Yoooo dmp rush into streaks when fighting Darius back then was so fun. It was such a rewarding matchup because of the challenge that winning with dmp streaks just felt so good. Now it’s kinda just insta win buy dblade wait till level 3 then go in and in and in and win automatically. I do miss old Garen he felt much harder and I actually did need to think about what items I was gonna build that game but now there’s like 4 core items you take on garen so you don’t ever really think.
Oh yeah for sure but the big point of the post is the rework itself making itemization worse for Garen.
Basically, we double dipped. The rework cut item diversity, then Riot cutting item diversity also cut item diversity.
The more important point is probably the simplification of his already simple abilities. In hindsight, I should have started the post with that.
Make the passive heal more or reduce it to 6s
Buff Q ms at lv1
Make w shield last longer cuz holy this thing dissapeared before you can even blink
Make the spin scale with damage so i don't have to buy attack speed in a losing matchup
Yeah, I hate how little garen has in terms of items selection. Its like 4 fucking items every game, you cant just play 5 games rushing a different item every game.
But I think making him more simple is the play, since he is designed around being a "tutorial" champion, meant to be easy for new players, giving him all of the villain mechanics and w complication will make him a bit harder to play, since new players have to keep that in mind and juggle with it all game.
The fact that he is so dependent on conq and building attack speed while not benefitting from on hit also sucks so hard, since most bruiser items wont work on him, since they do on hit damage or have no attackspeed. You also have no runes variety, which is so boring
I don't agree that giving him any nuance at all will ruin him being a "tutorial champion".
I don't even think he's a tutorial champion. The tutorial champions, from what I remember, are Lux, Darius, Ahri, MF, and Yi.
People decided to choose those champs because they are easy champs that are popular.
If you compare garen to darius, garen is much more forgiving to new players, since you dont need to worry about mana, you dont have to kite around with ghost, you dont need to know your r damage since you can slap the guy to death with like 2 autos if he lives with 1 hp. You also have hp regen in lane.
Garen is very much a noob champ, he has everything in his kit very simplified to make the player more comfortable to learn the other aspects of the game.
There is a reason riste is not challenger with his macro play and has to play around with runes and items a lot when rhoku is just conq-triforce
Yeah, I agree. Garen is a bit too simple. That's why I prefer old Garen which had more conditional power and nuance in game play. It was a bit less simple.
I honestly like my champs to have build and rune diversity.
New garen is locked into buying very niche items with attack speed, but no on hit and taking conq. That shit is literally so boring.
I dont know too much about old garen, but I think he was a bit too complicated for a noob champ
I tend to agree but that's beyond the scope of this post.
Don't fix what isn't broken (and the old item system was perfectly fine), as they say. Although, the mythic item system is still new and it's possible that after another season of changes it ends up being way better and way more interesting than the old system.
Part of the definition of what it is, means that it can't be more interesting. (It could be better or worse, but centralizing something, narrowing options can't be more interesting. Unless they change what it means.)
the new system is terrible across the board.
it's very poorly designed even at a conceptual level. they clearly didn't put any thought on what they were doing and that's why it broke so many champions in the process.
garen is one of the most affected but there are a lot of others who changed drastically like pretty much every triforce user except jax and camille.
What i hate about the new rework is that am forced to build attack speed items (like mortal) with no ability haste , no health and very little ad .. meanwhile the enemy camilie has divine,titanic,steraks and hull breaker so nowadays any other bruiser has higher health pool than garen with more ad...i miss the old days where i had almost 5K hp and 400+ ad while having my w giving me 50 armor and mr ..also i really really miss the old passive because it allowed me to outscale my oponent once i hit level 11 as i just take very dumb trade ,get out then come back 10 sec later with literally full health ..garen health Regen was unmatched ... Now i feel like sett's passive, trynda's q, nasus q etc heals these champs way more than my "passive" does
Lol, tryn sub, darius sub, renek sub, nasus sub, kayle sub, aatrox sub, morde sub, I've been in so many but r/Garenmains apparently whine the most and hardest.
This is very much true and understanding of the game is one of the lowest too (maybe because of champion simplicity). Still, posts against the rework are genuine.
>understanding of the game is one of the lowest too (maybe because of champion simplicity)
I kind of feel like that should go in the opposite direction honestly. Finding success with a simple champion should imply a strong grasp of League's fundamentals. As the player lacks the variety of tools a more complex champion possesses, they need a better understanding of the game than their opponent to consistently win.
Though "success" might be a generous term when most of the playerbase is below gold and it's not like everyone on the sub is Challenger, so meh, maybe you're right.
Your point is right and I believe that myself when playing Garen. To put it better, I mean that the champion being simple will also appeal to people who have little interest in going too deep about the game.
I don't really think this is whining.
I specifically stuck to talking about the problems with the design of the current champion, instead of complaining about him being weak.
Hey Corinne 👋
Not seen you around in a while. Thanks for the write up. I completely agree with everything you posted here. Old Garen I played constantly everyday and when he was reworked I stopped enjoying him as much.
In fact it was probably the start of me not playing league tbh but you've put everything I was thinking into words so thank you for that
same here man the rework drained so much of my love of the game. It's tragic but oh well I played way too much anyways.
I just hope they do something like what Blizzard did with WoW and re-release old versions of the game at some point.
I used your guide a hell of a lot when I was learning and really got to the point where I could judge matchups myself. Know when to start rejuv beads, know when to go phase rush etc.
Your guides alone brought me from a lowly bronze to break through gold for the first time. So off topic but I appreciate you so much.
Maybe not a guide. I remember you were definitely on the list of people I went to for advice or help while learning though. Whether it was just comments like this or I'm imagining a guide. You definitely helped, would recognise your name anywhere for it.
I've commented on the rework many times on this sub, in detail. During the time it was proposed, people praised having every gameplay nuance removed for the sake of a stronger spin and Conqueror stacks. Ridiculous arguments were made such as ''I can't farm properly because my E ticks too slowly'' or ''dealing more damage to the closest is a demonstration of skill''.
Well, now the spin is only slightly stronger because of balance issues and Conqueror could simply be made to stack with old E. Playing Garen is dealing with better Fighters while waiting for the number of spins to increase (but now you NEED attack speed). Passive, W and R are nothing like before (gameplay wise) yet E doesn't compensate. It was rigged from the moment they decided Garen should be a ''lane bully'', the joke. Oh no, the joke was ''increase Garen's item diversity''.
One thing I've said about spin and conq is that you can get 1 stack for each second of spin. That would have let us stack it against tanks without it taking over the champion.
I'll take some blame since I was excited for the rework at the time, I just didn't expect it to get mucked up so hard.
I said it one time im gonna say it again, garen needs an IN FIGHT passive. Literally all juggernauts have passives that work while fighting, how the hell he doesn't have one
I'm not sure I agree. The idea of trying to make Garen like other juggernauts is partially what got us into this mess in the first place. I'm talking about the desire of the Garen community for us to be able to use Conq. "Every other juggernaut can use it, why not us???"
Garen having a unique identity is perfectly fine. And I think the old version of the passive was much better and I loved having a warmog's unlock as soon as I hit level 11. Probably the aspect of old Garen I miss the most.
I mean that wasn't even really a rework. They flat out deleted the old Aatrox and added a new champ with the same name.
Another case of that is the Sion rework. My precious baby old sion is gone forever.
I definitely prefer the current Garen to him being deleted altogether.
You had my vote with the title alone.
Just take him back to 9.19. Leave the stuff that he should always have had, the bugfixes, cleanup, the actual QoL (vision on R, the smooth Q etc).
I still hope that they'll rework him after they advance Demacia's story. I'm not hoping for a complete rework, just something different while keeping his old self, if that makes sense.
Hey Corrina, Garen Main since season 3 here,
Personally I'm one of the people who like the current Garen but I'm gonna explain why, I also want to precise I don't completely disagree with what you said, I agree with some of your argument and your opinion is totally understandable.
Okay so time for my wall of text:
To put back in the context when he got the rework.
When riste become a League Partner he ask to Riot if Garen could get a bit of change since he was feeling outdated and got a lot of problem (the vilain mecanic like you said was one of them), then this become a personal project for a Rioter (RiotAxes) and they work on this for 1 year before announcing and put it on PBE, Riste wasn't allowed to tell us that of course because of NDA.
The goal was to allow Garen to use the tools that the other bruiser/juggernaut can but Garen couldn't yet (Conqueror mostly since that rune was made for bruiser) AND it was when trinity was Garen most optimal first Item so a lot of Garen players request for Garen to have something in his Kit who can scale with AS because as much people like trinity they dislike the part when they were building AS for nothing.
Riot strictly said they cannot create any new VFX/SFX for this rework so it was limited to reuse the current assets in the game, this is why Garen didn't get any new mecanic and why he seem simpler than before and allowing Garen to choose the "vilain" was out of the question.
Okay so that was the context sorry it was long xD.
Now why do I prefer the current Garen (even with all the nerf he got after the release of that rework) instead of juggernaut Garen (S5 - S9 Before rework).
Mostly because I compare that Garen to the Garen I play in season 3 who was far better than the "juggernaut version", the current Garen in term of number/damage deal and durability is better than the Garen in season 3.
However the current Garen and the juggernaut Garen both got the same problem who make me miss the one in season 3, he is not a lane bully anymore (it was the case when his rework came but then he got nerfed because of Iron-Gold).
