Each of these builds supplies the following:

• 40% CDR
• Lots of effective HP
• A Sheen item for damage
• Good to great mobility
• Insane wave clear
• Great objective control
• A "Lifeline" shield item ( Sterak's Gage or Maw of Malmortius) in every example item set

Follow these steps to win.

1. Get starter items, smite the buff for your jungler (on spawn) and go to lane
2. Focus on keeping yourself healthy and getting CS. Trade only if it's advantageous.
3. At 3:05 back off the minion wave, disappear into the fog and start heading to scuttle spawn OPPOSITE your jungler. Take scuttle when it appears. Don't die for it.
4. Return to lane and continue to CS until you have enough for your first items. ( Boots for Predator, Bami's Cinder for everything else) Back and buy them.
5. Return to lane and continue to use Smite to take all cannon minions. Use your Courage to zone and/or trade when possible. Take scuttles if available. Save up 1600 gold (after Bami's Cinder) and back for Enchantment: Cinderhulk. Smile.
   
   Note: Get Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk if you need gap close or escapability. Get Skirmisher's Sabre - Cinderhulk if you need dueling power.
   
6. Ward enemy Raptors. Take them when they're up and you see the jungler elsewhere. It won't take long.
   
7. Buy T2 boots and the "Early Buy" item (see notes on each build for an idea of the "Early Buy" item is). Get defensive boots IF NECESSARY. Otherwise, if using Predator get Boots of Swiftness because Relentless Hunter gives you the out of combat move speed you'll want. If using Grasp of the Undying or Phase Rush get Mobility Boots. (Repeat: If you need the benefits of defensive boots get them instead.)
   
8. Get to level 11 and take T1 turret if not already done.
   
9. Shove to tower and roam. See the wave management section for details. Take enemy jungle camps using Smite and the insane clear speed of Enchantment: Cinderhulk.
   
10. Invade enemy jungle heavily (Jungler shows top? Clear bot.), work with your jungler to control all dragons, herald, etc. Start hunting the villain (roam top or bot based on where the villain is).
    
11. Continue as before, making sure to collect all CS in your lane when it gets close to your tower. Buy core items for build.
    
12. Keep pushing waves and towers. Have patience with waves coming toward you, but make sure to accompany waves going away from you. Finish full build.
    
    Note: If you're the only one ahead on your team and you're needed for team fights send someone else to safely "collect" waves in sidelanes. I like to send the one most likely to help me carry late game. Often this is the ADC, but it could also be a Kayle, Kassadin, Tryndamere, etc.
    
13. Buy Elixir of Iron with any additional gold.
    
14. Keep pressure and make sure all objectives (Dragon's, Baron, etc.) go to your team. If you start to feel your tankiness failing sell boots for defensive boots (if you don't already have them).
    
15. Close out the game now or you're going to lose to a hypercarry getting full build. If that starts to happen try to peel for your hypercarry who is hopefully at least equal to the opposing team's. Ideally you don't get this far, but if so just be as useful of a tank/peeler as you can.

I've received several requests for Gameplay videos describing this build. Here are two (for the same game).

Note: I don't do any production or any notes, etc. This is just me talking about my game and play style.

These videos are now outdated, but they do show the macro portions of the gameplay. With the items listed above you'll be even stronger for dueling, and almost just as tanky and mobile so this build should feel even better.

https://youtu.be/qGG8DmKwC6c - vs. Swain stats and intro to me/the game
https://youtu.be/rqtk13BvqhQ - vs. Swain gameplay

Acknowledgments:

This guide wouldn't be possible without a lot of insight and help from various people. Here are some of the main ones.

• FSat
  
  FSat's Garen guide is THE premiere Garen guide on Mobafire (or anywhere else, probably). It has a lot of build diversity and great explanations on everything. My personal favorite part is the list of items. It has nearly every item Garen could possibly want to use and an explanation of why/when you would want to use it. If you ever want to learn about Garen, check his guide: FSat's Garen Guide
  
  He also streams (linked below)
  
• Riste
  
  Riste is the first one I saw using Smite in lane as Garen. (His stream is linked below)
  
• AdamJ, FSat, MoonMarooned and Riste
  
  These guys are the four most influential Garen players today. I don't believe AdamJ is streaming anymore (if that's wrong PLEASE comment to me so I can update this), but for the others here are their streams.
  
  FSat's Stream
  
  MoonMarooned's Stream
  
  Riste's Stream
  
• RTO (RenektonTopOnly)
  
  First off, he's not SoloRenektonOnly. Just wanted to get that out of the way. . .
  
  So how did a Renekton main help make this guide? Well, in essence I stole my macro strategy of getting big through out-farming the opponent from his YouTube guide on split pushing and wave management. Found Here. Both videos are well worth watching. The first is in the practice tool and the second is gameplay where he destroys, ironically, a Garen player.
  
  If you watch those videos you will know how to play this build according to this guide.
  
