Welcome to my first ever guide! This guide will feature my favorite champion and main, Garen.

First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Styopa, and I mained Garen last season. I reached Gold and had an 83% win rate playing Garen, so you should know that he is a very viable champion in this meta. While he may have some poor matchups, he does have some amazing synergy which I will cover in the next section.

Garen has some very unique skills indeed in his kit. He is one of only 5 champions that includes a silence in his kit, and has one of the longest silences in the game at 2.5 seconds.

What does this mean for me?
Silences are excellent for preventing escapes, since champions cannot use any abilities, including summoner spells or activatable items (except QuickSilver Sash/Mercurial Scimitar), which means they cannot flash away. This is an excellent tool for securing first blood during invades, as a quick Decisive strike opener with a few basic attacks from your team with an ignite is almost Garen-teed to kill an enemy. Get it?

What else does Garen have?
Garen has amazing lane sustain thanks to his passive, Perseverance. If you stay out of combat for a certain period of time, your health regeneration drastically increases until you are hit by an enemy champion or monster (until level 11, at which point only epic monsters can stop your regen). When you combine this with a charge of relic shield, which heals you when you last hit minions (as well as granting you and your lane partner kill gold), and the fact that Garen doesn't rely on any resources (only cooldowns!), you can stay in lane until you have the money to buy items.

Garen synergizes very well with carries that have snares or stuns, like Ashe, Jinx, Varus, and Urgot. He also works well with carries that possess a slow and a high damage output like Graves, Twitch, Quinn, and Teemo. He doesn't work well with carries that have a poor early game or carries that drop off, like Tristana or Corki. While he might work well with Kalista, I have never played a game with her, and I don't like playing with Kalistas, because they never seem to time their ******** ult correctly and they always cost us the game.
It's Shaco theory all over again damnit.

Pros:
-Very high early game damage
-Naturally tanky
-Great lane sustain
-Good lane synergy with most ADC's

Cons:
-Requires a good early game or else he drops off
-Fairly easy to kite

I love playing Garen in ranked, since Garen is not only an easy to pick up champion, but he is one that has a lot of good matchups, as well as a great early game. He requires a bit of set-up, since you can't run any set of runes and masteries on him, but if you know what you're doing (i.e. you have experience as Garen and/or as a support), then you can expect to win quite a few games as Garen.

In conclusion, Garen is a very tanky, high damage throughput champion with a great early game, and although he is somewhat easy to kite, he is a great support to add to anyone's repertoire. I would say that he is a support that has a skill level requirement from medium-advanced. Make sure that you grab Relic shield and 3 pots, or more risky is cloth+5. Get an early Brutalizer, then start building tanky, unless the Vs. Champions section says to build a Null-Magic Mantle after or Before your first Long Sword. Other than that, Garen is a relatively easy support, with a similar playstyle as Leona.

Good luck, and Have Fun!