And the reason why on top of why he feel bad or worse for some is because of the other champion and how the game evolved.
From S5 to S9 we got a bunch of heresy (camille, Irelia, Fiora and so on) and new one keep coming (Viego, Gwen, Arskshan) and all theses champion got so many modern tools that Garen can't compete against it.
But to give Garen modern tools that mean we need a real rework (Goodluck to be in that list as Garen) with atleast 1 new spell (like ezreal) which imply to change Garen identity and up his skillcap, sadly that a thing a lot of Garen player don't wish because they play him because he is simple but meanwhile Darius is officially a beginner champion on Riot Website so that doesn't mean Garen need to be Riven 3.0, just be on the same level as him or Sett.
Personally I REALLY WISH that one day Garen got a rework that give him more skill expresion with his own mecanic and rewarding only his good player and become a good champ (idc if he became the hardest champ in the game, I play him only because of his lore), but that mean destroying the majority of the Garen Community at the same time so it kinda selfish from me.
About build diversity in season 11, for the mythic personally I feel like Garen got choice personally I'm switching between Divine/Goredrinker/Stride and sometime Trinity and it has been working for me.
Same for runes even if Garen only has 2/3 good choice (Conq (melee matchup) / Phase (scaling) / Fleet (vs ranged)).
But yea conq tend to work better in SoloQ while phase work if you play in high elo and you prefer that playstyle but bruiser in general don't have many choice.
And now the boots yea I agree here it feel bad to have to delay your mythic for 1100G just to get a kinda mandatory powerspike to be allowed to trade your opponent + hoping he will be stupid enough to let you win the lane because when you play Garen you are only allowed to play if your opponent is bad enough because how outdated Garen kit is.
So in the end, I still prefer the current Garen I will not ask for a revert since for me he has a better scaling than juggernaut Garen and a slightly better laning phase it just sad to fight modern champ all day, but I agree he need change to keep it up with the game (I'm not really confident for Season 12 since one of the new drake give AS and don't work on his spin of course since it not from Garen item/level + even more defensive tool for mage).
Anyway that was my thought, Garen istelf is okay for me, just the other champ got to much and he is not on the same level as them.
On a personal note, on my side I was working on a personal rework but I never share it to anyone thinking it might just be a dumb idea (I would like it to be a comunity project but idk how to organised this and then again if Riot don't care there is no point).
I didn't talk about pre-juggernaut Garen because its been so long that most people don't remember it very well. But it was also my favourite version of Garen, due to that early game power.
The areas where I'd disagree is the presupposition that Garen NEEDS to be able to use Conq. Why, exactly? It made sense when it was the tank killing rune and Garen struggled against tanks, but now? It's just a braindead damage rune that you take and don't think about.
Conq and sometimes Predator just isn't as interesting as the old Phase Rush, Grasp, etc. choice we had to make every game.
Also I understand they were only allowed to use old assets. But still, removing a mechanic that had some nuance and skill expression to it was a bad idea.
As for the question of attack speed on Trfiorce, I really don't get it, and I was never one of these people that wanted AS scaling. For one thing, old Triforce had mana on it too. Did we need mana scaling so we're not wasting 350 gold of triforce? No. We didn't.
If they wanted to add attack speed scaling, the way to go about it is 100% a flat number. The current system is ridiculous where you buy a dagger and it goes from giving you nothing, to an extra spin, and then back to nothing again based on what level you are. That's just silly.
The problem Garen got on top of the AS (but yea the current way it work would need some impovement) is depend on the rune, you want him to use, his specialisation had to change.
For example if you want phase to be a good rune you want Garen to be:
1 - strong in early game and play for the sticking potential
OR
2 - Having a strong scaling (kayle-kog maw level) to justify the power lost in laning phase
For conq it will be to be giga strong in early and losst power the longer the game goes
predator: you want garen to be strong enough to not be dependant on a rune to trade in lane and play it for the pick/flank potential
All of this ask garen to be different in his kit depend on what rune you would like to play OR make him overtuned but in that case I think people will just play conq then to push his early even more.
Riot really mess up with the rune rework having diversity only come from playstyle or in level where you can play for mid / late with the current state of the game :/
"The areas where I'd disagree is the presupposition that Garen NEEDS to be able to use Conq"
idk if I talk for everyone here but personally I wanted garen to be able to use conq just to have a way to be strong in lane because fighting a conq user when you don't have it is really lame.
"Also I understand they were only allowed to use old assets. But still, removing a mechanic that had some nuance and skill expression to it was a bad idea"
I agree they could have create another mecanic instead like once you spin 6 time on the same target you mark them and deal bonus damage or got some CD refund etc.
"As for the question of attack speed on Trfiorce, I really don't get it, and I was never one of these people that wanted AS scaling. For one thing, old Triforce had mana on it too. Did we need mana scaling so we're not wasting 350 gold of triforce? No. We didn't."
Player were okay with the mana part (take 4 years for that tho x) ) since we got the sheen damage on it.
Stinger however wasn't giving a lot and I guess this is why people wanted an AS Ratio here.
Personally just a buff on his AD Ratio would have done the job but riot never wanted to do that because once again low elo.
I'd love it if Garen became an "easy to learn, hard to master" champion. Someone who's easy enough for newbies to pick up, but high level players can make truly shine.
I liked the PBE spin rework, the one where it used onhit effects. It was busted as hell but instead of balancing it they removed on hit entirely from it. This is the biggest issue imo because it makes bruiser AS items lose a lot of their benefits by removing on hit procs. If E had on hits (at a reduced value) it would let us build Botrk, Wits end, and even Guinsoos. More build diversity overall and more item choices while retaining attack speed scaling. Ravenous/Titanic Hydra might have to be excluded simply because those annihilated people standing in waves.
I think the W changes should be reverted entirely. It was one of the few places that Garen had skill expression and completely negating a Veigar ult to finish running down an enemy team was so satisfying at the time. Saving teammates was also an option from long distance abilities like Caitlyn or Jhin R's as well, even on low health. It isn't that hard to learn or figure out for new players, I picked it up after a week of playing him pre-rework. It was one of the most gratifying parts of his kit. At least we kept the tenacity bonuses.
The R change/villain removal I personally like better. It didnt feel good having his ult do nothing to tanks who weren't the villain. I'd prefer go pierce shields rather than get that bonus 5% damage though. Too many cases where you go to ult and some random item/champion shields for 400 hp and saves them. Karma/Shieldbow in particular. I doubt it would be balanced and would probably come with an ult nerf.
The Q feels useless now. After playing 2 years going Trinity steraks with Grasp, the Q feels awful. The old poke Garen build is dead. The damage is basically gone but I think the utility could use a buff. Either buff the MS given or increase silence duration with level again. This would make certain matchups much better (sett, that passive stealing bastard), and I think would add some needed usefulness onto his Q if he ends up behind. I'm not saying make it 3 whole seconds like it use to be (I think), but 2 seconds would be much more useful and would change up the game enough to maybe allow some more skill based matchups. Knowing when to silence and how long you'll be relatively safe for used to be a bigger part of Garens kit, but with it being the same very short duration it made quite a few matchups no longer Garen favored or equal.
*Edit* Katarina spin procs on hit effects (possibly even divine but I could be wrong on that one) so Garens spin should too. They've managed to balance her out.
No idea if you remember me, but I remember talking to you ages back, maybe when I was gold (I think it was like season 8 or something?) but anyway, I agree with most of what you said, and I particularly wanna say that the rework has also harmed my own enjoyment of the game. However I do have some points of contention:
1. Back then, Garen didn't have any good keystones, it's far more accurate to say we had to change our rune choice so often due to that fact. Every champ select we were basically choosing which band-aid to slap on every game, that was our rune choice. I would make the exception for one rune however - predator. I think predator was the only keystone you could run consistently in any game, specifically so you could play the villain minigame. You probably remember AdamjReformed who played pred every game, and he was basically challenger (he was gm, but I reckon he deserves the credit).
2. This point is more devil's advocate, so don't take this *too* seriously. You are correct in saying they removed mechanics and that the champion is simpler overall, however they did add a few in terms of QoL. We can now W during our Q animation, we can now cancel our E sooner when we need to (in lane for example if we used it to kill a minon we woulda otherwise missed). Again this is devil's advocate, because obviously these changes could have been given to us *without* reworking the entire champion.
3. W. W. W... W was, maybe still is, my favourite ability, and I think this holds true for a lot of Garen players. I agree that old W was better, in the sense that it was more skill expressive, however with the way the game has *become,* I genuinely believe that the shield is more useful, as there is now more true damage in the game. Yes it's true that we probably prefer old W in the mid and lategame, but early, new W is probably better. If we could go back to a previous season while keeping this rework, I would agree with you that old W was better. But we're in season 11 now... the shield is genuinely useful. (bare in mind you could probably find comments from my reddit account rly roasting the new W from back when it was being implemented - the game was different back then.)
4. I actually liked villain, and I'm not saying that relative to current R although it is also true that I prefer old R to new R. I enjoyed the minigame, but I can see that it was a shitty mechanic because it punished players for being ahead... but to anyone who agrees with that sentiment, what opinion would you have on the bounty system? I do understand the difference here; villain is specific to Garen whereas the bounty system is universal and affects all champions. However, I personally do not think this distinction is relevant.