  RTO's Stream
  
• Reddit users memekid2007 and kilgeralt
  
  The real beginnings of this build were from a comment memekid2007 made on this thread. As of this writing it's the top comment. The specifics he mentions are that Garen is unique in that he doesn't really rely on snowballing to win, most stats (including AD) are merely nice to have, as opposed to necessary, and how you lane doesn't tend to matter in the long run. My rallying cry initially became, "Embrace the uselessness!" directly from that thread. My rune sets are still labeled "Useless Phase" and "Useless Grasp" as reminders that I'm not trying to carry the game through smashing lane or anything. Instead, I'm just going to scale up into a monster and go from there.
  
  Kilgeralt is a buddy who helped me think through various iterations of the build. Specifically he helped me get the build order so it didn't have big power gaps throughout the game and also helped me get the right runes/items for the right situations. This build wouldn't be nearly as good without his help.

The overriding focus is on making a specialty build unique to Garen. The main points are to play the macro game and abuse Garen's ability to maintain constant pressure on the map due to his innate tankiness, his good move speed (especially with our runes/items) and his passive.

This build sacrifices a little on direct AD items WHEN NEEDED. In other words, if anything needs to be taken out of the build to counter a particular team comp or opponent we will sacrifice AD first to keep survivability, mobility and objective/map control.

We focus on getting damage through Sheen items (every build example has one), having 40% CDR (every build example has it), excellent wave clear and objective control through Enchantment: Cinderhulk and Smite and extreme mobility through runes, items or both.

Additionally, the purpose isn't to win by besting your opponent in lane directly. If you do that it's bonus, but not necessary. The purpose is to outgrow them through farm, our passive and our items/runes so they are largely irrelevant and to beat them and their team in the game.

What we are focusing on building is:

• Health
• Resistances
• Mobility
• Waveclear/Objective control
• CDR

One big thing to consider is that this build does not require you to fight your lane opponent directly. This is intentional. If you play this build correctly you should end up with a huge lead despite your lane opponent feeling like they've gone at least even with you. Done correctly they'll end up multiple levels and lots of gold behind you and wonder how you got there. If you are beating them up while doing this you can snowball out of control and win the lane, but even better your mobility around the map will allow you to dominate the enemy jungler and put fear into your other laner's opponents.

At any point if trading with your enemy is advantageous it is encouraged. If, however, you tunnel vision on beating your opponent through killing them you'll be better off with a different build.

To win you simply need to out farm your opponent. Once you've outfarmed them enough you can kill them or drive them from lane with relative ease.

After you get your Enchantment: Cinderhulk you'll have incredible wave clear and you'll leverage that to take all the CS you can as well as some that you shouldn't be able to (enemy jungle camps and buffs, sneaking dragons, etc.).

By focusing on map pressure and macro objectives you can carry a lot of games despite having a low kill count. While this build CAN be played top, it works best in mid due to the proximity to all objectives.

Details on the how/why behind the build, complete with a few shiny numbers are below.

Flash is pretty standard on everyone. It's very important for Garen because it's the only reliable gap close or escape tool he has. Standard summoner for most builds. Enough said.

Smite is my favorite summoner ability. One reason is that you can be completely free with using it. The cooldown per charge is 90 seconds, but you can hold 2 charges, so on average you could smite something every 45 seconds the entire game. That's better than some abilities! Also, it's highly versatile. Here are the uses I have for it before you finish the jungle item and it's still just Smite:

• Give your jungler the best leash ever (smite, and run to lane)
• Snipe cannon minions like a permanent minion dematerializer
• Heal in lane (run to your own raptors, smite big red, run back to lane)
• Take scuttler
• Control river objectives with your jungler
• Smite when pushing lanes into tower (instant kill cannon when below a certain threshold, same as above, but to push wave into tower quickly instead of to safely farm)
• Invade and take camps/buffs quickly while maintaining health
• Cast it on anything for a free burst of tenacity and slow resist. (See runes section below for the interaction with Unflinching.)

After you finish Enchantment: Cinderhulk and you gain Chilling Smite or Challenging Smite you can also add the following uses

• Smite when your ult leaves them with a sliver of life
• Smite to engage (Chilling)
• Smite to escape (Chilling)
• Smite when you are bored and have 2 charges (Seriously, unless you know a fight is about to break out or a dragon/baron is about to be contested there's no downside)
• Smite in an extended trade to give you the edge in the duel (Challenging)

Finally, you get exp boosts due to having a jungle item. You get 50 Exp per large minion killed, so even if your opponent has as much CS as you and steals as many camps as you they will fall behind because you're getting the bonus experience for camps and they're not.

The cooldown on Smite is so low (lower than many item actives) that there's no reason to try and save it. If it's available, use it.

Compare to Ignite where if you use it and don't secure a kill you've wasted it and if you used it when you could have secured a kill without it you've wasted it. Then you're stuck for several minutes instead of 15-75 seconds.

