my other bruisers. Warmogs Randuins FON sounds pretty sick. 1 offensive core item tailored to whatever champion I'm playing - the LW can be instead an AS item for Irelia (wits or something) and so on.
Wardens is pretty sick early game vs AD bruisers/autoattackers. A warden proc can, by itself, turn a trade completely in your favor and stop them from disengaging. Then it gives you 25 HP5? Sure.
I'm not incredibly fond of DShield, though. I'd rather go like... Boots 3 -> cloth+beads (instead of dshield) -> use cloth on tabi and beads on warden's mail. I also think as far as items to hit people with, phage is a lovely early defense+offense item and still fits alright into these highly defensive setups.
The point of the dorans shield is that they're just really cost effective and the hp is not only good for tower diving/ganks/getting ganked etc but it also gives more regen from your passive. I'd feel like a morn buying cloth+beads tbh.
I think regen quints are secret OP actually everyone just stopped using em when everyone had sick sustain and just went armour quints but now everyone needs to start using em. Wickds been using them for forever. I don't think regen builds are good on everyone, past laning phase, it's only guys with really good base damage but bad scaling and trouble getting into teamfights without being really tanky. Mundo is the classic guy to build those items. Garen works, but not many other champs do. Garens ult is almost all of his damage when it comes to bursting a low hp target, it actually does upwards of 1k damage on targets which are missing 1.5k hp or so.
What I've been doing is flat armor red, flat armor yellow, mr/lvl blue, and hp quints and going tripple Doran's blade into Sunfire, so far I've only lost once with it XD
I've been trying around lately which includes some stuff I used to build on the "old" Garen. It has revived my old love for Frozen Mallet again.
An early Phage actually feels like I do at least decent damage in the early to mid game and the slow is just boss. I spammed the Regen build several games before but its success is closely connected to how you do in lane. If you fail, farming up that Warmog's into FoN is a pain in the ass and you are not really a threat in midgame teamfights if you are not 3+ levels ahead of the enemy carry you are supposed to combo to death.
Phage (and later Mallet) can cover this weakness but it lacks a good chunk of plain HP and the Regen so you are not that unkillable.
In the end, it seems to come down which path you plan to go: a true tanky frontliner going almost full tank relying on your base damage + ultimate to instagib a low carry or a classic bruiser (Bruta / Ghostblade + Phage / Mallet into tanky stuff) that has a stronger presence in the midgame but can't tank a whole team for several seconds and escaping with low HP into the sunset.
Gotta admit, I accidently had a random Garen lock and decided to follow the regen Garen build. I lost a lot of CS to Kayle due to Alistar camping, but they couldn't get me below 50% even with the help. Doran Shields and Warmogs is pretty much unkillable so early into the game.
+25 armor pen runes are really strong. By the time the squishies have armor you can just buy a brutalizer and continue to almost true damage their carries while ignoring their bruisers.
Fast aegis is also really strong. I've been going boots/dorans -> boots/dorans -> nmm or 2nd dorans -> SV vs AP harass or Aegis -> roam bot to tower dive with dragon followup.
On August 28 2012 11:38 Celestial wrote: Gotta admit, I accidently had a random Garen lock and decided to follow the regen Garen build. I lost a lot of CS to Kayle due to Alistar camping, but they couldn't get me below 50% even with the help. Doran Shields and Warmogs is pretty much unkillable so early into the game.
Yorick doesn't have as much damage as kayle but I played the yorick vs garen matchup and my opponent rushed dorans and armor and I couldn't bring him down either. I could drive him off creeps for a few seconds, but garen's sustain is pretty dec.
On September 19 2012 11:05 nosliw wrote: recently bought garen after the price reduction. And I noticed he recently got rebalance, so I am wondering how you guys play him now.
Build items so you are unkillable. Go in fight, spin, kill something, run out. Come back when cooldowns are up and you magically have max HP again, spin and kill more things.
Garen is super strong vs low sustain lanes that don't have constant harass to keep your passive down. If you get an early kill you can just bully them around and even if bot and mid are both 0-5 you can come to midgame fights with a warmogs and kill one carry with spin+q+ignite and kill the other carry with spin+ult.
The HP is good in lane because of his passive, but also warmogs/dshield is just a really good regen item as well, that's the main reason for the dshields/warmogs. AR/MR are good too because of the thing on W though. You want to up your resists later if you don't need more damage.
haven't mathed it or anything but in my experience... not really, you can build pretty much any defensive items you want and get huge so you might as well just pick them on a game by game basis and not have a standard build. I think it's a bit silly to get locked into a specific stat every game. Sunfire, mogs, randuins, hexdrinker, ga, etc, have all worked really well for me.
I build garen as tanky bruiser. I haven't tried mass regen garen yet. HP is good when combined with resists, and good with his passive, but he gets a free 20% bonus resists from his W passive. I haven't done any serious mathcrafting, but it seems to me that building resists are generally better. I usually get FM and that's it for +health items. Just FM together with 9 points in defense gives you 2991 health at level 18, which is plenty tanky if you have 200+ armor and 150+ MR.
crit items are good on him since his Q and E both can crit. Particularly, the crit items that give +AD are great for garen, since he has boss scaling on his Q & E. I'm looking mostly at IE/Youmuu's/Atma's here.
Since garen gets free bonus resists thanks to W, I feel that AD + resists items are also great for garen. The best in this category are probably atma's and maw. In case you haven't noticed, atma's is really good on garen, since every stat synergizes with him in some way.
However he can work with a mostly offensive build or defensive build. A good balanced build would be something like:
merc treads/youmuu's/FM/atma's/maw/6th item. Great damage (youmuu/FM/atmas/Maw), good sticking power (youmuu's active, FM slow), 3k health, and good resists. Garen needs good sticking power since his most of his abilities are melee range, and he has no gap-closer, and no hard cc.
Beyond that, just build according to the game:
If you're the team's tank, get FM/atma's/GA faster.
If you already have a tanky team, get youmuu's/IE/atma's faster.
If you need more MR, add in FoN. If you need more armor, add in Randuin's/Sunfire.
If against AP, buy quick hexdrinker. If against heavy AD, buy ninja tabi/chain vest.
edit: if against armor-stacking team, get LW faster (sell off brutalizer)
EDIT: Warning messy theorycraft lots of numbers read at your own peril
" Judgment can critically strike but only the bonus damage portion of the ability will crit.
Judgement is subject to a linear crit bonus damage penalty of 50%. This means that if you have 100 damage from the ratio on Judgement, on a crit, you deal 50 more damage. Infinity Edge increases the crit multiplier to 50% + 50% = 100% and Lethality (mastery) increases it by 10%. "
Crit is actually pretty bad on garen. I tried building atmas and it felt like a piece of shit. IE felt way better and I didn't really know why but this explains it, it doubles the crit damage and therefore doubles the effectiveness of crit. IE's 20% crit is worth more than the 33% crit of atmas and gives the same or more AD than the two combined.
A level 18 garen with no bonus AD does 741.15 damage with 1 judgement and Q does 291.7 damage. This gives a physical combo burst of 1032.85 + 4.7xbonus AD A garen with frozen mallet, maw and youmuus atmas with 3k hp has 150 bonus AD, with 33% crit, giving you 810 extra damage including an average of (.33x1.5+.66x1 =1.15) 15% increase in damage from crit. (not sure about descisive strike crits tho). 810 damage from 11547 gold worth of items. Assuming said target has 3k hp and 100 armour your combo damage is 921.425 physical damage, 410 true damage from ignite and let's say with the team we get him down to 1k out of 3k, our ult does 525+(.4x2000 =800) =1325, even assuming he has 100 mr that's 662.5 damage. So your QE combo is 921 damage and your ult+ignite is 1072 damage meaning less than 50% of your damage is actually physical here. If you auto a bit with yomuus you probably won't get more than a few in but it might break the 50/50 mark. Consideing armour stacking is more usual than mr stacking with only 1 ap damage dealer you can expect something like an AD carry to have maybe 150 armour and like 60 mr or something as well.
Remember thats 11.5k worth of items, with 36 mr, 700 hp, and 45 armour as well as the maw proc meaning you've spent 600 gold on magic resist, 700 gold on armour, 1800 gold on hp = 3100 gold on defenses, you get a bit more from hexdrinker proc depending on who's killing you but if it at least procs let's round it up to 1/3 of your gold on defenses. So you are spending 2/3 of your total gold on items on damage. What's the damage increase? About 400 with your full combo used once to burst. Maybe your burst increased from around 1500 to 2000, pretty pathetic increase in damage honestly. IE+PD+LW+GA costs a total of 2845+2230+3830+2600 = 11.5k gold worth of items. It depends on the champ but these items increase your DPS on an ad carry with no items vs 100/200 armour targets by probably 4-8x AND the GA gives similar MR Armour and HP if you revive than your whole set up.
That why I don't build bruiser items on garen. Yeah I'm ignoring frozen mallet, yomuus proc, but IMO they are both trash on garen. Why do you need sticking power when you do everything with 1 combo where the target is silenced you're moving fast and you break all slowing effects.
That's why I just get LW and lategame IE. LW adds 188 damage +40% armpen. With IE that's another 376 damage with the crit bonus. 20% crit with IE proc is 1.2xdamage so 677 damage bonus for 6k. Not that great, which is why I usually just get LW. Let's say you have 50% armourpen and the target has 200 armour. (GA+aegis+taric or smth, or a tank) Your combo is 1220 damage x .33 = 407 damage. With 50% armour pen that's 610 damage. Without LW you have 1032/3 = 344 damage. So you can spend 2.2k gold to nearly double your physical damage against tanks instead of spending over 6k gold which doesn't even double your physical damage against squishys. In fact against a 200 armour target your build does a total of 614 damage. That is, 11.5k item build level 18 garen does the same damage against a 200 armour target as a level 18 garen with 2k item build. Toss in a couple giants belts, a vest and negatron to balance it out and that's a 5.6k item build for more hp, more mr, and the same damage.
A consequence of this is that we can show that garen actually has awful damage scaling in general. You can say yeah just wait 9 seconds and use QE again, but who's going to live 10 seconds in a teamfight? Super tanky guys who pick their spots and start the fight with full hp. Thus the whole regen garen thing. You absorb any poke, and in fights you're unkillable, but if they want to walk past you, you can combo them for most of their hp and if you get any support you can finish them with ult ignite, and you silence them too so they can't even get their spells off. Obviously the issue here is garen can't initiate, it's like garen is super godlike unbeatable champ.
There's no reason to build lots of damage on him because you can just play any other champ say wukong and build the items you want to build except you have a gap closer, an attack speed steriod, built in armour pen and a better spin.
However when you look at garens perks -One of the highest damage spells in the game when used as execute without any AD or AP needed for that damage -Built into CC breaker, CC reduction, speed boost and a silence -Pretty good base damage for a physical damage champ. For reference lee sin has 1140 so only 100 more damage than you at level 18 without ad INCLUDING his ult (not including execute tho). Lee sin has similar scaling but again this is garens QE vs lee sins full combo. Ofc lee sin has his utility nd cc but that's not the point. -One of the very best defensive steriods in the game lategame. 20% bonus resists and 30% damage reduction for 6 whole seconds. -A %hp based regen on his passive, so with his Q he's basically a walking force of nature except the movement speed bonus is faster and the regen is higher but they're both temporary.
The way scaling works it's generally better to stack on your strengths. That's why the nearly full tank regen garen builds work pretty well when you'd think garen is just a bad champ. Obviously he has lots of weaknesses, being a tank without initiate in itself is a pretty crippling design to have. At least mundo has poke.
Also CDR in theory is good on garen but the huge issue is you do so much with your 1 combo and it's often risk free to wait for cds but if you invest a lot in CDR you waste a lot of it on your E because the CD starts after you finish spinning and I think it's the same with Q. Otherwise ghostblade CDR would be worth a lot more and if you didn't expect them to stack armour ghostblade+cdr boots would probably be viable. Garen isn't totally dependent on mercs since W and Q and both anti cc moves cdr boots work sort of as tenacity. More practically though having 21 defensive+w+mercs prevents puny humans from trying to stop you when you're spinning on someone. 60% cc reduction meaning a 1.5 second taric stun lasts only 0.6 seconds on you combined with your speed boost it mightn't even allow whoever you're spinning on silenced to get out of range of the spin damage and ult range.
On September 20 2012 07:42 Slayer91 wrote: Crit is actually pretty bad on garen. I tried building atmas and it felt like a piece of shit. IE felt way better and I didn't really know why but this explains it, it doubles the crit damage and therefore doubles the effectiveness of crit. IE's 20% crit is worth more than the 33% crit of atmas and gives the same or more AD than the two combined.
Mind explaining? Atmas has 18% crit. Do you mean it'd be more damage than atmas tacked on to 33% crit from brawlers gloves/cloaks, and runes? IE provides 25% crit. Same thing?
From the top of my post "Judgement is subject to a linear crit bonus damage penalty of 50%. This means that if you have 100 damage from the ratio on Judgement, on a crit, you deal 50 more damage. Infinity Edge increases the crit multiplier to 50% + 50% = 100% and Lethality (mastery) increases it by 10%. "" so atmas 18% crit + youmuus 15% crit which is 33% crit is only worth 16.5% IE crit because IE crits hit twice as hard on judgement IE gives 25% crit? It's slightly better than the above then zzz but I'm ignoring that decisive strike crits for 150% from IE and 100% from judgement so it prolly works out similar in comparision.
well that's a huge post with a lot of topics. I won't respond to every point, but I will say that I disagree with some of them.
The biggest thing is that most of your math assumes that I don't ever get a LW. While I didn't specifically mention in my post that I would get LW against an armor-stacking team, I most surely would if everyone on their team has 150+ armor. In fact depending on what point in the game it was, I'd probably sell off brutalizer and get last whisper instead of finishing it into youmuu's, since against an armor-stacking team the 20 flat armor pen of youmuu's is fairly useless against such large armor amounts. So I'm curious now to know what the new numbers are, Using LW/IE/Maw/Atma's.
Also, I disagree that going from ~1500 burst to ~2000 is pathetic. I think that's the difference between getting a kill and not honestly.
I think Garen benefits greatly from +damage items. He's a burst champ, so he needs as much damage as he can get. Having LW obviously changes everything if you're up against 200 armor tanks and 150 armor ad carries like you described; I already know that.
I've been picking garen top more often now, even though he has a ton of bad match ups. I feel like the most consistent build if pure tank and abuse your W during team fights and 1v4 zone the other team. Sure if you get farmed you can build IE and BTs and shit but it still doesn't scale great into the late game and your best move has no AD ratio.
I'm a level 14 dude at the moment. Been having some good times with Garen. Last two games I went 14-0-28 and 17-0-18. Generally going Doran's Shield, Boots of Swiftness, Guardian Angel, Warmog's, Thornmail, Force of Nature. Tank like crazy, do decent damage and silence people in team fights and finish people with ult and sometimes ignite. Kablammo.
Played my first few games with Garen yesterday - what a fantastic champ. So fun to shut down katarinas and/or other tough melees. I did not know that Q and E can crit, certainly good to know. I really never even felt the need for any sort of damage items though, he does so much f'ing damage without it (I went full tank builds every game). I will try getting a brutalizer next game, seems like it would be perfect for him. Still on the fence though as to if I should start with boots + 3 pot or a Doran's Blade, have always started with boots build. Will Doran's blade basically add +10 damage to every hit from E? Sounds intriguing...
Edit: It also seems that this champ has been rebalanced since the OP here, do people still even do these damage type builds (BloodThirster, IE) nowadays?
On November 16 2012 08:35 rhs408 wrote: Played my first few games with Garen yesterday - what a fantastic champ. So fun to shut down katarinas and/or other tough melees. I did not know that Q and E can crit, certainly good to know. I really never even felt the need for any sort of damage items though, he does so much f'ing damage without it (I went full tank builds every game). I will try getting a brutalizer next game, seems like it would be perfect for him. Still on the fence though as to if I should start with boots + 3 pot or a Doran's Blade, have always started with boots build. Will Doran's blade basically add +10 damage to every hit from E? Sounds intriguing...
Edit: It also seems that this champ has been rebalanced since the OP here, do people still even do these damage type builds (BloodThirster, IE) nowadays?
you allways should start boots as you need to be at least as fast as your opponent the additional health from your pots allow you to stay long enough to push the lane into the turret so you can go back to buy some stuff.
the most important items i think are mercs and wardens mail. you should allways get those at some point. the rest is situational. there are more damage oriented builds and more tank oriented ones. lw is better most of the time than bruta IMO. your base damage and your ult is enough for you to stack defense as long as you need to. get more AD if there is a high-priority target you can reach easily with a full combo. as you figured garen is pretty good if they have kat or another assassin because they cannot ever get close if you predict their targets well enough. its harder if you have to dive in with garen especially if there are stuns or knockbacks.
so yeah. get defense, especially wardens mail and mercs, but don't completely neglect damage if you can almost allways catch someone.
