Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Spotlight featuring Garen, the Might of Demacia.
Garen is a melee fighter, and the most respected warrior of Demacia’s fighting elite.
With zero-cost spells, Garen has a highly aggressive playstyle, and can execute key opponents while boldly holding the front line in battle.
With his sturdy foundation of resistances and regeneration, Garen makes a formidable solo laner.
Garen’s passive is Perseverance.
If Garen avoids taking damage for a while, he’ll begin rapidly regenerating a percentage of his max health every second.
A noteworthy exception is that damage from lane minions won’t cancel the effect, or prevent Perseverance from activating.
Upon activation, Decisive Strike removes all slows and boosts Garen’s movement speed for a few seconds.
His next basic attack against any unit or structure also deals bonus damage and silences the target for a short time.
This skill can also critically strike.
In tough situations, Garen can use Decisive Strike to silence an attacker and speed away to safety.
Courage has a passive and active effect.
The passive gives Garen a percentage increase to all bonus armor and magic resist from items, runes, masteries and abilities.
Activating the ability further improves Garen’s defenses, mitigating a percentage of all incoming damage and reducing the duration of crowd control effects for a few seconds.
You should activate courage just before tanking hard hitting attacks and spells to significantly boost your survivability.
Judgment is Garen’s primary damage spell.
Garen spins around furiously, dealing physical damage at regular intervals without disrupting his movement.
Each individual hit has a chance to critically strike, but Garen can’t use basic attacks or cast Decisive Strike while Judgment is active.
He can, however, reactivate the ability to cancel the spin.
Judgment is also a great tool for quickly clearing minion waves as you rank up.
Even with no damage items, Garen is able to quickly chop up the caster minions with a rank 3 cast.
Demacian Justice is a high-damage, single-target execute.
Garen deals a flat amount of magic damage to a single enemy champion, along with a substantial bonus based on the target’s missing health.
Since his ultimate is used to finish off an opponent, it will also conveniently cancel his spin when used during Judgment.
Keep in mind that properly timing Garen’s ultimate is key to maximizing damage, so make sure not to use it too early or your opponent may escape with a sliver of health.
Before we get into gameplay, let’s take a look at one of Garen’s key ability combos to chase down an enemy for a kill.
For now, we’ll call this one “Brush with Death”.
Leading with his Q to silence Teemo and give himself a speed boost, Garen uses E to whittle him down enough to secure a kill with his ultimate.
W’s completely optional here, and you can use it whenever to boost your defense.
When laning, Garen can take advantage of his low cooldowns and zero-cost spells to bully his opponent early on.
Using Decisive Strike and Judgment, Garen can out-trade and out-push the enemy Shen, forcing him to retreat to his turret.
Though his Q is a great tool for trading, make sure not to use it too early against opponents with a stun or snare.
If you charge in too hastily, they’ll be able to counter - plus you’ll have wasted your escape if something goes wrong.
Even when you’re behind, Perseverance gives Garen enough regeneration to stay in lane where other champions might need to recall to base.
After sustaining heavy damage from a gank, Garen’s able to heal nearly to full health while farming carefully under his turret.
Since Decisive Strike silences your target, keep an eye out for opportunities to cancel enemy channels.
Here Garen expects Shen to ult in on an ally, so he flashes in to disrupt Stand United and save his teammate.
With all his abilities combined, Garen is a formidable tank that can sustain heavy damage and bait out fights.
With Shen and Zac ready to dive the turret, Garen deals as much damage to them as possible, using Courage to absorb additional damage as he stalls to wait for Orianna to bail him out.
Cautiously rejoining the fight, despite the fact he’s low on health and far behind on items, he’s able to help finish off Shen and pick up two kills for his team.
Garen’s ultimate has a decent cast range, making him a lot more difficult to escape from once he lands a Decisive Strike.
Charging into this fight, he uses his full combo on Lux, then heads straight for Tristana.
After scaring her off, Zac intervenes and Garen switches targets.
Helping his team take out Zac, he uses Courage to tank Tristana’s attacks, knowing he’s positioned to take her out if she focuses anyone behind him.
But, after Thresh lands a well-aimed hook, Garen sees the opportunity to follow up with Q, then flash and ignite for the kill.
Garen’s a supreme bully in teamfights, and can often go charging after the high damage dealers in the back line.
With his team falling behind in the fight, he chases down Corki, using Demacian Justice and Ignite to secure the kill before escaping with the speed boost from Decisive Strike.
When building Garen, focus on a mix of armor penetration, cooldown reduction, attack damage and defense.
A quick Brutalizer makes a great early offensive item.
For runes, try Armor Penetration Marks, Armor Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs and Attack Damage Quintessences.
For masteries, try 9/21/0, taking armor penetration and cooldown reduction in Offense, along with health and resistances in Defense.
For Summoner Spells, try Ghost or Flash, and Ignite to help you secure kills in case an adorable Teemo survives your ultimate.
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