U.GG: Garen Build, Runes, Items, & More

More Stats

Recommended Runes

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Early Game

Garen's excellence during laning phase is punishing mistakes.
In lower tiers, Garen's lack of mana dependance is an advantage that can be pushed with liberal use of his abilities to zone the opponent from CS and getting kills.
In higher tiers, a passive approach is recommended, building up a lead through CS, wave manipulation, and stacking his
W
Courage
passive. Either way allows Garen to transition into a strong midgame consistently.

Late Game

Garen is a teamfight monster.
His innate tankiness provided by a fully stacked
W
Courage
grants him higher defensive stats than most tanks in the game.
By building more bruiser items, along with the Villain mechanic, Garen can dispose of a carry in a teamfight fast while having enough durability to disengage safely. His passive can then heal him back in order to mantain the pressure in the final stages of the teamfight.

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Tips & Tricks

Garen's
Q
Decisive Strike
resets his auto attack timer: chain an auto with
Q
Decisive Strike
immediately after for a large amount of damage in a very small time window! It also cleanses Garen of all slows upon activation (and activation only): save it for when the cleanse is necessary when escaping! Finally,
Q
Decisive Strike
works on structures, keep this in mind when sieging!
Garen works extremely well in engage compositions. If Garen's team has a few forms of hard CC, he can chain his silence on the CC'ed target, securing the kill in most cases while keeping Flash up for another potential kill once his abilities are off cooldown.
Garen's
E
Judgment
applies a 25% armor reduction after 4 ticks which stacks multiplicatively with other reductions, making armor reduction items less efficient: build them only when necessary. Garen's
E
Judgment
does 33% more damage if it hits a single enemy unit (minions count): try forcing the enemy champion away from allies to maximize damage.
Garen's
R
Demacian Justice
does MAGIC damage so it is almost entirely negated by magic damage shields and reduced by Exhaust. The Villain mechanic solves the issue by converting the damage to TRUE damage, allowing you to go through both types of defense.
Finally,
Q
Decisive Strike
works on structures, keep this in mind when sieging!