On November 16 2012 08:35 rhs408 wrote: Played my first few games with Garen yesterday - what a fantastic champ. So fun to shut down katarinas and/or other tough melees. I did not know that Q and E can crit, certainly good to know. I really never even felt the need for any sort of damage items though, he does so much f'ing damage without it (I went full tank builds every game). I will try getting a brutalizer next game, seems like it would be perfect for him. Still on the fence though as to if I should start with boots + 3 pot or a Doran's Blade, have always started with boots build. Will Doran's blade basically add +10 damage to every hit from E? Sounds intriguing...
Edit: It also seems that this champ has been rebalanced since the OP here, do people still even do these damage type builds (BloodThirster, IE) nowadays?
you allways should start boots as you need to be at least as fast as your opponent the additional health from your pots allow you to stay long enough to push the lane into the turret so you can go back to buy some stuff.
the most important items i think are mercs and wardens mail. you should allways get those at some point. the rest is situational. there are more damage oriented builds and more tank oriented ones. lw is better most of the time than bruta IMO. your base damage and your ult is enough for you to stack defense as long as you need to. get more AD if there is a high-priority target you can reach easily with a full combo. as you figured garen is pretty good if they have kat or another assassin because they cannot ever get close if you predict their targets well enough. its harder if you have to dive in with garen especially if there are stuns or knockbacks.
so yeah. get defense, especially wardens mail and mercs, but don't completely neglect damage if you can almost allways catch someone.
I actually like starting with a doran's shield deoending on the MU. Maxing q first means that you will be fast when you need to be, and the shield lets you freeze lane from level one. Bullying becomes a breeze.
boots are obvious, bc for true damage and health, gb for more ms, some crit, and moar pen, and GA for resists (goes good with w passive). replace a black cleaver with revolver (yes) if you need sustain
On December 08 2012 21:50 nosliw wrote: three black cleavers? What?
The passives are not unique (yet) so you get 30% CDR, +45 flat ArPen and full Cleaver stacks in roughly a third of Garen's spin, dealing massive AoE damage and shredding almost a whole teams armor (5 people is not realistic, but hitting 3-4 is absolutely doable as rambo Garen) for your AD carry that can now follow up with a hilarious heavy damage Ult (Graves / MF come to mind, especially when they already got their Last Whisper and have specced flat pen by themselves).
Thanks to the order of penetration changes armor shred is actually pretty noticeable and Cleaver is the go-to item right now. Yesterday a J4 (who had a cleaver) + Taric + Corki combination melted me and my team in fights and it's the same principle with Black Cleaver Garen (I guess at least, haven't played triple Cleaver myself).
I really feel like Garen got a huge boost from season 3 changes:
BC seems made for him
no more minion damage reduction masteries, this makes garen one of the few champs that can effectively freeze top lane now
the new cc reduction masteries help with garen's kiting issues
some of the support items help with garen's kiting issues (mikael's crucible) or help with his initiation (shard of true ice)
there's also mercurial scimitar if you need to stack even more cc reduction
Not sure if he's a competitive pick yet, since he is such short range and has poor initiation, but I'm doing much better with him in season 3, and I'm seeing him a lot more in solo queue (even in ranked 5s) as well.
On December 10 2012 16:40 BlasiuS wrote: I really feel like Garen got a huge boost from season 3 changes:
BC seems made for him
no more minion damage reduction masteries, this makes garen one of the few champs that can effectively freeze top lane now
the new cc reduction masteries help with garen's kiting issues
some of the support items help with garen's kiting issues (mikael's crucible) or help with his initiation (shard of true ice)
there's also mercurial scimitar if you need to stack even more cc reduction
Not sure if he's a competitive pick yet, since he is such short range and has poor initiation, but I'm doing much better with him in season 3, and I'm seeing him a lot more in solo queue (even in ranked 5s) as well.
I think you forgot the anti-slow masteries.
He still seems kind of "lacking", if you will. I guess it's because he doesn't have gapclosers and his only CC is a single target silence.
On December 10 2012 18:48 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: You're forgetting that spin applies fear to all people within the circle and that execute is a form of CC
BC is actually terrible for garen compared to most people, wtf? Your Q and spin combo does 7 applications of physical damage only 3 of which will get the benefit of the full reduction, and after that all your burst is non physical (ignite, ult) except for your autos which you don't get to stick to people too much or the 9 seconds later or whatever when the next spin comes and the BC debuff already wears off.
I think the sunfire "buff", with warmogs and randuins both being fairly untouched make the full tank +armpen builds better. Stuff like brutalizer +LW into full tank is probably optimal. You have to abuse garens absurd base damage and tank steriods.
On December 11 2012 01:41 Slayer91 wrote: BC is actually terrible for garen compared to most people, wtf? Your Q and spin combo does 7 applications of physical damage only 3 of which will get the benefit of the full reduction, and after that all your burst is non physical (ignite, ult) except for your autos which you don't get to stick to people too much or the 9 seconds later or whatever when the next spin comes and the BC debuff already wears off.
I think the sunfire "buff", with warmogs and randuins both being fairly untouched make the full tank +armpen builds better. Stuff like brutalizer +LW into full tank is probably optimal. You have to abuse garens absurd base damage and tank steriods.
Gotta disagree there. His E applies full BC stacks in 2 seconds, and that's in an AOE. There's only a few bruisers who can do that. Riven can apply 3 stacks quickly if she hits multiple people with a full Q. Pantheon can with his E, but he can't move while channeling it, and again it's only 3 stacks. Renekton can with a Q+E combo, but again, only 3 stacks. Who exactly did you have in mind that uses BC passive better than garen?
But that aside, just looking at how much of your own kit can do damage at full stacks is an extremely arbitrary way of deciding who BC is good on. The BC debuff is good not only for yourself, but for the rest of your team. Even besides the passive, Garen uses all of the stats on BC effectively, and of course it builds out of brutalizer. The current BC is so good it's core on Garen. I suspect even after the nerfs it will still be core on him.
On December 11 2012 01:41 Slayer91 wrote: BC is actually terrible for garen compared to most people, wtf? Your Q and spin combo does 7 applications of physical damage only 3 of which will get the benefit of the full reduction, and after that all your burst is non physical (ignite, ult) except for your autos which you don't get to stick to people too much or the 9 seconds later or whatever when the next spin comes and the BC debuff already wears off.
I think the sunfire "buff", with warmogs and randuins both being fairly untouched make the full tank +armpen builds better. Stuff like brutalizer +LW into full tank is probably optimal. You have to abuse garens absurd base damage and tank steriods.
Gotta disagree there. His E applies full BC stacks in 2 seconds, and that's in an AOE. There's only a few bruisers who can do that. Riven can apply 3 stacks quickly if she hits multiple people with a full Q. Pantheon can with his E, but he can't move while channeling it, and again it's only 3 stacks. Renekton can with a Q+E combo, but again, only 3 stacks. Who exactly did you have in mind that uses BC passive better than garen?
But that aside, just looking at how much of your own kit can do damage at full stacks is an extremely arbitrary way of deciding who BC is good on. The BC debuff is good not only for yourself, but for the rest of your team. Even besides the passive, Garen uses all of the stats on BC effectively, and of course it builds out of brutalizer. The current BC is so good it's core on Garen. I suspect even after the nerfs it will still be core on him.
Renek has 4 damaging spells, and can auto attack inbetween spells which also stack BC faster and use stacks. He has a double gap closer and a stun both allow him to auto a lot more and use the time to auto attack with the armpen. Riven is the same, 5 damaging spells and also you can auto inbetween with your gapclosers.
Meanwhile Garen has a pathetic AoE radius on his spin and you bolded it, lol. If you want AOE try WUKONG. His ult does like 2x-3x the damage of your spin, gives him a movement boost and has a massively larger radius. Not to mention he already has armour reduction in his Q and a gap closer in E and a as boost to help him stack faster.
Brutal+LW is vastly more effective damage than BC on garen. And even then you are trying to compare champs who do ONLY physical damage or close to it, to champions who do about 50% physical damage (garen)
The "rest of your team" usually involves just the AD carry who may not be hitting the same target. Why not get BC on support with that argument? ranged can stack it easier!
On December 11 2012 01:41 Slayer91 wrote: BC is actually terrible for garen compared to most people, wtf? Your Q and spin combo does 7 applications of physical damage only 3 of which will get the benefit of the full reduction, and after that all your burst is non physical (ignite, ult) except for your autos which you don't get to stick to people too much or the 9 seconds later or whatever when the next spin comes and the BC debuff already wears off.
I think the sunfire "buff", with warmogs and randuins both being fairly untouched make the full tank +armpen builds better. Stuff like brutalizer +LW into full tank is probably optimal. You have to abuse garens absurd base damage and tank steriods.
Gotta disagree there. His E applies full BC stacks in 2 seconds, and that's in an AOE. There's only a few bruisers who can do that. Riven can apply 3 stacks quickly if she hits multiple people with a full Q. Pantheon can with his E, but he can't move while channeling it, and again it's only 3 stacks. Renekton can with a Q+E combo, but again, only 3 stacks. Who exactly did you have in mind that uses BC passive better than garen?
But that aside, just looking at how much of your own kit can do damage at full stacks is an extremely arbitrary way of deciding who BC is good on. The BC debuff is good not only for yourself, but for the rest of your team. Even besides the passive, Garen uses all of the stats on BC effectively, and of course it builds out of brutalizer. The current BC is so good it's core on Garen. I suspect even after the nerfs it will still be core on him.
Renek has 4 damaging spells, and can auto attack inbetween spells which also stack BC faster and use stacks. He has a double gap closer and a stun both allow him to auto a lot more and use the time to auto attack with the armpen. Riven is the same, 5 damaging spells and also you can auto inbetween with your gapclosers.
Meanwhile Garen has a pathetic AoE radius on his spin and you bolded it, lol. If you want AOE try WUKONG. His ult does like 2x-3x the damage of your spin, gives him a movement boost and has a massively larger radius. Not to mention he already has armour reduction in his Q and a gap closer in E and a as boost to help him stack faster.
Brutal+LW is vastly more effective damage than BC on garen. And even then you are trying to compare champs who do ONLY physical damage or close to it, to champions who do about 50% physical damage (garen)
The "rest of your team" usually involves just the AD carry who may not be hitting the same target. Why not get BC on support with that argument? ranged can stack it easier!
I'm still unsure of the point of your post. Are you suggesting BC isn't core on garen? Or that BC isn't worthwhile because wukong also uses it well? Or that BC is actually bad on garen?
I'm saying its sub optimal at least until late game The comparision was merely to refute the point that "it's better on him than on other bruisers" (lol)
On December 11 2012 05:00 Slayer91 wrote: I'm saying its sub optimal at least until late game The comparision was merely to refute the point that "it's better on him than on other bruisers" (lol)
But you provide extremely weak examples. Riven can't apply full stacks in an aoe, neither can renekton. Wukong is the only good example, so that's 1 champion out of 90+. At the very worst Garen is top 5 champs who benefit from BC. Using that as the basis for "BC is actually terrible for garen compared to most people, wtf?" is delusional. You haven't even refuted the point that Garen is one of the best champs in the game for utilizing BC. I think you're confusing "BC is terrible on Garen" with "well technically there may be 1 or 2 champs that could situationally use the passive on BC better than Garen can". There's quite a difference there.
And of course BC is optimal early game. The build path is extremely cost-efficient, as is the recipe. It would be silly to build brutalizer and then not upgrade it until late-game. It's why I and almost every high-level garen player builds BC as their first item.
As i said, garens AoE radius is pretty small, maybe you can try to hit it on 2 tanks to benefit your AD carry, but other than that, garen himself doesn't use it that well so unless you've got a lot of physical damage on your team I see no reason to get it over LW
Even still, applying it to more than 1 target isn't all that useful when your AD can only focus one at a time, it's worth something but I generally rather not waste your main combo on garen to focus tanks just to apply BC.
If you look at personal use garen only uses it for 3 ticks of spin which is half his spin which is less than 1/4 of his combo damage that benefits from the full stack of BC, seems like a pretty meh reason to build it unless you're specifically making a team around applying BC to a few targets with some other AOE physical dealers.
Also, you said wukong was the only good example, but wukong uses BC far more effectively than garen does, whats the point of playing garen and rushing BC when wukong does the same thing except with WAY bigger aoe, way more damage and a more reliable way to get in to apply the AoE BC. The strengths of garen over wukong is his base damage especially on ult and his tank steriod on W, if you aren't building to abuse those (threaten to combo squishies while being so tanky you can't really be focused) you might as well just play wukong.
Also talon with W and ult applies 4 stacks in a bigger AoE than garen as well. He also has a gap closer to get in to use it.
You do realize that we're talking about stacking BCs, which on this patch applies the on-hit per cleaver you have on each tick of spin, right? So like if you have 5 cleavers your very first tick applies 5 stacks and you're basically doing true damage to anyone under like 200 armor.
They're patching it soon, but right now it's ridiculous.
Aside from discussing strategy based on a gimmick that will be nerfed very soon, stacking BC's probably isn't viable on garen because you can just get focused too easily while your burst isn't that much improved compared to assassins who have better mobility, and burst harder from the true damage physical thing since they are ALL physical damage while garen, as I said but most people realize, is only about 50% physical damage. (ignite+ult does more than half your damage you can expect assuming they have lower mr than armour which everyone should normally and that the fight isn't exceptionally long)
I mean, go for the whole BC stack thing on anyone physical based champ with a gap closer but garen doesn't fit that too well.
On December 11 2012 08:35 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: You do realize that we're talking about stacking BCs, which on this patch applies the on-hit per cleaver you have on each tick of spin, right? So like if you have 5 cleavers your very first tick applies 5 stacks and you're basically doing true damage to anyone under like 200 armor.
They're patching it soon, but right now it's ridiculous.
On December 11 2012 08:50 Slayer91 wrote: Aside from discussing strategy based on a gimmick that will be nerfed very soon, stacking BC's probably isn't viable on garen because you can just get focused too easily while your burst isn't that much improved compared to assassins who have better mobility, and burst harder from the true damage physical thing since they are ALL physical damage while garen, as I said but most people realize, is only about 50% physical damage. (ignite+ult does more than half your damage you can expect assuming they have lower mr than armour which everyone should normally and that the fight isn't exceptionally long)
I mean, go for the whole BC stack thing on anyone physical based champ with a gap closer but garen doesn't fit that too well.
Garen is literally a physical champ with a gap closer
Garen at level 18 does ~1k damage with Q and E combo if it hits fully. Garens R breaks even with 1.2k or so missing hp. That's a squishy with about 30-40% hp which is prime execute range. Ignite does, what, 410 or so true damage?
Garens physical does more if you stack armpen and AD, and opponents have less armour. Garens magic does more damage when people buy more hp but not mr (common in this patch if you're running a single AP, it's hard enough to get armour let alone mr), and also if you buy sunfire. Garens ignite does relatively more damage if you don't buy any damage or more likely they get really tanky. (specifically GAs).
Granted, you can get more than 1 combo off in a fight, but the most important phase of the fight, by the time you use your full combo you have to wait 8-9 seconds for another spin which you won't expect to be alive unless you're building tanky. (adding to the argument of building tank focused on garen instead of damage focused)
So you're buying damage items to augment a lesser portion of the damage you deal in your combo. Whatever about laning phase, you build what you need for that, and by the time you got your big defensive item sunfire or whatever and your brutalizer it's not going to make a huge difference whether you get BC or LW.
As for calling garens Q a gap closer, by that argument every single melee has a gap closer. Either an instant flash gap closer, a speed boost, or a CC spell. I'm talking about instant flash spells when I say gap closer. Because it allows you to burst squishies without them having time to react. The cloest garen has to that is flashing in with Q but flash isn't that long a range compared to most bruisers/assassins and it has an insane CD so you have to get something done with it.
I used to get brutalizer on Garen anyways, a BC is simple next step from there to make him even stronger offensively. Not sure I'd want to stack BC though - sure it will put out tons of damage, but will you be able to live past your first spin in a team fight? I see a lot of garens go full damage builds, and rarely do I see them have good success - they usually get a lot of mid game kills, but late game die easy in team fights, making them relatively useless. I'm not a fan of paper tiger melees...
