Welcome to my build for Garen! This guide is based on a huge health pool with a really nice damage. Garen is so useful this way, and you will see it once you test this build. Hope you enjoy!

PROS:
-Balanced damage and resist
-Hard to run away from him
-Nice farm
-OP passive for sustain
-Best joke ever seen in LoL :D


CONS:
-Many ganks incoming for sure
-Not huge damage dealer early game

Classic start:

Doran's Shield or Boots + 3x Health Potion

1st time back:

Boots (if you started with shield) and Phage

2nd time back:

Boots of Swiftness, Frozen Mallet and one piece of Warmog's Armor if you can buy it.

-> This is your tanky build part. From here towards, you will build:

1st -> Infinity Edge (Buy first critical chance, your Judgment really benefits from it.
2nd -> Phantom Dancer, starting with Zeal.
3rd -> You sell Doran's Shield and then buy Vampiric Scepter

Judgment is your really damage dealer, indeed. Problem with it, is your movement speed gets decreased when used, that's why you get Boots of Swiftness. Try to use it just next using Decisive Strike to benefit from extra movement speed.

Courage will be used each time you get hit by your enemy / enemies. Never waste it just before engaging, because you won't benefit as long as possible with it and it's a lot of damage reduction. Also be warned which champions are you fighting. F.E: If you are vs Katarina, use it when she uses her ulti, not before. Same happens with Fizz, and many other champions.

Demacian Justice, the finisher. You will become a master using this for sure. Your damage dealed increases with target's lost health. In teamfight's, try to don't waste it on enemy carry (if he's being already focused and nearby die, of course). This ulti is so useful against tanky champions, and it's the best way to score an ace for your team and pushto finish.

I highly recomend you that you get arpen runes because you won't build it.

Your armor and magic ressist runes will make your enemies harder to beat you down, so go for it.

It's obvious that Garen needs to be defensive. He's defensive possibilities are so OP, so just building half tanky, you can become a pretty nice tank in teamfights, and funniest is that you will deal tons of AoE damage with Judgment! Is there any better thing that a tanky dealing tons of damage around? ^^

Garen doesn't have many hard counters late game... or probably, he has no counters. But he's squishy on early game against this champions in my opinion:

- Mordekaiser -> His passive will give you so many anger seconds... is hatefully a low shield, but remember that your early damage is not very huge.
- Wukong -> Not very hard, but his stealth + copy can make you a new whole if he's a good Wukong player.
- Jax -> Well, Jax is a bit OP once he gets his Counter Strike against all AD top champions. This is the only point you must know if you are vs this guy.
- Teemo -> Blind, run, poison, run... early game, is hateful to handle all this.

Other champions seems to be easy, for me at least have been like this way.

Garen tank is probably most effective tank cause his Courage's passive and active. Also has a non-bad AoE damage on teamfights and a really good finisher ulti.

They way you must look is to be unkillable for enemy teams. The build displayed upon, is a balanced build both AP and AD enemy team, but look yourself which build could be better in each time.

Alternative items in each condition:

VS AD:
+ + + + or

VS AP:
+ + + +

As always, I don't like doing a huge guide, with tons and tons of text without real utility. Practice and playing your champion and discovering your play mode is the best way to learn, not reading exactly all what you should do.

Hope this guide helps you a lot! Comment and rate and see you around!