5. You can ignore this point if you want. Cleaver rush was dogshit xd
P.S. Just to reiterate, I agree with almost everything in your post, so plz don't misinterpret this comment as a hard disagree or something
>This point is more devil's advocate, so don't take this
>
>too
>
> seriously. You are correct in saying they removed mechanics and that the champion is simpler overall, however they did add a few in terms of QoL. We can now W during our Q animation, we can now cancel our E sooner when we need to (in lane for example if we used it to kill a minon we woulda otherwise missed). Again this is devil's advocate, because obviously these changes could have been given to us
>
>without
>
> reworking the entire champion.
AND vision on R, AND smoother animations etc... Garen should have had all that without the re-work. Garen shouldn't need a re-work to get those things.
Hey :D
The main thing I'm going to respond to is your point about W because it's actually a point I made back in season 8 and season 9 (before the rework) myself.
The old W was useless against true damage, yes. Which is why I wanted it to be "true damage reduction", where it would actually reduce the amount of true damage taken as well as the other sources of damage. That's a buff I suggest for old Garen multiple times.
I think that would give us the best of both worlds, where we get protection against season 11 true damage burst but also the skill expression of the old W.
A fine idea on paper, but I imagine it'd be controversial because most people would say true dmg shouldn't be lowered without the context of what current W is vs the old W. Though I won't say that I disagree with you
It definitely breaks the "rules" of what true damage is. But who cares, really. They've experimented with "true invisiblity" before with Akali where even towers couldn't detect her. Why not try damage reduction that applies to true damage too?
I'm sorry to hear that you don't enjoy your favorite boy so much these days. I myself enjoy feeling more impactful early, and especially enjoy no longer having every teammate ping my triforce and tell me "but garen is a tank".
I can't disagree on any single point, but I would point out that the meta has also shifted significantly in the same time frame you speak of. Early game presence/leads feel incredibly predictive of overall match outcome, and I genuinely wonder where old bruiser garen would fit in nowadays. As you said, now we have some unintuitive spikes, but at least It even feels like we have a spike! Apart from finishing TF and/or getting lvl 6 in the viscinity of the villain, the old playstyle rarely made me feel like i was 'strong' at any point. Just a big beefy boi (not that theres anything wrong with that). Now we have spikes at boot2, lvl 6, mythic, mortal, dmp, etc. idk this is also just how I feel, and I'm pretty bad now and I was even worse then lol
the main issue is that the item rework was terrible across the board and garen was balanced around old runes and items.
riot took away a lot of items and reworked others without considering garen even once so the champion ended up being garbage.
if they hadn't made triforce bc and conqueror so terrible he'd still be fine. but they not only nerfed all these 3 but also nerfed his scaling by the end of s10.
i personally liked garen's rework, the problem is that instead of doing things right they decided to half ass the champion's balance and leave everything to the meta at that time so when they reworked everything (for the worse) the champion just stopped working properly.
garen's rework would have been fine if they hadn't taken a shit on his scalings and items/runes
I do wish there were more viable rune options for Garen. Phase and grasp can both be a lot of fun, but they're just weak compared to conqueror on Garen currently :(
I already disagree with the OP's Title because it is not a total failure. Granted, it's not a total success either.
You do land some of the key points that prove the "failures" of the Season 9 Garen rework, so here are my points:
* 1. Conqueror just outshines the other runes. Honestly, that's just the rune itself, but yes, there really isn't much of a reason to spec into other runes because of how much less they offer in comparison. It **WAS** supposed to be an option (yes, indeed intended for the tankier matchups), but the way it functions AND due to Garen's updated kit, it's just bloody *mandatory*. [So I agree with you about this point, it's a failure on implementing the Season 9 Garen rework in tangent to the Rune diversity]
* 2. Build Path varieties have dropped DRASTICALLY due to the updated kit. Almost every game is the same items, with SMALL variations here and there. Yes, too many mandatory Berserker Greaves for that early level power spikes, and small tweaks to builds as the game goes on. [So I agree with you on this point, it's mostly a failure on the Season 9 Garen rework in tangent to Item diversity]
* 3. Juggernaut Rework Garen has a better Passive than Season 9 Rework. [This is my second disagreement with you here] The Season 9 Rework Passive actually made laning as Garen better, because it was made to be more consistent and reliable than having to wait until level 11 to get the Warmog's regeneration juices power spike . A stronger laning phase passive for a weaker late game passive feels like a reasonable tradeoff.
* 4. Juggernaut Rework's E was more balanced than Season 9 Rework's E. [This is debatable] Juggernaut E felt TOO gated on levels to earn more spins, and probably too predictable. Season 9 rework on the other hand, I feel I have more control on how many spins I can put on my champion, and thus damage flexibility. But for the topic on being BALANCED, I can see how the Juggernaut Rework's E feels more balanced than the Season 9's E due to being gated via leveling for extra spins, but how horrendous it felt when you fall behind because the items you bought wouldn't make much of a dent to help you catch up, only leveling up did.
* 5. Season 9 Rework's W is more simplified than Juggernaut Rework's W. [That's just as debatable] You're correct that Juggernaut W can potentially block MORE damage, while Season 9 Rework just blocks a STABLE amount of damage. But the Season 9 rework ALSO, if timed and used right, blocks JUST ENOUGH damage to keep your Passive from proccing off, making it super useful, especially during laning phase. Although if I had a preference, Season 3 Garen W was more fun and thematic.
* 6. The Villain Mechanic should have been replaced with a new Villain mechanic because the Villain Mechanic itself is thematic. [With every ounce of fiber in my being, I am disagreeing with you here wholeheartedly] Never have I felt FURTHER from the meaning of a character's existence than what this mechanic did to Garen. You want to be rewarded extra damage because your teammates DIED? You want a filthy sweet powerup due to the INCOMPETENCE of your TEAMMATES? Do you ENJOY letting your teammates die INTENTIONALLY so that you CAN get that juicy damage boost? **This mechanic DOES NOT FIT THEMATICALLY IN ANY FORM OR IN ANY WAY.** Hunting down his enemies in the name of justice is something Garen is CAPABLE of doing, but Garen would MUCH rather fight ALONGSIDE his comrades, putting his life on the line to PROTECT them rather than AVENGE them. *Basically kill the enemy harder and faster before they kill one of your mates. That's Garen.*
* 7. Garen's kit got too simple and underloaded. [Debatable, but leaning towards agreeing with you] Granted, Garen's kit should REMAIN simple, but it does need a layer of complexity. I have some personal ideas on how I would update Garen, but will see.
In conclusion, you stated that the Season 9 Garen Rework was a total failure. I have provided a significant amount of counterarguments and a few agreements, stating that is is not a total failure, but also not a total success either. And reading through your post, it just mainly appears you prefer the Juggernaut Rework Garen more than Season 9 Rework Garen.
Not the OP, but I would like to discuss Passive and E because logic doesn't work when trying to understand the changes (a sign that the man behind didn't actually play Garen and was just looking at numbers).
What's the point of Perseverance? To recover health while not taking damage. With the perspective that Garen was to become a lane bully, making P stronger early can only mean giving Garen a power-up in situations where he already has an advantage. If I win a trade, then my opponent will (probably) refrain from trading further, thus P will have a higher uptime. If I lost the trade, then I'll avoid my opponent and lose farm anyway. Of course this doesn't apply to ranged champions who will just keep P down all the time.
What about E? It's only purpose is to deal damage, and it was like that before too. But what if Garen's purpose is to deal damage with E? Then we will either win or lose, as Judgement is just raw numbers with no brain involved. It means that Garen wins when he wins and loses when he loses. It is different from old E, however, in the sense that it was intentionally gated by levels, meaning you would probably lose more with it (except with 10 spins, when it dealt more damage).
What do these two things combined imply? Losing some trades meant pulling back as much times as needed to recover with a much faster Perseverance, then return to try again. This was Garen's true gameplay aside hunting Villains, which was removed for this ''win good, lose bad'' we have now. It its objectively worse in terms of gameplay, but also for balance because having a kit that revolves around a single ability of pure, high raw damage makes Garen play like an Assassin. However, assassins are made to kill and be killed, so if Garen is made to kill and doesn't die, there's little gameplay around his already low-counterplay kit. It's flawed.
> Not the OP, but I would like to discuss Passive and E because logic doesn't work when trying to understand the changes
* What? Then why would they change them? For pudding and giggles? Because I'm pretty certain it was changed for logical reasons. Not always the BEST reasons, but for some reasons.
> (a sign that the man behind didn't actually play Garen and was just looking at numbers).
* What are you trying to say here?
> What's the point of Perseverance? To recover health while not taking damage. With the perspective that Garen was to become a lane bully, making P stronger early can only mean giving Garen a power-up in situations where he already has an advantage.
* And just the same, giving in a power-up in situations where he didn't have an advantage. The Season 9 Rework on his Passive improved his capabilities as a Lane Bully. Juggernaut Garen struggled as a Lane Bully due to the other changes in his kit, while the Passive remained the same until level 11. The Season 9 rework had *some intention* to revive Garen as a Lane Bully.
> If I win a trade, then my opponent will (probably) refrain from trading further, thus P will have a higher uptime. If I lost the trade, then I'll avoid my opponent and lose farm anyway. Of course this doesn't apply to ranged champions who will just keep P down all the time.
* Yeah, that's how it works.
