Garen Build Guide by Barbopoulus

Introduction

Since last updates on Garen's abilities on patch V1.0.0.123 Garen has the best native characteristics to be a massive tank and carry all team on his back.

"Decisive Strike: movement speed boost duration increased to 4 seconds from 3."
"Judgment: cooldown reduced to 13/12/11/10/9 from 14/13/12/11/10."
"Courage: maximum armor and magic resistance increased to 25 at all ranks from 5/10/15/20/25."

Now all you got to do is get courage to level 1 and make it stack. Enemies couldn't do nothing to a garen with a boost 25 armor and magic resist in early game.

We will explore this ability to maximize Garen's capacity to kill and to never die :D

Summoner Spells

Summoner Spells is what is more likely related to each one's preferences.

My choice goes for Heal and Ignite but could also be Heal and Ghost for example.
I believe that with so much defense Garen has in early game, Heal and Ignite are the best combo to kill and to avoid you or your mate to be killed. Some call it a noob spell. I call it a not feeder spell.

UPDATE:
You can left Heal and play with Flash & Ignite or Ignite & Exhaust or a lot of other combos.

All I know is Heal means to my lane some kind of an insurance policy to avoid die and help to kill.

Runes

Well, I use this runes on all Attack Damage champions for its capacity to be harder to kill in early game (because of its +13 armor and +13 magic resist) and to make it a natural killer with +25 armor penetration.

You could probably change this ones to your's but with this ones and with a Doran's Shield for first item you have a Garen with 50 armor, 51 magic resist at level 1.. It can make a difference for first blood.

Masteries

Since it is a Full Tank Garen Build obviously I had to spent 21 to defense and the other 9 in utility for regen's Perseverence , experience Awareness and for money Greed . Now you have a Garen that regens itself, that earns more experience and that earns more gold to help get our Tank Full operational.

Items

Well, Items are the more important part of the process. Now we need to choose how good we need our tank to be. Depending on enemy team we need to buy items more likely to help in mean and late game.

Item build:
Mercury's Treads -> Warmog's Armor -> Thornmail -> Force of Nature -> Randuin's Omen -> Guardian Angel

First Item:
I always start with to make Garen a nice and rough tank to start the game.

Second Item:
For speed all you need is and then go for for future balance between armor and magic resist or if you want an armor "focus" tank.

Third Item:
Its time to start building our tank so we need to buy so I advice you to buy even before or .

Forth Item:
Since we already have enough HP we should bet on defense again cause now should be at 25 bonus armor and magic resist but we need more.
To start I buy or depending on opponent team. But as soon as you can, buy these two items to put your Garen with more armor and more magic resist.
After you bought those two items you need to choose between and . Pick what is best in the moment. Check opponents team and choose wisely.

Fifth Item:
If you picked for forth item now pick .
If you picked for forth item now pick .

Sixth Item:
We are almost completing our build and I suggest that you buy to get a little money boost and them sell and buy for get as soon as you can.

Last Item:
At this point Garen should be a massive tank with lots of HP, armor and magic resist and is our last item to choose. For a Full tank build I recommend . Now Garen should be a very powerful tank almost impossible to kill.

Complete build:

Decisive Strike

Courage

Judgment

Demacian Justice

Skill Sequence

To make this build a successful one Garen has to stack his Courage passive. He needs to get his 25 bonus armor and magic resist as soon as possible so I recommend you to start developing Judgment at level 1 and then in level 2 pick Courage. Now all you got to do is maximize Judgment and Decisive Strike and left Courage for last levels.

Pros / Cons

Pros

• High defensive power since level 1
• Lots of Health, Armor and Magic Resist
• Hard to kill
• Quick champ and quicker if use Decisive Strike
• Farming with Judgment gets Courage easy to stack
• High early game damage and easy to feed

• Low damage in late game

Garen's best friends

Garen tank could easily team up to every champion but is very reliable teaming with a "slower" champion. Laning with or makes a very strong lane generally feeding and destroying enemy team with his defense and owning with his ultimate Demacian Justice.

Summary

Resuming all I said, Garen is very powerful either for AD build either for Tank build but a tank that kills, assists and is very difficult to kill makes very significant difference.

The best score I had with this build was 17/0/19 2 days ago.
Hope I could help.
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