Garen/Strategy

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Gameplay

Champion Spotlight

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By David 'Phreak' Turley

Spin to win in the Champion Spotlight for Garen, the Might of Demacia.

Garen's a melee fighter who excels at bringing justice to his opponents in the form of tough, physical DPS. With a silence, a damage-reducing shield and an execute-style ability to help secure kills, Garen's toolkit is ideal for trading hits in one-on-one skirmishes while still remaining tanky. And of course there's Judgment, his signature ability, a furious, uninterruptable damaging spin. Garen's zero-cost spells and sturdy foundation of resistances and regeneration make for an aggressive, bullying playstyle that justifies his reputation as the most respected warrior in Demacia's fighting elite.

File:Garen Champion Spotlight (Old)

Recommended Items

Tips

Playing As Garen

• Garen's regeneration greatly increases if he can avoid receiving damage for several seconds.
• Judgment deals maximum damage when only hitting a single target. For effective trading, try to position such that only the enemy champion is hit.
• Garen is only constrained by cooldowns, making items such as The Black Cleaver very effective for him.

Playing Against Garen

• Stack armor items to lower the large amount of physical damage that Garen deals out.
• Try to run away from Garen as your health gets lower, as he can execute you quickly with Demacian Justice.
• Be careful about attacking Garen in brush. It often will lead to taking full damage from Judgment.
• Judgment deals maximum damage when only hitting a single target. If getting out of its radius isn't possible, move through allied minions to reduce damage taken.

Tricks

Ability Usage

• Garen's strength as a bruiser comes from his passive, Perseverance and Courage to keep himself healthy along with his decent early damage and utility from Decisive Strike and Judgment, with Demacian Justice providing a reliable and powerful execute.
• Garen's health regeneration is greatly increased due to his passive, Perseverance. This only activates if he can avoid receiving champion or monster damage for 9 seconds, granting him exceptional sustainability in lane as minions do not stop this effect.
• Garen's Decisive Strike makes him a powerful chaser, easily closing the gap and silencing enemies before they can cast a slow or any debuff. It can also be used to make a swift escape since it removes slows.
  • This makes Garen very strong against most caster-type champions due to its silence; disrupting combos can save teammates by preventing casters (both AP and AD) from comfortably using all their skills before they endanger themselves, especially since Garen himself is naturally tanky enough to rush in with little casualties, be it 1v1 or in a large teamfight.
• Decisive Strike can be used effectively to push lanes, as this ability also affects structures (turrets and inhibitors).
• Using Decisive Strike to catch up with, silence, and deal damage to a fleeing champion is the perfect precursor to a killing blow with Demacian Justice.
• Decisive Strike can be used to return to/move between lanes quickly, as it has no mana costs and a fairly low cooldown, along with a duration that increases the higher its rank.
• Decisive Strike resets Garen's auto-attack timer, effectively allowing him to deal good damage in a short period of time. However, Garen will have to come to melee range without a speed boost if he uses the skill to double-attack.
• While using Judgment, Garen ignores unit collision; this combined with Decisive Strike makes for effective harass and initiation during the laning phase.
• Garen can be lethal in early game fights, especially after getting Demacian Justice. Judgment deals good continuous damage to enemies and Decisive Strike's speed boost is good for chasing enemies. Demacian Justice also does extra damage based on how much health the enemy has missing.
• Garen's best starting skill is Decisive Strike, as it can be used to last-hit, silence, speed himself up, remove slows, reset autoattacks and has very high burst damage at early levels.
• Courage and Decisive Strike mix well for a powerful chasing and escape combo. The speed boost from Decisive Strike allows you to get in or out of range, while the damage reduction of Courage allows you to mitigate any retaliation from enemies.
• Because of his strong early game damage from Judgment, Garen lanes well with a partner with an early game stun such as Taric's Dazzle, though he is most often played as a solo top laner.
• Unlike other abilities, Judgment remains active when Garen is stunned because it is not a channeled spell.
• With some points into Judgment, Garen can easily farm and push minions with it.
• Judgment is Garen's main source of damage, but has a noticeable cooldown and long duration to maximize its damage. Make sure you activate Judgment properly or you will be left being fairly ineffectual in combat while it is on cooldown.
  • Take note that the damage is significantly higher if used on a single target, making it much stronger in dueling situations.
• Beware that Demacian Justice can be blocked by Banshee's Veil and its damage depends on the enemy champion's magic resistance and missing health.
• Demacian Justice can be activated during Judgment on an enemy at low health. This will cause Garen to immediately end his spin and cast if the target is in range.
• While any champion benefits from brush control, Garen excels at this due to the threat of his gap closing and damage capabilities; use this to your advantage, especially against ranged opponents.
• With his unique Villain mechanic, Garen scales well into the late game due to the extra true damage he does to said Villain.
  • Keep this in mind when you have Demacian Justice available, as the base damage alone will still do significant damage to the Villain due to its irreducible nature.

