Hello fellow silver, so you chose to to play Garen, you did well, Garen is a pretty simple champion mechanically allowing you to focus on other aspects of you game like csing, wave management, split pushing and great demacian justice. Buckle up newbie because we are going for a magic ride out of the silver land.

Let's talk about runes, since Garen's Juggernaut rework Garen became less of a early game bully and more of a mid game power house. This runes will help you fix that, introducing to you the 3 hit runes.

Your basic trade combo will be auto Q E / Q auto E when electrocute is of cooldown , or Q auto / Q E when electrocute is on cooldown. Our objectives with this runes is to proc Scorch and Cheap shot as efficiently as possible, try trading every 20 seconds for scorch to be up, cheap shot has a 4 second cooldown and procs on blind targets. Since we are only putting a point in E a single E spin proc is enough for the electrocute / cheap shot, only try to fully spin when you want to all in your target for the armor break and since your Q will be off cooldown shortly after you stop spinning, this last case will be rare in lane.

Ravenous hunter doesn't proc of your Q so it will only work on E and Ult, can heal quite a bit of your ultimate, can be change by relentless hunter if you want more map pressure.

Ultimate Hat is quite nice dropping your ultimate to around 45 seconds with max cdr. But can be switched by celerity if you feel that the move speed is valuable for you match-up o
r play style.


PS: I think the best runes for Garen are based on Graps of the Undying because they don't force you to play a specific way and work with all builds and skill orders. It's a perfect match for what Garen stands for and needs. When you transition to higher ranks you should transition to a normal Grasp build. The strength of the eletrogaren build (and the reason it's the highest win rate for Garen) is the meta being a quick one and this rune helps you win your lane hard and surprises most laners with the ridiculous amount of damage you can put out early game.

Garen's item build like his playstyle is pretty straight forward.

Starting items:

• Doran's shield and one health pot are the best starting items 90% of the time.
• The other 10% are super easy match-ups or lanes that you want to shut down like Nasus.

Boots:

• Boots are very important on Garen, in most match ups it's a great first item to complete. Ninja tabis give you the movespeed edge in lane as well as providing a huge damage mitigations in some matchups. Mercury treads provide you Mr as well as Tenacity, that could be great against high cc tanks consider them if you are having a hard time surviving ganks due to cc. Both boots are extremely cost efficient for the utility that they have in lane, and the early move speed can throw a lot of early games in your favor.

Health:

• Black cleaver is Garen's best friend, if you play him you know the spike this item gives you. This should be your second item if you are winning your lane or playing against tanks. If you are even or losing you should consider a defensive item from the Mr or Armor categories and delay this to your 3rd item.
  
• Warmog's is going to be your 3rd or 4/5th item, depending on the game. Warmog's has a great synergy with your passive and spirit visage if you buy it. This items is great for 2 things, as a recovery tool between small skirmishes or team-fights so you can keep your presence on the map without having to back, to snowball winning lanes. If you are winning your lane consider purchasing this item as your 3rd, this will allow you to fight under enemy tower, fall back and heal fully, makes you instantly win any trade and will make you very tanky. If not delay this in favour of Armor or Magic resist item to counter your lane or a heavy snowballing jungler or mid laner of the enemy team.

Armor:

• Dead Man's Plate is the go to item for armor, it will give you very good initiation potential due to it's movement speed buff and slow on first auto. Great synergy with your kit, making your Q a way better version of itself.
  
• Thormail is great against heavy auto attack top laners, like Jax and Irelia, that not only depend on auto attacks but also usually build lifesteal or have innate healing effects. This could be built against Mundo or Maokai, just secure the bramble vest early to cancel the heal and then continue your normal build in this case.
  
• Randuin's is a sub-optimal item that is a mixture of the two above, it can be used on match ups that you need the slow to trade but you also need the attack speed reduction. It's a mixture of the two above but not quite as good as them.

Magic Resist:

• Spirit Visage is the go to option, this with your passive and Warmog's will make your out of combat regeneration ridiculous. It has everything you need , cooldown reduction, health regen, magic resist and healing increase. If your are not facing fed magical damage dealers you can choose to start by Kindlegem for the cooldown, against poke lanes specter's cowl is a life saver.
  
• Adaptive helm is a great undervalued item, this item alone turns the bad Teemo matchup into a neutral or favorable one. Consider this item if your lane opponent or other magic damage dealer in the enemy team have repeated damaging abilities. Great examples are Cassiopeia, Ryze, Teemo , anything with dots, it the top lane even Nautilus E. really a great item.

Round Up Items:
This are items to round up your build, should be purchased as your 6th or 5th item, they add great utility to a mid to late game Garen.

• Sterak's Gage, since all our items have health this item gives you an insane shield when procced, gives a big ad boost too since Garen's base attack damage at level 18 is 3 ad short from the top 5 max base ad in the game.
  
• Mortal reminder, when you are surviving the teamfights and getting stuck with the 4K hp 400 armor tank o the enemy team. Garen has a lot of armor shredding by his E and Black cleaver , but if this happens extra armor pen goes a long way. This could be used to heal cut crucial members of the enemy team if you didn't opt for the Thornmail.

Situational items:
This items can be very good in very rare situations. Buy with caution.

• Death's Dance, Youmuu's Ghostblade, Rightous Glory are great items if you are versus a full ad team and need the 10% extra cooldown reduction that you are missing from one of the Mr items.
  
• Guardian's Angel is great against phsical damage all in dependent lanes, like Riven , Zed or Talon. This can be built as a second or third item is this cases.
  
