This Guide has the purpose to teach you how to play Garen like a Split Pusher for Garen is not a tank but a bruser rather.

For starters you will have to change your mindset - you are not waiting in lane to scale, you are an agressive top laner who wants to zone his oponent off CS

Garen Garen's Q is an auto attack steroid that can also reset your auto so it's a great tool for last hitting the cannon creep that lived on 20hp.
The Q can also be used on turrets and it stacks with Sheen's passive damage proc.
I also like going for auto Q trades with my laner so that I weave a bit more damage.

Note: For the matchups with some kind of spell shield like Pantheon or Malzahar (even if you are not against him but you just saw him in the jungle keep that in mind) you MUST auto to get the shield down before you Q.

As soon as you press your laner is going to back off so you can also zone them by Qing and walking up to scare them off CS.

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Garen Garen's W is the most broken thing about this champion. You normally max is last. on Rank 5 it's on 20 sec CD which is not that good :/ so use it sparely.
The passive basically means you get 1800 gold worth of Armour and MR. 's active is a Tenacity steroid and if you hit it right its more of a Cleanse acctually. For 0.75sec you gain 60% Tenacity and block 60% of the damage - that basically means that a Veigar R can be mitigated down to a Veigar Q.. broken.

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Garen Garen's E is or in a less sophisticated way it's the spin to win move.
Garen spins his sword 5/6/7/8/9 times around himself; kitting an enemy 4 times crushes 25% of their armour and other spins refresh the duration of 6 sec.
While is active you are immune to unit collision so if you are gettig chased post laning phase but there are minions blocking you use your to get past them.
Standing near an enemy damages them and if you are hitting only one entity it does the full damage while hitting multiplee entities damages then for 66% of the damage.

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Garen Garen's R is an execute ability that scales purely off the target's missing HP - the falling sword deals 175/350/525dmg +28/33/40% on the enemy's missing HP as magical damage.
's passive is marking the enemy that got the highest kill spree as the Villain; Garen's autos and E procs deal 1% of the Villain's HP as bonus true damage . if is used agains the Villain the damage is does is all true damage instead of magical.

Starting the lane you want to hide in the brush in the middle on toplane or simply wait if you are playing him in the midlane If you must leash than make sure you dont miss any CS on top - you can also start if you are leashing to get all 3 mele minions form the first wave After having taken the first 3 CS of the game try harassing with a or if your laner is mindlessly autoing the same creep try to go for an auto into For the most part during lane we will try to hit the laner with a EVERY TIME is up. Try no to push the lane with for that will make so that you will be putting yourself at risk of being ganged. It's crusual for you to stand in front of the wave zoning the enemy if you have at least 1 kill advantage AND have bought items with your gold lead - banked gold is not used gold you can be 10/0 with a dorans shield and you are no different than a 0/10 laner with the same items There is a reason why we take Ignite on Garen that being the fact Teleport does not work well with Garen AND we are playing for first blood turret so every lead we get must become a kill and every kill we get must turn into 20-30 cs lead until we can simply get the enemy freeze on them and zone they until their jungler comes to break the freeze die

For the runes you have two options that you can actually play in a ranked game and expect to win but they make for two different playstyles.

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Resolve into Sorcery

For the keystone go
Then going down the Resolve tree is a must for is not worth is and is a joke of a rune
For the 2nd row you have options - is not good on garen because you will be getting Armour and MR passively via your so the choise is between for laner that are looking to harass you and for lane presure agains common maatch ups like Dr. Mundo or Renekton

For the secondary tree go Sorcery
It's really not even worth explaning the other runes just know that you want because of the 2nd part of the rune which is amazing because we will build Dead Man's Plate in 90% of our games.