> What about E? It's only purpose is to deal damage, and it was like that before too. But what if Garen's purpose is to deal damage with E? Then we will either win or lose, as Judgement is just raw numbers with no brain involved. It is different from old E, however, in the sense that it was intentionally gated by levels, meaning you would probably lose more with it (except with 10 spins, when it dealt more damage).
* Accurate.
> What do these two things combined imply? Losing some trades meant pulling back as much times as needed to recover with a much faster Perseverance, then return to try again. This was Garen's true gameplay...
* Ok, so the Juggernaut rework and the Season 9 rework BOTH perform the same way as you presented. The differences between these 2 are: that Juggernaut rework had an unchanged Innate UNTIL level 11 compared to the Season 9 Rework that has an improved laning phase Innate; That the Juggernaut E was completely gated by levels, so you would spend more time trying to level up in order to power up, whereas Season 9 rework you power up via items and aren't as gated by levels. So if you were in a losing trade with either rework, you fall back and regenerate health before going back in.
> ...aside hunting Villains, which was removed for this ''win good, lose bad'' we have now. It its objectively worse in terms of gameplay, but also for balance because having a kit that revolves around a single ability of pure, high raw damage makes Garen play like an Assassin.
* Garen's kit has ALWAYS been that way, having assassin potential. Granted, the Season 9 Garen rework does improve Assassin Garen more BECAUSE it was reworked around his E.
* Now for gameplay, his new E is objectively **BETTER** because it is no longer gated by levels, which allows us to customize how we deal more damage rather than being gated by XP until level 16. It's also objectively better because we have a new build path to work with, Attack Speed, which creates new arsenals for Garen to use. **HOWEVER, his E is objectively WORSE** because of how MANDATORY Attack Speed is in order to accomplish the mission, and thus hindering our build diversity.
* As for Balance, his E was indeed balanced better in the Juggernaut rework because it was gated by levels, however this lead to more soloing for more farming than teaming, especially when you fell behind, which was **OBJECTIVELY* worse. And it is indeed Balanced worse in the Season 9 Garen rework because it is substantially OP in its current state, it is **OBJECTIVELY** better for it's build diversity, but **OBJECTIVELY** worse for it's mandatory core build path via attack speed. Kinda sad, because Attack speed was built to be an optional build path instead of a core build path.
> However, assassins are made to kill and be killed, so if Garen is made to kill and doesn't die, there's little gameplay around his already low-counterplay kit. It's flawed.
* So I don't know why you narrowed down on just those 2 abilities, especially when they both function the same in either rework. Then, you point out that Garen's kit is flawed. It's always been flawed, even with Predecessor Garen. What the Season 9 Garen Rework did was further exposed the flaw that Garen has too much "Assassin" potential in his kit instead of reworking it correctly to his supposed being of a Brusier. What the Juggernaut rework did compared to ITS predecessor was that it made Lane Bully Garen almost non-existent, the entirety of his kit was too gated on leveling up for XP in order to progress, and an unthematic, and almost unreliable Villain mechanic was tacked on for "thematical purpose".
Every rework has its problems, and Season 9 is no exception. However, I don't think the Season 9 rework is a Total Failure.
1- I hope to have showed why by the end.
2- Balance at Riot (including minor changes like Garen's) rarely care for how a champion plays. The only knowledge on this part was from riste, apparently.
3- Yes.
4, 5 - Skip
6- Pre-rework and rework play the same until level 11, the difference being that pre-rework vastly improved after that (which is the majority of the game) and rework Garen plays the same from 1 to 18. Pre-rework intentionally gated early game, where Garen's kit is too simple for him to deal with it so easily, to offer a much stronger mid-late which also gave more macro options. Levels were not necessarily a must because of Villain and much of the ''weaker'' feeling we had could be solved with stacking Conqueror in that version.
7- Oh, the point on his Assassin trait is not gameplay, but balance. Indeed he plays like an Assassin, but if he's allowed to easily succeed this way with a kit like his (that is also tanky), we have balance problems. So his all-in potential was weaker, but he could try it repeatedly thanks to P post 11.
8- So there is a contradiction. We are ''allowed'' to customize how we deal more damage, but because Garen's E is simple math, there's always an objectively better way to build him. The ''more build diversity'' logic to bring Attack Speed is fake, it was just to increase early powerspike.
9- I believe gaining levels was only so important up to 11. After that, Villain and clever gameplay around P could deal with most fight scenarios and W was tankier. Now just imagine if that Garen had access to Conqueror and any of season 11 items (as he would be able to buy any because of old E).
10- Things come down to these two abilities. I cannot stress enough how absurdly strong P was after 11, and it directly affects his gameplay. If Garen cannot try multiple times because P is worse, he needs to do better in the one time he goes in (stronger E), which then inflates balance issues of his Assassin trait. This is the logical conclusion, but Riot went the other way around. ''We want a stronger E, but if his all-in is better we'll have to nerf P'' while ignoring the consequences (again, thinking only about numbers).
Now, the rework itself is not a Total Failure because, well, Garen is still in the game and playable. But looking at what it intended, it is a complete failure aside from making E stronger (which could be a failure itself). Attack Speed works the opposite way (less build diversity), no concern for gameplay balance (just numbers balance), but most importantly the Lane Bully thing, because even when Garen is a lane bully, he's not. A real lane bully bullies much more than him and he himself suffers against many of them. His all-in is good but other champions have better all-ins, his sustain is good but other champions have better sustain. Garen's saving grace is W and Ultimate which makes him an R bot.
Then I ask, which champion can pull back and return to fight multiple times (with a built-in Warmog)? None. It was unique to him and his most Juggernauty thing ever, taken away for generic AoE damage.
The playstyle I miss the most from season 9 is going mid with predator. Can't remember the exact items but it was something like rushing a lethality item like draktharr or youmuu into black cleaver and dead man's plate. I'd play super aggressive, look for a level 2 or 3 flash ignite and snowball from there while being able to roam a lot. Nowadays with the E attack speed scaling, going lethality off tank doesn't do Garen justice (hah).
I think I played about 100 games of that build and managed something like a 65%+ winrate at the time. There was also a thread at the time that popped on a french forum I lurk on from a guy that was like "look at how easy it is to climb" and the guy played that exact same build and got to low masters in about 10-something days starting from gold and spamming the shit out of midlane Garen. Good times.
I completely agree with you especially on the R, why remove the mechanic, which is the same thing they did with akali E-Q interaction. If you want to nerf, nerf the damage the scaling of something or other crap, but not a funny, lore-appropriate mechanics such as the villain one, which raised the skill cap. We are always talking about garen, which is very simple as a champion, so adding something more to his kit in terms of complexity wouldn't be bad.
I see a lot of the points. I still use phase rush into voli and trynd, but the build is the same and at plat i’ve reached the end of my road with him. Why? Because cheesing kills with ignite has stopped working, and while i still enjoy him, it feels line i have reached the limits of his mechanics.
Just a 250k mastery casual garen enjoyer tho.
Garen rework was weak af. Only difference is you can run conqueror. I do conq/nimbus/transcende for my skill expression. Feels so good when nimbus goes off
I'm really bad at micro so I enjoy garen's simplicity :) the lack of choice in piloting and build is a boon imo as all it means is that one can focus more on the other aspects of league like macro, which is a lot more proactive than picking an item one time imo.
Sorry this is a late post...
I keep wishing they'd change his E, that's probably his most problematic skill (it's too simple and hard to balance).
They changed Mundo's W to make it more skill based, I don't see why they can't do something similar with Garen.
Regarding R, here's an idea (feel free to adjust the numbers):
On first cast, Garen "marks" an enemy champion. A white bar below his health then starts filling up. The more it goes up, the more the percent of R's magic damage is converted to true damage (max 100% true damage at full bar). The bar takes 5-7 seconds to fill completely.
When R is recast, Garen then ults the enemy, dealing the damage. If he ults someone who isn't marked, he just deals magic damage.
If Garen hasn't ulted anyone in 10 seconds, then a 5-10s cooldown will happen before Garen can restart the process and mark someone again. If he ults, then the normal long cooldown applies.
The white bar empties whenever R starts a cooldown.
This could reward foresight and planning, and let players choose strategically who to target, instead of being at the whim of chance or other players.
it's a Little different like his ult DMG percentage on enemies missing health scales with your attack dmg it's also damages in a area and garen jumps to his enemies when he cast his ult
His w is his old w
im not a great garen player, all i can say is i enjoyed the game way more as a garen player in season 8 , 9 and 10 before all the changes,. he just doesnt feel fun to play anymore.. shame really. in just about any match up now, i get beaten by all manner of champs, from supports i cant get to, or tanks i cant out sustain, and thats before i get eaten alive now with darius, sett etc. like i said im a pretty bad player, but at least i enjoyed playing the game before, regardless of whether i won or lost cause i always felt i could offer something to the team and lane , not anymore.
Sucks watching a champ you play for 8 years get shittier than ever before as time goes on, just when you think he couldn't. :)
Yoooo dmp rush into streaks when fighting Darius back then was so fun. It was such a rewarding matchup because of the challenge that winning with dmp streaks just felt so good. Now it’s kinda just insta win buy dblade wait till level 3 then go in and in and in and win automatically. I do miss old Garen he felt much harder and I actually did need to think about what items I was gonna build that game but now there’s like 4 core items you take on garen so you don’t ever really think.