I had a full build garen yesterday, not sure if it could be improved upon - ninja tabi, BC, sunfire, spirit visage, warmogs, switched out my dorans blade for IE for final item. Easy. My only question, would a second BC (in its current OP state) have been better than the IE? I can't see how it would be... the crits alone would end up doing more total damage, no?
so I go 9/21/0 on Garen, but I am not sure what specific points to take in Def. Should I get relentless (reduce slow) or Safeguard (reduce tower shot) No idea what to get in rank 4 or rank 5.
On December 12 2012 02:00 Slayer91 wrote: Garen at level 18 does ~1k damage with Q and E combo if it hits fully. Garens R breaks even with 1.2k or so missing hp. That's a squishy with about 30-40% hp which is prime execute range. Ignite does, what, 410 or so true damage?
Garens physical does more if you stack armpen and AD, and opponents have less armour. Garens magic does more damage when people buy more hp but not mr (common in this patch if you're running a single AP, it's hard enough to get armour let alone mr), and also if you buy sunfire. Garens ignite does relatively more damage if you don't buy any damage or more likely they get really tanky. (specifically GAs).
Granted, you can get more than 1 combo off in a fight, but the most important phase of the fight, by the time you use your full combo you have to wait 8-9 seconds for another spin which you won't expect to be alive unless you're building tanky. (adding to the argument of building tank focused on garen instead of damage focused)
So you're buying damage items to augment a lesser portion of the damage you deal in your combo. Whatever about laning phase, you build what you need for that, and by the time you got your big defensive item sunfire or whatever and your brutalizer it's not going to make a huge difference whether you get BC or LW.
As for calling garens Q a gap closer, by that argument every single melee has a gap closer. Either an instant flash gap closer, a speed boost, or a CC spell. I'm talking about instant flash spells when I say gap closer. Because it allows you to burst squishies without them having time to react. The cloest garen has to that is flashing in with Q but flash isn't that long a range compared to most bruisers/assassins and it has an insane CD so you have to get something done with it.
I'm not sure what your argument over stacking cleaver on garen is, it gives him 4 things that he scales off of (arp/ad/hp/cdr) and it's currently bugged to be extremely broken and completely shred the armor of anyone who comes near him with one tick. It doesn't matter if they have time to react or not, sometimes there's value in having deathtouch even if you can only instagib people with total reliability when your flash is up. When it's down, yes, you are vulnerable to cc, except slows are not very effective and you have a ton of MS with Q, and then they're forced to blow cc on you and burst if they want to kill you through your HP from cleavers and W so like you're doing that "tanking" thing and obviously nobody's going to be able to get through to your back line ever if you're standing there able to silence -> spin them as they run towards your team.
It's just absurd to not stack cleavers -> GA/other defense on this patch. Argue about it not working all you want next patch but it's currently retarded.
Also your argument about gapclosers is stupid. Darius and Mordekaiser both don't have gapclosers by that definition in spite of how dumb it is.
On December 12 2012 03:43 nosliw wrote: so I go 9/21/0 on Garen, but I am not sure what specific points to take in Def. Should I get relentless (reduce slow) or Safeguard (reduce tower shot) No idea what to get in rank 4 or rank 5.
Subjective: Relentless feels better than increased Tenacity since you probably want to build Merc's anyways. It is also highly unlikely that you can cleanse all the slows on you at once with a single Q, since in teamfights you'll have to deal with Red buff, Phage and now all those Ice items.
Flat damage reduction is always very strong because it applies after armor/mr which means it is worth multiplicatively more based on your armor/mr.
Objective:
3 pts in Juggernaut is better than 3 pts in flat MR once you have 50 MR but due to minimum pt requirements I split it 2 MR/2.75% HP (which breaks even at 60 MR).
1 pt in Defender is better than maxing out Juggernaut until you hit 300 armor/mr for the initial teamfight when you get +5 armor/mr. Also, Defender lets you check brushes by checking your armor/mr values
2 Juggernaut, 3 Legendary Armor performs better than 3 Juggernaut, 2 Armor, for AR/MR values higher than 170. BUT because of Garen's W passive the break even point is only 137, so 3 pts in Armor is better than 3 pts in Juggernaut.
Stacking BCs might be viable, but I'm ignoring it because it's days are numbered.
Also AFAIK legendary armour says BONUS armour and magic resist meaning it doesn't scale all your base armour/mr so it might be a lot weaker than you guys think.
On December 12 2012 06:12 Slayer91 wrote: Stacking BCs might be viable, but I'm ignoring it because it's days are numbered.
Also AFAIK legendary armour says BONUS armour and magic resist meaning it doesn't scale all your base armour/mr so it might be a lot weaker than you guys think.
So we're wrong and you're right because you're ignoring us? Cool.
I don't know, 2 BC's and GA is a pretty much lategame build already so maybe it's worth it when you finish the second BC because you get full stacks at Q and first tick of spin and the CDR stacks. I don't think single BC is optimal though.
You specifically made the argument about stacking em this patch, fair enough, I mostly care about the people arguing for it as a single item being the best DPS choice for him.
On December 12 2012 03:43 nosliw wrote: so I go 9/21/0 on Garen, but I am not sure what specific points to take in Def. Should I get relentless (reduce slow) or Safeguard (reduce tower shot) No idea what to get in rank 4 or rank 5.
Subjective: Relentless feels better than increased Tenacity since you probably want to build Merc's anyways. It is also highly unlikely that you can cleanse all the slows on you at once with a single Q, since in teamfights you'll have to deal with Red buff, Phage and now all those Ice items.
Flat damage reduction is always very strong because it applies after armor/mr which means it is worth multiplicatively more based on your armor/mr.
Objective:
3 pts in Juggernaut is better than 3 pts in flat MR once you have 50 MR but due to minimum pt requirements I split it 2 MR/2.75% HP (which breaks even at 60 MR).
1 pt in Defender is better than maxing out Juggernaut until you hit 300 armor/mr for the initial teamfight when you get +5 armor/mr. Also, Defender lets you check brushes by checking your armor/mr values
2 Juggernaut, 3 Legendary Armor performs better than 3 Juggernaut, 2 Armor, for AR/MR values higher than 170. BUT because of Garen's W passive the break even point is only 137, so 3 pts in Armor is better than 3 pts in Juggernaut.
The tenacious stacks multiplicatively with Merc Treads though. Is Relentless still better than Tenacious?
On December 12 2012 03:43 nosliw wrote: so I go 9/21/0 on Garen, but I am not sure what specific points to take in Def. Should I get relentless (reduce slow) or Safeguard (reduce tower shot) No idea what to get in rank 4 or rank 5.
Subjective: Relentless feels better than increased Tenacity since you probably want to build Merc's anyways. It is also highly unlikely that you can cleanse all the slows on you at once with a single Q, since in teamfights you'll have to deal with Red buff, Phage and now all those Ice items.
Flat damage reduction is always very strong because it applies after armor/mr which means it is worth multiplicatively more based on your armor/mr.
Objective:
3 pts in Juggernaut is better than 3 pts in flat MR once you have 50 MR but due to minimum pt requirements I split it 2 MR/2.75% HP (which breaks even at 60 MR).
1 pt in Defender is better than maxing out Juggernaut until you hit 300 armor/mr for the initial teamfight when you get +5 armor/mr. Also, Defender lets you check brushes by checking your armor/mr values
2 Juggernaut, 3 Legendary Armor performs better than 3 Juggernaut, 2 Armor, for AR/MR values higher than 170. BUT because of Garen's W passive the break even point is only 137, so 3 pts in Armor is better than 3 pts in Juggernaut.
The tenacious stacks multiplicatively with Merc Treads though. Is Relentless still better than Tenacious?
Situational
vs ashe, relentless is probably better
vs harder cc, tenacious is better
But I run 21/9/0 on garen anyways because I am a man
On December 12 2012 06:26 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know, 2 BC's and GA is a pretty much lategame build already so maybe it's worth it when you finish the second BC because you get full stacks at Q and first tick of spin and the CDR stacks. I don't think single BC is optimal though.
You specifically made the argument about stacking em this patch, fair enough, I mostly care about the people arguing for it as a single item being the best DPS choice for him.
What is the single best DPS item choice for Garen in your eyes?
On December 12 2012 06:26 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know, 2 BC's and GA is a pretty much lategame build already so maybe it's worth it when you finish the second BC because you get full stacks at Q and first tick of spin and the CDR stacks. I don't think single BC is optimal though.
You specifically made the argument about stacking em this patch, fair enough, I mostly care about the people arguing for it as a single item being the best DPS choice for him.
What is the single best DPS item choice for Garen in your eyes?
On December 12 2012 06:26 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know, 2 BC's and GA is a pretty much lategame build already so maybe it's worth it when you finish the second BC because you get full stacks at Q and first tick of spin and the CDR stacks. I don't think single BC is optimal though.
You specifically made the argument about stacking em this patch, fair enough, I mostly care about the people arguing for it as a single item being the best DPS choice for him.
What is the single best DPS item choice for Garen in your eyes?
LW but i'd defintely go 2x BC if they stacked over BC LW
On December 12 2012 06:12 Slayer91 wrote: Also AFAIK legendary armour says BONUS armour and magic resist meaning it doesn't scale all your base armour/mr so it might be a lot weaker than you guys think.
I totally forgot about that. In that case legendary armor breaks even with flat armor/mr at bonus levels of 100. I'd rather get the flat for early laning vs either damage type, and then since you're building for the lane, its highly unlikely you'll have bonus values for the other type, making flat worth even more.
On December 12 2012 03:43 nosliw wrote: so I go 9/21/0 on Garen, but I am not sure what specific points to take in Def. Should I get relentless (reduce slow) or Safeguard (reduce tower shot) No idea what to get in rank 4 or rank 5.
Subjective: Relentless feels better than increased Tenacity since you probably want to build Merc's anyways. It is also highly unlikely that you can cleanse all the slows on you at once with a single Q, since in teamfights you'll have to deal with Red buff, Phage and now all those Ice items.
Flat damage reduction is always very strong because it applies after armor/mr which means it is worth multiplicatively more based on your armor/mr.
Objective:
3 pts in Juggernaut is better than 3 pts in flat MR once you have 50 MR but due to minimum pt requirements I split it 2 MR/2.75% HP (which breaks even at 60 MR).
1 pt in Defender is better than maxing out Juggernaut until you hit 300 armor/mr for the initial teamfight when you get +5 armor/mr. Also, Defender lets you check brushes by checking your armor/mr values
2 Juggernaut, 3 Legendary Armor performs better than 3 Juggernaut, 2 Armor, for AR/MR values higher than 170. BUT because of Garen's W passive the break even point is only 137, so 3 pts in Armor is better than 3 pts in Juggernaut.
The tenacious stacks multiplicatively with Merc Treads though. Is Relentless still better than Tenacious?
Tenacious stacking multiplicatively is a bad thing. It means that 15% CC reduction + 35% CC reduction = 45% CC reduction instead of 50% CC reduction.
Since Garen's W is 30% CC reduction, I would go with Tenacity in the defense tree and the pick up Swifty boots. This gives him 25% resistance to slows and 40% CC reduction and higher base MS, which helps vs Phantom Dancer/Static Shiv
The MR on Merc's I feel is less important now because Mundo Visage is a ton better, and the new Aegis/Aegis 2.0 are MR heavy
Swapping 2 pts in flat armor/mr depending on the lane, and perhaps even swapping tenaciou and slow reduction depending on the enemy team
Tenacious + Mercs + W = 60% CC reduction, which might be valued if you are up against a ton of stuns and roots
Relentless + Swifties = 40% reduction on slows, probably good vs Nunu/Cho/Diana (since Cho and Diana have knockbackups that apply slows, and CC reduction doesn't work on knockback)
Is Sunfire worth it? It gives really nice stats for the midgame, and the passive is OK along with something like brutalizer -> sunfire, but if the game goes long then both sunfire and bruta end up taking up space and gold that couldn't been Warmogs or Whisperer.
Or is the whole point of Garen now to just kill stuff before it gets to lategame and I'm bad at directing my team to take objectives?
I just played a game where I built Bruta -> Sunfire -> Mercs -> Cleaver and felt really strong for the first Baron at around 25 mins. + Show Spoiler +
But then our mid DC and so we couldn't push into their base. I ended up finishing Warmogs and Visage off of our ADC getting caught but then Spin2Win to salvage the fight. Basically I got really fed so they could never fight us in open space but our ADC was really behind and kept getting picked off before fights started so we couldn't push.
TL;DR I ended up on Cleaver, Mercs, Sunfire, Warmogs, Visage, and then Randuins but at this point I really wish I didn't buy the bruta at all got my Sunfire/etc earlier and then picked up LW instead of bruta. But at the same time having the flat armor pen apply after Whisperer makes bruta much better (though the cleaver upgrade not worth as much).
There are 7 items I feel are really good for lategame Garen and only 6 item slots what to do.
On December 13 2012 04:23 xes wrote: Is Sunfire worth it? It gives really nice stats for the midgame, and the passive is OK along with something like brutalizer -> sunfire, but if the game goes long then both sunfire and bruta end up taking up space and gold that couldn't been Warmogs or Whisperer.
Or is the whole point of Garen now to just kill stuff before it gets to lategame and I'm bad at directing my team to take objectives?
I just played a game where I built Bruta -> Sunfire -> Mercs -> Cleaver and felt really strong for the first Baron at around 25 mins. + Show Spoiler +
But then our mid DC and so we couldn't push into their base. I ended up finishing Warmogs and Visage off of our ADC getting caught but then Spin2Win to salvage the fight. Basically I got really fed so they could never fight us in open space but our ADC was really behind and kept getting picked off before fights started so we couldn't push.
TL;DR I ended up on Cleaver, Mercs, Sunfire, Warmogs, Visage, and then Randuins but at this point I really wish I didn't buy the bruta at all got my Sunfire/etc earlier and then picked up LW instead of bruta. But at the same time having the flat armor pen apply after Whisperer makes bruta much better (though the cleaver upgrade not worth as much).
There are 7 items I feel are really good for lategame Garen and only 6 item slots what to do.
Until next week's patch I would still just stack BC's and throw in a GA after the first 2
Garens early game is nerfed hard and his lategame is pretty good because of the resists bonus on W and 6 second duration. Dunno why you'd play him for early game.
choose between sunfire and warmogs. Get LW over cleaver
On December 13 2012 04:23 xes wrote: Is Sunfire worth it? It gives really nice stats for the midgame, and the passive is OK along with something like brutalizer -> sunfire, but if the game goes long then both sunfire and bruta end up taking up space and gold that couldn't been Warmogs or Whisperer.
Or is the whole point of Garen now to just kill stuff before it gets to lategame and I'm bad at directing my team to take objectives?
I just played a game where I built Bruta -> Sunfire -> Mercs -> Cleaver and felt really strong for the first Baron at around 25 mins. + Show Spoiler +
But then our mid DC and so we couldn't push into their base. I ended up finishing Warmogs and Visage off of our ADC getting caught but then Spin2Win to salvage the fight. Basically I got really fed so they could never fight us in open space but our ADC was really behind and kept getting picked off before fights started so we couldn't push.
TL;DR I ended up on Cleaver, Mercs, Sunfire, Warmogs, Visage, and then Randuins but at this point I really wish I didn't buy the bruta at all got my Sunfire/etc earlier and then picked up LW instead of bruta. But at the same time having the flat armor pen apply after Whisperer makes bruta much better (though the cleaver upgrade not worth as much).
There are 7 items I feel are really good for lategame Garen and only 6 item slots what to do.
Randuin's now builds out of giant's belt, so now Sunfire & Randuin's are both health + armor items that build from Giant's belt. I feel that randuin's is far superior to sunfire, and I like the armor build path of cloth -> cloth -> warden's -> randuin's way better than chain mail -> sunfire. Also the recipe for sunfire doesn't add any additional armor.
Sunfire is a bit cheaper but the recipe cost only adds like +30 health or something. Randuin's has more health, more armor, and better abilities than sunfire, so if you want armor + health, go for randuin's. You could get both I guess, but that's too much armor. Also I don't like warmog's on garen, he prefers resists due to the bonus he gets from W. I think one giant's belt item + black cleaver is enough health for garen.
On December 13 2012 05:11 McFly_terran wrote: I've played Garen support to some degree of success. Just build tank and play with ranged AP carry and win always
You support by "if you touch my AD carry, I WILL MURDER YOU"? I think the problems occur here when say... Nunu Caitlyn wards the crap out of bushes and kites you all over the place while (optionally) killing you or your carry. You probably can handle Melee supports better than ranged ones, except for alistar headbutting you off into lalaland.