Smite is happiness. The versatility and spammability are heavenly, but then it adds the ability to take Enchantment: Cinderhulk and it's borderline OP. If I have any more children I'd seriously consider naming my next one Cinder Hulk. I hope it's a boy (for their sake), but if not so be it.

For the keystone on this build I take Predator, Phase Rush or Grasp of the Undying.

I always take Conditioning and Unflinching.

Conditioning goes really well with all the HP we stack and makes us very tanky late game.

Unflinching has a really cool interaction with Smite. You get 15% tenacity AND slow resistance for 10 seconds every time you cast a summoner spell. Additionally you get 10% of each the entire time the summoner spell is on cooldown. Those two stack multiplicatively. By taking Smite you can get 23.5% tenacity for 10 seconds pretty much on demand (average of 45 second cooldown).

Chain CC is the biggest problem for Garen, both on engage and disengage. Having CC reduction on demand, in addition to your tenacity from Courage, slow cleanse from Decisive Strike and appropriate boots ( Mercury's Treads or Boots of Swiftness) you can burn through so much more CC than standard. It's honestly one of the most broken interactions Smite has and one reason I always take the Resolve tree as secondary (if not primary).

Part of this build is movement, movement and more movement. If you take Phase Rush or Grasp of the Undying you should look for Mobility Boots if you can get it. However, if you take Predator you can take Boots of Swiftness as your default because Relentless Hunter will provide the out of combat movement speed you need, so mobis are redundant.

In general, I currently recommend the Domination tree runes. They give the best damage boost AND make it so you don't have to sacrifice in-fight move speed (or defense if needed) for out-of-combat move speed. Since we're already tanky enough, especially with Conditioning and Unflinching we can use the damage from that tree.

On the flip side, Grasp of the Undying provides great tower pressure and will likely help you get early plates and possibly first blood tower. Phase Rush and the minor runes there are the "all in on movement" runes. They have a place, but it is more situational.

In my opinion Predator with Relentless Hunter, Conditioning and Unflinching is the best rune set for this build.

The others can be played very effectively as well.

Note: First draft, still very rough. Details here are mostly OK, but this will be polished in the upcoming days and weeks.


In my example builds I mixed and matched boots and red/blue smite. If you want to get the benefits of a build but feel the need for a little more tankiness or a bit more CC reduction, etc. you should first adjust the shoes you're going with. If you need a little more gap close or a little more dueling you can pick the smite to match.

In other words, the standard build shows Boots of Swiftness, but if you're against a CC heavy team or an AP lane opponent it might be worth it to go to Mercury's Treads instead of jumping directly to the anti-AP build.

Treat boots and red/blue smite as the way to tweak the overall build slightly.

In this guide I currently have 5 example builds. They are:

1. The Riste (Standard Build)
   
   This build should be used unless you need one of the others. It has good tank stats, good fighting and good mobility, especially with the Domination tree runes. It will work in most general scenarios.
   
   If you don't know what to use, use the standard build.
   
2. Heal Stopper (Apply Grievous Wounds on hit)
   
   This build requires getting an item to apply Grievous Wounds when you attack enemies. Grievous Wounds applies a debuff that reduces healing by 40% for several 3 seconds. This is useful if the enemy team has multiple champs that rely on healing such as Dr. Mundo, Vladimir, Aatrox, Sylas or anyone with Conqueror. Also, any team with Soraka can be considered a heal heavy team. Grievous Wounds is a direct counter to them.
   
   To get Grievous Wounds we need to sacrifice an item from our main build. We can either sacrifice Black Cleaver or Trinity Force. Since Cleaver provides so many good tank stats and armor shred I opted (in the example) to give up Trinity. Instead I buy an early Executioner's Calling and upgrade it to Mortal Reminder as a final item.
   
   This is problematic because Sheen items give great damage on Garen. Luckily, even though Trinity is the best Sheen item for Garen Iceborn Gauntlet can work in a pinch. You don't hit as hard to a single target, but it becomes AoE and provides a slow. Additionally it is a defensive item so I don't have to slot it in place of Cleaver.
   
   The result is I take Iceborn Guantlet in the place of Dead Man's Plate to keep my tankiness high and still get the sheen procs I crave. This is definitely a compromise and I only do it if the value of Grievous Wounds offsets the better balance between damage and defense the traditional build supplies.
   
   Garen's abilities and Iceborn's AoE proc provide Grievous Wounds if you have Executioner's or Reminder so you can easily apply it to all enemies in a team fight. This makes things like Soraka's ult a lot easier to handle. If that's more important than individual damage to a single target, this could be a good build.
   
3. Hit Me Heal Stopper (Tank version where you apply Grievous Wounds through armor)
   
   This build is designed as a tanky version of the heal stopper. The benefits are that you are harder to kill and you get to keep both Trinity Force and Black Cleaver. The downside is that you can't proactively apply Grievous Wounds. The enemy has to attack you instead.
   
