garen's spin became a meme long ago, in a magical era pre-dating the battle royale craze. it all started in april of 2010, a much simpler time, overflowing with man-made wonders such as shrek 4ever after and iron man 2. lady gaga, ke$ha, and katy perry dominated FM radio while ipods playing decent music had become common-place.
but you don't care about any of this lmao just get out there and press E.

and MOST IMPORTANTLY don't forget to play this in the background.

there's no need to say anything about 4k health garen other than remembering to poke (deal damage to the enemy champion) as close as possible to every 4 seconds. the cheapshot damage on top of grasp of the undying's health bonuses will be very beneficial if you can spam them as often as possible.

other than this we only need to remember to USE TITANIC HYDRA. as an active item it does no good unless we cast it, and it can also stack with Q so feel free to bind your first item slot to Q and use it to spam (this way even while Decisive Strike is on cooldown we can activate hydra without moving the finger off of the Q key)

if you want to mess around with the jungle garen pirate booty build then continue reading, but be warned your teammates will spam ping your items and become extremely toxic so be prepared :)

basically you want to jungle like you would any other champion. yes, garen is not a meta jungler HOWEVER he has great base stats and decent abilities that allow him to clear camps even at level 1.

this build guide is by far one of the least typical and despite how awful it sounds it actually preforms extremely well in the hands of a competent player. the #1 MOST IMPORTANT thing to adapt to is NOT using garen's E (spin) hardly ever. many veteran players will recognize the term "spin2win" but attack speed garen DOES NOT press E against ANY champions. the ONLY time you will ever spin is to clear small minions/monsters. even with this new patch 9.1 garen's spin is so broken and desperately needs a rework, therefore this build relies solely on Q to engage, W for added sustain, and AA (auto-attacks) to deal the majority of our damage.

if you have made it this far reading then you are ready to become the most hated player by the enemy team, nobody in their right mind would build attack speed garen. and that is exactly why you will win. players of any elo who are even half-decent understand the basics of how garen is played (grasp, conqueror, maybe even phase rush if you're a riste fan ;) and expect garen to play a certain way. especially in low-elo (iron bronze silver) the enemy players will likely not look at the items you are building and will be completely caught off guard when you walk right up with a flurry of auto-attacks.

but enough rambling, you want results. load into a bot game and give this a shot even if you 'know' this is hands down the absolute worst garen build ever conceived. i dare you. prepare to be pleasantly surprised the first time you solo a dragon at level 4...

and most importantly you must always remember: GL HF :D <3

here we have 2 options, both of which start in the same exact way:

1. ENEMY JUNGLE
this path is best if you plan to head straight into top lane afterwards and not lose your initial wave.

2. ALLIED JUNGLE
the standard jungle pathing used by most any jungle champion. very safe start and allows for either mid or bot lane early gank

regardless which side you end up on, we ALWAYS take red buff first. ALWAYS.
red buff applies a DoT effect that is essential to helping garen clear camps efficiently.

assuming you are following this guide (duh) you will have refillable pots and machete to start, and some combination of summoner spells including smite. we also take garen's Q first so make sure it's not on cooldown when the red buff spawns (if you used the speed to quickly get into position or if you had an opportunity to trade with enemy champs before the brambleback spawns at 1:30).

step 1: cast decisive strike and start auto-attacking the red buff as soon as it spawns
step 2: start drinking one of the refillable pots during Q's cooldown.
(make sure to recast decisive strike each time the cooldown ends) x2
step 3: by now you should be just under 75% health so go ahead and cast smite
step 4: finish off the brambleback with a 4th decisive strike to gain the red buff


now take a look at the map, see if you have any opportunities to gank a lane with your red buff. probably not unless someone has already overextended themselves this early in the game (lol) so we move onto the 2nd camp. after killing the brambleback you will have leveled up so go ahead and take a point in W. use your Q and start smacking the larger krug (rock looking golem thing) while tanking the damage with W. after you kill a couple of them (they just keep splitting into smaller ones) you will level up again and this time we take E and immediately use it. this early in the game we havent built any attack speed items so the spin actually deals more damage than normal auto-attacking. be sure to use the 2nd potion charge if you think you might not make it.


after ganking/killing all the krugs we run to the river and kill the nearest rift scuttler (looks like a green beetle) since we will be low health and he does not do any damage. then grab all the health sap from any plants that may have spawned in the river and decide whether you can clear another camp/gank a lane or if you should stay on the safe side and recall to buy a dagger.

continue to clear camps as they spawn and PLACE TONS OF WARDS. as a jungler your main job is to know where the enemy jungler is at all times. if you followed the pathing up to this point then i can no longer help you as it becomes entirely situational based on what's happening in each lane.

ok so you have red buff in top lane. good for you. trades against the enemy top-laner should go exceptionally well thanks to the DoT burn you apply on-hit. whatever you do, DO NOT DIVE THE TOWER. attack only with a full wave of minions and only after killing the enemy champion or confirming they are very, VERY far away.

garen is NOT GOOD at moving around quickly so you don't want to get slowed/stunned or CC'd of any kind under the tower because you WILL DIE.

continue to poke as often as possible to proc Kleptomancy and earn extra gold.

i will be updating this frequently as i continue to test it throughout season 9

that's what the discussion panel is for, so feel free to comment :)