On December 13 2012 05:11 McFly_terran wrote: I've played Garen support to some degree of success. Just build tank and play with ranged AP carry and win always
You support by "if you touch my AD carry, I WILL MURDER YOU"? I think the problems occur here when say... Nunu Caitlyn wards the crap out of bushes and kites you all over the place while (optionally) killing you or your carry. You probably can handle Melee supports better than ranged ones, except for alistar headbutting you off into lalaland.
Have you seen supportekaiser?
Maxes shield, and if you get a ghost you've won the game
edit: for massive lulz buy sword of the divine and get 100% crit on a full spin
I haven't tried doing support garen yet, sounds fun... but is he still useful once mid-late game comes around as you are presumably very low on cs? There aren't any GP+ items that are good for him so I could see him easily turning into crap late game unless you happen to be getting kills/assists in your lane?
I don't think Garen as support works. The most important aspect support is to be able to save your carry and initiate/set up gank. Garen doesn't have any knock up, stun/snare. If they want to focus your carry, you have no way of helping except silence and silence doesn't stop range AD from aaing. On the other hand, if he has no kit to initiate a gank or secure a kill in early levels. He is more like doesn't do much and ks the carry at the same time.
Black Cleaver and Randuin's Omen are core on Garen imo, BC gives Garen all the stats he wants plus an AOE armor shred combined with his spin and the Randuin's passive and active are just awesome. I mostly prefer Merc Treads over Tabi because the tenacity of mercs + Garen's W active is just OP unless the lane is really harass heavy.
Mid/lategame items that go well together imo are Atma's and IE. The HP from BC and Randuin's will boost the bonus damage you get from Atma's to around 50 and IE for the boost in crit dmg. For an MR item I'd go for Aegis/Bulwark if no one else on your team has it, Hexdrinker/MoM, Spirit Visage or a Mercurial Scimitar if they have ridiculous amounts of CC.
I'm sure there are more options than Atma's and IE but it's been working just fine for me. You get massive damage and become super beefy when you use W at the right moments when all the burst and AOE get's thrown around in teamfights. The build is pretty adaptable imo since you have a wide variety of middle tier items you can buy and upgrade later.
Something new I learned for Garen today (new because I'm noob, yes) - get CDR boots instead of the typical tabi/mercs to further snowball if you're doing really well early. I never really considered them before but they are actually the most offensive boots you can get for garen if you think you can survive without the tabi/mercs.
Anyone try furor enchantment for boots yet on Garen?
I'm beginning to think you can get away with not buying any items which are straight defense items (i.e. warmogs, GA, randuins) and instead get items which are a combo of offense and defense (and also happen to be great for garen), mainly thinking of phage into FM (HP), avarice into atmas (armor), and hexdrinker into MoM (MR). Other 3 items of a full build would be boots, brutalizer into BC (would get the brutalizer asap), IE as a last item. FM and MoM are both expensive but build out of items which are already very good for garen, so the build order can be very flexible depending on how the game is progressing. If I really thought I needed more tankiness after the FM, MoM and atmas combo, would consider switching out (or not getting at all) the atmas with a sunfire. Will let you guys know when I hit 2k elo with these theories... ;o
One last question - is it better to upgrade your brutalizer to BC as soon as you can, or keep bruatlizer in inventory and instead start working on another item (I'd normally be thinking of adding a phage around this point)?
Garens ad scaling kinda sucks, garens cdr scaling kinda sucks. IN LANE they are both good, but once teamfights come a huge part of your damage comes from level 3 ult and your ignite. Your Q E combo is mostly a way of getting them into the ult+ignite finish range which is around 50% hp for a squishy.
You want to abuse the efficiency of your base Q + E damage which means to get maximal armour pen for minimum cost and invest the rest into pure defense items because of how tanky your are with your W scaling and active it allows you to get away with a lot to kill squishy targets. LW is the best straight up damage item and brutalizer is very good in lane and after lane still nice. CDR and AD are both secondary stats but if you're doing really well it's better than nothing for damage if your team is basically useless.
CDR boots don't scale well with E because the CD starts after you finish spinning, which gives a % of the CD which doesn't scale with cdr so the dps beneifts are very small then you need to consider that having a shorter CD isn't always gonig to be that useful. You start to think - why not just buy a sunfire? You get more DPS overall, and it's active all the time, helps you in lane, more than CDR boots for sure. Probably better than all the ideas you said.
Hexdrinker i'd maybe consider, at least in lane, but generally bulwark and then ga are the best options for magic resist.
On December 13 2012 05:11 McFly_terran wrote: I've played Garen support to some degree of success. Just build tank and play with ranged AP carry and win always
You support by "if you touch my AD carry, I WILL MURDER YOU"? I think the problems occur here when say... Nunu Caitlyn wards the crap out of bushes and kites you all over the place while (optionally) killing you or your carry. You probably can handle Melee supports better than ranged ones, except for alistar headbutting you off into lalaland.
Have you seen supportekaiser?
Maxes shield, and if you get a ghost you've won the game
edit: for massive lulz buy sword of the divine and get 100% crit on a full spin
Thats what I wanted to ask, is that a viable strat? Q the carry, then sotd and E R him to death? Cant imagine that will work on higher ELO levels, some sort of peel and sotd is useless. If garen only had a gap closer...
I'm just a scrub, but recently I've been doing great with garen. Against ad tops, I start with dshield (which just got buffed yay) then work on brutalizer + swifties. After that, I get randuin's. Immediately after with a negatron before if I'm receiveing too much ap damage.
After IE, I get warmogs and bc and finish with spirit visage.
I tend to splitpush a lot, and come endgame, I feel like I'm completely immortal, and significant damage threat.
I've had 4 people try to gank me to stop splitpushing, and just q away laughing. If one of them tried to defend the tower, I'll just dive them if they're squishy, or ignore them and hit the tower while spamming /l. It just feels like there's nothing the opponent can really do.
In teamfights, I just e the frontline and peel for my adc.
Replace IE with LW most of the time. A large amount of your physical damage comes from base damage on Q and E and although IE has its strong points because crit works on E generally LW is a better buy. (much cheaper and you get it pretty late unless you're super fed and often people are stacking armour)
Swiftness boots don't matter that much, but I'd get them if they have a lot of slows or something, usually Q is fine.
Aegis//bulwark is the best MR item. negatron sucks because spirit visage is kinda meh. GA is alright too but bulwark is more than enough with your W boosting it.
Split pushing is okay if you can get away with it. Otherwise garens a teamfight monster if you are tanky enough which you should be.
Replace brutalizer with sunfire against anyone who stacks armour. I know sunfire costs more but the combine cost is less than brutalizer.
Your 5 final items should be something like randuins/bulwark/warmogs/BC/IE or LW get IE and LW if you don't need to be that tanky for whatever reason. (their team has to dive onto your team and focus your squihies.
Cloth+5 is the only other option other htan dshield, maybe null magic+2 vs AP tops. More pots might be worth if it you don't want to play passive early but you do usually since your E is weak early ranks.
Peeling isn't always the right option but it depends, it often is a safe bet though. Generally you want to support the majority of your team, if 1-2 guys are diving in you want to back them up, if most of your guys are staying back you stay back too. Garen can't really initiate so you have to go with the flow and react accordingly.
I really like sv because, aside from mr, cdr feels great and the healing boost sinergyzes both with warmogs and my passive. Maybe the passive doesn't matter so much since I get sv so late but still.
Also, is lw just better, or can I get an ie if I'm getting fed?
Edit: you covered my question pretty well in the first post duh. On the other hand, people aren't getting as much armor in league I warmogs this days...
LW is better against armour stack, IE is better if you get it faster (assuming you arent sacrificing too much tanky stats) or if people straight up aren't buying armour. Getting a higher cost item faster is generally something you shouldn't worry about since you're already doing so well.
I'm liking BC less and less with the nerfs except to support your AD carry lategame by stacking it with a single E.
20% on a little bit of health regen is so meh, compared to the stats AND the team aura you give with aegis. Heck the regen aegis gives is probably way more than the bit from spirit visage.
CDR is OK on garen, but it's not as good as on other champs because your E starts cd AFTER the 3 seconds of spin so it's not really worth it it's only 100% effective on Q and W in teamfights and since CDR gets better every point from 1-40% I don't think it's that great an idea. It's good but I can't see it being optimal unless your team has bulwark already and even then a second one sounds better.
I don't see how cdr is less effective on e because of that tbh, you're still getting it back faster. And with bc, sv and blue pot you're pretty close to 40% cdr. I'll try getting an aegis and see how it works out.
Edit: looking back, maybe I'm getting too fed lately and my perspective is skewed. Blue pot on garen is a bit out there
On February 03 2013 12:11 JeosAdn wrote: Does the base damage of garen's e crit? because getting an atmas sounds really cool.
ie, atmas, bc with randuins and bulwark sounds... sexy
Only the bonus damage can crit and building so you live long enough to get another QE off after you 1shot the first squishy you hit anyways will pretty much always be more damage at less gold investment.
garens E crits only for 50% extra damage and only the bonus damage meaning you only should get IE For crit because it doubles the crit bonus from 50% to 100% extra
I am wondering whether AD runes or ARP runes are better on Garen. Does anyone know for certain? Or is a mix best? Ignoring that AD is best for last hitting please
So I really think Garen is rather op. The only lane that has ever given me trouble is Elise and she is a huge cunt so I band her anyway. Also Xin jungling but that goes for every top laner so I ban him to cuz fuck that asshole.
So every other top laner/jungler combo I have no problem with. I just patiently farm at level 1, maybe do a little autoQ harass but i don't want to push too hard. I generally ask my jungler to do a route that will put him top at level 3 or 4 so he is set up for the inevitable counter gank.
K my different "strategies."
Starting Items:
Boots + 4 almost always, the MS is what you need to stay on top of your opponent if they are melee and what you need to get in range if they are ranged. Boots help you get out of ganks the best with your Q getting rid of the slow and the high MS you have + flash.
Dorans Shield: I think this can be good sometimes run with defensive runes but I haven't experimented with it much aside from vs Yorick as 2nd item after boots +4 and I run 19-11-1 masteries so I dont get the block 3 damage.
Cloth + 5: Garen is a boss why do you need armor?
(x)potions+ wards start: vs xin jungling, sometimes vs Lee if I am nervous or want to go super balls deep etc. Only vs scary junglers.
1st item: 99% of the time I go brutalizer. Occasionally I will get a Giants belt. vs Yorick and Jayce I get a dshield then brutalizer, same with vs Kayle but she isn't played top as much and gets shit on by Garen anyway.
2nd item: Warmogs/Tabi. Really the only 2 options, if I need extra MS and armor/auto blocking helps in my lane I'll get Tabi, if I am fine I just go straight Warmogs and get boots 2 later. Warmogs + a well timed W is so much damage soak and with Brutalizer you do nuts damage anyway. QEigniteR can 1 shot squishies still.
3rd item: Tabi/Sunfire/Last Whisper/Spirit Visage: Get boots if I didnt, usually I follow with a Sunfire, I don't know why. The item isn't that great but it looks fucking sweet! But for real the armor, health and extra damage however minimal is helpful, generally good as AD's are starting to ramp up and the armor + tabi helps you stay alive. If the AP is fed I sometimes get Visage but generally It's not necessary as W + your health buffer keeps you alive through the burst. If I am super fed I get Last Whisper to completely end the game
4th item: Last Whisper/Spirit Visage: AP a threat? Visage. AP not a threat? Sometimes Visage anyway as the health bonus and cdr are still great stats. However Last Whisper is a good item here as well.
Last Item: Last Whisper and Black Cleaver. Gives you a nice boost in damage and you should be raid boss status already.
I guess you could get Infinity Edge and Last Whisper instead but I never have. I don't know how good IE really is on Garen but Cleaver is underwhelming as it takes him forever to get 5 stacks, it just helps you clean up late fights vs other tanks.
This is my thought process/build to Garen. Welcome any thoughts and if you want my rune pages my name is Bladeorade just look up my AD rune pages I use all the varieties.
So i just tried building Botrk (is that the acronym? XD) on garen as 2nd item (after boots2) and i completely owned a game vs a jayce top..given that him and his team were prolly rly bad though.
Still seems like a good pick to me, as it builds out of vamp scepter ^_^
Basic build went cloth5 - tabi - vamp scepter - bilge - Botrk (?) - mogs - and then it ended.
I probably would have thrown on something like GA and cleaver after, and i'd drop cleaver for a tanky item if i wasnt crushing the enemy team
Whats a good MRes item for garen? ^ why would you build spirit visage on anyone without innate lifesteal like warwick though? It kinda feels wasted imo. But i guess with the BOTRK the visage would go quite well in this build
On February 14 2013 18:47 Capped wrote: So i just tried building Botrk (is that the acronym? XD) on garen as 2nd item (after boots2) and i completely owned a game vs a jayce top..given that him and his team were prolly rly bad though.
Still seems like a good pick to me, as it builds out of vamp scepter ^_^
Basic build went cloth5 - tabi - vamp scepter - bilge - Botrk (?) - mogs - and then it ended.
I probably would have thrown on something like GA and cleaver after, and i'd drop cleaver for a tanky item if i wasnt crushing the enemy team
Whats a good MRes item for garen? ^ why would you build spirit visage on anyone without innate lifesteal like warwick though? It kinda feels wasted imo. But i guess with the BOTRK the visage would go quite well in this build
Well if your that far ahead most anything will work. But BOTRK doesn't really work well on garen do to him not being much of an auto attacker. And a good mr on garen is Maw
why would I get visage? Garen with mercs and bulwark has like 160-200ish mr (not sure if thats with team bulwark or not). Bulwark is also a team aura and gives a bunch of armour. Visage regen and cdr isn't that good on garen. I explained earlier why cdr garen isnt amazing. (but not terrible either, spirit visage buff makes it somewhat better on him)
need mr? bulwark need armour? randuins/SOMETIMES thornmail
otherwise warmogs and or sunfire +LW+brutalizer sometimes and Black cleaver someimtes.
On February 16 2013 07:59 Slayer91 wrote: why would I get visage? Garen with mercs and bulwark has like 160-200ish mr (not sure if thats with team bulwark or not). Bulwark is also a team aura and gives a bunch of armour. Visage regen and cdr isn't that good on garen. I explained earlier why cdr garen isnt amazing. (but not terrible either, spirit visage buff makes it somewhat better on him)
need mr? bulwark need armour? randuins/SOMETIMES thornmail
otherwise warmogs and or sunfire +LW+brutalizer sometimes and Black cleaver someimtes.
Hmm well Bruta + Visage being 30% cdr now is pretty strong, I think CDR is fairly important on Garen and if achievable through items that benefit him in other ways should be gotten. Like Bruta obviously makes his early game strong, Visage combined with Warmogs, the high amount of health you will have late game and his passive is incredibly strong. If you survive a fight and go to clear a wave you will be full health soon making him a very strong pusher. And the extra health is always good.
I'll have to try Bulwark on him in games where the jungler isnt building it but I dont find that to be very often and I really like spirit visage. I also very rarely build merc treads on Garen. I don't find the extra MR necessary ever and the CC being blown on you early in fights can be negated by a properly timed W, combined with CDR your second W comes up even sooner.
You can make an argument for any item being good. The question is which is better.
30% CDR isn't the same DPS increase as 30% CDR on other champs for a few reasons -W is a defensive steriod but it comes in useful to have it up earlier sometimes (in long ass fights) so we'll call it even -Q, doesn't start CD until you hit it I believe meaning you don't get the full benefit of its mobility the only time its good for dps/silence uptime is when you're constantly on a target -E doesn't start CD until after spinning so cdr loses a lot of its cost effectiveness -You only get 1 R per fight and your R damage is based mostly on their missing hp meaning the more damage you do in the initial combo is critical while no matter how much cdr you have you often cant afford to wait for the next combo.
that said, I think cdr is strong enough that there won't be a HUGE difference in effectiveness going a cdr build.
On February 16 2013 09:58 Slayer91 wrote: You can make an argument for any item being good. The question is which is better.
30% CDR isn't the same DPS increase as 30% CDR on other champs for a few reasons -W is a defensive steriod but it comes in useful to have it up earlier sometimes (in long ass fights) so we'll call it even -Q, doesn't start CD until you hit it I believe meaning you don't get the full benefit of its mobility the only time its good for dps/silence uptime is when you're constantly on a target -E doesn't start CD until after spinning so cdr loses a lot of its cost effectiveness -You only get 1 R per fight and your R damage is based mostly on their missing hp meaning the more damage you do in the initial combo is critical while no matter how much cdr you have you often cant afford to wait for the next combo.
that said, I think cdr is strong enough that there won't be a HUGE difference in effectiveness going a cdr build.