   This can be good against someone like Fiora where you have very little kill pressure. Aatrox is another candidate it could be good into. An early Bramble Vest can make their lives a lot less fun. Since we stack a lot of armor (passively and through items/runes) eventually upgrading to Thornmail can also help counteract on hit ADCs as they'll be doing a lot of damage to themselves every time they hit you.
   
   This one is a simple swap between Dead Man's Plate and Thornmail with Bramble Vest being the early buy item. I put Ninja Tabi boots in the example because most scenarios where it seems like this would be necessary would also likely benefit from the added defense from basic attacks.
   
   If you only have a particular enemy on the opposing team that you need to apply Grievous Wounds to, or you want them to hurt on hit, this is a better build than the on-hit version above. You only sacrifice Dead Man's Plate bonuses and pick up the ability to counter a particular champ (and possibly an ADC) and make them think twice about attacking you. If they do, it'll give you a huge edge in fighting back at them.
   
4. Bad ADC, No Right Clickey (Another tank build built to counter right click champs like Master Yi, Yasuo and Vayne)
   
   This build is designed around crit based and attack speed champs. This is a build I made to combat my nightmare of facing Vayne. It can also be useful against fed ADCs like Jhin, Jinx, Twitch, etc.
   
   The idea here is that you will go full tank, so we have two defensive items instead of the standard 1. Only do this if your team needs a tank and understands that you're going to front line and someone else needs to deal damage.
   
   Luckily the player you're trying to counter will often be the villain, so you'll be equipped to shut down their offense AND have the benefit of the villain passive to be able to deal damage to them.
   
   The key items are Frozen Heart for the aura that reduces attack speed (and the 20% CDR) and Randuin's Omen for the stacking attack speed reduction as well as crit damage reduction.
   
   Randuin's active also helps lock down ADCs so they can't kite you.
   
   This is the true "anti-carry" build, but its usefulness is very niche so make sure you understand what you're trying to do when you use it.
   
5. The AP, It Burns! (For full magic resist.)
   
   This build is another totally niche one. I included it to show that there are ways to get high Magic Resist, keep a Sheen item, keep 40% CDR and keep a lifeline shield. The other builds were mostly the same core items, but you can also mix and match.
   
   This build would be a pretty good counter to something like Teemo top, Katarina mid, Karthus jungle, Soraka support and an ADC.
   
   It's very situational and I haven't needed to build it yet, but it's an example of breaking the mold to keep CDR, Sheen item, big defensive shield, and still have the ability to fight as needed.

Starting Items

I prefer to take the Rejuvenation Beads instead of Doran's Shield. It's more gold efficient because 2 of the 3 will be used for items and the third sells for a good return on investment. Also, I'm not trying to trade a lot, so unless there's a lot of poke I'll get more healing out of the beads than the shield.

Doran's Shield is definitely the stronger item. In addition to healing up after poke it gives more HP and helps killing minions. You can't go wrong with taking Doran's. If you're going to trade a lot early it's the recommended start.

Early backs

If you are using Predator you'll want to take a first back at 450 gold or higher. Ideally you get to either 600 or 1050. If you back with 450 buy a Refillable Potion and Boots and use Predator to get back to lane. If you have 150 more get another Rejuvenation Bead. If you have 400 after boots get a Ruby Crystal instead.

For any other keystone At first back you should hopefully have 1050 gold to get a Refillable Potion and Bami's Cinder. In a perfect world you'll also have 300 additional and be able to get Boots, but if not get that next time back.

Core Items

The first rushed item is Enchantment: Cinderhulk. It is the key item in this build/playstyle. You'll get Smite upgraded to a combat summoner and its wave clear is amazing, especially early game!

Let's compare the aura damage to minions from Bami's Cinder for a moment. Bami's Cinder gives 10 + 2x Garen's level DPS to minions. So if you're at level 5 it's doing 20 DPS. Enchantment: Cinderhulk gives 44 + 4x Garen's level DPS to minions. That means at level 5 it'll do 64 DPS. At level 8 Bami's Cinder is at 26 DPS while Enchantment: Cinderhulk is doing 76. That's a difference of 50 DPS (to minions) AoE. You won't need to spend much time in lane worrying about waves after that.

I usually have Enchantment: Cinderhulk at level 7 or 8, but have gotten it as early as level 5.

Enchantment: Cinderhulk also comes with 300 Bonus HP and +15% to all bonus HP, including the 300 from the item itself. So you really get 345 HP and all your HP purchases throughout the game are going to be even better.

All this means Enchantment: Cinderhulk provides 3 things:

1. Extreme waveclear
2. A nice scaling defense by making all your HP purchases worth 15% more
3. A combat summoner catered to the game. Chilling Smite is for gap close and disengage and Challenging Smite is for dueling

After Enchantment: Cinderhulk you want to get the "early item". The early item is designed to be an early power spike even if it's not a completed item. You can then hold onto it while you complete the rest of the build.