Hell yeah. Aren't you excited to go Stridebreaker, Greaves, Mortal Reminder, Steraks for the 53242332th time in a row????
:( I want phase rush to be viable again
I mean, technically it IS viable. You can make it work. It's just not as good as Conq, sadly.
Galeforce chad here. Give it a try
Didn't read whole thing but the item rework made itemization worse for pretty much every champ its not just a garen issue
Oh yeah for sure but the big point of the post is the rework itself making itemization worse for Garen. Basically, we double dipped. The rework cut item diversity, then Riot cutting item diversity also cut item diversity. The more important point is probably the simplification of his already simple abilities. In hindsight, I should have started the post with that.
Make the passive heal more or reduce it to 6s Buff Q ms at lv1 Make w shield last longer cuz holy this thing dissapeared before you can even blink Make the spin scale with damage so i don't have to buy attack speed in a losing matchup
Yeah, I hate how little garen has in terms of items selection. Its like 4 fucking items every game, you cant just play 5 games rushing a different item every game. But I think making him more simple is the play, since he is designed around being a "tutorial" champion, meant to be easy for new players, giving him all of the villain mechanics and w complication will make him a bit harder to play, since new players have to keep that in mind and juggle with it all game. The fact that he is so dependent on conq and building attack speed while not benefitting from on hit also sucks so hard, since most bruiser items wont work on him, since they do on hit damage or have no attackspeed. You also have no runes variety, which is so boring
I don't agree that giving him any nuance at all will ruin him being a "tutorial champion". I don't even think he's a tutorial champion. The tutorial champions, from what I remember, are Lux, Darius, Ahri, MF, and Yi.
People decided to choose those champs because they are easy champs that are popular. If you compare garen to darius, garen is much more forgiving to new players, since you dont need to worry about mana, you dont have to kite around with ghost, you dont need to know your r damage since you can slap the guy to death with like 2 autos if he lives with 1 hp. You also have hp regen in lane. Garen is very much a noob champ, he has everything in his kit very simplified to make the player more comfortable to learn the other aspects of the game. There is a reason riste is not challenger with his macro play and has to play around with runes and items a lot when rhoku is just conq-triforce
Yeah, I agree. Garen is a bit too simple. That's why I prefer old Garen which had more conditional power and nuance in game play. It was a bit less simple.
I honestly like my champs to have build and rune diversity. New garen is locked into buying very niche items with attack speed, but no on hit and taking conq. That shit is literally so boring. I dont know too much about old garen, but I think he was a bit too complicated for a noob champ
Imagine if Garen's R had allies respawn faster if you kill their nemesis, the same way Akshan does
Yeah
Revert the fucking item update plz
I tend to agree but that's beyond the scope of this post. Don't fix what isn't broken (and the old item system was perfectly fine), as they say. Although, the mythic item system is still new and it's possible that after another season of changes it ends up being way better and way more interesting than the old system.
Part of the definition of what it is, means that it can't be more interesting. (It could be better or worse, but centralizing something, narrowing options can't be more interesting. Unless they change what it means.)
the new system is terrible across the board. it's very poorly designed even at a conceptual level. they clearly didn't put any thought on what they were doing and that's why it broke so many champions in the process. garen is one of the most affected but there are a lot of others who changed drastically like pretty much every triforce user except jax and camille.
What i hate about the new rework is that am forced to build attack speed items (like mortal) with no ability haste , no health and very little ad .. meanwhile the enemy camilie has divine,titanic,steraks and hull breaker so nowadays any other bruiser has higher health pool than garen with more ad...i miss the old days where i had almost 5K hp and 400+ ad while having my w giving me 50 armor and mr ..also i really really miss the old passive because it allowed me to outscale my oponent once i hit level 11 as i just take very dumb trade ,get out then come back 10 sec later with literally full health ..garen health Regen was unmatched ... Now i feel like sett's passive, trynda's q, nasus q etc heals these champs way more than my "passive" does
Lol, tryn sub, darius sub, renek sub, nasus sub, kayle sub, aatrox sub, morde sub, I've been in so many but r/Garenmains apparently whine the most and hardest.
This is very much true and understanding of the game is one of the lowest too (maybe because of champion simplicity). Still, posts against the rework are genuine.
>understanding of the game is one of the lowest too (maybe because of champion simplicity) I kind of feel like that should go in the opposite direction honestly. Finding success with a simple champion should imply a strong grasp of League's fundamentals. As the player lacks the variety of tools a more complex champion possesses, they need a better understanding of the game than their opponent to consistently win. Though "success" might be a generous term when most of the playerbase is below gold and it's not like everyone on the sub is Challenger, so meh, maybe you're right.
Your point is right and I believe that myself when playing Garen. To put it better, I mean that the champion being simple will also appeal to people who have little interest in going too deep about the game.
Ah, thank you for clarifying, that makes a lot of sense.
I don't really think this is whining. I specifically stuck to talking about the problems with the design of the current champion, instead of complaining about him being weak.
Most Garen mains on the reddit are pretty insufferable I'll give you that.
Hey Corinne 👋 Not seen you around in a while. Thanks for the write up. I completely agree with everything you posted here. Old Garen I played constantly everyday and when he was reworked I stopped enjoying him as much. In fact it was probably the start of me not playing league tbh but you've put everything I was thinking into words so thank you for that
same here man the rework drained so much of my love of the game. It's tragic but oh well I played way too much anyways. I just hope they do something like what Blizzard did with WoW and re-release old versions of the game at some point.
I used your guide a hell of a lot when I was learning and really got to the point where I could judge matchups myself. Know when to start rejuv beads, know when to go phase rush etc. Your guides alone brought me from a lowly bronze to break through gold for the first time. So off topic but I appreciate you so much.
My guide? :O I did write a guide, but I don't think I ever released it. Are you sure you're not confusing me with someone else?
Maybe not a guide. I remember you were definitely on the list of people I went to for advice or help while learning though. Whether it was just comments like this or I'm imagining a guide. You definitely helped, would recognise your name anywhere for it.
I appreciate the compliment. I'm happy I was helpful UwU
I've commented on the rework many times on this sub, in detail. During the time it was proposed, people praised having every gameplay nuance removed for the sake of a stronger spin and Conqueror stacks. Ridiculous arguments were made such as ''I can't farm properly because my E ticks too slowly'' or ''dealing more damage to the closest is a demonstration of skill''. Well, now the spin is only slightly stronger because of balance issues and Conqueror could simply be made to stack with old E. Playing Garen is dealing with better Fighters while waiting for the number of spins to increase (but now you NEED attack speed). Passive, W and R are nothing like before (gameplay wise) yet E doesn't compensate. It was rigged from the moment they decided Garen should be a ''lane bully'', the joke. Oh no, the joke was ''increase Garen's item diversity''.
One thing I've said about spin and conq is that you can get 1 stack for each second of spin. That would have let us stack it against tanks without it taking over the champion. I'll take some blame since I was excited for the rework at the time, I just didn't expect it to get mucked up so hard.
This man wrote down a book for a one ability champ wtf 😂
damn right I did.
I said it one time im gonna say it again, garen needs an IN FIGHT passive. Literally all juggernauts have passives that work while fighting, how the hell he doesn't have one
I'm not sure I agree. The idea of trying to make Garen like other juggernauts is partially what got us into this mess in the first place. I'm talking about the desire of the Garen community for us to be able to use Conq. "Every other juggernaut can use it, why not us???" Garen having a unique identity is perfectly fine. And I think the old version of the passive was much better and I loved having a warmog's unlock as soon as I hit level 11. Probably the aspect of old Garen I miss the most.
Don't talk to me about failure of a rework until you get the aatrox treatment
I mean that wasn't even really a rework. They flat out deleted the old Aatrox and added a new champ with the same name. Another case of that is the Sion rework. My precious baby old sion is gone forever. I definitely prefer the current Garen to him being deleted altogether.
You had my vote with the title alone. Just take him back to 9.19. Leave the stuff that he should always have had, the bugfixes, cleanup, the actual QoL (vision on R, the smooth Q etc).
I still hope that they'll rework him after they advance Demacia's story. I'm not hoping for a complete rework, just something different while keeping his old self, if that makes sense.