Well the difference in our builds is Visage vs Bulwark so I think perhaps if you aren't tanky enough Bulwark is best, but for damage Visage is better considering the 20% cdr is fairly large.
I don't find myself craving more armor or health and usually the aura is coming from someone else so I don't feel the necessity.
I'm genuinely curious about How you guys react to a jarvan garen matchup top.. sometimes I win sometimes I don't and I'd like to hear what you guys would do if you were in that situation.
Ah, I feel like Garen just shits on Jarvan. Garen should out damage J4 and his ult should deal more damage while Garen's W if well timed should prevent more damage than J4's shield.
On February 16 2013 10:50 Sermokala wrote: But what would you do to mitigate him zoneing you from level 1-9 by q pokeing your passive down and your health down with an auto attack afterwords?
Umm why would he zone me? If he is using Q to poke and then auto instead of EQ combo then just auto Q E him?
You don't let him ever get an auto hit off without at least getting a q off in return, and probably Q+E. You shouldn't get hit my many q's and if you do you just sit at tower and heal up and lose a few cs. Someone in general forum said jarvan shits on garen but apparently he's wrong and just better at jarvan than his opponents garen gg.
I think I was that guy. My huberious cost me a couple matches before I got my magic back in the matchup. I see him so much on na I thought I'd get more peoples ideas on what would counter me. I do have to bring 2 mana pots to lane every time I go back but so far my ability to hit my q's have decided how hard I win the lane.
But like I said I don't understand the matchup sometimes I just get wrecked and I don't know why sometimes its a free lane and I don't know why.
I dunno J4 uses mana and Garen doesn't and Garen has free sustain and J4 doesn't so even in a "farming" lane I couldn't see J4 harassing Garen out of lane nevermind landing any kills. But I think Garen is stronger when fighting straight up with QE
Not gonna lie guys, I think Garen is really, really strong. I'm not sure whether or not he needs nerfs yet (as always I'd rather everyone else get buffed). I'll have to wait until i start playing good opponents.
Garen not gonna get nerfed until he starts getting abused in pro tourney games, and he is still not used in ANY tourney games (which I still find hard to imagine), so it will be a looong time.
On February 16 2013 14:34 rhs408 wrote: Garen not gonna get nerfed until he starts getting abused in pro tourney games, and he is still not used in ANY tourney games (which I still find hard to imagine), so it will be a looong time.
As much as I'd like this to be true, it is not. Riot frequently nerfs people who are popular in soloq, even if they were never played in tournaments. Fresh examples are Riven and Shaco.
Garens really strong and the nerf seems okay. I'm just interested is whether he needs that strength to make up for his lack of gap closer. Probably not.
assuming runes and masteries still count for something, you're losing 14.5 armour and 10.5 magic resist which is 500 gold loss of stats at level 18, significant but hopefully not game breaking. You lost about 8.5 of each by level 9 though which is about 350 gold by level 9 which is slightly more significant.
Hmm... I disagree he needs a nerf. His laning is strong yes but there are many champions that can go even with him and just farm. Garen is just a raid boss in team fights his team fighting isn't spectactular so I'm not sure why they are nerfing his armor/mr. I don't think this will effect him too much too be honest but it's still rather annoying
I honestly think Garen is really fucking strong right now. With just Arpen runes and maybe a LW or BC on top of pure tank, he manages to be a damage threat as well as one of the straight up tankiest champs in the game thanks to free resists and DR. I don't even feel like he can be kited all that easy anymore, unless you're running like a 100% CC team.
I haven't lost to a Garen yet in lane when starting cloth+5 and being a bit passive but trying to poke him without getting caught by silence at a bad time, then going allin while he is spinning and I am ready. Seems like he's easy to gank too, if he blows his silence and doesn't have the cleanse effect to use.
Could be bad Garens though (Winning lane with: Shen, Irelia, Riven, Renekton)
Alright so I am convinced Garen is too strong. His early laning is really strong and the only people that give me trouble only give trouble till 6 and are mostly just annoyances. Elise, Nidalee, Jayce etc. Ranged champions with good harass. Vlad is NOT included because his early harass blows and you can just zone him then kill him at will, also doesn't include AP Kennen though I have not faced an AD Kennen.
So his early laning does redonk damage (obviously.) The catch being if you initiate with Q your escape and slow cancellation is gone. However he is pretty tanky in general so a lot of times you can either run away anyway or take 1 for 1. Especially at level 6.
His midgame which I'll say is Brutalizer, boots 2 and warmogs, is ridiculous. Just Brutalizer increases his damage so much and with Warmogs and good timing of W you are nigh unkillable. You will 1 shot squishies so I like to flank team as opposed to charging up the middle and just flash QEW making them all focus you is great for engaging and if you are lucky you can get a kill. He is a great midgame oracles holder, which then ties into the flanking. No ward coverage for enemy team makes it easier.
mid-late game which I'll consider Bruta, boots 2, Warmogs, Sunfire + kindlegem/negatron perhaps a finished Visage. You are just unkillable and your damage isn't terrible yet, but its definitely falling off. This is where I think Garen is the weakest damage wise as you haven't built your 2nd damage item, but definitely his strongest tank wise. You just should not die and you should still be a threat to squishies.
Late game: Ghostblade or Cleaver: I have been leaning towards Ghostblade recently, Cleaver really is shit on Garen and after using it a lot early, I feel Ghostblade is just better for what Garen wants to do, and thats get on squishies dicks. Last item: Las Whisper. Synergizes well with Cleaver AND Ghostblade, allows you to kill tanks, and just increases your damage a shit ton.
Consider selling: Sunfire for Randuins. At this point Randuins is likely the better option, the active lets you stick on them better, the passive hurts their ADC who should be nearing 6 items and it will keep you alive much longer. Your only threat is the ADC and this is the best item vs them.
/rant on Garen
this is after running Garen on my smurf to gold for fun, started playing him on my main and have gone 14-6 with 8.3-4.2-5.9 averages
TBH, I haven't noticed much difference in Garen's tankiness after the nerf. It's actually not alot of armour/MR, a -15(?) reduction at level 18. That's really not enough to even put a dent into Garen's ability to stomp.
The power in Courage is still the 30% damage and CC reduction.
On March 20 2013 19:29 TigerKarl wrote: most boring champion i've ever played.
This is what I thought at first, but a lot of his versatility comes in the form of the match up you're in. Trying to play Garen against Teemo, Renekton, and Rumble for example is anything but boring. But ya some of your more traditional Nasus, Jax, and Irelia style lanes can be very one dimensional.
On a side note and to add to discussion, I usually avoid picking Garen unless the other teams top lane has already been picked, because he is so easily counterpicked. What champs do you guys think Garen has an almost impossible time up top with?
On March 20 2013 19:29 TigerKarl wrote: most boring champion i've ever played.
This is what I thought at first, but a lot of his versatility comes in the form of the match up you're in. Trying to play Garen against Teemo, Renekton, and Rumble for example is anything but boring. But ya some of your more traditional Nasus, Jax, and Irelia style lanes can be very one dimensional.
On a side note and to add to discussion, I usually avoid picking Garen unless the other teams top lane has already been picked, because he is so easily counterpicked. What champs do you guys think Garen has an almost impossible time up top with?
Anyone with good ranged harass is strong against him. If they can also kite him, then it becomes impossible for Garen to win. I've had the hardest time with Teemo and Elise, but Kennen, AD Nidalee, and Rumble are all incredibly difficult as well.
Also I have a hard time against Cho'Gath. It's extremely easy for Cho'Gath to land ruptures on you, and once he builds armor you can't kill him and it becomes a farm lane. Cho'Gath is a far better teamfighter than Garen, so overall it's a bad matchup
garens biggest laning phase strength is that he can usually farm well against most everything, if you are playing to dominate lanes you are doing it wrong. Garen can win lanes but after repeated nerfs to his early game damage its better to just take opportunities but look for farm
i often run regen quints and abuse his passive and w passive its a shame they both got nerfed
Champions with poison/DoT based effects semi-counters Garen in top lane. Toxic Shot and Darius passive come into mind as they can make his passive have no effect for an extra 5 or so seconds, which can equate to about 40-50hp less regeneration at the early stages.
You see, when you trade with Garen, it's still an advantageous trade even if you deal the same damage to each other because your passive lets you regen faster than your opponent.
Until mid-late game, Vorpal Spikes is going to make his DPS pretty crazy too. I guess given the HP stack meta Cho's tankiness with Feast stacks makes him about as tanky or more so than Garen, and his stupidly big model is kind of an advantage as well.
Big model makes him easier to hit. Lack of mobility makes him easier to hit. Feast is better against tanks worse against squishies especially given the range. HP "meta" makes hp steriods worse than resists steriods.
plus if you end up clicking on a tank whose damage is front loaded (burst) and not other stuff, that's ok too (i personally build Cho either full tank or support-ish)
On March 20 2013 19:29 TigerKarl wrote: most boring champion i've ever played.
This is what I thought at first, but a lot of his versatility comes in the form of the match up you're in. Trying to play Garen against Teemo, Renekton, and Rumble for example is anything but boring. But ya some of your more traditional Nasus, Jax, and Irelia style lanes can be very one dimensional.
On a side note and to add to discussion, I usually avoid picking Garen unless the other teams top lane has already been picked, because he is so easily counterpicked. What champs do you guys think Garen has an almost impossible time up top with?
Anyone with good ranged harass is strong against him. If they can also kite him, then it becomes impossible for Garen to win. I've had the hardest time with Teemo and Elise, but Kennen, AD Nidalee, and Rumble are all incredibly difficult as well.
Also I have a hard time against Cho'Gath. It's extremely easy for Cho'Gath to land ruptures on you, and once he builds armor you can't kill him and it becomes a farm lane. Cho'Gath is a far better teamfighter than Garen, so overall it's a bad matchup
teemo, elise, and yorick. other than that, i've never found any unwinnable matchups as garen.
thats the point though right? you're a tank, you take damage. personally ive never really had a problem getting poked down as cho.
personally, i like cho a lot more than garen. garen is so popular is because he's faceroll easy. cho still gets picked like 13% which isn't too bad (and higher than nerfed garen who is at like 10%)
On March 23 2013 04:13 ticklishmusic wrote: thats the point though right? you're a tank, you take damage.
no taking damage has no innate purpose you should always try to minimize incoming damage
the job of a tank is to threaten enemy squishies//protect yours usually some combination of both
people always say "oh well I died but I tanked them" as if its some achievement, and not your team carrying you//sometimes their team having bad focus but most of the time you overextended but got lucky (and when you dont - wtf my team so bad, I tank them all and we still lose!!!!)
chogath has more cc so to do a better job as garen you have to use your mobility and burst damage to your advantage to teamfight better than in this example a cho gath doesnt sound faceroll easy to me.
often in pro games you see the enemy ad crush the tank line and clean up, most people see this as the ad carry doing a good job and not his tanks doing a better job staying alive while theirs dies, and usually its a combination. AD carries cant do anything without tanks doing their job
Guardsman Bob was insisting on his stream yesterday when he played garen that spirit of elder lizard was a better buy for garen than black cleaver - I strongly disagreed, both before he bought it and after he bought it (and his team proceeded to lose). Anyone else ever try spirit of elder lizard on garen?
On March 23 2013 04:28 Bladeorade wrote: Only champion that has truly given me problems is Elise. Her damage starts early and hits hard from a range. Everyone else is manageable.
Same here. Are there ANY melee champs that can take on elise in top lane? She would even shit on pre-nerf AP tryn np.
Going against Darius can be a very interesting duel though... it's like a constant game of chicken as to who will use an ability first to farm the creep wave - whoever uses first to grab that extra cs opens the door to an uneven trade by the opposing garen/darius, and once you're behind, it becomes extremely difficult to get back to even ground.
im saying that chogath is such a huge target that in a teamfight he will inevitably soak up a lot of damage. ofc you dont want to take damage, but its better that its on you rather than someone squishy. idk, thats all really basic stuff, i know i didnt explain it the best but yeah.
in teamfights garen just spins around and tries to get damage down. figuring out how to do that is like any other cc-less champ (okay maybe you go FM and you silence with Q but not the point), you try and find a good angle and then E in, use Q if you get slowed or something and dunk the best target. you R if someone's low, W for DR, it feels pretty one dimensional. garen's "peel" is to try and kill the enemy divers before they can kill a squishy.
cho gath has to pick a good angle/time to scream to maximize its effectiveness, decide if he wants to Q early or save it for peel or catch, move around to avoid unnecessary dmg and position his E's to hit as many champs as possible, and then decide if he wants to use a R to kill someone low, chunk them at high/mid hp to force them away, etc. dying is also a lot more costly for cho because of stacks, and then he has to restack which means he loses a huge chunk of his damage while doing so.
you can boil teamfighting down to avoiding areas of high damage (and trying to help your team avoid those places), and putting damage down in areas where there's a high concentration of enemies to maximize your DPS. chogath has to make a lot more decisions of how to do that than garen, so i consider him more difficult and more fun. however, playing cho gath also seems to have potentially higher returns.
That's just a super biased post. You're just saying the same thing but oversimplifying it for garen and making it seem more complex for cho. The only real argument is "I Got skillshots my champ is more skill reliant"
i'm biased towards champs with cc being more useful than those without. its just the way i play the game (support, jungle).
i played garen and cho pretty exclusively from 1-30 (well, i bought xerath somewhere along the line too...). obviously i was a lot worse back then and i'm still pretty meh now, but i've got a decent amount of experience with both champs and this is how i feel about them. its not even about having skillshots, its having a kit that you can just do more with.
and its a pretty subjective argument. how would you quantify the value of CC? i mean i could probably come up with some crazy equation like type mod(range*x + cd* y + duration*z) and add in some equation for damage and if it had multiple types of CC, but its hard.
Sure, CC is valuable, but it's only one aspect of what makes a champion useful. Garen has better mobility, greater overall tankiness, is harder to lock down, and provides AoE armor shredding with E and black cleaver. In a teamfight, he most likely WILL outlive the enemy tank, and with speed boost + cc reduction he can force more cc's to be spent to keep him locked down.
Garen is an ok champ and i encourage people to play him, but don't think you are going to get to platinum/diamond by playing this guy, he has too many counterpicks and he sucks at carrying, he's just too easy to play against for him to be viable.
I first picked garen all day before the nerf in diamond and carried tons of games and very rarely felt really counterpicked
cho has seen slightly more play in pro scene but none of it is recent enough to prove anything about whos better and I think its definitely situational.
I think anyone who dismisses garen as easy to play has an invalid opinion when it comes to his ability to carry because carrying is hard.
I have to say, to celebrate the new commando garen skin with beret, I've been trying slayer91's regen garen again and it's pretty good. It used to be one of my favorite builds but after FoN was cut and warmogs changed, I haven't tried it since. It still works surprisingly well. 9/21/0 masteries with magic pen hp regen quints doran shield/merc(or tabi) and then cowl -> warmogs or sunfire -> warmogs, depending.
I can't decide if I like spirit visage better or Banshees better.
On October 14 2013 10:23 obesechicken13 wrote: How is the new Garen?
IIRC Garen received no balance changes, was just a visual update.
Oh, what? I swear I saw a post by some Plat or Diamond Garen who was complaining all the changes to Garen were nerfs. You're right. I should have checked.
I wanna pick up Garen again but what's the way to build him runes/masteries atm?
Last season i used to do AD(or MS vs dirty teemos)/AD/armor/MR(flat or scaling of course) If i got ahead i used to bruta-funfire-shiv-rands/SV, if not pretty much straight tank.
In the handful of games i've played him this season, i used the same runes and usually end up going 5/25/0 and building straight tank into a 5th item LW. I used to really like running Ghost/Ignite on him in general but it seems meh. Distortion seems good to get for the cases when one would run Ghost but i don't like the 475g dump for that.
Depends on the matchup. Generally I run AD quints, armor pen reds, armor yellows and flat/scaling MR blues. I go 21/9/0 against weaker laners and 9/21/0 against Renekton/Darius because you need the regen. Sometimes I'll run armor quints and I've been debating hp regen quints for those two matchups in particular.
What is bad about atmas: Slot efficiency, not honestly an issue until 6 items at which point it will be giving around 3800 gold worth of stats...not exactly poor.
Crit isn't used effectively on bruiser/tanks
Garen loves it. Armor: Garen gets free bonus armor from armor Crit: Judgement crits, making crit a stright damage boost. If you aren't spinning on people as garen you are doing it wrong. AD: Garen has sick AD ratios.
