Garen Build Guide by Kirluu

Intro of Darkness, then Redness, then Whiteness

This guide is especially made for playing Garen as a solo top, which is to note, the only place he should be played. The reason for this, is that this is the area of the map where he dominates the most, and considering the current meta-game, you probably know: It's best to place your AP-Carry in mid and your Ranged AD-Carry and Support in bottom lane.

To start things off I want to say that this build is very much viable in both normal and ranked games. You might have struggle with getting solo top in normal games though, as there can be games when nobody on your team wants to play a jungler.

I am aware, that there are other ways to play Garen and which way to build him is best is going to differ from game to game. This is simply the way I build him, and the way which I have gotten the most wins with. Both in normal games and ranked.

About what items do, and such, you can put your cursor over any item I mention in this guide, and read the tooltip to see their effect. I might mention some of their capabilities as being advantagous, and as such you can read more about them in the tooltip.

Legend

For any abbreviations you do not understand.

Masteries

Preffered Masteries:

It's time for the reasoning of the masteries, which you can also see at the top of the page.

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I have chosen to get a full 21 points in the offense tree. This is mainly because, while being tanky, you want to be able to deal a lot of damage throughout the game, which is achieved by a good combination of Masteries, Runes and of course Items. First off, I go up in Brute Force since the 3 extra AD, even though it isn't much, will make it that much easier to lasthit - Also it's obviously a better choice for Garen than AP, since Garen has no skills that scale on AP. I also take a point in Summoner's Wrath for the Armor and MR reduction on Exhaust. Next, I go full in Cooldown Reduction( Sorcery ) and 4 points in the Attack Speed bonus of Alacrity , mostly to be able to grap the 10 % Armor Penetration and 10 % Magic Penetration(For Demacian Justice) in the next level of the Offense Tree. I then take 3 points in Havoc for the increased Damage Dealt, and then 3 points in Sunder for the flat increase of Armor Penetration. Finally I take the last point in Executioner , which not only increases your physical damage through Decisive Strike and Judgment, but also increases the damage dealt by Demacian Justice which makes the Offense Tree just about perfect for Garen. Note: If you choose to go with Infinity Edge instead of Last Whisper as your last item (As I listed Inf. Edge under "Other Viable Items"), you may want to consider taking 5 points for Deadliness and Lethality for the bonus critical strike damage that lies there, instead of the magic penetration and 4 % cooldown.

I have put all the remaining 9 points into the Defense Tree. First, I take 2 points in both Hardiness and Resistance , simply to create a sort of base defense against both physical and magic damage. It is important to remember that although the majority of Solo Top Characters deal physical damage mainly, quite a bit of them have abilities that can deal magic damage, of course along with the chance of meeting a magic damage dealing Solo Top, such as Cho'Gath. Next, I put all the next 4 points in Durability which will give you some pretty darn nice Health/Level, which will only help your outwards-looking bulk. The more bulky you look, the more frigtening you'll be, and the more good things you can do for your team, such as protecting your carries by scaring the enemies away. The final point then goes to Veteran's Scars as this will just add some more to your early game bulk, and will, unless you face a ranged opponent, make your laning that much easier to withstand. Since your passive, Perseverance is based on percentages of your HP, you won't suffer from it being ineffective even though you now have more health than usual.

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Altenative Masteries:

This is an alternative to the above shown Masteries. The only difference between the two sets, is in theDefense Tree and the Utility Tree.

The reason I chose to make this alternative is basically because I find that both sets can be usefull in their own ways, although I personally prefer taking the 9 points in the Defense Tree.

The only change being the Utility Tree, here it is:

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I put 9 points in the Utility Tree, grabbing the Summoner's Insight because of the Flash CDR, and 3 points in Good Hands for the sake of getting out of spawn earlier, should you die. Then I take the most important mastery in the Utility Tree for Garen and perhaps the only reason to actually go here, which is the Swiftness mastery, which improves your movement by a tiny little 2 %. The reason that I call this tiny, is that it doesn't make the biggest of differences in the beginning, but later, it will improve your speed by a nice amount, in addition to all the other speed buffs, particularily in form of Youmuu's Ghostblade as well as Force of Nature, and of course Decisive Strike. Our last point goes to Runic Affinity in case you get your hands on some buffs throughout the game (For instance through killing enemies holding buffs).

