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Choose Champion Build:
Spells:
Exhaust
Flash
Ability Order
Perseverance (PASSIVE)
Garen Passive Ability
Introduction
I know that I promised in my last (and first) guide, that it would be Garen, Cuckoo for Criticals II: The Age of Kings, but I haven't had time to test a crit-stacking Garen.
I can however, vouch for the effectiveness of Cooldown Reduction on Garen. So, without further ado, the guide.
(Note: For this Guide, Orange indicates Carry Information, Blue indicates Tank Information and Purple is Both of them. Additionally, more in depth information on how to play Garen will be coming soon.)
Garen is currently one of two champions (the other being Katrina) that is 100% CD reliant. He doesn't have a energy resource.
CDR is useful on a Carry Garen (first build) because it lets him use
Decisive Strike and
Judgment very often. In fact, at 40% CDR, DS has a 4.8s CD and Judgement has a 6s CD. Since Judgement lasts 3 seconds, you can DS --> Judge --> DS for massive amounts of damage. And you pretty much can keep your target locked down, with a 2.5s silence every 4.8s. That's more than 50% downtime for a caster. If you include GCDs they won't be able to combo-nuke you if you get in the first hit.
CDR is vital on a Tank Garen (second build) because he does not have powerful CC options. One of the jobs of the tank is keeping teammates from being attacked, and all Garen has to help in that department is being highly noticeable and
Decisive Strike. As mentioned above, keeping that on a low CD means lots of interrupting. With it you can interrupt suppressed like
Absolute Zero,
Infinite Duress or
Nether Grasp. It also gives you a low CD on
Courage, bringing it down to just over 10s at 40%. With the low CD you can use it when you initiate a team battle and have it available near the tail end of the fight when health pools are lower.
CDR is useful on a Carry Garen (first build) because it lets him use


CDR is vital on a Tank Garen (second build) because he does not have powerful CC options. One of the jobs of the tank is keeping teammates from being attacked, and all Garen has to help in that department is being highly noticeable and





Pros
-Good Early Damage in
Judgment
-Activated speed buff
-Low CD CC
-Can break out of slows
-Strong defensive ability on low CD
-Very powerful execute Ult
-Manaless
Cons
-Susceptible to non-slow CC
-Doesn't have much CC
-Melee and doesn't have a dash
Looking at CDR in particular, you can use your abilities more often, but in trade, you have less power. In the DPS build you trade
Ionian Boots of Lucidity for
Boots of Swiftness and in the Tanking build you trade Yomuu's Ghostblade for a more defensive item like
Warmog's Armor or
Frozen Mallet. You also Glyph CDR and spend a Quint on CDR, but otherwise you have a fairly standard build.
-Good Early Damage in

-Activated speed buff
-Low CD CC
-Can break out of slows
-Strong defensive ability on low CD
-Very powerful execute Ult
-Manaless
Cons
-Susceptible to non-slow CC
-Doesn't have much CC
-Melee and doesn't have a dash
Looking at CDR in particular, you can use your abilities more often, but in trade, you have less power. In the DPS build you trade




Carry Masteries
These are both fairly standard. I went 24/6/0 for the Carry build rather than a 21/9/0 or 21/0/9 because both of those builds have points that are absolutely wasted on Garen. He doesn't use mana, so anything that does anything with that is as useful as not putting the point anywhere.
Tank Masteries
With the tank build, I went 9/21/0. The defense build is standard, avoiding any mana talents. I could have gone deep Utility for the 6% CDR but you don't have many defensive stats.
Shared Points
In both I take the 3% CDR and the 15% Magic Pen. I take the Magic Pen because the base damage of


The Runes are fairly self explanatory.
Greater Mark of Desolation in both builds increases most of Garen's Damage, as most of it is physical attacks.
Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction in both builds gives 5.85% CDR.
One
Greater Quintessence of Cooldown Reduction in both builds gives another 1.65% CDR, which combined with the glyphs and masteries is just over 10%.
For the Carry build, I chose
Greater Seal of Critical Chance as the bonus damage from Judgement can crit, as can Garen's auto attacks. I also took 2x Greater Quintessence of Desolation for the extra ArP.
For the Tank build, I chose
Greater Seal of Evasion and 2x
Greater Quintessence of Evasion giving a base 9.75% dodge.
Shared Runes
Greater Mark of Desolation in both builds increases most of Garen's Damage, as most of it is physical attacks.

One

Carry Runes
For the Carry build, I chose

Tank Runes
For the Tank build, I chose


Carry Items
The Carry build is fairly standard. The one item that I took that most other DPS builds don't take is




Other than that you want to rush a

The






Tank Items
Again, the tank build is standard. I go for gold per ten items quickly as your goal is not to get kills and last hit all the time, everywhere. Getting those is nice, but you'd rather have your carries have them. So you're going to need the extra gold. Also those items build into items that you're going to want later, so you're not wasting them.
If you want to get




I strongly suggest the Yomuu's Ghostblade, but if you don't want it, grab



If you want to get rid of Yomuu's Ghostblade and are ok with getting a less-than-ideal item, go for


I personally haven't tested

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