Hello, and welcome to my guide for Garen on Dominion. This is my first guide on Mobafire, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

Now, I want to make something clear. This build is not a rule list, as in you don't HAVE to follow it. It's suggestions, made to guide you in the right way. You can modify the build in every way you like to your preferances and situation. This is just the way I like to play.

For Summoner Spells I always take Flash and Ghost.



Garrison
A fantastic summoner spells and something I ALWAYS run with in solo queue. It's great offensively, and even better defensively. A must have in my opinion.


Ghost
For mobility around the map. Ghost + Map speed boost + Blood Scent = Any place any time. Great for saving Turrets.

I allways take my hybrid build because it's better to attack and defense the capture points

Garen's passive is amazing. It gives you incredible health regeneration when you've been out of combat for a couple of seconds. It lost it's touch a bit in Dominion, but still is useful.


I love this skill. It gives you a decent boost of movement speed (always useful for Dominion) and if you hit an enemy with this, it hits for really good damage and silences them. I use it whenever I walk to a point to get there faster, and as an initiazing skill, because it allows you to get in range.


Great skill for defense. It gives him increased Armor and Magic Resistance every time he kills a unit passively, but that's not the best part. It decreases all damage taken by 20% at rank 1, and 36% at rank 5! That's an incredible amount of damage that just got negated because you pressed one button. Say Annie comes in, and drops her Summon: Tibbers on your for 750 damage. With your shield up, it will now hit for 600 damage at rank 1, and 480 at rank 5! This is just so incredible it can't be ignored. (I'd be close to saying this is just OP..) You want to try and max this equally with your Decisive Strike, however, if you take too much damage while the game progresses, you might want to max it before Decisive Strike.


Garen's bread and butter. This is where the saying "spin to win" comes from, and for good reason. This skill does amazing damage and scales with 1.2 damage for every bonus damage Garen has. You should max this as soon as you can, for the most damage output possible.


There are more useful ultimates in the game, but this one isn't that bad either. It does VERY high damage, depending on how much health they're missing. For this reason, you should save it for when they're low. Around 700-800 basically means they're dead, depending on their max health. You should get a point in this every time it's possible.

Pros

Excellent Map Movement
Excellent Damage
Able to defend towers alone


Cons

You will get called OP
CC...

I can't say this enough. COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR TEAM.

Seriously, it wins games. No one likes that guy that does his own stuff and never listens to his team. It doesn't matter if you're better than them, just try to play together as an actual team, instead of 5 seperate champions.

Oh, and be nice to your fellow man. Make love, not war(craft).

21/6/3

Pretty standard AD setup. I like having the 6 in defense for that extra bulk and 3 in Good Hands, because late game death times in dominion are dreadful.

Main rune set

Greater Mark of Desolation Greater Quintessence of Desolation

Garen is the strongest early game champion. Period. I go with this rune setup because it improves upon that foundation. Armor Pen is a must for any Garen build and I go with resistances for the extra bulk. I prefer flat rez for the early game advantage. Don't forget that armor pen works with his spin. Judgment scales poorly against armor so the runes are a must.

jugdment: You want to max this skill first because its going to provide the bulk of your damage early game. Unfortunately Judgment scales poorly late game, but its very powerful early on.

Thankfully its not completely useless late game. Judgment crits and scales with AD so its going to be your main farming tool.


: This is the skill that you'll be using to initiate fights because of the speed boost/silence and it does really good damage as well. There's no reason to save this unless your playing against someone like Nunu and you need to shut down his ult. Max it second.

Its also important to note that this skill procs with Frozen Mallet's slow. So if you chase and initiate with this skill your enemy will be slowed, allowing you to do full damage with your spin because they cant get away.


: There's not much to this skill and it doesn't improve much per level, so I max it last. It doesn't last very long either. Use it whenever you draw focus and you plan on staying in the fight. If its off CD you can use it to help escape ganks and such as well.


: This skill is ridiculous. It does more damage based on how much health your opponent is missing so any champ at low health has good reason to fear you. You'll have to practice yourself to see how much damage it does, but this is a good guideline to follow if you want to ensure a kill.

Level 1: Use when your opponent is around 10% health
Level 2: Use when your opponent is around 15% health
Level 3: Use when your opponent is around 20% health

I believe the build outlined above, allows you to maintain a general, yet very adaptive playstyle and a wide range of utility, however counter-picking wins games and here we'll discuss a few other options for some of the items listed above.

If the enemy team is CC heavy, Tenacity is a good thing. Grab Mercury's Treads. To make up for the lost CDR, you can get a Youmuu's Ghostblade instead of Entropy. They are both great offensive items with powerful actives. Youmuu's adds more utility to Garen's Taker role.

Youmuu's Ghostblade can be picked instead of Entropy even without needing extra CDR, however missing Entropy's active will make filling the Defender role a little more skill reliant. On the other hand it turns Garen into a beastly fill for the Taker role.

Frozen Mallet is a tankier alternative to Entropy. It's less damage though, I believe Entropy is almost better in every situation, but there can be situations in which Frozen Mallet's utility will be useful.

If the enemy team is all AD or mostly AD, consider grabbing Thornmail or Warmog's Armor instead of Force of Nature. They both will grant you extra damage, but in different ways. If it's a long game and you feel as if you'll be completing your build, get Warmog's because of it's syngergy with Atma's Impaler. However, if it's a shorter game or the enemy is all attack speed/auto attack champions, get the Thornmail, you won't regret it while you watch the enemy Master Yi kill himself while trying to scare you off your turret.