Garen Build Guide by Plathar

Introduction

Hi this is my first guide. I decided to use Garen as my first subject as I have played him many times. I'm not going to go into great detail about so please look elsewhere for professional Garen guides and game play tips. This is not a ranked guide nor intended to be used as a ranked guide. I have made this as an attempt to create a guide and would love any criticism to help me improve.

Abilities

Perseverance: HP regeneration when not in combat
Garen gains some heavy duty HP regeneration when he is out of combat. Use this to your advantage when low on health.
Decisive Strike (Q): On next hit damage and silence
Garen gains a brief movement speed buff and on his next hit damages and silences an enemy unit. The skill also removes the effect of any slows. Use this skill to chase down enemy champions or use the silence to interrupt channeling skills.
Courage (W): Passive: Increased bonus armor and magic resist. Active: Damage and crowd control reduction
This gives Garen a 20% increase to his bonus armor and magic resist. Activating the ability grants 30% incoming damage and crowd control reduction.
Judgment (E): AoE DPS
Garen spins around dealing damage based on his current attack damage and crit chance. However, you also move slower when traveling through minions and minions take 25% less damage from the skill. This is your main damage dealer against champions and can leave enemies in a world of hurt.
Demacian Justice (R): Low HP execution
Deals flat magic damage as well as damage based on the amount of health the enemy champion is missing. use this as an execution move to completely wipe out low HP champions.

Skill Sequence

Masteries

I take masteries as 21/9/0. The resistance masteries and the HP regeneration go well with Garen's passive Perseverance and his Courage. The offensive masteries look to make full use of Decisive Strike and Judgment. I leave off the magic penetration for Demacian Justice as most of your damage will come through Judgment and Decisive Strike. Since most of this damage is physical I pick up the extra crit chance and damage as well as the armor penetration and Executioner

Runes

• Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: I chose these to go with Garen's Decisive Strike as speed on the battlefield is a great advantage.
  
• Greater Mark of Desolation: Decisive Strike and Judgement use armor pen.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: These provide Garen with greater bulkiness end game especially against AP casters.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: These are good early game and in addition to the Doran's Shield give you good survivability.

Items

• : Boots of Swiftness work great on Garen, they allow him to catch up to enemy champions with the speed boost from Decisive Strike and the land the full duration of Judgment.
  
• : Provides armor and the some extra health to give you even more regen with Perseverance
  
• : Gives magic resist and the enhanced regeneration effect really gives a kick to Perseverance so that you almost have your very own Sadism constantly.
  
• : With crazy amounts of health and HP regen, Warmog's Armor makes for a great combo with Perseverance.
  
• : The armor penetration from a The Black Cleaver goes well with Judgment and provides you with the offensive part of build.
  
• : This may seem strange but of late Infinity Edge on Garen has become increasingly popular and for a very good reason. As well as the AD it gives you it also gives you some crit which increases the damage output of Judgment.

Alternate Items

• : These are better against a team with heavy CC's. Replaces Boots of Swiftness.
  
• : The slow gives Garen another CC in which he is lacking. Replaces Warmog's Armor.
  
• : Alternate armor if your into a more aggressive style, also has crit for Judgment. Replaces Sunfire Cape.
  
• : Good when blocking large damaging single shot skills, eg Primordial Burst or Sigil of Silence. Replaces Spirit Visage
  
• : For the more offensive style of play replaces. Replaces Spirit Visage

Summary

I hope this guide has been informative and useful. I would love any criticism as this is my first guide and any tips would be appreciated. Even though I used jhoijhoi's template I would like to know if there are any areas I can improve on or important things that I have left out.


Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.