User blog comment:Zeowolf0/Champion Appreciation Week - Garen/@comment-109.144.235.126-20121203205601/@comment-109.144.248.57-20121204170712

@Fishing Boat: Don't get me wrong, I loved ALL the reworks up to this point. Eve and Kat is amazing, and I really liked how they fixed Jax and Sivir. Sorry if I came across as bitchy and snobbish, it wasn't my intention. I just feel that whatever goal Riot said they wanted to achieve with Garen's rework, they just failed to do so.

Examples:

1, They changed the fixed armor and magic resist buff to a percentage based one, so now you have to build tanky to get a decent value. But the thing is, even if you do build very tanky, you'll only get pretty much the same bonus as before, as now you get 20% at max rank, which only gives you the bonus 25 MR/AR, if you have at least 125 of both stats. But then they went and changed the damage on his other skills too, so you have to build offensive items to deal damage later on. To me, this seems like a hard choice between tankiness and damage that you have to make, when say Jax, Darius, Rengar, etc. doesn't really have to make the same choice, except they have a kit that is stronger and has more utility too. Old Garen could easily build into a tanky dps, who was insanely strong midgame. Sure, he fell off later on, but he yould pretty much decide the game until then. Now, he loses a lot of early-midgame tankiness. And he still falls off harder than any of the champs above (and a lot others).

2, I really hate how they moved the slow reduction from Judgement to Decisive Strike. Seeing as how DS is his only real gapcloser, you'll have to use it first to catch up, or you'll be kited to death. BUT now, if you want to close the gap, they can just CC you to hell and you'll have absolutely nothing you can do against it. So this little change just made his biggest weakness even more evident. GG.

3, I kinda like the CD reduction on his ult, BUT it does prompt you to use it more, and let's face it... a lot of people will just use it to KS. Which will not really help Garen's image in champ select even when someone competent decides to pick him.

4, Don't even get me started on the fact that Garen loses speed when he spins through a minion wave.

So all in all I just see this rework as a nerf, which he didn't need at all. Riot nerfed his early and midgame power, and didn't improve on his lategame that much. If anything, they made the problems with his kit even more painful than before. He's even more vulnurable to kiting and CC than pre-rework and didn't really get that much tanky to compensate for it.