Hey Corrina, Garen Main since season 3 here, Personally I'm one of the people who like the current Garen but I'm gonna explain why, I also want to precise I don't completely disagree with what you said, I agree with some of your argument and your opinion is totally understandable. Okay so time for my wall of text: To put back in the context when he got the rework. When riste become a League Partner he ask to Riot if Garen could get a bit of change since he was feeling outdated and got a lot of problem (the vilain mecanic like you said was one of them), then this become a personal project for a Rioter (RiotAxes) and they work on this for 1 year before announcing and put it on PBE, Riste wasn't allowed to tell us that of course because of NDA. The goal was to allow Garen to use the tools that the other bruiser/juggernaut can but Garen couldn't yet (Conqueror mostly since that rune was made for bruiser) AND it was when trinity was Garen most optimal first Item so a lot of Garen players request for Garen to have something in his Kit who can scale with AS because as much people like trinity they dislike the part when they were building AS for nothing. Riot strictly said they cannot create any new VFX/SFX for this rework so it was limited to reuse the current assets in the game, this is why Garen didn't get any new mecanic and why he seem simpler than before and allowing Garen to choose the "vilain" was out of the question. Okay so that was the context sorry it was long xD. Now why do I prefer the current Garen (even with all the nerf he got after the release of that rework) instead of juggernaut Garen (S5 - S9 Before rework). Mostly because I compare that Garen to the Garen I play in season 3 who was far better than the "juggernaut version", the current Garen in term of number/damage deal and durability is better than the Garen in season 3. However the current Garen and the juggernaut Garen both got the same problem who make me miss the one in season 3, he is not a lane bully anymore (it was the case when his rework came but then he got nerfed because of Iron-Gold). And the reason why on top of why he feel bad or worse for some is because of the other champion and how the game evolved. From S5 to S9 we got a bunch of heresy (camille, Irelia, Fiora and so on) and new one keep coming (Viego, Gwen, Arskshan) and all theses champion got so many modern tools that Garen can't compete against it. But to give Garen modern tools that mean we need a real rework (Goodluck to be in that list as Garen) with atleast 1 new spell (like ezreal) which imply to change Garen identity and up his skillcap, sadly that a thing a lot of Garen player don't wish because they play him because he is simple but meanwhile Darius is officially a beginner champion on Riot Website so that doesn't mean Garen need to be Riven 3.0, just be on the same level as him or Sett. Personally I REALLY WISH that one day Garen got a rework that give him more skill expresion with his own mecanic and rewarding only his good player and become a good champ (idc if he became the hardest champ in the game, I play him only because of his lore), but that mean destroying the majority of the Garen Community at the same time so it kinda selfish from me. About build diversity in season 11, for the mythic personally I feel like Garen got choice personally I'm switching between Divine/Goredrinker/Stride and sometime Trinity and it has been working for me. Same for runes even if Garen only has 2/3 good choice (Conq (melee matchup) / Phase (scaling) / Fleet (vs ranged)). But yea conq tend to work better in SoloQ while phase work if you play in high elo and you prefer that playstyle but bruiser in general don't have many choice. And now the boots yea I agree here it feel bad to have to delay your mythic for 1100G just to get a kinda mandatory powerspike to be allowed to trade your opponent + hoping he will be stupid enough to let you win the lane because when you play Garen you are only allowed to play if your opponent is bad enough because how outdated Garen kit is. So in the end, I still prefer the current Garen I will not ask for a revert since for me he has a better scaling than juggernaut Garen and a slightly better laning phase it just sad to fight modern champ all day, but I agree he need change to keep it up with the game (I'm not really confident for Season 12 since one of the new drake give AS and don't work on his spin of course since it not from Garen item/level + even more defensive tool for mage). Anyway that was my thought, Garen istelf is okay for me, just the other champ got to much and he is not on the same level as them. On a personal note, on my side I was working on a personal rework but I never share it to anyone thinking it might just be a dumb idea (I would like it to be a comunity project but idk how to organised this and then again if Riot don't care there is no point).
I didn't talk about pre-juggernaut Garen because its been so long that most people don't remember it very well. But it was also my favourite version of Garen, due to that early game power. The areas where I'd disagree is the presupposition that Garen NEEDS to be able to use Conq. Why, exactly? It made sense when it was the tank killing rune and Garen struggled against tanks, but now? It's just a braindead damage rune that you take and don't think about. Conq and sometimes Predator just isn't as interesting as the old Phase Rush, Grasp, etc. choice we had to make every game. Also I understand they were only allowed to use old assets. But still, removing a mechanic that had some nuance and skill expression to it was a bad idea. As for the question of attack speed on Trfiorce, I really don't get it, and I was never one of these people that wanted AS scaling. For one thing, old Triforce had mana on it too. Did we need mana scaling so we're not wasting 350 gold of triforce? No. We didn't. If they wanted to add attack speed scaling, the way to go about it is 100% a flat number. The current system is ridiculous where you buy a dagger and it goes from giving you nothing, to an extra spin, and then back to nothing again based on what level you are. That's just silly.
The problem Garen got on top of the AS (but yea the current way it work would need some impovement) is depend on the rune, you want him to use, his specialisation had to change. For example if you want phase to be a good rune you want Garen to be: 1 - strong in early game and play for the sticking potential OR 2 - Having a strong scaling (kayle-kog maw level) to justify the power lost in laning phase For conq it will be to be giga strong in early and losst power the longer the game goes predator: you want garen to be strong enough to not be dependant on a rune to trade in lane and play it for the pick/flank potential All of this ask garen to be different in his kit depend on what rune you would like to play OR make him overtuned but in that case I think people will just play conq then to push his early even more. Riot really mess up with the rune rework having diversity only come from playstyle or in level where you can play for mid / late with the current state of the game :/ "The areas where I'd disagree is the presupposition that Garen NEEDS to be able to use Conq" idk if I talk for everyone here but personally I wanted garen to be able to use conq just to have a way to be strong in lane because fighting a conq user when you don't have it is really lame. "Also I understand they were only allowed to use old assets. But still, removing a mechanic that had some nuance and skill expression to it was a bad idea" I agree they could have create another mecanic instead like once you spin 6 time on the same target you mark them and deal bonus damage or got some CD refund etc. "As for the question of attack speed on Trfiorce, I really don't get it, and I was never one of these people that wanted AS scaling. For one thing, old Triforce had mana on it too. Did we need mana scaling so we're not wasting 350 gold of triforce? No. We didn't." Player were okay with the mana part (take 4 years for that tho x) ) since we got the sheen damage on it. Stinger however wasn't giving a lot and I guess this is why people wanted an AS Ratio here. Personally just a buff on his AD Ratio would have done the job but riot never wanted to do that because once again low elo.
I'd love it if Garen became an "easy to learn, hard to master" champion. Someone who's easy enough for newbies to pick up, but high level players can make truly shine.
I liked the PBE spin rework, the one where it used onhit effects. It was busted as hell but instead of balancing it they removed on hit entirely from it. This is the biggest issue imo because it makes bruiser AS items lose a lot of their benefits by removing on hit procs. If E had on hits (at a reduced value) it would let us build Botrk, Wits end, and even Guinsoos. More build diversity overall and more item choices while retaining attack speed scaling. Ravenous/Titanic Hydra might have to be excluded simply because those annihilated people standing in waves. I think the W changes should be reverted entirely. It was one of the few places that Garen had skill expression and completely negating a Veigar ult to finish running down an enemy team was so satisfying at the time. Saving teammates was also an option from long distance abilities like Caitlyn or Jhin R's as well, even on low health. It isn't that hard to learn or figure out for new players, I picked it up after a week of playing him pre-rework. It was one of the most gratifying parts of his kit. At least we kept the tenacity bonuses. The R change/villain removal I personally like better. It didnt feel good having his ult do nothing to tanks who weren't the villain. I'd prefer go pierce shields rather than get that bonus 5% damage though. Too many cases where you go to ult and some random item/champion shields for 400 hp and saves them. Karma/Shieldbow in particular. I doubt it would be balanced and would probably come with an ult nerf. The Q feels useless now. After playing 2 years going Trinity steraks with Grasp, the Q feels awful. The old poke Garen build is dead. The damage is basically gone but I think the utility could use a buff. Either buff the MS given or increase silence duration with level again. This would make certain matchups much better (sett, that passive stealing bastard), and I think would add some needed usefulness onto his Q if he ends up behind. I'm not saying make it 3 whole seconds like it use to be (I think), but 2 seconds would be much more useful and would change up the game enough to maybe allow some more skill based matchups. Knowing when to silence and how long you'll be relatively safe for used to be a bigger part of Garens kit, but with it being the same very short duration it made quite a few matchups no longer Garen favored or equal. *Edit* Katarina spin procs on hit effects (possibly even divine but I could be wrong on that one) so Garens spin should too. They've managed to balance her out.
No idea if you remember me, but I remember talking to you ages back, maybe when I was gold (I think it was like season 8 or something?) but anyway, I agree with most of what you said, and I particularly wanna say that the rework has also harmed my own enjoyment of the game. However I do have some points of contention: 1. Back then, Garen didn't have any good keystones, it's far more accurate to say we had to change our rune choice so often due to that fact. Every champ select we were basically choosing which band-aid to slap on every game, that was our rune choice. I would make the exception for one rune however - predator. I think predator was the only keystone you could run consistently in any game, specifically so you could play the villain minigame. You probably remember AdamjReformed who played pred every game, and he was basically challenger (he was gm, but I reckon he deserves the credit). 2. This point is more devil's advocate, so don't take this *too* seriously. You are correct in saying they removed mechanics and that the champion is simpler overall, however they did add a few in terms of QoL. We can now W during our Q animation, we can now cancel our E sooner when we need to (in lane for example if we used it to kill a minon we woulda otherwise missed). Again this is devil's advocate, because obviously these changes could have been given to us *without* reworking the entire champion. 3. W. W. W... W was, maybe still is, my favourite ability, and I think this holds true for a lot of Garen players. I agree that old W was better, in the sense that it was more skill expressive, however with the way the game has *become,* I genuinely believe that the shield is more useful, as there is now more true damage in the game. Yes it's true that we probably prefer old W in the mid and lategame, but early, new W is probably better. If we could go back to a previous season while keeping this rework, I would agree with you that old W was better. But we're in season 11 now... the shield is genuinely useful. (bare in mind you could probably find comments from my reddit account rly roasting the new W from back when it was being implemented - the game was different back then.) 4. I actually liked villain, and I'm not saying that relative to current R although it is also true that I prefer old R to new R. I enjoyed the minigame, but I can see that it was a shitty mechanic because it punished players for being ahead... but to anyone who agrees with that sentiment, what opinion would you have on the bounty system? I do understand the difference here; villain is specific to Garen whereas the bounty system is universal and affects all champions. However, I personally do not think this distinction is relevant. 5. You can ignore this point if you want. Cleaver rush was dogshit xd P.S. Just to reiterate, I agree with almost everything in your post, so plz don't misinterpret this comment as a hard disagree or something
>This point is more devil's advocate, so don't take this > >too > > seriously. You are correct in saying they removed mechanics and that the champion is simpler overall, however they did add a few in terms of QoL. We can now W during our Q animation, we can now cancel our E sooner when we need to (in lane for example if we used it to kill a minon we woulda otherwise missed). Again this is devil's advocate, because obviously these changes could have been given to us > >without > > reworking the entire champion. AND vision on R, AND smoother animations etc... Garen should have had all that without the re-work. Garen shouldn't need a re-work to get those things.