For many of the builds it's Sheen because that gives you a great powerspike at a reasonable cost. For the anti-healing builds it's either Executioner's Calling or Bramble Vest. For the example Magic Resist build it's actually a Tiamat. All of those items provide some type of utility at low cost that can be upgraded to a complete item later. Even if you hold it until last item it can be a valuable purchase early on.

After Enchantment: Cinderhulk finish your T2 boots. The boots can help tweak the build to meet your needs, so feel free to mix and match as needed. If you don't need the defensive boots I highly recommend Boots of Swiftness for the Domination tree runesets and Mobility Boots for the others.

After boots you can choose to complete an offensive item (usually the Sheen item) or you can go for the defensive item. Then, get whichever you didn't get before.

Final Items

At that point you only have a couple items left. I generally get Black Cleaver (if it's in the build) and save Sterak's Gage (or Maw of Malmortius) for last, but if you find that you're getting bursted it makes sense to switch those and get the Lifeline shield first.

OUT OF DATE, TO BE UPDATED

• Mobility: Dead Man's Plate, Relentless Hunter, Predator, All the sorcery runes and Mobility Boots or Boots of Swiftness mean you have incredible movement. You can be anywhere on the map in a HURRY.
  
• HP: Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk gives 15% boost to bonus HP. Most of the core items all stack HP. With any build you should be close to 4000 HP at 3 items. Plus that scales with Sterak's Gage passive (and Perseverance)
  
• Resistances: Conditioning scales our defensive items, Garen's built in resistances as well as Courage (50 Armor and 50 MR). It also makes all that 4000+ health worth more.
  
• Wave Clear: Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk burn is crazy good for clearing waves and stealing camps. At level 8 Bami's Cinder does 26 DPS to all minions and jungle creeps nearby. At level 8 Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk does 76. That's a 50 DPS improvement! Add in Judgment and you can nearly instantly clear minion waves or jungle camps. When I say that waves melt, I mean it.
  
• CDR: Since Garen is a manaless champ with infinite lane sustain his only gate is cooldowns. All of the build examples in this guide provide maximum CDR to keep you using the abilities as often as you can.
  
• Non-bonus AD damage: This one is pretty technical, but the idea is that Garen has poor scaling to raw bonus AD (AD purchased from items), but really good base stats. That means items that provide damage based on base stats ( Sheen and Sterak's Gage, for example), or that provide damage based on other scalings ( Titanic Hydra scales to max HP and Dead Man's Plate proc scales to . . . nothing) are comparatively more useful on Garen than raw AD. Also things like Predator or Grasp of the Undying provide good "free" damage as well.

The result is a super fast, super tanky, super objective control-ey Garen with surprising dueling power. Add in the Demacian Justice execute (especially on the Villain) and you've got a highly useful champ. This is even true on the full tank builds.

We take Garen's high base stats and magnify them rather than try to just stack combat stats directly.

Note on this section: This is a very rough draft version of some wave management info I want to get out. This section is very much a work in progress. Expect updates over the next several days to clean it up and make it more readable.

If you want the tl;dr on this build refer to RTO's videos form the acknowledgments section. The videos can be found here: https://redd.it/a574f6

Especially watch the first video (the one from the practice tool).

My favorite part goes from 3:58 to ~7 minutes. Watch as the wave crashes just outside the enemy turret with a cannon on the enemy wave coming out. The enemy will lose 3 or 4 entire waves worth of CS and RTO loses a fraction of that. It's insanely unbalanced!

The opposite effect is shown at 8:25 to about 10:15. Watch as he doesn't crash his cannon wave and doesn't have the enemy wave pushing with a cannon. He loses 2 complete waves of CS before it even turns the tide. That's CS that can bump your numbers extremely well.

The rest of the videos are also interesting and informational for split pushing, but for CS and post-lane wave management those clips encapsulate what this build is all about.

Now to the longer description of things.

Wave management is key to this build. Especially wave management AFTER an outer turret in your lane has fallen. If you take advantage of how the waves move you can get maximum CS with minimum difficulty.

From a philosophical and strategical standpoint minions (and all farm) are an expiring commodity. Once a minion is killed by something other than you or a teammate that is CS you can never, ever get back. It's gone. You want to make sure that you (or a teammate) are killing as many minions as is safely possible and at the same time contest the right objectives, join the right team fights, etc. Finding that balance is what Macro play is all about.

The alternative to you or a teammate collecting CS is them dying to other minions or to turrets. That's CS that is lost. You can get the next batch of minions, but nothing can recoup the lost value of the ones you missed. Once minions are being efficiently captured you also want to make sure that you (or a teammate) are getting as many neutral/jungle camps as possible. Your jungler really needs their camps, so generally this means taking them from the enemy jungle when you're able to do it.

If your team takes a higher percentage of available minions AND takes the majority of the neutral/jungle camps you'll have a lead. The enemy will likely try to compensate by getting kills (farming champions, essentially), but that's hard to do when you're ahead of them through CS because you'll have level and/or item advantages. That's the key to this build: How to get as much available farm as possible while simultaneously having the enemy get less. Honestly, if you haven't watched at least the couple minutes of clips from RTO's videos like I recommended above you're missing out on fully grasping the power of a pushing wave.