With 2-3 tank items garen has between 3 and 3.5k health, giving him ~45 AD with atmas.
This gives Atmas 3200gold worth of his most valuable stats for only 2300gold, or an efficiency of around 140%.
Compare this to other damage options garen can buy, the high tier items are too expensive for him to buy and still be tanky enough to reach his target (IE/BT etc). Even then they arent 140% stat effective.
the mid tier are like Youmuu where you will literally not benefit from the 40% AS on the active because if you close successfully you will use judgement, rendering it terrible slot efficiency and basically hugely expensive MS for 6 seconds every 45. LW which has its use later but is probably overshadowed by Cleaver, which you can apply over AOE quickly for your entire team and builds from a brutalizer you probably already have from early game.
in conclusion build Atmas on Garen because its good and is at the perfect pricepoint.
On June 30 2014 17:09 sob3k wrote: Atmas is good on Garen.
What is bad about atmas: Slot efficiency, not honestly an issue until 6 items at which point it will be giving around 3800 gold worth of stats...not exactly poor.
Crit isn't used effectively on bruiser/tanks
Garen loves it. Armor: Garen gets free bonus armor from armor Crit: Judgement crits, making crit a stright damage boost. If you aren't spinning on people as garen you are doing it wrong. AD: Garen has sick AD ratios.
With 2-3 tank items garen has between 3 and 3.5k health, giving him ~45 AD with atmas.
This gives Atmas 3200gold worth of his most valuable stats for only 2300gold, or an efficiency of around 140%.
Compare this to other damage options garen can buy, the high tier items are too expensive for him to buy and still be tanky enough to reach his target (IE/BT etc). Even then they arent 140% stat effective.
the mid tier are like Youmuu where you will literally not benefit from the 40% AS on the active because if you close successfully you will use judgement, rendering it terrible slot efficiency and basically hugely expensive MS for 6 seconds every 45. LW which has its use later but is probably overshadowed by Cleaver, which you can apply over AOE quickly for your entire team and builds from a brutalizer you probably already have from early game.
in conclusion build Atmas on Garen because its good and is at the perfect pricepoint.
Some small points first off: Youmumus, IE, BT are all awful damage items. Although IE is potentially a decent last item in some very rare cases against tons of melee and you dont need to be tanky. You probably shouldn't be building brutalizer early game, it's a very old fashioned thing to do honestly. Black cleaver itself is strictly worse than LW except to boost your ADCs damage, how much that is worth it depends on team comps and relative farm levels though, so its up to your discretion, but in any case if its better than LW then its better than Atmas.
Atmas crit: 15%. Judgement works on the AD modifer only and it gives you 50% less crit damage. This means it gives 15% chance to do 1.5x3.3AD @150 AD ==>495 dmg x.5 = 247.5 bonus damage with full crits x.15 = 37.125 bonus damage per E. @200 AD ==>37.125x4/3 = 49.5 bonus damage per E In general 15% crit = .15x1.5x3.3(AD) bonus damage per E Now it is very safe to assume that for every E you get, you get 1 Q. So that gives garen a total AD ratio of 1.4+3.3 = 4.7. So at 150 AD the 15% crit = 8 AD only. 288 gold value. At 200 its slightly more at 10.6 ==> ~380 gold value.
So lets say we're getting this item fairly late, lets give the crit 400 gold value, chain vest 720 since although garen gets benefits from resists they are other items that also give armour like thornmail sunfire and randuins which are all great on him. So atmas costs 2300, with 1120 gold value before the bonus AD. That means we need it to give 1200 gold worth of AD to be effective. ~32 AD. after 2k it becomes cost effective. It is worth 540 more gold per 1k HP. So we can assume it reaches about 120% cost efficiency at 3k hp and by the time we get higher the slot efficiency comes into question.
I did some quick math with LW. http://www.soloqueue.com/damage-calculator LW gives 40 AD, for 2300, so its the cost of a pickaxe +40AD, so you need to make up 25 damage to be cost effective using a base AD of 200, putting your QE combo at about 1430, against a 200 armour target LW gives an effective AD boost of ~90 AD against a 100 armour target LW gives an effective AD boost of ~60 AD so LW is more than 150% cost effective starting at 100 armour assuming the shield is fully used also hexdrinker is also more than 150% cost effective
Thanks for the math Slayer, I think you're probably right mostly. Still a solid item though IMO if you need some damage and can't really sacrifice any survivability.
People build youmuus all the time (lol look at probuilds), and that's no good.
I did jungle garen before when they increased the judgement damage to monsters. Its fine, it works and he clears and functions, he's just not that great a jungler with no CC, gap closing issues and not that phenomenal a lategame. Darius brings a lot more to the table in the same vein IMO. Still fun for soloq sometimes. Quillcoat probably isn't that great on him, as he doesn't really want to stack health that much due to his bonus armor/MR and the fact that, lets face it, an invincible garen does a lot less than an invincible champ with CC or utility.
On July 04 2014 05:29 sob3k wrote: Thanks for the math Slayer, I think you're probably right mostly. Still a solid item though IMO if you need some damage and can't really sacrifice any survivability.
People build youmuus all the time (lol look at probuilds), and that's no good.
I did jungle garen before when they increased the judgement damage to monsters. Its fine, it works and he clears and functions, he's just not that great a jungler with no CC, gap closing issues and not that phenomenal a lategame. Darius brings a lot more to the table in the same vein IMO. Still fun for soloq sometimes. Quillcoat probably isn't that great on him, as he doesn't really want to stack health that much due to his bonus armor/MR and the fact that, lets face it, an invincible garen does a lot less than an invincible champ with CC or utility.
well yeah but you wouldn't be stacking health you'd be stacking resistances that have some health attached, IDK i'm definitely going to try it out.
On July 04 2014 05:29 sob3k wrote: Thanks for the math Slayer, I think you're probably right mostly. Still a solid item though IMO if you need some damage and can't really sacrifice any survivability.
People build youmuus all the time (lol look at probuilds), and that's no good.
I did jungle garen before when they increased the judgement damage to monsters. Its fine, it works and he clears and functions, he's just not that great a jungler with no CC, gap closing issues and not that phenomenal a lategame. Darius brings a lot more to the table in the same vein IMO. Still fun for soloq sometimes. Quillcoat probably isn't that great on him, as he doesn't really want to stack health that much due to his bonus armor/MR and the fact that, lets face it, an invincible garen does a lot less than an invincible champ with CC or utility.
well yeah but you wouldn't be stacking health you'd be stacking resistances that have some health attached, IDK i'm definitely going to try it out.
well then whats the point of the quill? You can already build garen a straight tank and be so tanky nobody will even attack you until you are the last possible target, he doesn't need quill for that. Its just not very good because you're ignorable.
you're far overrating this invincibility thing. Having 250 more hp (max 500) from the 25% bonus thing from spirit of ancient golem is just going to be like a few more autos from an adc and what can you really get done with that extra few seconds on garen? You already do nothing with spells on cd. You're probably going to be underfarmed and can't gank for shit anyway. Elder lizard would make a lot more sense on him.
On July 04 2014 20:31 Slayer91 wrote: you're far overrating this invincibility thing. Having 250 more hp (max 500) from the 25% bonus thing from spirit of ancient golem is just going to be like a few more autos from an adc and what can you really get done with that extra few seconds on garen? You already do nothing with spells on cd. You're probably going to be underfarmed and can't gank for shit anyway. Elder lizard would make a lot more sense on him.
maybe, idk I just won with it, only in plat V though currently, dropped down. killing was a bit of a problem but you can only ignore a champion for like 3 seconds before the damage starts adding up
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
In all honesty though Garen's level 2 gank is terror, Q flash silences and applies red buff and then you just spin on their face. Works well if the mid laner trades really hard early and especially if they have some form of CC like TF or a gapcloser like Yasuo.
Still, without flash you're not very effective and your clear is abysmal.
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
Personal route
Open red, charge to their red, ward their red and wait at the brush closest to the top inner tower. If their jungler checks that brush run down HUGGING the wall - itll kill the vision. Then just do the level 2 garen cheese accordingly..best is to wait for lizard to be low enough so when you drop the silence on the jungler he either backs off and gives up the red or he tries to contest and he dies. Bonus points for getting both obviously. Will most likely result in kill unless elise since she doesnt tank the lizard herself so shes gonna be max HP.
Garen is NOT a farmer. Think of him as a Pantheon jungle who maxed Q first - you want to gank and you want to gank hard. Abuse your early game damage. If lanes arent that good for ganking, camp their jungler. Two points in E is enough for clearing small camps.
Garen is so uncommon that people dont really know how to properly deal with him and how much damage he can deal with items xyz...especially true vs mid/bot/jungler mains since they really, really dont play vs garen that much
That Q crit from 1% rune on squishies tho
Personally I dont bother getting W pre 6 since I wont have any tank items and Id rather get that two points into E and 3 points into Q for absolute terror..Maybe someone can correct me on that
Why would you think of Garen as someone who (used to have during his prime) an offensive jump, a significant stun and slow jungle when Garen can't claim to have any of those things?
The best comparison to Garen is Shyvana, except that instead of having pretty decent jungle (after first clear) Garen has embarrassingly awful jungle and scales way worse into the lategame out of the jungle.
On July 13 2014 10:42 Scip wrote: Why would you think of Garen as someone who (used to have during his prime) an offensive jump, a significant stun and slow jungle when Garen can't claim to have any of those things?
The best comparison to Garen is Shyvana, except that instead of having pretty decent jungle (after first clear) Garen has embarrassingly awful jungle and scales way worse into the lategame out of the jungle.
Hes not a good jungler at all. Hes a cheese jungler. Hes good at raking in kills when ahead and absolutely fucking terrible at farming back a decent game in the jungle when behind. Hes good at constant skirmishes but if the game is slow - hes bad at stealing buffs, abysmal at controlling dragon, and only works well in small skirmishes mid game with or without a good damage item. His one trick pony style gets countered by a fucking hex drinker if opponents are paying attention - a 1350 gold cost item denying a champion of his sole purpose mid-late game. Why compare him to shyvanna tho? Shyv easily has one of the fastest clears while being terrible at all the skirmishes before 6, while garen is the opposite.
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
Personal route
Open red, charge to their red, ward their red and wait at the brush closest to the top inner tower. If their jungler checks that brush run down HUGGING the wall - itll kill the vision. Then just do the level 2 garen cheese accordingly..best is to wait for lizard to be low enough so when you drop the silence on the jungler he either backs off and gives up the red or he tries to contest and he dies. Bonus points for getting both obviously. Will most likely result in kill unless elise since she doesnt tank the lizard herself so shes gonna be max HP.
Garen is NOT a farmer. Think of him as a Pantheon jungle who maxed Q first - you want to gank and you want to gank hard. Abuse your early game damage. If lanes arent that good for ganking, camp their jungler. Two points in E is enough for clearing small camps.
Garen is so uncommon that people dont really know how to properly deal with him and how much damage he can deal with items xyz...especially true vs mid/bot/jungler mains since they really, really dont play vs garen that much
That Q crit from 1% rune on squishies tho
Personally I dont bother getting W pre 6 since I wont have any tank items and Id rather get that two points into E and 3 points into Q for absolute terror..Maybe someone can correct me on that
Q doesn't crit...
I would also not max Q over E.
1 point in Q gets you: +25 damage +.75 speed duration +.25 silence duration
1 point in E gets you: +25 damage per second (+75 total damage) +10% AD scaling (+30% total AD scaling damage) -1sec cd
So from a damage perspective you are getting far far more out of E and it also assists in clearspeed.
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
Personal route
Open red, charge to their red, ward their red and wait at the brush closest to the top inner tower. If their jungler checks that brush run down HUGGING the wall - itll kill the vision. Then just do the level 2 garen cheese accordingly..best is to wait for lizard to be low enough so when you drop the silence on the jungler he either backs off and gives up the red or he tries to contest and he dies. Bonus points for getting both obviously. Will most likely result in kill unless elise since she doesnt tank the lizard herself so shes gonna be max HP.
Garen is NOT a farmer. Think of him as a Pantheon jungle who maxed Q first - you want to gank and you want to gank hard. Abuse your early game damage. If lanes arent that good for ganking, camp their jungler. Two points in E is enough for clearing small camps.
Garen is so uncommon that people dont really know how to properly deal with him and how much damage he can deal with items xyz...especially true vs mid/bot/jungler mains since they really, really dont play vs garen that much
That Q crit from 1% rune on squishies tho
Personally I dont bother getting W pre 6 since I wont have any tank items and Id rather get that two points into E and 3 points into Q for absolute terror..Maybe someone can correct me on that
Q doesn't crit...
I would also not max Q over E.
1 point in Q gets you: +25 damage +.75 speed duration +.25 silence duration
1 point in E gets you: +25 damage per second (+75 total damage) +10% AD scaling (+30% total AD scaling damage) -1sec cd
So from a damage perspective you are getting far far more out of E and it also assists in clearspeed.
Both his Q and his E crits - thats why IE is so amazing on him I get two points into E for clear speed but I prioritize ganking - Q gives better chase/map movement, longer CC, and higher burst. If I wanted to slowly grind people down while ganking I wouldnt be picking garen. I even rush those 60ms boots to abuse his Q ms buff even more, although Ive been feeling a faster Lizard elders will probably be much better for his early game. Garen's jungle is horrendous regardless of any level of E if hes popping 1-2 pots per camp before elder lizard, so I feel its better to just clear less camps and gank/tax more, utilizing his passive while roaming to save on pots, ignoring the golems and wraiths if smite on CD so top/bot can farm those too. Yes he will be fucked if his early game plays out bad. Thats why I said hes a cheese jungler. He has to abuse timings, level advantage windows and map information to get ahead so hes nowhere close to be an "easy" jungler. Missing those windows as an early game bully makes garen even worse than just a "bad jungler"..especially when hes a "terrible jungler" if blue start.
I recognize that my previous ending statement was flawed - I was asking tips on getting W early or not.
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
Personal route
Open red, charge to their red, ward their red and wait at the brush closest to the top inner tower. If their jungler checks that brush run down HUGGING the wall - itll kill the vision. Then just do the level 2 garen cheese accordingly..best is to wait for lizard to be low enough so when you drop the silence on the jungler he either backs off and gives up the red or he tries to contest and he dies. Bonus points for getting both obviously. Will most likely result in kill unless elise since she doesnt tank the lizard herself so shes gonna be max HP.
Garen is NOT a farmer. Think of him as a Pantheon jungle who maxed Q first - you want to gank and you want to gank hard. Abuse your early game damage. If lanes arent that good for ganking, camp their jungler. Two points in E is enough for clearing small camps.
Garen is so uncommon that people dont really know how to properly deal with him and how much damage he can deal with items xyz...especially true vs mid/bot/jungler mains since they really, really dont play vs garen that much
That Q crit from 1% rune on squishies tho
Personally I dont bother getting W pre 6 since I wont have any tank items and Id rather get that two points into E and 3 points into Q for absolute terror..Maybe someone can correct me on that
Q doesn't crit...
I would also not max Q over E.
1 point in Q gets you: +25 damage +.75 speed duration +.25 silence duration
1 point in E gets you: +25 damage per second (+75 total damage) +10% AD scaling (+30% total AD scaling damage) -1sec cd
So from a damage perspective you are getting far far more out of E and it also assists in clearspeed.
Both his Q and his E crits - thats why IE is so amazing on him I get two points into E for clear speed but I prioritize ganking - Q gives better chase/map movement, longer CC, and higher burst. If I wanted to slowly grind people down while ganking I wouldnt be picking garen. I even rush those 60ms boots to abuse his Q ms buff even more, although Ive been feeling a faster Lizard elders will probably be much better for his early game. Garen's jungle is horrendous regardless of any level of E if hes popping 1-2 pots per camp before elder lizard, so I feel its better to just clear less camps and gank/tax more, utilizing his passive while roaming to save on pots, ignoring the golems and wraiths if smite on CD so top/bot can farm those too. Yes he will be fucked if his early game plays out bad. Thats why I said hes a cheese jungler. He has to abuse timings, level advantage windows and map information to get ahead so hes nowhere close to be an "easy" jungler. Missing those windows as an early game bully makes garen even worse than just a "bad jungler"..especially when hes a "terrible jungler" if blue start.
I recognize that my previous ending statement was flawed - I was asking tips on getting W early or not.
