Talk:Garen/@comment-15020375-20140217212613/@comment-15244341-20140313192915

Smart use of Decesive Strike? Mine still has me running at people to apply it, unless you mean following up initiation or using it to purge slows which only does so much against say, Thresh (the one support I see 85% of the time with two crippling slows), Lulu (which I see mid now almost always and basically peels Garen off whoever she wants) or maybe Leona.

Judgement is good, I love that skill. Just notice how the AoE is on a guy that is not getting to the backline if the enemy team staggers CC or kites him back. Admittedly it will not always be applicable, but coming from playing a lot of Garen lately I'll say you will be 100% peeled by competent supports. Plus the appallingly high CD on it. Or any of his skills, actually.

As for Renek, yes. He does have a really strong lane against most top bruisers. That I didn't deny. It's basically the reason to pick him, for me. Go get Garen against Renek, both of your late games are bad, but your early is actually better and your chances of killing someone you do get to are better than his. Or to make Riven cry.

As for Mundo, notice how you are not zoning him when he can actually spam cleaver to farm and farm under turret when you inevitably push lane. Because that is how Mundo plays against 75% of the top laners since Mundo is not a good duelist. Oh. And mundo outscales Garen badly, no buts admitted.

Understand this is not me saying Garen sucks, go play Shyvanna. But Garen does have the Udyr syndrome. When the enemy team is not prepared to deal with him (no slows, no exhaust, no proper peeling/movility) your teamfighting is going to be bonkers. You get to the backline, you stab their tongues (or however one silences people by swording them) and then spin on them to finally execute. And hes pretty good at it. But Garen IS predictable in and out of teamfights. It is hard to deal with good Garens because they will optimise the activations of his skills and fully exploit all his numerous assets to the max, but his threat range and in game choices are set in stone. Late game he can't deal enough damage to a beefy frontline to make going for them worth it, so he has to try to go for the backline, which may prove far too hard for him (Lucian, for example, is hard as heck to pin down).

This, in my opinion, is why pros prefer Renekton. He is better than Garen at reliably getting to a backline thanks to his dashes. While he has less damage, his is more reliable since he doesn't need to crit to hit damage spikes. He also has a stun (an actual stun) and thrives in teamfights in which he gets focused thanks to his empowered Q and fury mechanics. Garen hits harder and scales better both offensively and defensively, but Renekton is pretty much more reliable than Garen is at that whole thing. He does have a higher skill cap and ceiling than Garen does, though, so that is one thing against him.