Here's a concept that matters for this build:
During laning phase CS is a micro exercise. After laning phase CS is a macro exercise. The macro decisions will have way more impact on your final CS numbers than the micro ones will.

In other words, during laning phase you want as much CS as you can get (safely), but however many you got or missed will be largely irrelevant compared to what you do once turrets start to fall. Playing safely is always better than greeding for that one minion (even if it's a cannon). Generally in lane you're talking about getting or missing individual minions. In mid game and beyond you're talking about getting or missing entire waves. The scale isn't even close.

Laning Phase Wave Management:

PLACEHOLDER FOR LANING PHASE WAVE MANAGEMENT

FREEZING
SLOW PUSH
FAST PUSH (CRASH/RESET)

POST LANING PHASE PLACEHOLDER

After laning phase freezing isn't really a thing you're trying to do. Instead I'm going to talk about waves moving either direction as either "accompanied" or "unaccompanied".

I'll give you the rule of thumb ahead of time and then discuss why and exceptions below:

As a general rule you want to accompany minion waves to the enemy turret and you want unaccompanied minion waves pushing to you.

That's it. That's the secret sauce. The catch is you can only control 1/2 of that equation. You can't make the enemy not accompany minion waves. It's not your choice. We'll talk about that.

In RTO's video he has some simple instructions to make sure minion waves that are ignored are going the right direction. It looks like this:

1. Accompany your minion wave all the way to their turret.
   
2. Check the incoming minion wave. If it's got a cannon in it LEAVE. If it doesn't, proxy that wave and check the next wave.
   
   Pretty quickly after the outer turret falls you should have a cannon at least every other wave, so you can generally count on proxying at most 1 wave.

Here's why this works. If you crash a minion wave under turret then it'll get eliminated quickly by the turret. If the next wave includes a cannon minion then their wave will have an inherent advantage in power over your minion wave and it'll kill your minions a lot faster, causing it to move your direction. Each time a wave stacks up that advantage will get bigger.

In the video RTO shows where a wave stacks up just like that. It clears out 3 entire waves of friendly minions (CS that the enemy team has now lost forever) and on the flip side loses 3 total minions, so you have 2.5 entire waves left! Also, if it's completely unaccompanied you have about 60 seconds between crashing the minions and going to "collect" the large wave. During that time you can take raptors, ward enemy jungle, go try to gank another lane, back to buy, take a dragon, etc.

If you time it right you'll have lost next to nothing and gained a huge CS lead!

The biggest potential mistake is not making it back to lane in time to collect that wave. Giving up 2.5 waves of CS as well as a bunch of tower damage is essentially a losing play in this build.

That's all well and good, but what about when the enemy stays with the wave and accompanies it instead of just letting it push?

Well, we turn that situation into a win as well. Basically, if our enemy laner is on screen, in lane, and pushing hard you have completely free reign to do whatever you want. You don't have as much times as you would, let's say 30-40 seconds instead of 60-80, but you also don't have to worry about your laner. You can easily steal a buff or take Gromp/Wolves in 30 seconds. Once you have boots of mobility you can even put a hit on a side lane in that amount of time and make it back in time.

The idea is that your lane opponent has to choose between giving up all semblance of map control and lane pressure to get CS or they have to try and follow you around the map and give up all CS. You put them in a no win situation.

Garen's combination of healing, wave clear and mobility (especially with this build) means you can turn any wave on a dime, should be able to accompany it to turret extremely quickly, and you can then take advantage of the down time better than just about any other champ in the game.

This is RTO's strategy. I just stole it for Garen.

I'll include here the summary of RTO's steps in an easy to follow checklist:

1. Farm up and take outer turret
   
2. Accompany a minion wave to their mid turret.
   
3. See if the next wave contains a cannon minion. If not, proxy it and repeat this step. If so, leave and find something useful to do with your time.
   
4. Keep an eye on the minion wave. Make sure to return to lane BEFORE it crashes into your turret to "collect" all your CS. (Whether it's accompanied or not.)
   
5. Repeat from the second step

That's it.

For a bonus list, here are some things you can do with your time while you're waiting for the big wave to be ready for collection:

• Get a free back to buy an item. Once you hit level 11 you shouldn't need to back for anything else.
  
• Take neutral objectives (Scuttler/Herald/Dragon, etc.)
  
• Invade enemy jungle and ward/take camps or buffs. Or just hide in a bush. You'd be surprised how scary Garen can get.
  
• Roam to a different lane, ideally where the villain is. (Note: Villain hunting is a LOT of fun. Chase the exclamation mark!)
  
• If there's no more farm on the map, you might as well hit a turret a few times. Why not.
  
  Note: If you took demolish you should try and proc it every time it's available. There's no reason not to. Either way, non Demolish hits on a non-outer turret are the least efficient use of your time and saved for when you can either finish a turret off quickly or there's literally nothing else worth doing because all other resources are already off the map, you have nothing to buy, there's no good roam opportunity and your wards are on cooldown.
  
