Welcome to my Garen guide.

I was reading a lot about people looking for a build that works nowadays. I've never been a fan of "tank" Garen to be honest, just lacks the cc for it and with only tank items you will get ignored lategame. So stopped playing him but with the latest pushes from Riot to a tanky dps champ I decided to figure out a build that could work.

update 6-2011: Changed itembuild.

Greater Mark of Desolation x9
Greater Seal of Armor x9
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist x9
Greater Quintessence of Desolation x3

His abilities scale with Armor pen. So i'm going with full marks & Quintessences, also I usually try not to go for a Last Whisper so I need it. No brainer there.

Seals of resilience (flat armor) combined with the cloth armor gives me some good armor early game, I have tried dodge & Hp/level but the flat bonus combined with Cloth armor is just too good.

The glyphs of warding are there for survivability, this keeps my mr up to level. I'm a big fan of these on mostly all my champs with some exceptions. Have tried cdr blue on him but in this build he doesn't need them because you will already hit the 40% cap.

My masteries are 21/5/4

Offense:

Deadliness: for some extra crit chance. Your judgement scales with it.
Sorcery: some cdr, Garen is only restricted by his cooldowns!
Archaic Knowledge: Your ulti does magic damage, some penetration will only make it hurt more.
Sunder: more armor pen. duh! ;)
Offensive mastery: Makes last hitting a bit easier.
Brute Force: More dmg, scales with you abilities.
Lethality: Some extra crit dmg, you wil have crits so take it.
Havoc: More base damage, abilites hurt even more.

Defense

Resistance & Hardiness: some extra mr & armor, works nicely with courage as well.

Utility

Perseverence: This is normally not so good imo, yet it is there for champs like Mundo, Fiddle and yes Garen. Works nicely with his passive. More staying in lane is more gold.
Haste: For chasing down champs and getting out alive. As for the ghost spell don't forget that it ignores unit collision, so use it with your judgement for example when enemy champ is behind creeps.

Most items are not too expensive, I did this on purpose. This way you will have your items faster and the rate your champ grows ingame scales nicely imo. No long downtime while trying to get that Infinity etc.

You will gain a good amount of mr & armor (and the health to go with it) combined with damage, crit & cdr. I tried to find a balance so you can face a mixed team with ap & ad.

Start with a ruby crystal OR boots en pots

Boots Get these asap when you have your kindlegem. You need speed!

Spirit Visage Together with your runes and courage this will make you "tough"(early game). Also you will start to notice the 10 % cdr with your sorcery mastery (3%) a bit. Just fast enough to hit another Q or E ;)

Ionian Boots of Lucidity Well we got the basics down; some hp, armor, MR. As Garen your skills already do a lot of dmg early game without buffs so take advantage of it. Buy these great boots and you'll have 28% cdr. You can spam more of your abilites and put the hurt on. Also around this time in-game you will need the next level boots or you will be behind.

Youmuu's Ghostblade This item has it all for a cheap price. Start out with brutalizer or, if you are having trouble take Avarice for some gold while you play def. You will hit the max cdr cap of 40% now. Get some nice 15% crit, 30 dmg AND 20 Armor pen.! (that's huge! You will have 51 armor pen now which will make your abilites hurt even more) This wil add some nice dmg, also don't forget the active on it; yet another chasing tool or just use the attack speed for some extra hurt.

Sunfire Aegis Some nice hp, armor & extra dmg/sec to go with your E. This with spirit visage and runes + courage will make you tanky midgame.

At this point in time you have to make a choice, facing a lot of ap? Go for force of nature, if ad take the atma's. These items give a lot for not too much gold.

Atma's Impaler This item wil make your Armor and MR even(your mr/level should be kicking in now), so you are balanced again. When you buy this you WILL get an increase of 50+ dmg minimum. On top of that you will get +18% crit which will stack nicely and 45 armor. SO you are getting a BF sword (1850)+ chainvest (700) + cloak of agility (880) for only 2405 gold!!!

Force of Nature Gives high mr, insane hp regen AND a nice speed boost! With garen you can fight and wait for a couple of seconds for hp and then fight again. Also the speedboost is very nice on Garen.

If the game continues (very late game) you have the option of selling your spirit visage and getting a trinity force. Gives nice speedboost, crit, dmg, slow & sheenproc.

Elixir of Fortitude Last (but) not least! Use the elixir, you will get a huge bonus for only 250 gold. It's great! Some nice extra hp and dmg (and more dmg if you have atma's)

Ignite + Demacian Justice: Will get you kills
Ghost: Just good. Use it to escape or to get a kill. Also remember it ignores unit collision so use it with Judgment or Decisive Strike to get someone hiding behind creeps.

Leave me a comment! ;)