Talk:Garen/@comment-17738098-20130912160134/@comment-3238314-20130913155946

Garen's ult used to have a lower cooldown. It was one of the first things to nerf. If garen gets ahead and buys cooldown with the build you suggest, he gets it every 80-90 seconds (kindlegem + brutalizer). What this means is that whenever you come back to lane against him, you sit for about 20 seconds and then you die, or you just get starved out of xp and gold, which makes you even easier to kill and a burden to the team. The huge cooldown on early levels is there to make sure you're not all-inned every time you come back to lane if you get behind early, and you have a chance to get back up or keep up. If anyone of you remembers, it's the same reason why riven got nerfed some time ago. And that lvl1 damage is anything but crap. If used properly, it will still shave 20-25% of the enemy's hp, which coupled with ignite, is almost 100% sure to get you the kill.

And it's far from being one of the worst ults. It's a near instant huge damage nuke that requires no build-up. it ensures that if anyone on the enemy team gets low he gets smashed by a good flash+ult. It's fast, efficient, and the use cases are good for almost any situation: See low hp hero, ult.