Predator is a very power keystone that gives your boots an activatable boost to movement speed allowing you to pretty much catch up to most champions in league of legends. This is currently what I run for Predator Garen. Take Nimbus Cloak and Celerity in the secondary tree for the all in pressure. Take Demolish to get those extra tower plates, Bone Plating or Second Wind depending on match up, and then Overgrowth for extra HP since Garen doesn't benefit from Revitalize and I personally think currently the extra HP is better than conditional tenacity from Unflinching. You can also use this set up if you are having difficulty playing against tanks as it is easier to trade using Grasp with them. Champions such as Qiyana, Fizz pretty much melee champions that have a tool to disengage and deny your Judgment from getting full value. You can apply this to many other off meta top champions you may come across that have a similar playstyle. Therefore, against these 2 champions it is better to go Grasp of the Undying as you will only look for trades with Q Decisive Strike whenever your Grasp is active. I take these runes when I'm playing vs something like Akali and Jayce when Garen has a very hard time using Judgment after hitting your target with Decisive Strike because Jayce can knock you away and Akali can just hide in shroud. I run this set up pretty much 100% of my games when I am smurfing because this is the most powerful set up in getting solo kills. Movement speed on Garen is very important as Garen is a champion with 0 dashes. Celerity also boosts the movement speed bonus from Decisive Strike which is also very nice. When you use Ignite, your Nimbus Cloak will give you more movement speed and you can use this to both kill or run away from your opponent! On top of that Celeritywill boost the movement speed you get from Nimbus Cloak. These runes go very well together because I tend to run Ignite for more kill pressure in lane. ★ For my secondary runes I like to go run the Sorcery tree and take Nimbus Cloak and Celerity.
I never run Cut Down as Garen almost always has more hp than his key targets during a game (usually enemy mid laner or ADC). However, if you are up against 4-5 VERY squishy champions you can definitely consider running coup. So, what are you waiting for? Queue for top, read the guide, and try out Garen today!Īs for the last rune, I usually end up going Last Stand as it is better than Coup de Grace in most scenarios. I will teach you how I personally hit the rank of Diamond with Garen as my most played champ in this guide. This is shown by many players consistently achieving high elo across multiple regions with Garen as their primarily played champion. However even players in the highest ELO brackets are susceptible to Garen and his simple kit. A lot of times you can laugh as players on a flashy "high skill cap" champion try to "outplay" you but in reality they only outplay themselves! Many people consider Garen to only be good at noob stomping, and this is fairly accurate because Garen thrives against lower the skill levels. EASILY COUNTERED - A lot of Garen's current counters such as Kayle, Camille, and Darius are all popular meta picks that can leave Garen vulnerable if you first pick him in a game. NO UTILITY - If you can't out tank or kill your opponents then you might feel pretty useless (which is why it's important to get a lead in laning phase.)ģ. EXTREMELY KITEABLE - Garen relies heavily on his Q Decisive Strike or Flash to gap close.Ģ. His ultimate ability Demacian Justice is one of the most powerful execute tools in the game.
His passive Perseverance allows for a lot of leniency in lane when you make mistakes.ģ. So Paul Chung, why should I play Garen you may ask? Well, let us go over Garen's strengths and weaknesses.