  Exceptions to my rule above are if you're providing pressure to keep people occupied while your teammates siege a different turret or something similar. If you're staying there to provide pressure for them, that's worthwhile for a short period of time. In a vacuum, however, you'd rather spend the time getting more farm than whacking at a mid tower.

If you bounce between collecting nearly all your CS and picking up any neutral objectives you'll be multiple levels up on anyone in the game before too long.

OUT OF DATE, TO BE UPDATED

Early game for this build is defined as: Anything pre- Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk.

The point of early game is to get Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk (and level 11 as soon after as possible).

The very early game is scripted. At the beginning get your starter items and head to the top pixel bush to scout out invades. They don't seem to be common top side anymore, but it's still good to check.

When the buffs are 25-30 seconds from spawning make your way to the buff where your jungler is going to start. Make sure they know you are there to give them a Smite leash and your intent is NOT to steal the buff. It's a concern sometimes.

As soon as the buff spawns Smite it and run to lane. If it's blue buff you can do it over the wall, but if it's red buff you'll need to go around toward the opening and end up a little further from lane. In either case, don't stick around for any hits or you'll miss out on CS and possibly exp. Just smite it and run to lane.

Play the first 3 lanes like normal, prioritizing CS and keeping your health up. Make sure to get the first cannon. You won't have Smite up for it because the cooldown will be about 8 or 10 seconds off what you need. At about 3:05 try to go back out of vision and head to the scuttle crab opposite where your jungler goes. At 3:15 the scuttle spawns. Keeping an eye on the map in case you get collapsed on take the scuttle. Ideally your jungler took the other one and their jungler gets none.

If the jungle contests usually you should have the advantage, but if there's any doubt just leave it and run back to safety in your jungle. Your Smite should be available and hit for 430. The enemy jungler will usually be at level 3 as well, so you don't have Smite advantage. Luckily, at this point they usually aren't thinking about a laner with the ability. Usually rather than confront you openly they'll hang on the edges thinking they'll run in and steal it last second. I try to get it to about 450-460 then quickly Decisive Strike-> Smite so the jungler doesn't have a chance to retaliate.

If mid or bot start to collapse get out of there quickly. In my experience you don't have any problem 70% of the time, the jungler comes with no help (and you win that) about 10% of the time and the jungler comes, causing mid to collapse about 20% of the time. This means you should hope for about an 80% success rate for the scuttle crab.

If you get the scuttle crab you'll have another cannon minion without Smite, but after that you should have it available each time. Just get as much CS as you can. I generally average high 60s to high 70s on CS at 10 minutes. If you have to back off and regenerate health, do it. If you're in danger of being tower dived and killed go back.

What makes early game good or bad is how much you can safely CS. Dying is the worst thing. Don't look to roam too much, but ping any time your laner is gone.

At 1050-1350 gold back and get your early items ( Refillable Potion, Bami's Cinder and Boots). Boots are last priority. You need the potion for sustain and you need Bami's for lane priority/better CSing.

Once you have Bami's Cinder you're looking to get ALL cannons, all scuttles that your jungle isn't going for, and to start getting lane priority. The overall objective is to save up 1600 gold. If you can get kills and/or turret plates this will be a lot easier, but not required.

Once you have 1600 gold back and get Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk.

Congratulations! You've finished early game.

If you've gotten a kill or 2 and a couple turret plates you can get to this point as early as about level 5. Generally levels 7-9 are the sweet spot. If you're level 10 or more you've probably got some CS improvement to look forward to next game.

At this point, being equal level with the enemy laner (or even a level or so behind) is OK. You'll start to make it up quickly.

OUT OF DATE, TO BE UPDATED

Welcome to mid-game! You should now have Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk. Mid-game is about becoming bigger and badder than anyone on the map. Mid-game ends when you get to about level 16 or 17 and have Titanic Hydra. If the game has gone well you should be pushed to T3 turrets or possibly even have an inhibitor down by this point. Ideally the enemies will range from level 11-15 at this point.

Here's a handy list of powerspikes you'll hit within the first few minutes of mid-game:

• Conditioning should kick in if it hasn't already
• Just got Stalker's Blade - Cinderhulk
• Level 11
• Overgrowth should hit the magic 120 minions dead near you for 3.5% HP boost. This is usually worth about 120-150 additional HP by this point in the game.
• Mobility Boots will put your cross map movement into overdrive
• Courage should get fully maxed
• You should be able to start taking more enemy jungle camps than the enemy jungler (if you focus on it)

Basically you'll have spike after spike all on top of each other. If you utilize those buffs effectively and no one on your team becomes too heavy to carry you should become the strongest champion on the map.

The first thing to do is get level 11 and take down the T1 turret. This will open the map for you. The pattern from that point is to push the wave under turret, leave a cannon wave pushing back out, and roam. When you roam, roam with a purpose.