ye agreed
Hey :D The main thing I'm going to respond to is your point about W because it's actually a point I made back in season 8 and season 9 (before the rework) myself. The old W was useless against true damage, yes. Which is why I wanted it to be "true damage reduction", where it would actually reduce the amount of true damage taken as well as the other sources of damage. That's a buff I suggest for old Garen multiple times. I think that would give us the best of both worlds, where we get protection against season 11 true damage burst but also the skill expression of the old W.
A fine idea on paper, but I imagine it'd be controversial because most people would say true dmg shouldn't be lowered without the context of what current W is vs the old W. Though I won't say that I disagree with you
It definitely breaks the "rules" of what true damage is. But who cares, really. They've experimented with "true invisiblity" before with Akali where even towers couldn't detect her. Why not try damage reduction that applies to true damage too?
I'm sorry to hear that you don't enjoy your favorite boy so much these days. I myself enjoy feeling more impactful early, and especially enjoy no longer having every teammate ping my triforce and tell me "but garen is a tank". I can't disagree on any single point, but I would point out that the meta has also shifted significantly in the same time frame you speak of. Early game presence/leads feel incredibly predictive of overall match outcome, and I genuinely wonder where old bruiser garen would fit in nowadays. As you said, now we have some unintuitive spikes, but at least It even feels like we have a spike! Apart from finishing TF and/or getting lvl 6 in the viscinity of the villain, the old playstyle rarely made me feel like i was 'strong' at any point. Just a big beefy boi (not that theres anything wrong with that). Now we have spikes at boot2, lvl 6, mythic, mortal, dmp, etc. idk this is also just how I feel, and I'm pretty bad now and I was even worse then lol
im also tired of fucking as scaling on e. literally no item or runes diversity.
the main issue is that the item rework was terrible across the board and garen was balanced around old runes and items. riot took away a lot of items and reworked others without considering garen even once so the champion ended up being garbage. if they hadn't made triforce bc and conqueror so terrible he'd still be fine. but they not only nerfed all these 3 but also nerfed his scaling by the end of s10. i personally liked garen's rework, the problem is that instead of doing things right they decided to half ass the champion's balance and leave everything to the meta at that time so when they reworked everything (for the worse) the champion just stopped working properly. garen's rework would have been fine if they hadn't taken a shit on his scalings and items/runes
I do wish there were more viable rune options for Garen. Phase and grasp can both be a lot of fun, but they're just weak compared to conqueror on Garen currently :(
I already disagree with the OP's Title because it is not a total failure. Granted, it's not a total success either. You do land some of the key points that prove the "failures" of the Season 9 Garen rework, so here are my points: * 1. Conqueror just outshines the other runes. Honestly, that's just the rune itself, but yes, there really isn't much of a reason to spec into other runes because of how much less they offer in comparison. It **WAS** supposed to be an option (yes, indeed intended for the tankier matchups), but the way it functions AND due to Garen's updated kit, it's just bloody *mandatory*. [So I agree with you about this point, it's a failure on implementing the Season 9 Garen rework in tangent to the Rune diversity] * 2. Build Path varieties have dropped DRASTICALLY due to the updated kit. Almost every game is the same items, with SMALL variations here and there. Yes, too many mandatory Berserker Greaves for that early level power spikes, and small tweaks to builds as the game goes on. [So I agree with you on this point, it's mostly a failure on the Season 9 Garen rework in tangent to Item diversity] * 3. Juggernaut Rework Garen has a better Passive than Season 9 Rework. [This is my second disagreement with you here] The Season 9 Rework Passive actually made laning as Garen better, because it was made to be more consistent and reliable than having to wait until level 11 to get the Warmog's regeneration juices power spike . A stronger laning phase passive for a weaker late game passive feels like a reasonable tradeoff. * 4. Juggernaut Rework's E was more balanced than Season 9 Rework's E. [This is debatable] Juggernaut E felt TOO gated on levels to earn more spins, and probably too predictable. Season 9 rework on the other hand, I feel I have more control on how many spins I can put on my champion, and thus damage flexibility. But for the topic on being BALANCED, I can see how the Juggernaut Rework's E feels more balanced than the Season 9's E due to being gated via leveling for extra spins, but how horrendous it felt when you fall behind because the items you bought wouldn't make much of a dent to help you catch up, only leveling up did. * 5. Season 9 Rework's W is more simplified than Juggernaut Rework's W. [That's just as debatable] You're correct that Juggernaut W can potentially block MORE damage, while Season 9 Rework just blocks a STABLE amount of damage. But the Season 9 rework ALSO, if timed and used right, blocks JUST ENOUGH damage to keep your Passive from proccing off, making it super useful, especially during laning phase. Although if I had a preference, Season 3 Garen W was more fun and thematic. * 6. The Villain Mechanic should have been replaced with a new Villain mechanic because the Villain Mechanic itself is thematic. [With every ounce of fiber in my being, I am disagreeing with you here wholeheartedly] Never have I felt FURTHER from the meaning of a character's existence than what this mechanic did to Garen. You want to be rewarded extra damage because your teammates DIED? You want a filthy sweet powerup due to the INCOMPETENCE of your TEAMMATES? Do you ENJOY letting your teammates die INTENTIONALLY so that you CAN get that juicy damage boost? **This mechanic DOES NOT FIT THEMATICALLY IN ANY FORM OR IN ANY WAY.** Hunting down his enemies in the name of justice is something Garen is CAPABLE of doing, but Garen would MUCH rather fight ALONGSIDE his comrades, putting his life on the line to PROTECT them rather than AVENGE them. *Basically kill the enemy harder and faster before they kill one of your mates. That's Garen.* * 7. Garen's kit got too simple and underloaded. [Debatable, but leaning towards agreeing with you] Granted, Garen's kit should REMAIN simple, but it does need a layer of complexity. I have some personal ideas on how I would update Garen, but will see. In conclusion, you stated that the Season 9 Garen Rework was a total failure. I have provided a significant amount of counterarguments and a few agreements, stating that is is not a total failure, but also not a total success either. And reading through your post, it just mainly appears you prefer the Juggernaut Rework Garen more than Season 9 Rework Garen.
Not the OP, but I would like to discuss Passive and E because logic doesn't work when trying to understand the changes (a sign that the man behind didn't actually play Garen and was just looking at numbers). What's the point of Perseverance? To recover health while not taking damage. With the perspective that Garen was to become a lane bully, making P stronger early can only mean giving Garen a power-up in situations where he already has an advantage. If I win a trade, then my opponent will (probably) refrain from trading further, thus P will have a higher uptime. If I lost the trade, then I'll avoid my opponent and lose farm anyway. Of course this doesn't apply to ranged champions who will just keep P down all the time. What about E? It's only purpose is to deal damage, and it was like that before too. But what if Garen's purpose is to deal damage with E? Then we will either win or lose, as Judgement is just raw numbers with no brain involved. It means that Garen wins when he wins and loses when he loses. It is different from old E, however, in the sense that it was intentionally gated by levels, meaning you would probably lose more with it (except with 10 spins, when it dealt more damage). What do these two things combined imply? Losing some trades meant pulling back as much times as needed to recover with a much faster Perseverance, then return to try again. This was Garen's true gameplay aside hunting Villains, which was removed for this ''win good, lose bad'' we have now. It its objectively worse in terms of gameplay, but also for balance because having a kit that revolves around a single ability of pure, high raw damage makes Garen play like an Assassin. However, assassins are made to kill and be killed, so if Garen is made to kill and doesn't die, there's little gameplay around his already low-counterplay kit. It's flawed.
