Hello! I'm Makior72 and this is my first ever guide, constructive criticism is welcome.

I'm pretty much a Garen one trick who has used Garen top for the past 3 seasons, He's my favorite champion in the game due to the forgiving nature of his kit, and how easy he is to learn. And though I get hate for maining an "Easy champ" the end result is more often than not, a victory for me. Lets get started!

You want Movement speed Quints due to Garens lack of gap closing ability. (More on that later)

go with Lethality and attack marks for and easier time bullying your lane opponent and last hitting.

Seals can be armor or health, this one is kind of up to you. imo health will help you early on and armor will be more useful mid-late game.

Glyphs pretty much need to be magic resist, I cant think of any reason to run any other type of glyph on Garen.

Typical tank masteries with some bruiser/assassin masteries to help you be a lane bully. For your key stone go with grasp of the undying for the extra sustain in lane, this works well with Garens passive and with good trading will lead more often than not with you winning after a brief regen.

The new Dorans shield + 2 pots is my go to now. With the extra damage to minions, extra regen, and regen after taking damage from an enemy champion, on top of your passive regen, why wouldn't you start with dorans? well.....


shut down lanes. There are some lanes where you absolutely MUST shut down your opponent, and you need to do it early. Nasus is one such lane. In this situation you would not want a Doran shield but instead a long sword + 3 pots to help you bully him.

Continuing on with shut down lanes, remember that its ok to not finish an item right away. For example, most of the time the first item you complete on Garen would be a phage -> Black cleaver. However if you need the extra damage in lane, after your first back there is nothing wrong with buying 2 more long swords for some cheap extra damage, and build them later into a dirk -> ghost blade. Just be sure that you are in fact ahead if you are building in this way, if you are losing your lane, you need to start building tank.

DO NOT EVER BUILD GAREN FULL TANK. Fighting against a full tank garen is a lot like being poked by a small child while you lift a heavy weight over your head. Is it annoying? yes, but unless you were about to collapse anyway, you're still gonna hold that weight just fine. You need one damage item, minimum, and that item needs to be black cleaver (especially if it is your only damage item) due to the armor shred, which stacks with your E.

Q should be your lvl 1 ability 100% of the time. It will help you move across the map faster for invades / counter invades, your auto Q auto combo at level 1 does about 1/3 - 1/2 an enemy champions hp depending on who it is, and the silence will prevent quite a few champions from adequately retaliating against you after / during a trade. Max this ability after E.

E should be taken second, as this will become your main damage ability later. E an level 1 is pretty weak, so don't use it for trading until level 2-3 because you will push your minion wave, and wont do much damage to the enemy. Exceptions to this rule would be if you are going to secure a kill, or you are not fighting in the enemy minion wave. Max this ability first.

W should be taken third, and maxed last. Don't forget to use it at the beginning of a trade / team fight right before you take damage. Garen players often forget to use their W and thus take more damage during trades and team fights than they actually needed to.

R should be taken at level 6-11-16 as per any other champions ulti.

Flash and teleport are your bread and butter summoner spells. Garen is a pretty good split pusher as his Q is an empowered auto attack, that does extra damage to anything, including towers.

If you're looking to play more aggressively or don't plan on building tanky at all, you can bring ignite instead of teleport, but imo teleport is still the better option.

Ghost: only really use this if you don't have flash yet. You can gain enough movement speed through quints, boots, ghost blade, and deadmans plate to not really need it.

Pros:

Super easy to learn
Powerful melee lane bully
True damage execute against the villain
Early game sustain through passive
Strong lane phase against most match ups when played correctly.

Cons:

Weak engage.
Easily kited
playing against ranged tops can be very challenging
People insult you because you just Demacia'd them with an "easy" champion.

Assuming you go to lane at the same time as the minions, set up your wave by hitting one of the melee minions twice with an auto. Then a different melee minion once with an auto, and not touching the third. This will set you up for a perfect first wave of cs. Remember also that your Q cancels your attack animation so you can use this to nab some cs you may have otherwise missed due to low attack speed.

Garen is a bruiser. He has no hard CC and therefore should not be played as a pure tank. If your team does need extra peel, build yourself a Frozen mallet. Frozen Mallet will not proc with your E but it will with your auto's and Q. This is pretty much the limit of peel Garen can provide. Your main objective should be to

A: Get to the carries / squishies if possible and kill them
B: If not possible to get to the squishies, utilize your E in conjunction with your Black Cleaver to shred the armor of their front line while your carries attack them.
C: Keep an eye out for the villain, a lvl 11 Garen ulti will usually take out the villain around half health, if they don't die, they'll be dead as soon as you walk up to them and whisper "demacia" into their ear.