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Garen Build Guide by Pyroen

Top ✔️ [11.12] God-King Conqueror Garen

Top ✔️ [11.12] God-King Conqueror Garen

Updated on June 9, 2021
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League of Legends Build Guide Author Pyroen Build Guide By Pyroen 488 41 1,043,720 Views 13 Comments
488 41 1,043,720 Views 13 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Pyroen Garen Build Guide By Pyroen Updated on June 9, 2021
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Runes:

Precision
Conqueror
Triumph
Legend: Tenacity
Coup de Grace

Resolve
Conditioning
Overgrowth
Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health

Spells:

1 2
Higher Utility
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport

Teleport

Items

Standard Starting Item Against Poke Lanes
Standard Starting Item Against Melee Lanes
Items in the early game if struggling against someone using physical damage
Items in the early game if struggling against someone using magic damage

Champion Build Guide

✔️ [11.12] God-King Conqueror Garen

By Pyroen
Why Play Garen?
Why Play Garen




In the current meta, it is a running joke that top lane does not impact the game very much. Oftentimes that can be true, unless your top laner is snowballing and taking over the game, many top laners do not bring a lot to teamfights. Many top laners spend much of the mid game split pushing, which don't get me wrong is a viable strategy, but that hinders your ability to impact team fights.

Garen on the other hand will bring an immense amount of utility to team fights. Consider several areas that he excels in.

If you are looking for a Jungle version of this guide, I just released it here at the link below!

Garen Jungle Guide

Silencing Key Targets


Garen is one of the few champions that have a silence built into their kit. Decisive Strike in addition to massive damage and a burst of speed, applies a 1.5 second silence to the enemy. In the current meta of assassin comps, where champions like Talon and Zed rule the mid lane, one and a half seconds of silence can spell their deaths. It isn't only good against Assassins though, as many Mages will be useless if silenced and can resort to slow and weak auto attacks, allowing your team to quickly kill them.

Beginner Friendly Design


Garen is unable to miss a skill shot. Many champions have to aim their abilities and hope the enemy moves in a predictable manner, but not Garen, he simply clicks on an enemy and attacks. All of his abilities are unable to be dodged if Garen can get in range. If you start your Demacian Justice ability animation and the enemy flashes away, it will follow them and if they are low enough, kill them.

Explosive Single Target Damage


With the removal of the Villian Passive his Demacian Justice now ALWAYS does true damage, meaning that it is not mitigated by armor or magic resist items. If a more squishy target is around 1/3rd HP, in general Garen can run up and use his Q and R abilities to kill them.

Sustain


New players often over-trade in lane and overstay, making them vulnerable to ganks from the enemy jungler or getting easily killed by the enemy. Garen's passive Perseverance helps to make you not as easy of a target due to your incredible health regeneration, and it could also make it easy for you to turn the tables on them after waiting 30 or 40 seconds for some health regen. If the enemy over stays, you will quickly have the health advantage.

Too Much Fun


See video below for some intense Garen Jungle Gameplay from the day of the patch release!

Content Structure
1.
Runes

The Might of Demacia

2.
Pros and Cons

Champion strengths & weaknesses

3.
Gameplay

Gameplay and Tips and Tricks

Runes


Conqueror



Conqueror remains as such a powerful rune for anyone who gets into extended fights. The healing and bonus true damage are so invaluable for someone like Garen who can very quickly hit the enemy 5 times within a brief window now that his E has been reworked to stack Conqueror per tick. Grasp of the Undying remains an option and may be taken based on the matchup, for example, fighting against someone like Yorick you generally do not want an extended trade, but the bonus damage from Grasp of the Undying may be the difference that you and your jungler needs when you are receiving a friendly gank.
But in most situations Conqueror will be your go to Keystone for Garen when you want to play aggressively.
This is the standard rune for fighters like Garen as the sustain you get from the 12% of missing health heal per takedown can make or break a teamfight. As Garen will be soaking so much damage in these fights, often times if you go in, get low health, and then get out while your team picks off the weak enemies, you will be in a position to go back in shortly with the healing you receive from Triumph.
Garen can really go either attack speed or Tenacity, but for teamfights purposes, Legend: Tenacity will remain supreme for Garen.
Coup de Grace is such a perfect rune for a fighter like Garen because it allows you to finish fights strongly. A key factor with teamfighting as Garen is that one of the best things you can do is finish off weak enemies, so that you can get your Triumph hp back from a kill. The only thing I hear people argue about this rune is the pronunciation. Leave a comment in the discussion tab if you think you know how to correctly pronounce this word!
Pros and Cons
PROS