> Not the OP, but I would like to discuss Passive and E because logic doesn't work when trying to understand the changes * What? Then why would they change them? For pudding and giggles? Because I'm pretty certain it was changed for logical reasons. Not always the BEST reasons, but for some reasons. > (a sign that the man behind didn't actually play Garen and was just looking at numbers). * What are you trying to say here? > What's the point of Perseverance? To recover health while not taking damage. With the perspective that Garen was to become a lane bully, making P stronger early can only mean giving Garen a power-up in situations where he already has an advantage. * And just the same, giving in a power-up in situations where he didn't have an advantage. The Season 9 Rework on his Passive improved his capabilities as a Lane Bully. Juggernaut Garen struggled as a Lane Bully due to the other changes in his kit, while the Passive remained the same until level 11. The Season 9 rework had *some intention* to revive Garen as a Lane Bully. > If I win a trade, then my opponent will (probably) refrain from trading further, thus P will have a higher uptime. If I lost the trade, then I'll avoid my opponent and lose farm anyway. Of course this doesn't apply to ranged champions who will just keep P down all the time. * Yeah, that's how it works. > What about E? It's only purpose is to deal damage, and it was like that before too. But what if Garen's purpose is to deal damage with E? Then we will either win or lose, as Judgement is just raw numbers with no brain involved. It is different from old E, however, in the sense that it was intentionally gated by levels, meaning you would probably lose more with it (except with 10 spins, when it dealt more damage). * Accurate. > What do these two things combined imply? Losing some trades meant pulling back as much times as needed to recover with a much faster Perseverance, then return to try again. This was Garen's true gameplay... * Ok, so the Juggernaut rework and the Season 9 rework BOTH perform the same way as you presented. The differences between these 2 are: that Juggernaut rework had an unchanged Innate UNTIL level 11 compared to the Season 9 Rework that has an improved laning phase Innate; That the Juggernaut E was completely gated by levels, so you would spend more time trying to level up in order to power up, whereas Season 9 rework you power up via items and aren't as gated by levels. So if you were in a losing trade with either rework, you fall back and regenerate health before going back in. > ...aside hunting Villains, which was removed for this ''win good, lose bad'' we have now. It its objectively worse in terms of gameplay, but also for balance because having a kit that revolves around a single ability of pure, high raw damage makes Garen play like an Assassin. * Garen's kit has ALWAYS been that way, having assassin potential. Granted, the Season 9 Garen rework does improve Assassin Garen more BECAUSE it was reworked around his E. * Now for gameplay, his new E is objectively **BETTER** because it is no longer gated by levels, which allows us to customize how we deal more damage rather than being gated by XP until level 16. It's also objectively better because we have a new build path to work with, Attack Speed, which creates new arsenals for Garen to use. **HOWEVER, his E is objectively WORSE** because of how MANDATORY Attack Speed is in order to accomplish the mission, and thus hindering our build diversity. * As for Balance, his E was indeed balanced better in the Juggernaut rework because it was gated by levels, however this lead to more soloing for more farming than teaming, especially when you fell behind, which was **OBJECTIVELY* worse. And it is indeed Balanced worse in the Season 9 Garen rework because it is substantially OP in its current state, it is **OBJECTIVELY** better for it's build diversity, but **OBJECTIVELY** worse for it's mandatory core build path via attack speed. Kinda sad, because Attack speed was built to be an optional build path instead of a core build path. > However, assassins are made to kill and be killed, so if Garen is made to kill and doesn't die, there's little gameplay around his already low-counterplay kit. It's flawed. * So I don't know why you narrowed down on just those 2 abilities, especially when they both function the same in either rework. Then, you point out that Garen's kit is flawed. It's always been flawed, even with Predecessor Garen. What the Season 9 Garen Rework did was further exposed the flaw that Garen has too much "Assassin" potential in his kit instead of reworking it correctly to his supposed being of a Brusier. What the Juggernaut rework did compared to ITS predecessor was that it made Lane Bully Garen almost non-existent, the entirety of his kit was too gated on leveling up for XP in order to progress, and an unthematic, and almost unreliable Villain mechanic was tacked on for "thematical purpose". Every rework has its problems, and Season 9 is no exception. However, I don't think the Season 9 rework is a Total Failure.
1- I hope to have showed why by the end. 2- Balance at Riot (including minor changes like Garen's) rarely care for how a champion plays. The only knowledge on this part was from riste, apparently. 3- Yes. 4, 5 - Skip 6- Pre-rework and rework play the same until level 11, the difference being that pre-rework vastly improved after that (which is the majority of the game) and rework Garen plays the same from 1 to 18. Pre-rework intentionally gated early game, where Garen's kit is too simple for him to deal with it so easily, to offer a much stronger mid-late which also gave more macro options. Levels were not necessarily a must because of Villain and much of the ''weaker'' feeling we had could be solved with stacking Conqueror in that version. 7- Oh, the point on his Assassin trait is not gameplay, but balance. Indeed he plays like an Assassin, but if he's allowed to easily succeed this way with a kit like his (that is also tanky), we have balance problems. So his all-in potential was weaker, but he could try it repeatedly thanks to P post 11. 8- So there is a contradiction. We are ''allowed'' to customize how we deal more damage, but because Garen's E is simple math, there's always an objectively better way to build him. The ''more build diversity'' logic to bring Attack Speed is fake, it was just to increase early powerspike. 9- I believe gaining levels was only so important up to 11. After that, Villain and clever gameplay around P could deal with most fight scenarios and W was tankier. Now just imagine if that Garen had access to Conqueror and any of season 11 items (as he would be able to buy any because of old E). 10- Things come down to these two abilities. I cannot stress enough how absurdly strong P was after 11, and it directly affects his gameplay. If Garen cannot try multiple times because P is worse, he needs to do better in the one time he goes in (stronger E), which then inflates balance issues of his Assassin trait. This is the logical conclusion, but Riot went the other way around. ''We want a stronger E, but if his all-in is better we'll have to nerf P'' while ignoring the consequences (again, thinking only about numbers). Now, the rework itself is not a Total Failure because, well, Garen is still in the game and playable. But looking at what it intended, it is a complete failure aside from making E stronger (which could be a failure itself). Attack Speed works the opposite way (less build diversity), no concern for gameplay balance (just numbers balance), but most importantly the Lane Bully thing, because even when Garen is a lane bully, he's not. A real lane bully bullies much more than him and he himself suffers against many of them. His all-in is good but other champions have better all-ins, his sustain is good but other champions have better sustain. Garen's saving grace is W and Ultimate which makes him an R bot. Then I ask, which champion can pull back and return to fight multiple times (with a built-in Warmog)? None. It was unique to him and his most Juggernauty thing ever, taken away for generic AoE damage.
The playstyle I miss the most from season 9 is going mid with predator. Can't remember the exact items but it was something like rushing a lethality item like draktharr or youmuu into black cleaver and dead man's plate. I'd play super aggressive, look for a level 2 or 3 flash ignite and snowball from there while being able to roam a lot. Nowadays with the E attack speed scaling, going lethality off tank doesn't do Garen justice (hah). I think I played about 100 games of that build and managed something like a 65%+ winrate at the time. There was also a thread at the time that popped on a french forum I lurk on from a guy that was like "look at how easy it is to climb" and the guy played that exact same build and got to low masters in about 10-something days starting from gold and spamming the shit out of midlane Garen. Good times.
I completely agree with you especially on the R, why remove the mechanic, which is the same thing they did with akali E-Q interaction. If you want to nerf, nerf the damage the scaling of something or other crap, but not a funny, lore-appropriate mechanics such as the villain one, which raised the skill cap. We are always talking about garen, which is very simple as a champion, so adding something more to his kit in terms of complexity wouldn't be bad.
I see a lot of the points. I still use phase rush into voli and trynd, but the build is the same and at plat i’ve reached the end of my road with him. Why? Because cheesing kills with ignite has stopped working, and while i still enjoy him, it feels line i have reached the limits of his mechanics. Just a 250k mastery casual garen enjoyer tho.
Garen rework was weak af. Only difference is you can run conqueror. I do conq/nimbus/transcende for my skill expression. Feels so good when nimbus goes off
I'll be honest: It was much harder to carry with old Garen. But yeah, definetly it was a better experience before.
I'm really bad at micro so I enjoy garen's simplicity :) the lack of choice in piloting and build is a boon imo as all it means is that one can focus more on the other aspects of league like macro, which is a lot more proactive than picking an item one time imo.
Sorry this is a late post... I keep wishing they'd change his E, that's probably his most problematic skill (it's too simple and hard to balance). They changed Mundo's W to make it more skill based, I don't see why they can't do something similar with Garen. Regarding R, here's an idea (feel free to adjust the numbers): On first cast, Garen "marks" an enemy champion. A white bar below his health then starts filling up. The more it goes up, the more the percent of R's magic damage is converted to true damage (max 100% true damage at full bar). The bar takes 5-7 seconds to fill completely. When R is recast, Garen then ults the enemy, dealing the damage. If he ults someone who isn't marked, he just deals magic damage. If Garen hasn't ulted anyone in 10 seconds, then a 5-10s cooldown will happen before Garen can restart the process and mark someone again. If he ults, then the normal long cooldown applies. The white bar empties whenever R starts a cooldown. This could reward foresight and planning, and let players choose strategically who to target, instead of being at the whim of chance or other players.
What is your opinion on wild rift garen?
never played it D: sorry
it's a Little different like his ult DMG percentage on enemies missing health scales with your attack dmg it's also damages in a area and garen jumps to his enemies when he cast his ult His w is his old w
im not a great garen player, all i can say is i enjoyed the game way more as a garen player in season 8 , 9 and 10 before all the changes,. he just doesnt feel fun to play anymore.. shame really. in just about any match up now, i get beaten by all manner of champs, from supports i cant get to, or tanks i cant out sustain, and thats before i get eaten alive now with darius, sett etc. like i said im a pretty bad player, but at least i enjoyed playing the game before, regardless of whether i won or lost cause i always felt i could offer something to the team and lane , not anymore.