I've been plinking around with Garen since the introduction of the new Black Cleaver.

Masteries: 21-9-0
Runes: Atk Dmg, Armor, MR, Atk Dmg Quints

Initial Impression

Garen is a weird mix of AoE and single target damage with a kit that is good for hit and run tactics.

I find him rather satisfying to play as it is fun to smack people with with Decisive Strike, then take chunks off of them with Judgment, and finally end them with Demacian Justice.

He also has great emotes and jokes and such. Always fun to start doing one armed handstand push-ups just out of reach of the enemy team.

His big weakness is definitely being kited. That part sucks. Forget catching a Kalista.

I also find that he can't carry a team fight, even if you are doing well, if the rest of your team is behind. Which feels a little odd because you can silence an important member of their team and deal quite a bit of AoE damage. It just never seems to be enough.

I've had the most success with him when I win lane and then run around doing annoying things like splitpushing, ganking other lanes, and just generally pissing the other team off enough to get them to chase me around.

6-10-15 Diana "We could win this if Garen would ever join us for team fights."

5-7-9 Garen [standing over the smoldering crater of the enemy team's inner Bot lane turret after having cleared top lane of turrets] "??? Why would I team fight when I can just take their turrets. You guys have Sivir, Braum, and Nidalee. Just move as a team to keep the enemy team busy and run away from them if they try and start a fight."

Match-ups

Talon - anticipate his Rake and shield the damage with Courage. Clear the slow by activating Decisive Strike, auto him to silence him, get a touch ahead of his position and then activate Judgment to chunk him. Try to get 6th before him and if you've played the lane right he should be on low health, combo him as described above and finish him off with Demacian Justice. If he gets 6th before you do, he'll just go invisible and run away, leaving you to farm at your leisure.

Talon scales really well, but he needs items before he really starts doing damage. You can get away with just Cloth Armor and the damage reduction from Courage for quite a while.

The bleed from Noxian Diplomacy does screw with your passive Perseverance so keep that in mind if you count on your passive to sustain you in lane as it will not kick in until a number of seconds (depends on your champions level) after the bleeding stops.

After 6th level you aren't going to kill him unless he is stupid and really screws up while you happen to have a pink ward to reveal him.

He'll figure out he can't kill you and probably can't farm that well so he'll go roam to try and pick up kills. So ping that he is missing any time he is gone from lane and make him pay for roaming by taking all the turrets in his lane.

Garen - Keep your health above half. If you get below that he'll kill you. If he activates Decisive Strike back away from him and count off 4.5 seconds. If he keeps following you without hitting you with the empowered auto, then activate your Q and silence him and spin. You win the trade.

If you feel the need you can also activate your Q to run away from him faster. Since you activated your Q second you will have a little time after his goes on cooldown to turn around and Q him. Fun little game of chicken there.

Get your Black Cleaver before he does and you win this easily, unless you let your health get too low allowing him to get an ult off on you.

Shyvana annoying. Built in Sunfire Aegis in Burnout, her autos do % max health damage if she hits you with Flame Breath, and Twin Bite allows her to basically get off four auto attacks if she autos you, uses Twin Bite, and then autos you again.

On top of all that she is just as fast as your are and she can escape over walls with Dragon's Descent and she clears creep waves faster than you.

At my current skill level with Garen and my game knowledge in general, I would avoid this match-up if possible.

If you have to lane against her, I would recommend not to fight her directly, especially in dragon form.

Try to get to lane first and walk up to the enemy minion wave to draw minion aggro. Once you have minion aggro walk toward the lane bushes to get the minions to follow you.

The point of this is to give you the best chance of getting most or all of the creeps from the first minion wave from the relatively safety of the bushes. Try and manipulate future minion waves to also get them to come toward the bushes, though this will be harder with Shyvana in lane with you. If you get to level two before the trickiness begins. Work to get a minion advantage, dodge her Flame Breath, and then get her to auto you so she draws minion aggro, then Q her and E her. If it works she will probably be low enough on health that you can zone her.