What I mean is to get something useful out of it. Here's a helpful list of things you can (and should) do. The order isn't exact, but I've got it more or less in order of importance.

• Get Dragon (or Baron later)
• Get Herald
• Get an "obvious" roam (An obvious roam is when the villain is pushed to turret and you can probably get an easy kill just by getting up river, or your jungler is fighting their jungler in river and you can turn it into a 2v1, etc.)
• Get Scuttle Crab (High on the list because it's easy to take, can be done while on the way somewhere else, and it usually doesn't last long so it's got a short shelf life)
• Back and buy (if you have enough for an item or component)
• Roam into enemy red side, ward buff and take raptors on the way out
• Also take Red buff if it's there and jungle isn't around
• Roam into enemy blue side, ward buff and take wolves
• Take blue and gromp if available
• Take enemy krugs
• Go to a lane that's pushed, even if it's not the villain (looking for kill)
• Go to a lane that's pushed, even if it's unlikely to result in a kill. Just show up and force the enemy to release pressure.

This is not a checklist to be done each roam! Make sure to keep an eye on your own lane and rotate back about the time the waves crash at river. Faster if they're hard shoving. When you get back, spin on the wave, hit your Tiamat active (if you've got it), spam your thumb's up emote, and push back to tower. There shouldn't be much they can do to you.

You'll notice that putting damage on tower isn't on my list. It's what you do if there's literally nothing else to be done, or when the opportunity arises. For example, if you just roamed into enemy red and took krugs and you notice that the bot lane has been vacated for some silly mayhem in the middle, go push and take bottom turret (and dragon if it's up). There's no reason to not do it, so you might as well. That said, I'm never focused on "sieging" a turret unless my team is obviously focused on it, we have some kind of advantage, and the odds of success are better with me there. That's a lot of prerequisites! If that's not the case I'm going to focus entirely on getting bigger.

Items to get in this phase (in order) are:

• Tiamat to get some AD and also to be able to completely eliminate waves and camps like raptors in 3 seconds or less
• Mobility Boots because this lets you run anywhere on the map to the point that the enemy will feel like there are 3 Garen's and not just one.
• Dead Man's Plate so you're actually tanky. Up until this point you're pretty big, but still susceptible to burst, so be careful. I start on the Armor components first, because that will increase our effective hit points more than stacking more HP will.
• Titanic Hydra to turn all that HP into damage and make sure you don't fall behind on that.

At this point you should be big, powerful, and ready to close out the game (if it's not over already).

OUT OF DATE, TO BE UPDATED

Endgame is defined as when one nexus or the other explodes. Often if things went well and all your lanes went even or lost gracefully and you got as big as you can this will actually happen during mid game. That's the ideal scenario. If we do get this far and the game is still in doubt you're playing on the clock and will soon start to taper off.

You want to close out the game as quickly as you can. Unfortunately no matter how big your lead is once you hit 18 everyone else will be catching up by default. You're playing on a bit of a timer and will become more and more dependent on your carries being stronger than there's, which isn't where we want to be.

First thing here is to buy Sterak's Gage and keep vision on Baron and Dragon (especially Elder Dragon). Once you have Gage you want to stop focusing CS for yourself and instead try and help your carry get to full build ASAP. For this guide "carry" doesn't necessarily mean ADC. It means whoever is going to be your late game win condition. Ask how much gold they need and, if necessary, accompany them to side lanes and let them get the farm. Let them know that to win you need them to get big and fed and you'll do your part to help them. They tend to like that.

If your team is controlling teamfights and you have no problem staying alive buy Zz'Rot Portal to become extra tanky with the resistances it offers. If teamfights are a problem you can get Locket of the Iron Solari and use it to keep you and your carry alive.

Either way, with any extra gold get Elixir of Iron and possibly sell your boots for more appropriate defensive boots. The time to be running all over the map is over. If you sell your Mobility Boots you can buy defensive boots for 330 gold difference. That late in the game that's a worthwhile investment to stay alive longer. Once revive timers get too long the next fight is quite likely the winning fight so you want to cash in and double down on teamfight utility.

There's not much to say here, because this is just late game League. Make sure to keep Chilling Smite ready for any objectives or to pick someone off to give your team an advantage. You don't really need it for shoving waves at this point anyway.

Back up your carry, push to inhib, take Baron, push another inhib and win game. That's the plan at this point.

• August 23, 2019 Remove Electrocute from the runes.
• August 7, 2019 Overhaul items and runes. Add Unflinching's synergy with Smite.
• July 30, 2019 Add a couple gameplay videos, per request.
• July 24, 2019 Add more to Wave Management section. Still Work in progress.
• July 9, 2019 Add rough draft of Wave Management section. Definitely work in progress.
• July 8, 2019 Add acknowledgments section. Work in progress.
• July 5, 2019 Finish quick and dirty "early, mid and late" game descriptions. Work in progress.
• July 3, 2019 Initial release. Work in progress.