Mastery Usage

Item Usage

• Garen is a melee champion, who excels in quickly killing priority targets and being able to soak up tons of damage.
• Phage is a good early item for him and can later be built into The Black Cleaver, which is very effective on Garen as Judgment can quickly apply stacks on multiple enemies.
  • Another option would be Youmuu's Ghostblade; it gives similar AD and Armor penetration, but it also gives a short boost to movement speed and attack speed. This makes it a great late game item as Garen can use the extra attack speed to help destroy turrets.
  • They can also be built together for an easy source of 30% CDR to combine with Spirit Visage.
• Sterak's Gage is an excellent item due to its combination of damage and health, along with its passive to boot.
• Last Whisper and its upgrades is a good counter to teams stacking mass amounts of armor but gives no defensive stats, which are important if you are to survive the enemy's damage long enough to deal yours.
• As both Decisive Strike and Judgment benefit from critical strike, items such as Infinity Edge increases the ability's damage output as well as his basic attacks.
• Maw of Malmortius is a good anti-mage item. An early Hexdrinker can help Garen against high burst magic damage.
• While the AoE on-hit passive component of Tiamat and Ravenous Hydra is somewhat redundant on Garen thanks to how easily he can farm with Judgment, the active ability can be activated while spinning for extra burst.
• Spirit Visage synergizes well with Perseverance, easily allowing him to regenerate % of his maximum health each second.
• Warmog's Armor can be a good choice as well; the item's passive along with Perseverance allows to recover health quickly after teamfights without going back to base. The extra health along with Courage makes him very hard to kill in a teamfight.
  • Building Spirit Visage and Warmog's Armor synergize even better with Perseverance, giving Garen the ability to regenerate nearly all of his health in a matter of seconds out of combat.
• Frozen Mallet is a decent health item for Garen, as it provides some attack damage and a powerful slow to help Garen stick to his target.
• In combination with Judgment, an early Sunfire Cape helps with Garen's wave clearing capabilities, as well as providing mixed damage and constant threat.
  • On a similar route, Dead Man's Plate grants higher stats with some added mobility to make you much more difficult to catch.
• Randuin's Omen can help greatly against being kited and reduces the enemy ranged carry's DPS. An early Warden's Mail is good against auto-attack reliant champions such as Kayle, Xin Zhao, Fiora, etc.

Countering

• Garen's damage output is very high early game; avoid early confrontations and play passively if needed.
• Harass Garen in lane every few seconds, if possible, to minimize the effect of Perseverance.
  • Ranged champions can easily stop Perseverance with an auto-attack (unless Garen goes farther back, which forces him to miss last-hits) and farm in lane at a safe distance from him - they generally also have abilities to keep their distance. Ranged carries will scale stronger than him in this situation.
• Avoid going into a brush that does not have a ward in it if Garen's current whereabouts are unknown. Garen players have a tendency to hide in bushes, due to the synergy between his silence from Decisive Strike and damage from Judgment.
• Garen is a cooldown based champion. However, all of his ability cooldowns are high. Try to attack him when they are on cooldown.
• Decisive Strike is very good at stopping combos due to its silence; if you happen to be playing a caster champion who relies a lot on their abilities to deal most of their damage, be wary of this ability as Garen can save a teammate or even himself from your burst, as well as leaving you without the use of your defensive abilities or summoners such as Flash.
• Be very cautious when low on health and you know Garen's Demacian Justice is off cooldown.
• It is often worth the investment to purchase armor to counter Garen's high physical damage.
• Think carefully before using your crowd control abilities on Garen. His  Decisive Strike will remove slows and hard CC will not stop Judgment, only his movement. Keep some distance from him, especially if playing squishier champions as it deals very high damage over a short duration. 
• Like most melee champions, Garen is quite vulnerable to ranged harassment.
  • However, because of his high damage and better durability, he can force ranged champions away or even kill them if he gets all of his damage off.
• Buying a Hexdrinker may help as it can block a fair amount of damage from Garen's Demacian Justice early on. Do not forget that his main form of damage is still physical, however.
• Because Garen usually builds a lot of health, getting champions or items that deal % health damage can cause him to melt quickly, such as  Blade of the Ruined King's active and passive, Amumu's Despair, Kog'Maw's Bio-Arcane Barrage, Vayne's Silver Bolts and Zed's Contempt for the Weak. Being able to outsustain his damage will also help.
• Teemo is considered to be one of the best known counters to Garen. He can effectively poke and escape from him, if played correctly. Teemo's Blinding Dart can be used to both deal damage and prevent him from dealing damage and silencing you with Decisive Strike. Toxic Shot allows you to harass and prevent his Perseverance from activating, and Noxious Trap allows you to slow and zone him. Use it while you are escaping from him, then retaliate when he attempts to escape. Keep in mind, however, that his combo is strong enough to kill you at early levels and he can utilize the brush to prevent you from harassing him.
• Garen's kit lacks any practical gap closer other than blowing a Flash, and is thus very vulnerable to kiting of any sort.

References

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