You know you've achieved success if she is forced to try and last hit with Flame Breath. Work to freeze your lane just outside of range of your tower and keep the freeze on for as long as you can, which should be a long time since you can sustain through your passive.

If you can't get to the point of zoning her, then you are going to need jungler help, preferably before she hits level 6th and gains her escape/becomes even more dangerous.

Keep in mind that she does a lot of magic damage, so an early Null-Magic Mantle helps mitigate that.

If she gets ahead she'll either proxy farm behind your turret and in your jungl or roam and try to get kills. You can do the same, but she is faster at it.

Last Hitting Under Turret

Garen's attack speed is rather low and you are probably not going to be building much consistent attack speed. This makes the ranged minions really hard to get under turret.

What you can do is activate Judgment for one spin and then deactivate it. This will do roughly one autoattack worth of damage to them so that you can let the tower hit them once and then finish them with an autoattack.

Pushing Minion Wave

Walk to the head of an incoming minion wave, auto the melee creeps once each, then walk in between the melee minions and the caster minions and use Judgment. Stop spinning, if you feel like you might miss any minions and finish them with an autoattack.

To team fight or split push?

Since Garen can reduce the duration of CC via the active on Courage and he gets a speed boost from Decisive Strike he is actually a pretty good candidate for excursions into the enemy jungle to drop wards.

Deep wards are good for:

• keeping tabs on the enemy jungler
• coordinating a collapse on the enemy jungler
• Stealing enemy jungle camps
• just generally harassing the enemy jungler if you don't have anything more pressing to do
• getting picks on enemy champions that are rotating through the jungle
• early warning of enemy champions rotating through the jungle
• making it safer to splitpush
  
  Knowing when you can and should be splispushing is something of an artform that I'm still trying to perfect.
  
  In the Diana game I mentioned above we had a fed Sivir but everyone else on my team was behind the enemy team in gold, levels, and items. Our Nidalee had died 15 times so she was next to useless. We could not win team fights. Given those parameters and the fact that our team had good disengage via On The Hunt and Glacial Fissure our only real option was split pushing.
  
  And it was working. I really had cleared the top lane towers and the bottom lane towers. All by myself. Sadly I couldn't get it through to my team that they just needed to keep the other team busy while I took towers and inhibitors, so they kept getting into and losing team fights which we would not have won if I had been there. I know because I did show up to two fights and we lost them, despite me keeping their Vayne and Braum out of the fights for multiple seconds each fight.
  
  Now, if you try to split push and aren't having success (e.g. the enemy team is responding well to your activities) then join your team.
  
  In team fights if your carries are fed, then peel and zone for your carries.
  
  If your carries aren't feed then try to get on their carries to silence them and zone them, but be prepared to back off and switch back to peeling for your carries, especially late game when their carries have a lot of Magic Pen and Armor Pen.
  
  You are fairly sturdy but can still go down to concentrated fire, so stay in as long as you can but beat a retreat if it will keep you alive and able to peel.
  
  Proxy Farming
  
  Is one way to deal with a bad match-up. It works best if the enemy laner has poor/slow wave clear. The idea is to farm in-between enemy teams turrets, whether that be their outer and inner turrets or their inner turret and their base turret.
  
  You can also farm two lanes if you are brave/crazy/cagey enough to proxy farm in the enemy base Singed players are notorious for doing this. However don't do this unless your mid laner is dead because you will be taking farm from them.
  
  Since you kill the enemies laner's creeps it means they can't push to your tower and take it without brute forcing it, which is unlikely to happen during laning phase because champions either aren't tanky enough to do it or they don't have the damage to do it fast enough or both.
  
  It also means that if the enemy laner doesn't want to miss farm they have to stay at their turret. Ergo they can't deal with you, which forces other people on their team to come up and deal with you. This can open up the rest of the map for your team to make moves such as taking dragons or turrets.
  
  If you do get caught out, just try to be as annoying as possibly and waste their time. Though, keep in mind that you don't want to miss minions if you can avoid it. Keeping your farm up is a component of being annoying as you can't keep being annoying if you
  can't buy items to stay relevant in terms of damage and defense.