Hello, and welcome to my guide for Garen on Dominion. This is my first guide on Mobafire, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

Now, I want to make something clear. This build is not a rule list, as in you don't HAVE to follow it. It's suggestions, made to guide you in the right way. You can modify the build in every way you like to your preferances and situation. This is just the way I like to play.

Garen has some weaknesses, but by countering them, and emphasising on the strengths of Garen even more, I tried to create a solid build.

Side note: The weakness of his slow attack speed is hardly present, as his Judgement (main source of damage) does not need attack speed at all.

Good Hands vs. Perseverance
We all know about the discussion, or atleast heard something about it. Well, here's my take on it.

Since we'll be playing Dominion, I take Perseverance. The respawn timer on Dominion has been lowered alot compared to Summoner's Rift and Twisted Treeline. Also, it syncronizes really well with Garen's passive (by chance, also called Perseverance)

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed
The reason I'd take these is you want all the movement speed you can get on Dominion. Helps you catch people, move around the map, and flee from enemies in one package!

Greater Mark of Desolation
Really the only reason I get these is if the enemy armor stacks. Can't be too sure.

Greater Seal of Armor
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
As I said in the Masteries section, I prefer survivability over damage.

The Strong

Flash
I simply love this to death. You can use it offensively or defensively. You can Flash over walls to escape people. You can Flash in range of people to get the kill. Just all around amazing. I don't see any downsides to taking this.

Ghost
It's really a must have on Dominion. It'll help you in so many ways. Even if it's just for getting to a point faster, it's already worth taking this. Besides that, you can catch enemies with it or run away faster.

Garrison
It's not my favorite, but it really is useful. You can use it on both your own and enemy points. It'll give your turret an amazing buff on regen and attack speed while you keep them from capturing it. (I also got multiple aces when their whole team came to cap a point with 3 of us on it.) You can use it on enemy points to dive enemies that are hugging it. (I really don't suggest this. If one is hugging his point, just move on to defend your own points or capturing another.)

The Mediocre

Ignite
You can secure kills with this, and kill that annoying Dr. Mundo or Swain. It was more useful on 5's and 3's though.

Exhaust
All round amazing spell. Though it loses it's usefulness slightly in Dominion, it's still very much viable. You can catch people with this, or save yourself when you get ganked.

The Weak

Heal
It's okay when you're below level 11, but come on, do you really need it?

Promote
I never really got this. I guess you could use it to push a point, but honestly I found it doesn't match the usefulness of other spells.

Garen's passive is amazing. It gives you incredible health regeneration when you've been out of combat for a couple of seconds. It lost it's touch a bit in Dominion, but still is useful.


I love this skill. It gives you a decent boost of movement speed (always useful for Dominion) and if you hit an enemy with this, it hits for really good damage and silences them. I use it whenever I walk to a point to get there faster, and as an initiazing skill, because it allows you to get in range.


Great skill for defense. It gives him increased Armor and Magic Resistance every time he kills a unit passively, but that's not the best part. It decreases all damage taken by 20% at rank 1, and 36% at rank 5! That's an incredible amount of damage that just got negated because you pressed one button. Say Annie comes in, and drops her Summon: Tibbers on your for 750 damage. With your shield up, it will now hit for 600 damage at rank 1, and 480 at rank 5! This is just so incredible it can't be ignored. (I'd be close to saying this is just OP..) You want to try and max this equally with your Decisive Strike, however, if you take too much damage while the game progresses, you might want to max it before Decisive Strike.


Garen's bread and butter. This is where the saying "spin to win" comes from, and for good reason. This skill does amazing damage and scales with 1.4 damage for every bonus attack damage Garen has. You should max this as soon as you can, for the most damage output possible.


There are more useful ultimates in the game, but this one isn't that bad either. It does VERY high damage, depending on how much health they're missing. For this reason, you should save it for when they're low. Around 700-800 basically means they're dead, depending on their max health. You should get a point in this every time it's possible.

Starting items

Generally, you will want a boost to your damage at the start. The new item, Prospector's Blade fulfills this quite nicely. And ofcourse, Boots should be your second starting item. It helps you get to The Windmill faster, so that you are the first to capture it.

Core Items

These item's should be the the ones you get nearly every match. The Brutalizer gives some decent damage to your currently low-ish damage. The Frozen Mallet gives you some more damage, a good amount of health, and it's amazing passive that slows anyone you hit. This allows Garen to overcome his weakness of having no slows or stuns in his arsenal, and has become a must-have item on Garen. Your next item is Atma's Impaler, which gives you some crit chance, some Armor, and it's passive, that adds 2% of your max health to your damage. It synergizes just so well with your Frozen Mallet that you should pretty much get it every time you get [[Frozen Mallet. Randuin's Omen gives you some Armor, some more health for your Atma's and some health regen. Besides that, with it's active, no one will ever escape you, and any champion that heavily relies on Attack Speed lost alot of it's damage output.

End-Game items

If the game lasts this long you can get Youmuu's Ghostblade, which builds out of your Brutalizer. It gives you a little bit more damage than your brutalizer, and gives you some crit chance. However, it's active gives you an amazing boost to your movement speed and attack speed.

Odyn's Veil is for that much needed Magic resist, and even more health for your Atma's.

I'd like to define what Garen should do on Dominion in my eyes.

He should rush The Windmill and hold it for his team, helping out other point whenever needed. Your also one of the guys that go around killing people whenever The Windmill isn't seeing too much action. However, do note that if you leave it alone for too long, the enemy might capture the point. If you see multiple enemies (3~5) coming to windmill, it's best to leave it for them to capture, and you should capture other points, because they just left their other points wide open. Garen really shines in defending his points against 1 or 2 enemies for the reason that he has good survivability and an AoE spin to keep them from capturing.

I can't say this enough. COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR TEAM.

Seriously, it wins games. No one likes that guy that does his own stuff and never listens to his team. It doesn't matter if you're better than them, just try to play together as an actual team, instead of 5 seperate champions.

Oh, and be nice to your fellow man. Make love, not war(craft).

Garen is in my eyes one of the best on Dominion. He's also quite cheap to unlock, easy to learn, and really fun to play. I can highly suggest everyone should atleast try him out once.

Anyway, it was about 5 hours of straight fun making this guide. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

Please leave a comment with some feedback.

-FelixProject

Endless thanks to jhoijhoi for her guide; Making A Guide