SPEED. INTENSITY. POWER.

These are the three main things you will feel playing this build. Imagine going at 182 kmh on your new Honda rebel 500 (TM) with the wind in your face and nothing on your mind but the ROAD. This is how league is meant to be played.

Before we go into the main course allow me introduce myself. My name on the rift is Dj Swagpants and i stream daily (kappa) at https://www.twitch.tv/djswagpants. Known as a 2 time challenger s10 and s11 EUW and have been a vivid Garen ENJOYER since s4. Have always looked for way to the play game in unconventional ways and still perform at a high lvl-alas the cause for this playstyle. This is my first guide, so be please be gentle with me! Will keep updating it as i get time, feedback is greatly apreciated.

So, ideally you are sitting mid with Boots and 4 Health Potions. Do not play the lane AGAINST your enemy mid opponent but AROUND. Focus on farming and dodging skillshots, trading is not needed in ranged matchups. Keep your eyes peeled for early extending lanes and jungler skirmishes (Scuttler crab spawns at 3:15). Even in challenger you can catch people unaware with the predator Boots start because its not expected which is why its good. This is why early game roams are the most powerfull. In some matchups you will be sitting on Ruby Crystal instead which means we are opting into Dead Man's Plate first item (usually every game). So if ur against melee mid go for early Chain Vest on ur first back and if you are against ap mid go for Winged Moonplate and another Ruby Crystal first.

If you dont have a massive lead, always perma shove at all stages of the game. Freezing can be applied but to be able to freeze against most ranged matchups you need a huge lead.

Now, your lane is shoved and you have opened up limited time on the map, what do you do with that time?

You can either choose to play with ur jungler, follow him for ganks and invades- or u can play your own game, ganking the lanes you see fit. Playing to win your lane is not the playstyle we are going for here. The aim is to get a kill through a roam and then get controll of your lane.

If these options are not available then your safe course of action would be to clear raptor camp. Clear enemy camp if you know where enemy jungler is on the map, or clear yours if walking into enemy fog of war jungle seems like a unecessary risk. You can start to clear these camps at lvl 5 (rank 3 Judgment is needed) utilizing the 150% increase in damage output to monsters buff that happend a few patches ago. Remember to stay next to the big raptor for the 25% increased damage for faster clear.

This is where you should be starting to snowball. Garen mid is all about tempo which means exp and cs are extremely important but also very easily accessible with Garen's clear speed. Fun fact, if you get enough gold for Berserker's Greaves and Trinity Force before plating runs out, you can get 5 platings in one cannon wave with proper usage of your spellblade effect from Trinity Force. Now, with that being said: You have 2 win conditions you can push for.

Either raw stomp by sheer gold advantage and exp backed up by a team that is equal or ahead of enemy, or if your team is low on kills/bad teamfight you can go for your other win con, namely, splitpushing.

If you are going for the splitpushing strat, you are going to need one of your summoners to be up, and trinity force+deadmans plate+ghostblade in your inventory is preferably for the game winning split. This is so you can easily disengage if enemy team answers your split OR so you can easily flank enemy team when they engage your team thinking they are one man down. This is not true because you posses the SPEEEEEEEEED which allows you to have the macro game of a god and be there in time providing the FLANK.

So this is entire chapter dedicated to what i like to call... the FLANK. With all the extra movement speed we are pumping into the build, this makes our strongest form of engage to be flanking. Peeling by flanking, engaging by flanking, catching by flanking etc etc. Almost always go engage from the side or behind for maximum effect. Without the FLANK Garen becomes very easy to read and predict which allows enemy to counterplay. So how do you peel by flanking? You basically run up, get close enough for them to use a cc or slow spell then sidestep it and you are free to engage. This is easier than it sounds like because of the leeway this build provides you.

NEVER, and then i mean NEVER give away your bounty. Having a good kda is easy playing this version of Garen. You can succsesfully steal every single one of your teams kills if you so desire. This will make you amass huge gold leads/bounties. Having a 1k gold bounty means you are in controll of the game. You set the rules of the game and everyone else has to comply. IF you give away this bounty you lose almost all of this controll. Garen is not a scaling champion thus he gets **** on against feed enemies. Starved enemy team is always going to be prefered to having a feed allied team when playing Garen. These two situations usually go hand in hand but NOT always.
If you are in possesion of a 1k bounty you have to play like it or lose all of the controll you have amassed through your early game lead.

TLDR IF BOUNTY

- NO 1v1 kill trading
- NO risky dives for bountyless targets
- NO coinflip deaths for unsecure objectives.


OK, so the big question in everyones head right now should be: WHY NO Stridebreaker? THIS ITEM IS BORDERLINE OP AND DOES EVERYTHING THIS BUILD WANTS YOU TO DO???
While this is true, it also lacks the spellblade effect = u cant one tap squishys fast enough. Furthermore, it stops your splitpush win condition in its tracks with way way less dmg vs turrets. You could counteract this and say "But Essence Reaver fixes this". Yes and no, Essence Reaver combined with just being nerfed and also opening up a bad build path for Garen is enough to not pick it up.

All of this being said, you could still go Stridebreaker in some bad ranged matchups like Azir, Corki and Ryze (see matchups).

Something else that is worth noting is the fact that this build has a hard time performing against enemy bruisers during laning phase, which means its pretty useless for top. The lack of conquerer removes alot of dueling power, so make sure before you go into a 1v1 to always check your enemies items. OK so this guy has a zhonya, maybe not dive him. Allright volibear is sitting on ninjatabis, maybe look for another target. And lastly, this dastardly irelia has built steraks, can i proc it somehow disengage and re-engage? Keeping track of enemy team items are very important to know which win condition you should be striving for, be it objectives, teamfighting or splitting.

SO yeah thats the guide in short. Might expand based on the feedback. I hope you guys enjoy this playstyle and if you ever have any questions >>>>https://www.twitch.tv/djswagpants<<<<< is the place. xoxo keep it spinning yall, this is the DJ signing out- PEACE!

SO here is an updated chapter for the new build. The idea is to maximize the value we get from Ingenious Hunter by taking as many items as possible that benefits from it and are still valuable to Garen. In alot of ranged mid matchups we will be going Edge of Night first item. Why? On top of having great stats it also eats an entire spell or cc effect. Exactly what you want when you are running straight for your targets to avoid getting kited. So which ranged matchups would this be good in? a few examples would be Twisted Fate, Cassiopeia, Xerath, Vel'Koz and Veigar to name a few. Its also counters some support picks like Nautilus ult for example.

After Edge of Night we could be opting into Galeforce because of the extra dash it provides. Remember how good garen was during pre nerf Stridebreaker? Yeah that mobility is what this build is trying to bring back. That being said, Stridebreaker is probably still your safest bet to build. Prowler's Claw has a dash aswell, but since the dash is way to slow(enemies can react to it much easier) compared to Galeforce, this pick is not as popular. Galeforce can be used as an execute or engage or escape. Its all situational. For the rest of the build its the same items as usual. DMP and YGB (the core speed items) followed by a 6th flavor item of your choice depending on enemy comp. More details about that in the build section. NOTE that DMP is NOT needed for the Stridebreaker build OR Galeforce into Stormrazor build since these items has the slow effect. These notes should cover for the S12 build. Try and give it a "spin" u wont be disapointed.