Runes

Summoner Spells

Skilling Sequence

This is by far the most correct and efficient way to level Garen's skills. The reasoning behind leading the sequence with a point in Decisive Strike lies within it's ability to escape a possible level 2 gank from the enemy jungler, making it at least possible to escape without wasting your Flash. Additionally, you can use this very effectively in level 1, to get some substantial harass off onto your opponent. Focusing Judgement comes out as obvious based on the the damage that it gains per level. While it starts with a fairly low base damage, it makes up for it when you level it to level 2-3.
The reasoning behind putting Courage as the last priority, is simply that the damage reduction per level really isn't worth prioritizing in front of Judgement nor Decisive Strike.

- "Then why not just skip it completely??"

Well, if you take a look at Courage you will notice that it has a passive. This passive is really good for Garen early on, and will help you out a lot going into mid-game. If you can manage to get some lasthits in, abusing this passive, it will provide crazy tankiness to Garen - and very early in the game. The passive of Courage is one of the many reasons that Garen is so scary. The reason that Courage is prioritized last, except for that first point at level 4, is that the passive doesn't stack when leveling it, which means that only the temporary damage increase gets better, which just doesn't compare to the damage from Judgment as well as Decisive Strike.

Garen's Abilities explained

Possible Builds

Build 1:

This is my main build, as well as the build that I recommend you follow. The secondary build is simply there to make sure that nobody will blame me for completely ignore the GP/5 aspect of the game, which for many champions is very viable and almost necessary. In my book, however, that is not the case for Garen.

The following chapters will describe how to get to this build, my main build, as well as explain the choices I make with my build, and the advantages of getting the items I get, at which points in time.

Build 2:

A secondary building sequence as well as end-game build that gives overall stronger end-game stats, as well as a very usefull Active ability from Randuin's Omen, however also a build which lacks a lot of the things that Build 1 holds very dearly.

With this build you suffer from a lot of your early game damage as well as bulkiness, and substitute it for some extra gold income.
Both builds are viable, however Build 1 is by far the build I would recommend to you.
I will not care to explain the building sequence in this build, however check the Cheatsheet for a well detailed sequence that you can follow and still hopefully do well with, if you feel convinced that it is the better option, even though it is against my advice.

Starting Items

Core Items

Preffered End-Game Items

Other Viable Items for Build 1

Basically; the "Other Viable Items for Build 1" are mostly the items in Build 2, along with others that I deem viable, naturally.

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Side Note: I chose not to make Other Viable Items for Build 2, as Build 2 is basically the "Other Viable Build" already.

AD Garen

It's rather obvious that my way of building and playing Garen is not the only way. I also make that clear in both the introduction and outtro of this guide.

What I want to take up here is the viability of playing Garen as a full AD-based character - And I have one thing to say:

"
It can be viable, however...
"

It all really comes down to whether or not your teammates understand that you are going AD, and not going to be able to tank too much for them. Therefore you should, at least in ranked games, make fair sure that you have positioned some sort of tanky character in the jungle. Examples for tanky junglers are:

Amumu, Udyr, Lee Sin, Xin Zhao(If built that way) and fx Cho'Gath

These are all, if built that way, either very tanky(Meant to be tank from the start), or very bulky while still dealing loads of damage (i.e. Lee Sin).

-

You should make sure that your teammates are aware that you will be taking this rather less tanky route, rather than being the Big, Tanky, Strong Garen who does whatever he likes.

Other than this - And I've tried my share of games as well - I find AD Garen to be a fairly viable build, and if you play correctly, you shouldn't even die that many times, despite being quite a bit less tanky.
I'd like to put a small thanks to Palthios, as it was his build I used while trying to consider whether or not I should mention AD Garen in this guide :)

WARNING: You may be met with rage, and loads of losses, if you do not mark out in champion selection that you are a full AD Garen. It may just cost you the game that you don't have someone reliable to defend as well as tank for your team.

Gameplay - Laning Phase

Finally!!
- We made it to the interesting part!! ;)

It's time to dig into how the professinal Garen reacts upon laning opponents, minion farm, aggression, initiating ganks, and so on :D

First, I'd like to dig into how you should react upon the different laning oppponents. Basically, as it may have been predicted there are counters to Garen's might. However, as it may also be predicted, there are ways to counter Garen's counters.