And for your last rune you want scorsh for it provides about 25% of your damage in lane. You just won't believe who much that does on top of your empowered auto + the proc

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If you are playing him into a range match oponent or in the midlane (no matter who you are versing even if its say a Zed )
For the keystone you want as for the other runes you want to take simply because the other two do nothing, after get for the scaling
and finish the main tree with I know it seems strange taking this one but after you stack the bounties you can roam with with ease for the CD on the boots will be very low.
Going down the secondary tree you should go Sorcery simply becasue of the bonus damage and the for the last rune once again you have a choise between which is the ultimate oneshot rune and the which in theory sounds waaay better but is actually a huge loss of power - you see the actually activates as you use your and the bonus MS you get will be added up to the so your actually makes it so that does bonus damage OwO

Given The Fact Garen is deemed to be a tank and yet he is also played a split pusher makes me think I should go ovet the items we build here once again:

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Your core build involves Trinity Force Sterak's Gage and Youmuu's Ghostblade and while Youmuu's Ghostblade is not crutual to this build its lack makes it so that you will get almost no kills.

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How does one play Garen ?

In lane you trade with and Q trying to get a clean freeze if the bot turret is not in danger of falling
If the bot turret is about the fall however you need to kill your laner or force them to back and get the turret with Sheen this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ITEM IN THIS BUILD] - most people will think you are trolling but trust me I have played mainly support this season and yet only this season I have 100+ games on Garen with 62% WR
The rules of thumb are
1. Dont Group If You Can'a Take The Turret - most people like to stand in the mid lane and clear the farm as 5 waiting for the enemy to give the turret up for no reason - Dont be like that. While the enemy team is grouped mid go top and take their inner turret or inhib.
2. Track the enemy - in low elo up to plat players like grouping as 4 or 5 to get a kill and if you die thats bad because you lose pressure and you have to rely on your team and we all know that in solo Q you have no team
^^^When you split you need to think of the map pressure and it you are creating the most pressure.Make sure your team is doing something that would be worth you dying (like a baron or an infernal - because you WILL die. Solo Q monkeys give up Baron Nashor of a top lane kill)

How do you know when you have the pressure ?

Imagine the rift and imagine all the remaining turrets - if the first turret has fallen on say bot then the most pressure if the waves are pushed will be on bot
(I'm sorry I did tyr to embed the image for hours but i could not so just click it ;-;
https://i.imgur.com/a/UWrYNMz )

As you can see the red line is bypassing the outer turret in the bottom lane because we assume it has fallen meaning if a 1-3-1 Spliting strategy is aplied the first person who is likely to die is the one pushing bot because they are too close to the enemies' base COMPARED TO THE OTHER LANES

Try to imagine that line while you are splitting and if you notice you are deeper than any othere lains try to swap say with bot (or with top if you are the bot lane and there is no drake) so that other turrets can be forced. Note that in most cases the bot lane that has won will be the one rotating to take top turret after the 1st blood turret has been shed on bot.
3. Our next Garen Garen rule is - Take the Rift Herald. Most people dont like this objective but a good herald can end the game on min 15

How to use a Rift Herald

First of all note that the ONLY time you should be using the Rift Herald on a tier one turret is when the enemy is about to take the first turret and you need to base rase for the bonus team gold.
normally you want to use the rift on a tier 2 or 3 turret after the creep wave has been cleared and the minions have arrived at the turret. If you remember the red line of pressure you either must be in a lane that does not have all of the pressure OR you have to outnumber the people that will be send to clear the Rift Herald - say you had a skirmish and you killed the midlaner and the support and you are pushing the tier 2 mid turreet with 2 other people. This is a great time to summon the Rift Herald for the enemy will be forced to routate giving you enought time to charge the rift 2 times or in the best case senario 3 times and getting you tier 2;3 turrets AND an inhib

PROS Tanky A great split pusher with 2 items Garen's is savory <3 Good in all comps Easy to learn Rewarding if mastered Great for picking off weak targets with

CONS Immobile if you don't buy Youmuu's Ghostblade Has lots of semi-bad match ups Easily kited if you dont get a Dead Man's Plate ; Youmuu's Ghostblade ; Turbo Chemtank Can't Team-Fight