+ Safe first pick
+ Fits well into many comps
+ Built in sustain
+ Can safely split push
+ Can often 1v1 anyone if piloted correctly
+ Naturally gets stronger (scales) as the game goes on

Garen is such a great beginner champ due to his straightforwardness. This is not to say he isn't impactful though. Who can deny that a champ who can run through an enemy team and kill their ADC in 2 shots isn't impactful? He can cancel his auto attack animation with his Q, allowing him to farm effectively and secure cannon minions, and without Mana, that is one less resource to manage in a game.
CONS

- Can be counterpicked (looking at you Vayne)
- High skill players can take advantage of Garen
- Weak Gap Closer
- No crowd control aside from silence
- Easily kited

Unfortunately, Garen naturally loses a lot of matchups and much patience is required to play him in those bad matchups. Work on good CS (minion kills) and build to properly counter the enemy team, and late game you will shine! Dealing with ranged champions such as Vayne and Teemo can be difficult, but if you can get a lead, they are quite squishy champions and can be swiftly dealt with by a gank from your jungler.
Gameplay



EARLY GAME
Trade Safely

Before we recommended to trade often when Grasp of the Undying is ready, but also take your time to heal back up with your Perseverance passive. But now with the changes to E and Conqueror stacking, a lot of extra damage comes from Conqueror.

If you are getting a friendly gank from your jungler, the two of you can likely quickly delete an enemy with the burst damage that you have. At the very least, you will likely force them to use their Flash.

Use your Q to reset your auto attack animation. What this means is as soon as your auto attack does it's damage to the enemy or minion, you can press Q and you will instantly start the next animation, even if your swing hasn't finished. Practice this to maximize your burst damage.

MID GAME
Look to roam or Teleport!

Try to keep an eye on the map and be present for team fights, if you could be useful, Teleport to a friendly ward or minion to get involved. Focus the largest enemy threat, either their ADC or Assassin can be quickly dealt with by your combo.

Continue farming as much as possible to get your Courage fully stacked!

LATE GAME
Split Push or Team Fight

While split pushing might not be the most exciting gameplay, if you don't take objectives like turrets, you can't win. Taking pressure off of other areas of the map is so important. And as a late game Garen can likely 1v1 most people on the enemy team, you can sponge a lot of pressure for your team as the enemy may have to send 2 or 3 members to try and stop you, allowing your team to have the numbers advantage in their fight. With Demolish as an option for your secondary runes you will be able to do so much damage to towers you can not be left unanswered. Vision is key for this strategy!!! Have good map awareness and know when to back off if you don't know where 2 or 3 of the enemy team is. If the enemy does not react though, continue your path of terror and take some towers while you are at it!

As Garen is a bit of a juggernaut, the enemy will spend a lot of time and abilities to kill you. If you can make them focus on you, a well timed W Courage can mitigate so much damage, allowing you and your team to finish the enemy off. If you see a squishier target at around 50% health at this stage of the game, a quick Q and R will almost always finish them off and don't forget that Conqueror will continue to heal you through the fight and convert some damage into true damage, this can and will win you many fights!




Macro

What is Macro? Please take a look at my mini-guide for a brief explanation!
Summary




Thank you for taking the time to read my guide, I am just beginning my journey of guide writing! All of the guides have been for League of Legends. I enjoy articulating what I have learned through mistakes and experiments and research. I hope that even Garen veterans can appreciate this guide and hopefully there were little gems of information that everyone came away with from it. Garen hasn't changed much over the last year but changes are coming and I will update the guide when that hapens! Please check out the notes for the item builds and runes as there is more information tucked away in there. I hope that if there are corrections that I need to make, that people kindly let me know in the comments, and I would be happy to make adjustments!!

Over time I hope to add more to the guide to keep it relevant. Eventually I would like to add more matchup specific information, as well as a full breakdown of different runes. I know I change my secondary runes often based on matchup!

Also, I am not the most artistic person in the world, so if there is anything I can change with the formatting of the guide, please let me know! I would love to make adjustments to make the guide easier to ready. And lemme beat you trolls to the punch, "It would make it easier to read if you just deleted the guide, har har, Kappa", well too bad for you, I don't care about deleting it, just care about improving it!

Please consider stopping by my YouTube channel, more guides will be added on there over time, and you might learn something new!

So once again, thank you so much, if you gleaned anything from the guide, please like the guide and if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to drop a comment!
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✔️ [11.12] God-King Conqueror Garen

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