Let's just dig into it, shall we?

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Yes. Mordekaiser really, in some cases, is Numbero Uno. At the least, he is the Numbero Uno counter to Garen. This lies in the simple fact of Morde's passive shield's extreme extention of Morde's health. Morde has the unique ability to extend his health greatly just before you land you Decisive Strike - This shield, Iron Man can, in some cases, make your life seriously miserable on that lane. You're Decisive Strike's damage gets nullified, and continuing on to spin, will just give Mordekaiser a chance to hit you with Mace of Spades while you're away from your minions. Finally, attacking him, will, as most other attacks, make you achieve most of the enemy minion aggro. Not only does this actually mean you're pushing your lane while tanking those minions, you're also losing tons of health while you're only dealing slight amounts of damage to Mordekaiser.

How to Counter the Counter:
Okay, while meeting a well-played Mordekaiser can many times be the worst possible thing for you, in terms of getting in some minion farm etc, there is a way to get him. You want to take advantage of brushes, and basically, if anywho possible, you want to make sure that he is scared of you, and not the other way around. You need to play with his mentality. You must make sure that Mordekaiser is scared of Garen and not the other way around. While you are in the brush, Morde doesn't want to waste his siphon into the brush, in case you're not there, and he will find no other possible way to go about it all, than pushing, keeping his shield up all the time, in which case there has to be a time for him to mess up, at which time you strike. Don't worry if you don't get him the first time, if he uses Flash it means you've already started to build up your Fear Factor.

Fear Factor is important, but it is not all. A well played Morde, perhaps one who's used to meeting Garen in top lane, WILL NOT waste his cooldowns on minions - He will sit back and farm with AA's. This is where you're gonna have a problem. You want to farm as well, but every time you try, he has the means to remove rather decent chuncks of your health, while you, as a melee champ, will have a hard time reaching him. Sometimes, a good option here, is to get very early Boots of Speed & 3 Health Potions, perhaps even as first items, if you fear this being a problem.

In order to rock a Mordekaiser's world, you need to make sure that he doesn't rock your world, first of all, and as soon as you get Decisive Strike is pretty much the time when you want to ask for a gank. If you have a jungler of the kind, then you can ask for an "early gank", just as you start of. That way, if you play it right, you'll be 2 lvl 2's against 1 lvl 2. You will be able to initiate, and hopefully your jungler will be able to deal consistent damage, and you might even get a kill.

To sum up that last part: You'll need some help from your jungler. Someone like Lee Sin is a brilliant co-worker with Garen.
I'll tell you more about initiation down below.

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Even if Heimerdinger is not the most common to meet in ranked play, that doesn't make him less of a threat to Garen. He can be a pain, but he can also be a real breeze. A Heimerdinger with no defensive runes, and no health what so ever, might be the easiest thing in the world, but we're talking a different story, when we meet the Heimer with Greater Seal of Armors and Doran's Ring stacking, and in the worst case scenario, even Teleport. This Heimerdinger is the one I'm talking about. He can be a b*tch to take down, and just like Mordekaiser He'll needs to either be feared to death(literally) extremely early on, or you're, again, gonna need to coordination with your jungler. I will talk more about initiation later.

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Akali is another reasonable counter to Garen, however not the best counter. If you can find your way to silencing Akali with Decisive Strike and then spinning her down until the silence wears off, that'll make her fairly low on health early on, which then means she'll be a little more careful. After you've made her fairly low, you can start minion farming a bit. When she starts looking interested in attacking you, OR the minions, you silence her again, and spin her down. If you can avoid pushing, you should have a fairly easy lane. However the problem with Akali arises when you do not manage to get her down early on. If she is allowed minion farm, and is zoning you with Mark of the Assassin, that's where you've already made your first mistake. You need to charge her while you're still packed with health. If an Akali gets you to around half health, and she's still full, that's when all you can really do, unless an uncounted for opportunity arises ( Akali using all of her cooldowns on minions, for whatever reason) is to sit back, and wait for a gank, and hope that Akali will be stupid enough to push the lane. I'll tell you more about initiation later.