No, his Q doesn't crit. It's a autoattack modifier. The autoattack portion of it can crit like any auto. The bonus damage and bonus AD ratio does not crit. It's the same as every other next auto modifier in the game (Jax W, Vayne Q etc). The only reason anyone mentions Garen Q being able to crit is that at one point the skill was bugged to not have any portion crit, which was then fixed.
Q max does give barely increased mobility and an inconsequential .25s silence, but certainly not higher burst. If you aren't able to spin on a laner for at least two tics you basically contributed nothing to the gank anyway, and if you are able to then level 2 E does over double the damage of level 2 Q.
If you level E Garen's clear speed is not by any measure horrendous after 2+ levels. Its actually quite fast due to how much damage E gets on each level.
I wouldn't get W early, your ganks are your focus and you need more damage for then more than any survivability.
On July 08 2014 00:31 Scip wrote: If you have a video recording thing can you show me how to get to lvl4 as Garen without backing because I have no idea how you'd go about doing that
as jungle? you need a very hard leash at red and it's not too bad, i almost never do full clears though. my garen game I played I went red, ganked mid, blue, wolves, ganked, wraiths, backed I think.
Personal route
Open red, charge to their red, ward their red and wait at the brush closest to the top inner tower. If their jungler checks that brush run down HUGGING the wall - itll kill the vision. Then just do the level 2 garen cheese accordingly..best is to wait for lizard to be low enough so when you drop the silence on the jungler he either backs off and gives up the red or he tries to contest and he dies. Bonus points for getting both obviously. Will most likely result in kill unless elise since she doesnt tank the lizard herself so shes gonna be max HP.
Garen is NOT a farmer. Think of him as a Pantheon jungle who maxed Q first - you want to gank and you want to gank hard. Abuse your early game damage. If lanes arent that good for ganking, camp their jungler. Two points in E is enough for clearing small camps.
Garen is so uncommon that people dont really know how to properly deal with him and how much damage he can deal with items xyz...especially true vs mid/bot/jungler mains since they really, really dont play vs garen that much
That Q crit from 1% rune on squishies tho
Personally I dont bother getting W pre 6 since I wont have any tank items and Id rather get that two points into E and 3 points into Q for absolute terror..Maybe someone can correct me on that
Q doesn't crit...
I would also not max Q over E.
1 point in Q gets you: +25 damage +.75 speed duration +.25 silence duration
1 point in E gets you: +25 damage per second (+75 total damage) +10% AD scaling (+30% total AD scaling damage) -1sec cd
So from a damage perspective you are getting far far more out of E and it also assists in clearspeed.
Both his Q and his E crits - thats why IE is so amazing on him I get two points into E for clear speed but I prioritize ganking - Q gives better chase/map movement, longer CC, and higher burst. If I wanted to slowly grind people down while ganking I wouldnt be picking garen. I even rush those 60ms boots to abuse his Q ms buff even more, although Ive been feeling a faster Lizard elders will probably be much better for his early game. Garen's jungle is horrendous regardless of any level of E if hes popping 1-2 pots per camp before elder lizard, so I feel its better to just clear less camps and gank/tax more, utilizing his passive while roaming to save on pots, ignoring the golems and wraiths if smite on CD so top/bot can farm those too. Yes he will be fucked if his early game plays out bad. Thats why I said hes a cheese jungler. He has to abuse timings, level advantage windows and map information to get ahead so hes nowhere close to be an "easy" jungler. Missing those windows as an early game bully makes garen even worse than just a "bad jungler"..especially when hes a "terrible jungler" if blue start.
I recognize that my previous ending statement was flawed - I was asking tips on getting W early or not.
No, his Q doesn't crit. It's a autoattack modifier. The autoattack portion of it can crit like any auto. The bonus damage and bonus AD ratio does not crit. It's the same as every other next auto modifier in the game (Jax W, Vayne Q etc). The only reason anyone mentions Garen Q being able to crit is that at one point the skill was bugged to not have any portion crit, which was then fixed.
Q max does give barely increased mobility and an inconsequential .25s silence, but certainly not higher burst. If you aren't able to spin on a laner for at least two tics you basically contributed nothing to the gank anyway, and if you are able to then level 2 E does over double the damage of level 2 Q.
If you level E Garen's clear speed is not by any measure horrendous after 2+ levels. Its actually quite fast due to how much damage E gets on each level.
I wouldn't get W early, your ganks are your focus and you need more damage for then more than any survivability.
How come it hits 1k+ with only IE tho :/ Anyways when I say it gives higher burst I mean instantaneous burst - for those flash QR moments, I max Q before 6, so its still 2 points into E since we ignore W anyways, but after 6 I guess leveling E makes sense.
Doesnt matter anyways since I just got my ass handed to me by a level 2 rengar cheese on ranked even tho I pinked blue river and opened red ....I give up on jungler for a few days for now
Is Garen vs Nidalee all but hopeless? Played the match up on the other day and I got steamrolled really hard. Between the ranged poke, bush control, and DoT it was pure despair.
Well I tried that, but when she froze the lane it became hell. All I could do was roam, because I couldn't really push the lane (E minions = I take free damage; let her auto me and thus divert minions = I lose passive).
Never felt this oppressed in a lane match up for a very long time.
1: how do you let someone freeze lane 2: you just go and W-E inside the whole wave. No way she can tank it all and once it shoves to tower you base for full hp and its back to even
is 21/9 the way to go? I see discussion from a while ago saying 9/21 but havoc, %pen, and executioner add so much damage to the combo. Is regen, tenacity, armor/mr worth losing out on the damages? Maybe go more defensive vs tough lanes i guess?
I'd always err on the side of the defense tree but executioner is nice. Havoc not so much, % pen is decent. It depends on a lot of factors really, if they rely a lot on CC and burst to keep you away I wouldn't bother with the offensive tree but if you need damage more obviously 21/9 might be a wiser choice.
so i played a little bit of garen jungle (in norms though) and apparently jungle garen is pretty decent. he really needs a slow (like red buff, later on randuins can work) and he does a lot of damage with just q e. his waveclear once he gets elder lizard is not amazing but surprisingly it was not as bad as i thought it would be, the e will clear all small minions and then the big creep will be killed by autos and Qs.
his passive rework is pretty OP, lategame with 4k hp i got bursted down to 100 hp, walked away for a few seconds and came back with half health
i think for jungle garen to work he needs a team that can set up ganks with slows/stuns but its still possible to gank overextending enemies who dont ward. at level 3 (with lvl1 q and lvl2 e, red buff and 2 autoattacks) i literally took off 80% of veigars hp by myself
Frozen Mallet sounds bad. You don't auto that often and your E does not slow with FM.
I do agree that he needs at least a dash of damage in his build so he is not totally ignored... BC is probably the best, atmas is probably OK, and IE.... well, one can dream.
frozen mallet is a 6th item, its really expensive for its stats but its fine that lategame, its stats in itself are okay. Health and AD, with the slow. There's a few redeeming factors about it. Firstly warmogs is pretty redundant in general as a regen item where you get so much regen from your passive, so 700 Health and 30 AD is a fine tradeoff for 1000 hp, if the slow is any value.
As for the slow; 95%+ of your E's are preceded by a Q which does proc the slow. If you are CC'd during the spin even with your high cc reduction it may reduce your damage a lot. The Q slow helps stay ahead of a target and the silence guarnatees that they can't use a jump to get away except for the last one or two ticks. Secondly if you need to finish off a target with your ult flashing for a couple of extra autos might be more viable with the 40% slow against say an adc with redbuff. (Randuins works admirably for this also)
The second and I would say main reason for getting it is defensively you can auto targets to slow and get some okay damage with LW when you want to save your QER combo for a squishier target that's waiting to jump in. A 40% slow is pretty significant in a stage where an adc can kill or die in a few seconds or prolonged fire.
Remember atmas only gives about 45 AD or so at 3k hp and maybe a 5-10% damage increase on E damage which itself is less than half your damage. (Q and R and often ignite, sunfire and sometimes autos account for the rest). 45 armour is worth like 800 gold which 700 hp is worth probably 1800-1900 so even discounting the damage disparity of 15 ad and 15% crit it's quite a bit better in terms of EHP. If you count in the effects of LW and already overtuned armour stat (sunfire randuins thornmail is a lot)
In nearly all cases BC is better than atmas anyway but if targets are squishy enough that its not then its likely the frozen heart tankiness against mpen/armourpen and slow is more useful.
On October 09 2014 02:56 TheHumanSensation wrote: If you can afford a BF sword, wouldn't Mercurial help Garen more than an IE?
with mercs and W and 21 defense you should have around 60% cc reduction as well as insanely high EHP from your tank build, W passive and actives and huge regen, your Q breaks any slows as well as providing a large and long duration speed boost meaning the qss active part isn't that useful. I would get it against perhaps a malzahar or something. Nearly always your core is sunfire+hexdrinker so you often just convert to malmortius until super lategame where any AP targets have LW and if they do any damage to you, you are probably out of position because with over 3k hp, 100ish mr and W 30% damage reduction even with DFG they won't do any damage you can't shortly regen. You want to sell that malmortius for BC/Frozen mallet I think.
On October 09 2014 02:17 Sufficiency wrote:
I do agree that he needs at least a dash of damage in his build so he is not totally ignored... BC is probably the best, atmas is probably OK, and IE.... well, one can dream.
Normally I resent any statements that you need "some damage so you can't be ignored" but in garens case, being reliant on a burst 100-0 so much, I agree a little bit. The first thing to realize is that LW is by far the best damage item for you. Hexdrinker and sunfire are both excellent early on, and if I had to build blind I'd get sunfire/hexdrinker/lw+mercs. The second thing is that against squishy targets being tanky is often more important. Surviving long enough to threaten a second combo for example forces him away from the fight. Thornmail is an important damage source against an ADC and probably as good as a full damage item. Against heavy ranged AD thornmail+sunfire-->randuins would be the preferred build and you'll end up doing more damage than if you had gone BC or some nonsense like IE. Thornmail+sunfire passive damage+autos has often been enough to bring an adc from half hp or so to R kill range in a few seconds. ADCs like vayne who destroy you suddenly are in trouble when you finish thornmail because they can't kite and lifesteal after you get your initial combo off.
The short of that is you have to build based on the enemies survivability. Ranged ADs don't need any damage because of how good thornmail and sunfire are against them. Ranged APs you want some more AD usually hexdrinker/lw and assassins normally you don't have to kill them by yourself what's important is helping your team kill them, your damage+maybe a sweepers lens+being enough of a threat to keep the backline away so they can focus the assassin are your main focuses. When it comes to the bruisers and tankier guys LW is absolutely critical and being tankier isn't a big priority because you are already extremely hard to kill but pose little threat if you can't burst someone down. Since you often get LW anyway normally the adjustment here is a BC 4th item (after sunfire/hex/lw). It fits perfectly because it gives you some more AD and armourpen (the hp is nice because just sunfire feels low) while also increasing team damage as you can fully stack a BC with a Q E combo. The main problem with BC is that nearly all your damage is done before BC is fully stacked, it's only really good in lane where you can keep autoing after E wears off and get another combo. Ironically also good with frozen mallet if you aren't getting thornmail or selling sunfire for it.
The important thing is to figure out what you are likely to need to achieve in a teamfight and then build toward it. Normally if you build decent items you are well balanced to do anything but if they are heavily melee you want more damage and heavily ranged you want heavy tankiness and focus on flash+q engages or regening poke and countering their engages.
I dislike BC in most situations on Garen because like you said it kind of sucks outside of lane since by the time you stack it with spin you have already used most of your burst since you probably led with Q. In most fights I care more about about bursting down a priority target, tanking a bunch of damage, making it out alive with refreshed cooldowns and ~500 more hp from regen. BC doesn't really help due that that, its more utility in shredding the enemy frontline or divers. Depends on your and the enemy team comp obv. It also doesn't help that brutalizer is a trap item in that you normally want to rush it 1st or 2nd to help win lane but it slows down your LW which costs less than 1k more and provides much more damage. BC itself is such an expensive upgrade as well that its tough to even finish it til later meaning you are sitting on a brutalizer or maybe brut + hexdrinker for a while which is just not enough damage to be a threat and is part of the reason people think Garen sucks out of lane. LW provides such a massive damage boost midgame that not getting it as your ~3rd item seems like a big leak. If your opponent is stacking armor in lane, thats fine, the brut probably isn't going to be enough to kill him anyways, and skipping it makes you much more effective once teamfights start.
LW + Hex seems like its plenty of damage in most cases especially once you get thornmail as a pseudo 3rd damage item. I feel like getting a 2nd defensive item is more important than finishing BC, and a 3rd defensive item (usually thornmail) is better as well since that is going to give you 3.5 tank items (counting sexdrinker as .5) which makes you into an unkillable monster midgame. Its definitely a more selfish build not getting BC but i'd rather do huge burst to a single target and then survive for a 2nd round of cooldowns instead of shredding the enemy frontline and then probably dying due to having 1+ fewer tank items.
In that game vs all AD I figured ~50 AD, ~56 armor (45x1.25), and +15% crit for 2300 was probably better than the 50 AD, 200 health, 10 armpen, 10 CDR and shred of BC for 3k, although its definitely more selfish. I think I had something like 3300 hp and 440 armor it was disgusting. Maybe should have gotten a warmogs and dropped the sunfire, I suck at math so not sure how much more eHP i'd have with ~55 less armor but ~500 more hp and a ton more regen. Plus another what 7.5 damage from atmas.
Also I love hexdrinker in general and its even better on Garen thanks to the extra bit of bonus MR, but I almost never upgrade it. The upgrade cost to maw is huge especially since you usually won't be upgrading until lategame when you have full items and waiting for 1850 gold is rough. I usually wind up selling it for a 4th tank item and stick with only LW for damage, which leaves you with less damage but more tankiness and utility if you replace it with something like say Locket which once you sell hexdrinker is the same cost as what it would take to upgrade to maw. Could even just get a BC instead for not too much more. Is the 60-95 AD from maw worth getting over the alternatives?
I'm quite sure there are uses for it, however buying it just because it feels like you're helping isn't a good idea. If you don't know exactly why you're buying it then just get LW/Hexdrinker as usual for damage.
Cases where I think I like it: -split pushy tanks: If you can't one combo someone your damage tends to drop off pretty fast and being able to run fast to chase or avoid autos helps, having cdr helps a ton (cdr is much better for pure dps than it is in practical games where you just go in when your CDs are back), and the armour pen increases your auto dps quite a bit. -where they have tanks that are dominating your back line: If you are forced to deal with them in teamfights then having BC is probably a good idea assuming your ADC has decent damage but he is too swamped to be able to deal it if you go and kill someone else.
On June 13 2015 19:58 Slayer91 wrote: I'm quite sure there are uses for it, however buying it just because it feels like you're helping isn't a good idea. If you don't know exactly why you're buying it then just get LW/Hexdrinker as usual for damage.
Cases where I think I like it: -split pushy tanks: If you can't one combo someone your damage tends to drop off pretty fast and being able to run fast to chase or avoid autos helps, having cdr helps a ton (cdr is much better for pure dps than it is in practical games where you just go in when your CDs are back), and the armour pen increases your auto dps quite a bit. -where they have tanks that are dominating your back line: If you are forced to deal with them in teamfights then having BC is probably a good idea assuming your ADC has decent damage but he is too swamped to be able to deal it if you go and kill someone else.
BC is also good specifically against Riven. Allows you to actually catch up to her later on in the game, meaning she can't just splitpush and avoid you all game.
How do you lane against riven? I'm not an experienced garen (played about 20-30 games around late 2014 and picked him up again recently) and I'm clueless about the match up. Every time I try to get aggressive on her she just E/W away and I can't get any meaningful damage. Even when building tanky she often can all in me when I'm around 70% health.
It's a bit of a mexican standoff. If she tries to engage with EW you silence her and she can't do anything while if you go in she can W and E away. A good trick is to run (if she's chasing you run just out of range and chase her to just in melee range if she's running) with q until her shield runs out and then Q to stop her using any spells while you E on her. If you're rushing sunfire you shouldn't be getting one shot at all. What you want to aim for is chasing until she shield runs out and then QEing or else sneaking a Q in before she can react and then bumberbanging her.
You should have the edge in terms of one combo potential since she can't really do anything versus silence and if you use W well it negates a lot of her burst.
I haven't played it in a while so I can't give you any indepth details but I found the matchup generally comfortable and you can sometimes even oneshot her through shield. It's possible even stuff like maxing Q first or at least a few points is good.
I generally agree with it being a standoff matchup, but want to add that if Riven goes for the cherry-tapping plan the lane can be annoying as her abilities are all faster then yours. Consider running TP and putting an extra point in Q (makes your silence last longer then her cc combo, and the MS is decent). When lane ends Garen destroys Riven as flash-Q'ing her when she comes for your backline means she dies.