• Maw of Malmortius is great against magical damage all in dependent lanes, not as good as Guardian's Angel, due to the nature of magic damage dealers they will poke you in lane, making the other magic resist items more worth for most match-ups, this can me useful for Katarina or Fizz since you wanna protect yourself and still shut them down early game. This can be built as a second or third item is this cases.
  
• ZZ'Rot Portal should be build when you are weaker at split-pushing late game but still want to keep map pressure. Very very situational item since it has been nerfed.

So your item build should be composed of:
1 - Boots
2 - Black Cleaver / (Armor Item / Magic Resist Item)
3 - Black Cleaver / (Armor Item / Magic Resist item)* the one you didn't buy before
4 - Warmog's / (Armor Item / Magic Resist Item)* the defense you don't have at this point
5 - Warmog's / (Armor Item / Magic Resist Item)* the defense you don't have at this point
6 - Round up item / Another Defense Item

Against full ad teams consider buying one of the cdr items as 5th item.

This is where a Garen main can shine so lets review when to Q max or when to E max.

Q max has too main reasons for you too do it. First if you think you lose in a long trade with your lane opponent. Two if you need the move speed to being able to reach him.

When NOT to max Q. Note this isn't the same as maxing E(in theory, but you will max E here).
When your Q slow denial is a counter to your lane opponent. Examples like this are Nasus, against Nasus you want to save your Q to break wither, that way you can trade with him without the fear of being stuck afterwards, this can actually save your life a lot more then you think. Since you are silver you don't have the map awareness or the jungle knowledge to know when your are being ganked, so you can get baited easily.

E max is a great tool but a overrated one, Garen rarely want's to fight post-spin early game, your damage follow up is not as big as other bruisers like Darius or Fiora, so actually a Q max gives you a way in way out mechanic that Garen loves actually. E max is quite useful against tanks, since they don't have the best early game and you can shred them hard with E, and usually they have slows , so saving your Q is valuable.

If you just want to afk raid boss top style, take ignite instead of teleport, but wouldn't do that. A huge part of top lane play is knowing how to split. And without teleport the answer after silver is never. Teleport is the thing that allows you to split.

This is a guide to play a specific build. And this is the great thing about your champion. Like Ryu in street fighter is the base for all the game balancing and what makes sense or not, so is Garen. This is the champion created the idea of a bruiser top laner. It's about fundamentals.

This is the most important part of this guide. I will leave you a couple of videos that you should watch. They help me a lot even after I was higher ello then you are now. And I really wish I would have seen them before.

I climbed my way plat by playing unconventional roles, jungle/support so never had to learn all this. But when I learned this I started to appreciate league in a whole new way.

Motivational Video for playing Garen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2A7GhNi0wE

Wave control and minion management video and series. A must watch for any top laner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSQWcHIl5oc&index=2&list=PLzHaU28zdQ4GAMfVf_aASyiB4dheLsONx

Fundamentals guides, will teach you concepts that influence your game but you don't even know they exist probably:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iko2tqmDpJQ&list=PL9RdXhXESRJzgY_SwHB8T-cZxXljWhQvz&index=1


With this I think you have all the tool to become a better player and be successful in League of Legends. I will leave you just a couple of my own advises for you:

If something happens to you a lot probably there is a reason for it, some people will tell you stupid reasons because they don't know better but hope with the guides here you can make things get better for you. For example, if you die a lot of times to ganks, people will tell you to ward. Warding is indeed crucial but there is a lot more that is happening. Probably you are not managing your wave correctly and the jungler is being able to come to your lane when he knows you will be out of position. Maybe you are not watching your own jungler and you don't know when you have priority in your lane or not. Maybe you didn't look where the oposite jungler started and you don't know how he is rooting this game. League is a complicated game, it's ok to feel overwhelmed.

A great thing I learned while playing Street Fighter is personal responsibility. People will tell you that your team is hell and you are stuck. Don't listen to them. Statistically speaking if you are a good player you have 4/5 out of players that can be bad in your team, while the opposite team has a 5/5 chance. So you are in a advantage. Try to read into every match, not only your losses. Went 10/1/5 and lost? Did you control the map as you should have? Did you use your teleport to farm some creeps and didn't have it for a teleport bot to help your team and secure a dragon? I know it's easy to look at numbers and think you are doing great or bad. But league is a very complex game. A very small thing can snowball into a massive defeat.

Minimize your deaths, deaths are literaly the worst.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4cTEpSzZcM

There is a video explaining why this is. But long story short you must think as a kill being less important then a death to you. If you can kill someone and then die for the most part it isn't worth it. If you die less every game even to the expense of not killing you will see that you start winning a lot more.

Don't be afraid to dodge. Nothing is more frustrating in league then getting to a point that you win 15 point per win and lose 25 per loss. This is will crush your spirit and your will to play ranked matches. Losing 3 points 0 MMR and 5 mins is way better then losing 15-25 points X MMR and 20 - 50 minutes. MMR is the most important thing while ranking up in league.

Play games, league is a intense mechanical game. If you think you can hop on a game every 15 days and just be as good as you were before you are wrong. Even playing a simple champion like Garen there are a lot of things that are done in a mechanical way, like the need to ward, watching timers and teammates. League now has a lot of tool to let you train mechanics use them, practice tool is great for learning tricks, csing and a lot more.

Last but not least, have fun. League is a game, life is hard has it is, you don't need to come home and stress over the thing that is supposed to make you happy, you will see when you are burned out on this game you will do a lot more, but when you are having joy you will do better naturally without any effort. Nothing illustrates this better then when you buy a skin and are having the joy of playing that flashy skin for the first time.

This guide is dedicated to Mario (MGF) so he can stop being a scrub for Christmas and maybe join the big boys league. Cya in the rift friend.