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Renekton is a fair counter to Garen for one reason. His, usually aquired, HP and Armor. He blocks a lot of Garen's damage, and even if you block a lot of Renekton's damage as well, he has more damaging skills that Garen does altogether. With a fair matchup like this, you'll want to work together with your jungler to take this beast down, or at the least to create either a significant level advantage, so that you may have an easier time after your jungler has ganked your lane, hopefully successfully.

Initiation

You may or may not have gotten a slight bit excited from my constant spamming of "I'll tell you about it later"-stuff, however the Art of Initiation is not that difficult at all.

Basically, there are 3 different ways to go about it, or more likely, there are 3 different scenarioes to take into account.

1:
You and your opponent are going at it rarely, and you don't have the greatest of chances to get minion farm in, because of enemy ranged skills. Minions are meeting around the middle. In this case, you want to sit in the opponent brush for some while before your jungler appears to gank. Then, when you're jungler is present, you're opponent should automatically have pushed slightly through minion lasthits. You don't want to make it obvious that a gank is incoming though. The enemy won't go forward too much, knowing that you're in the brush. You just want them where the minions are slightly pushed towards your half of the lane. When the enemy goes a slight bit forward to get a lasthit, that's when you strike with Decisive Strike and then Judgment, followed up by whatever damage your jungle can make it there to deal. This is usually not a secure kill, unless you have Demacian Justice ready as well as Flash. Since in this case, your jungler won't always be able to get there to do anything at all. Therefore this is the secondworst scenario for a gank, since what happens in this scenario, is something you can do to get kills all by yourself.

2:
Same minion scenario, however in this scenario, then enemy is feeling highly confident, and his lasthitting to no end, thus pushing the lane. You don't always have full health, and you are pretty much just sitting back, awaiting your jungler's approach. Once you're jungler is in position, what you want to do is to pop Decisive Strike, Flash towards you're target, silencing them almost instantly, your jungler will attack with whatever means they have available, while you deal as much damage as you can with Judgment. This is one of the strongest ganking scenarioes.

3:
The worst case scenario for your jungler. You're lasthitting all you can, and the enemy is being passive, and letting you push through lasthitting only. This makes it near impossible for your jungler to gank, in which case you should try to sit in the brush after pushing that last minion wave up. You want the enemy to come closer, so that both kills for you and ganks from the jungler are realities.

Denying the enemy

This is mostly for the time when you meet melee laning opponents without any real ranged skills to lasthit with, and/or to poke to you with like Irelia, Lee Sin(Stay behind minions, to make this guy's poke unusable against you), Jarvan IV(He doesn't have any CC on his poke, and therefore it isn't too dangerous), Jax(This guy can be dangerous in terms of damage output, though), Nasus and a number of others as well, however some of the others can cause serious trouble dispite their being melee. (Kind of like Jax can cause trouble)

Garen has a special way of denying his enemies. It doesn't work the way it works with many others by putting yourself in between the enemy and the minions. That's only going to make you get harrassed. And in some cases you'll get targeted by enemy minions when they have pushed the lane till you have no more minions.
The art of denying as Garen lies in between patience and offense. You see, what you're trying to deny the enemy is minion farm, and not exp. Denying them exp can only be done if we're facing another melee champion with no ranged skills. If not, however, what you want to do is just to concentrate on your own minion farm (Patience), and then, when the enemy attempts to get a minion lasthit (You'll be running around in the middle of all the minions lasthitting at will), you will charge towards them with Decisive Strike and Judgment them down. If you can see that they're within killing range, use Flash as well, either as initiation, or to secure the kill.
With this, you're securing yourself the minion farm, while punishing the enemy if they try to get any of it at all. Basically, if they get too close to the Alpha Male( Garen)'s territory, they get banished from the land. (Metaphors ftw)

Gameplay - Teamfights

Okay, so we made it to the almost just as exciting part of playing Garen.

The Teaaaamfiiiiiights
(Awesome intro ftw ?)

Here we will be going through things like initiating, staying in focus of the teamfight, helping out your teammates, using your skills with care, and so on.