Older gaming term for essentially poking someone to death. Riven's decent at it because she can W your Q and E/Q out of your E, meaning she can get 'free' Q and W damage in if she disengages immediatly. It's not going to kill you fast but it is annoying. Also why putting some extra points in your Q is decent as it allows you to actually catch up to her if she does this.
Riven still has pretty dumb burst if you get ganked or get caught at 50% when she hits level 6. It's a hard strategy to pull of consistently though but I've run into some who did it near-perfect and it makes the matchup feel slightly unfavored. I can imagine the lane being horrible if both players are essentially Faker because theoretically you can never put damage on her before you have either maxed Q, which means you lose straight up damage trades if you do it first, or some items.
But most people aren't Faker, and if she fucks up you win.
If she only does cherrytapping she will miss a lot of cs, because she can't cs when all her skills are down, so if you just stock up on armor and pots you'll get a pretty nice cs advantage.
She doesn't have to. It's more that you take 1 Q activation at a time and the second you turn to her she walks off. No reason for her to use W or E if you're not using abilities. It loses you an equal amount of cs.
While I don't think Riven would 'beat' Garen particularly hard playing like this it is something to be congnisant of and a reason to go into the lane with a different mindset then you normally do. I'd pick ignite vs almost anything, but I prefer TP against Riven because of it.
- ofcourse, if you use abilities and she does, all her abilities are down I guess. Problem is that her cooldowns are shorter then yours, so that's not a good thing. Without your W in particular straight up trades vs Riven are not good.
If nobody uses abilities and you both just farm up you're quite happy as Garen. If she uses abilities and you don't you also win. I mean if you use Q while you're stunned and she still has Q or E up you're gonna have a bad time so you really shouldn't do that.
That's great, but Riven essentially has 5 abilities (Qx3), on shorter cooldowns then you, with the exception of your Q which has comparable cd. Rivens also commonly build CDR much earlier then you do or have it on their pages, considering how much better the stat is for her.
What I'm getting at is that the real problem here is that she can stun you in midair if you're Q-ing, or dash out of your spin because she's not silenced. If she manages to do that every time, she gets to take potshots at you. It's hard for her, but that's Riven for you. Any other way of playing means she loses because, as Teutonica said, you smash her in 1-for-1 combo trades.
I don't really want to argue over something small like this, I'd merely like you to consider that it's a way Riven can play and that you should be prepared for it.
You're overestimating riven a little bit. One note is about pointing out what her cds are shorter. None of them are shorter than Q unless you don't use Q straight away or she is lvl 9+ with cdr in which case you have so many points in Q you don't give a fuck.In any case, it doesn't matter if her CDs are up or not, if your Q and E went on cooldown, she's either dead, or so far away she can't abuse it.
Riven can't W while she Q's, so if she uses Q to poke you can snipe her with Q and whats worse is she might reset her Q cd and lose the rest of her stacks. You obviously shouldn't let her charge a knockup on you but that's not a problem because if she charges it, you wait 3 seconds and once its down she's at risk. That rules out her using Q to harass.
That leaves two basic options for riven to harass you: Using W+auto to harass and Eing out or using E+auto to harass and Wing out Both cases rely on using Q for the extra speed to avoid the followup Q by garen because just one of those spells isnt enough to outrun garen. Eing in allows you to engage from range Wing in allows you to harass only from your own auto range.
The only issue is, for weak poke it makes you a lot easier to engage on for garen. You rely on escaping with just 2 of your skills (you shouldn't at all count rivens Q as 3 abilities, it's basically a movement boost with damage for chasing, damage for dueling, and just a movement boost for running). If this is enough then you got some poke off, but you now have an 10ish second window where you can't get close to garen meaning its hard to press any kind of advantage as he can wait for his passive or push the wave or try to zone you. So going in to harass at all is a questionable trade off, as wheelking said.
This is why I talked about the standoff situation. Riven shouldn't be able to do any meaningful harass but if she doesn't try to how can you press your advantage with Garen? It's something that could be possible but I haven't played the matchup in a while. Essentially you have to vie for position. Rivens disengage tactics assume you're running backwards towards your tower. If you run into the middle of the lane and garen goes between you and your tower you probably want to find another exit, but if its toward a wall or his tower you might have trouble because his Q stays up even after the speed boost is gone. Whether or not garen can effectively do this I'm not sure of.
Ideally what riven wants is garen to waste his QE combo on something stupid like getting baited by a single spell and then you ult and then you get to use your Q to its full effect of chasing+damage, while garen can't do enough return damage without E and can't survive enough to wait for it. The fact garen relies on killing riven before she can effectively combo with her skills passive and ult is one of the reasons I don't agree with taking TP.
I'm not totally sure on everything I've just said but it's probably not too far from the truth. As far as jungle ganks they are both hard to gank, but can both snowball pretty hard. If rivens ahead enough she can allin any time out of tower range, and garen won't be able to cs easily, he'll probably need to bait riven to aoe the wave or somtehing. If garen snowballs he can just dive her when she tries to cs, if she uses abilities you just wait while chasing with Q.
Also yeah don't forget so be smart about using Q, you don't always have to use it straight away you can just use the movement speed boost to get yourself into a position where she can't stop you even if she uses her W , or wait for her shield to run out so you don't waste damage on it.
Thoughts on the new item, Dead Man's Plate? Seems pretty good on Garen, possibly good enough to replace Randuins in core build. Replacing Sunfire for it doesn't seem worth though, but I'll try that as well.
Opinions on TP on new Garen? Used to be mediocre in almost all matchups but with how bad his early currently is and the villain mechanic kind of demanding you go help your feeders it might go up in value?
All numbers assume full spin. Lower spins of course do less damage.
As i see it it makes almost no sense to level E before level 10 and probably 13. You just get too little damage with no other benefit. .3 total AD scaling on an ability that starts out at 2.415. The speed up and DR duration has to be more valuable.
Slayer what do you go now on new Garen? If its not Q,W,E or W,Q,E could your try one or the other and see how it goes?
Once you hit level 7, E is the most damage. And, crucially, if you did level it before 7, when you hit 7 your level up choices become retroactively better. It just seems like both a long time to wait, and a lot of wasted utility in the Q speed up, or more punishing early trades in the W DR duration.
Damge itself is a benefit? A 1 second lower cooldown on a 24 second cooldown ability isn't going to do you an awful lot, and while damage resistance is nice, it's better to do damage than to sit and take it.
The fact that Garen's E does full damage to minions now is reason enough to level it. Not really sure where you're getting your numbers from either, because they don't look accurate on spin damage.
Look them up on league wiki. It's not hard. Garens E doesn't do "full damage vs minions " now. It just does worse damage vs more than 1 target straight up.
Leveling W doesn't mean that you "just sit there any take it" the point is you're gaining 5-10% damage on E vs taking 30% less damage for 4 seconds Could be worth, against any burst trading champs.
On August 26 2015 10:41 Slayer91 wrote: Look them up on league wiki. It's not hard. Garens E doesn't do "full damage vs minions " now. It just does worse damage vs more than 1 target straight up.
Leveling W doesn't mean that you "just sit there any take it" the point is you're gaining 5-10% damage on E vs taking 30% less damage for 4 seconds Could be worth, against any burst trading champs.
I did look. And the lines I'm referring to in particular are: "9 / 22.2 / 26.6 / 30.4 / 34.2 / 38 Damage 0375 / .045/ .0525 / 0.06 / 0.0675 / 0.075 AD Scaling"
No idea what the first line is. Second line is scaling at x level of E. I want to say it's the difference between having max E and not, but it's not? What is the 9 supposed to be? Because it's inconsistent with the rest of the numbers. And if it's supposed to be the difference between max E and not, it's nonsensical because you're not maxing E at level 1 or 4.
A different way of putting the difference between level 1 E and level 5 E:
Level 9, 1 doran's blade and phage (AD marks/quints, 9/21/0): Level 1 E: 46 damage per spin, 7 spins = 322 damage Level 5 E: 62.3 damage per spin, 7 spins = 436 damage
Against a single opponent, same variables as above:
Level 1 E: 428 damage Level 5 E: 581 damage
I suppose Q before E makes sense. Not as convinced about W before E.
The 9 is supposed to be 19. The one got cropped for some reason
The values are the marginal bonus of ranking the ability at Garen's level from the line above(which is when he gets more spins). At level 1 to 3 you get 19 damage for any rank in E(besides rank 1 of course). At level 4-6 you get 22.8 damage for a rank in E. So on and so forth. The second line is the bonus AD scaling you get per rank in E at the same levels.
edit: I edited it so its easier to read. Does it make sense now?
Level 9, 1 doran's blade and phage (AD marks/quints): Level 1 E: 47 damage per spin, 7 spins = 329 damage Level 5 E: 53 damage per spin, 7 spins = 371 damage
This is wrong:
If level 1 E does 47 damage per spin then Level 5 E does 64.7 damage per spin = 453 damage
Which means you got 31.11 damage per rank. Which is kind of shit considering Q gives 25 damage/rank and also gives you 2 more seconds of speed up
On August 26 2015 11:30 Goumindong wrote:Level 9, 1 doran's blade and phage (AD marks/quints): Level 1 E: 47 damage per spin, 7 spins = 329 damage Level 5 E: 53 damage per spin, 7 spins = 371 damage
This is wrong:
If level 1 E does 47 damage per spin then Level 5 E does 64.7 damage per spin = 453 damage
Okay, the marginal gain per level of E makes sense.
Yeah, rechecking things my values are off because I was looking ingame. They display the actual damage in a really weird way. I'll fix that in my other post. Does make E look a lot better against single targets.
On August 26 2015 10:37 zer0das wrote: Damge itself is a benefit? A 1 second lower cooldown on a 24 second cooldown ability isn't going to do you an awful lot, and while damage resistance is nice, it's better to do damage than to sit and take it.
The fact that Garen's E does full damage to minions now is reason enough to level it. Not really sure where you're getting your numbers from either, because they don't look accurate on spin damage.
Should have replied to this earlier.
So while damage itself is a benefit. So must damage reduction itself. On some champions you're going to want to pick damage because you can outplay the enemy and if you don't build damage you have both no option to outplay the enemy and no power.
But garen isn't like that. Garen can't really outplay an enemy mechanically. He doesn't have ranged auto attacks, non-targeted dashes, invulnerability, etc. all he can do is real more damage or take less damage.
And I feel like 4 more seconds of DR is super powerful both in lane and in team fights. It means an enemy cannot at all decide to wait out your DR and it means you have less to worry about for timing it. It means that any combo or CD based champion who wants to weave in/out will do very little damage to you.
Similarly the extra 2 seconds of speed up will make the difference between running away and dying. Or closing to an enemy versus not making it and so doing no damage. Even against melee the extra 2 seconds of speed up will often be able to confer positional advantage that you can use to get more auto attacks off and so do more real damage as they're running.
So it's true that e has the highest damage post 7 and highest by a half decent margin against an isolated enemy. But garen isn't like Viktor where you hit your laser or lose so your laser might as well hurt. Garen is a ball of stats and anything that increases either of the damage/tank stats better is more powerful.
Any updated build on him from anyone who plays him? Filling every role in ranked and not playing a lot have left me really behind the new items learning curve.
Quick and dirty assessments from time playing Darius/Garen:
I feel like you almost always want DMP, Titanic and Cleaver; it's mostly a question of order. An early hexdrinker is still good vs any hard AP lanes. Warmog's as 4th or 5th item seems nice but I haven't tried it at all because I never know when that ridiculous regen would actually be useful, particularly on Garen. Maw is good, SV is good. Along that same line, Randuin's as a second armor item is good if applicable. I think Sunfire still has niche uses as first armor item but is largely outclassed given how bad it is lategame. Sterak's Gage is great, but would almost certainly be after DMP/Titanic/Cleaver and the shield decays quicker than I'd have liked.
On August 27 2015 02:53 Caiada wrote: Quick and dirty assessments from time playing Darius/Garen:
I feel like you almost always want DMP, Titanic and Cleaver; it's mostly a question of order. An early hexdrinker is still good vs any hard AP lanes. Warmog's as 4th or 5th item seems nice but I haven't tried it at all because I never know when that ridiculous regen would actually be useful, particularly on Garen. Maw is good, SV is good. Along that same line, Randuin's as a second armor item is good if applicable. I think Sunfire still has niche uses as first armor item but is largely outclassed given how bad it is lategame. Sterak's Gage is great, but would almost certainly be after DMP/Titanic/Cleaver and the shield decays quicker than I'd have liked.
if you dont build randuins what the hell do you do against vayne can't imagine going dmp titanic cleaver without just getting bopped anytime you try to teamfight that shit is broken and I don't see what you do if you dont buy oracles+randuins so you have a chance to do something against her I remember before I had to get randuins+thornmail before I could beat vayne in duels and teamfights tend to be worse because it punishes committing to chasing someone.
not sure if new thornmail is better or worse now though
I'd probably swap DMP for Randuin's vs Vayne. Aspd slow and all.
That build and treads should get you to enough health and resists to fight, but maybe trade Cleaver for Maw against double AP/Thornmail or Randuin's against hypercarries.
I'm kinda thinking I'm overrating Cleaver as an early item on Garen because of how much I love it on Darius. Darius doesn't have the massive movespeed burst and he procs Cleaver movespeed a lot more consistently.
New thornmail should be better against Vayne since she gets so much aspd.
Think the new best build is something akin to funfire or DMP -> cleaver -> tank. Maybe even 2 tank items first. Because his W now gives flat stats rather then a percentage you're incentivised to build HP rather then resists and his E spinning faster at higher levels means you stack Cleaver really, really fast. While I don't like the villain mechanic overly much building like that and then just sticking to whoever the villain is seems quite powerful. The true damage doesn't scale with anything except stickiness and you're almost garuanteed to be able to kill someone as long as you stay alive long enough.
Also regarding levelling stuff; It seems to barely matter anymore. None of his abilities really give you anything significant for leveling them so I just stick with E because I'm used to pressing cntrl-E.
Don't know what's the big deal with DMP. I find it weak as fuck, you get CC'd all day what's the point of a 1 second slow, if you take any cc it wont slow anyway and then they just pop heal or a cc and you can't do any damage. Randuins seems way better.
Cleaver feels good but I kinda think you want randuins and maybe even RG and then steraks or something so you can't be killed before all their CC runs out.
DMP does give you slightly more tank stats (150 hp and 5 armour) over funfire. The place where it really shines is running around the map. Miss Fortune passive is shit most of the time too, but when it's good it's really good.
Sunfire's still the item to buy most of the time though.
Been playing Garen a bit lately. His laning feels awkward since the Villain seems to do nothing during it but his teamfight feels pretty strong. You kill a Villain even building pure tank pretty quickly. The only damage item I've been buying on him is Black Cleaver.
He's actually banned a decent amount on EUW. His laning is bad but he's a bit like a nasus now where you just suck and regen early on, get some killing power post 6, pretty strong around 11 and beastly after 16.
I definitely like randuins a lot more than everyone else here, steraks too. I don't want to buy shit like titantic hydra when sticking power is by far a bigger problem than damage. I do get it later though.
Don't build sunfire too much, now. I usually go BC or hex or something.
On August 29 2015 17:52 Slayer91 wrote: He's actually banned a decent amount on EUW. His laning is bad but he's a bit like a nasus now where you just suck and regen early on, get some killing power post 6, pretty strong around 11 and beastly after 16.
I definitely like randuins a lot more than everyone else here, steraks too. I don't want to buy shit like titantic hydra when sticking power is by far a bigger problem than damage. I do get it later though.
Don't build sunfire too much, now. I usually go BC or hex or something.
Well, Titanic Hydra gives you an absolute shitton of damage, plus it gives HP. If the enemy team will try to 2v1 or 3v1 you it's a really good item because you're not chasing anyway. Ofcourse if you're chasing other items are better. It also resets your auto so it's pretty damn great for splitpushing.
how about dont get forced into 3v1 situations you scrub wheelking teamfights is what's important most of the time, moving around the map to catch people and stuff too but deadmans and randuins both win in that department.
On August 29 2015 18:32 Slayer91 wrote: how about dont get forced into 3v1 situations you scrub wheelking teamfights is what's important most of the time, moving around the map to catch people and stuff too but deadmans and randuins both win in that department.
??? The plan is to win the fucking 3v1, you scrub. What else are you supposed to do when you're playing with the Awful Good.
EPT
. 
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JQDka.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wcxoN.png)
) 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. 