The Art of Initiation

As you can most likely guess, you will want to, if possible at all, initiate with Decisive Strike which will make the enemy incapable of escapeing(Other than running, of course) for at least 2,5 seconds. But that isn't all. You should always make sure to time it right, and to not just silence the nearest enemy. The nearest enemy is in almost all cases going to be the enemy tank. Unless the enemy has a bum as a tank with no defenses nor HP, which should hopefully, for the other team, never happen, you don't want to focus the tank. You should always attempt to get your fingers in one of three characters on the enemy team.
Here they are in the row of whom you want to get your fingers in the most:

---1. The AP-Carry
----Getting your fingers on this bad boy is the best you can do for your team. A dead AP-Carry, or even a damaged one is a lot better for your team than one which is alive, even at half HP. If the enemy loses their means of bursting down your Ranged AD Carry, your Ranged AD Carry, together with your support will be able to do some serious DPS of course along with you and your jungler. Your AP Carry should focus on killing the enemy Ranged Carry.
---2. The Support
----An Enemy Ranged Carry without a support, or basically an Enemy Team without a support is a very much weakened team. Remove this pestilence, and you've removed loads of potential CC(fx Janna), Heals(fx Soraka) or both(fx Taric)
---3. The Ranged AD Carry
----The enemy's main source of DPS. If you can silence and kill the enemy ranged carry while they're out of position or of the alike, you've in some cases already won the fight. If you remove anyone at all from the enemy team without paying any expense, you've most likely won the upcoming fight in any case - That is unless all of your teammates end up using their Ultimate on that one person, stupid as that however would be.

Acting Reasonably During Teamfights

Yes, you actually have a purpose in teamfights --> You are not just the initiater. You are also a tank, and one to be feared of that matter. You have the ability to split up enemies. Do this correctly and you'll have done your job, hopefully resulting in the enemy getting aced, and your team not having suffered any losses, other than perhaps a Banshee's Veil getting popped every now and then :)
You want to use your skills with care(Especially Decisive Strike and Demacian Justice). You need to save a skill like your ultimate, Demacian Justice until the moment when it is really needed. If your team catches an opponent off guard, don't use your ulti at all. Either get the kill fair and square with Judgment, or have one of your teammates get the kill.
Also, take note at the beginning of the match, if the enemy has any kinds of "cancelable" skills of any kind. Examples of these Champions are Katarina's Death Lotus and Galio's Idol of Durand. (A nice tip about Galio: If you can time your Decisive Strike well enough, or just activate it and run around Galio with it, when he activates his ult, you're first AA will silence him cancelling his ultimate)
In other words; If the enemy team has a champion with an Ultimate such as Galio's or Katarina's, take care when and who you swing your Decisive Strike at.

About Courage --> Make sure you pop it before you start taking damage. You have to be the judge of when the enemy gets ticked off enough to start wasting their cooldowns on you, and it's just before that where you want to pop Courage, and not once you're at 25 % health. There is no mod to see when the enemy is about to attack you - Sorry Mr. Cheapshot.

Finally, you're job as a tank is also to guard your teammates with your life. If a teammate is running - There's a reason. Do whatever you can to save them. You can do many things. If someone from your team is getting hunted by an Ezreal for instance, you can silence him, to stop him from closing further of the distance, and if Decisive Strike is on cooldown, the least you can to is to at least block his Mystic Shot from dealing that killing blow on your teammate.
- However you should make sure that you protect the right people. Don't chase after you're own jungler to protect him - It is also his job to protect your 3 other teammates - If he is running away and an enemy or two is chasing after him, valuate which is more important - Chasing after them, possibly getting a kill, or saving 3 of your teammates from the enemy tank coming charging towards them.

Pick Your Fights!!!

Closing Statements

Thanks a load for reading this far, and thanks if you even read some of it :)

I hope you liked my build, and of course my guidance about playing Garen the way I believe he should be played.

I am aware, that there are other ways to play Garen and which way to build him is best is going to differ from game to game. This is simply the way I build him, and the way which I have gotten the most wins with. Both in normal games and ranked.

Anyways, again, thanks for reading along! ;)

Additional Note: I plan to take a look at the graphical part of the gameplay-section - I hope it didn't bug you too much - simply rest assure that I plan to make major changes to the layout in that section of my guide :)

.,~'*Kirluu*'~,.

Credits

The time has come, for a few people to have their share of shine in this guide :)

~ Searz for his pretty darn awesome guide template, which you can find here ;)

~ Maztef for providing a few tips, as well as helping me with testing different ways to build and play Garen.

~ Levander for also providing a few tips, as well as helping me test out AD Garen.

~ WeatherMán, because he simply "had" to be in the credits-section.