Talk:Garen the Night of Demacia/@comment-98.252.26.207-20110814143107/@comment-98.252.26.207-20110816010632

All right, let me explain. Incoming wall of text~

To the person who said CDR is generally not good on Garen: That's not an argument that can be taken seriously because it hasn't been supported with any facts. Garen is a very skill dependent champ, especially now, so CDR might/should be more effective than it was before.

You don't get Spirit Visage for the healing. You get it for everything. Chiefly, you get it because it's the most gold efficient MR item for Garen at this time aside from Mercury's Treads.

Banshee's Veil gives more effective health than Force of Nature and synergizes better with Atma's. That's why you get BV. There's really no reason to get a FoN on Garen unless you need the movement speed.

By getting a BV, you're paying for mana that Garen doesn't need, as someone above said. This is why Hexdrinker and Mercury's Treads used to be two of the best MR items on Garen. They were the most gold efficient, Hexdrinker added to his damage, and given Garen's naturally high MR, anything more was, more times than not, overkill.

But with all these changes to his skills, you use Spirit Visage as a replacement for Hexdrinker. The justification for this is the extra HP, MR, CDR, and regeneration are all things Garen makes use of. The 10% CDR adds up to quite a bit, the extra HP helps Atma's, and altogether, might end up with around the same effective damage output and defense.

In short, Spirit Visage doesn't look like much, but it adds up to a lot when grouped with other items and skills.

I have done the math on Judgment versus his autoattacks and it's typically better to use Judgment, it just doesn't seem like it.

In that core alone, Garen gets +500 HP, gold per 10, 204 AD, 40% CDR, 51 flat armor penetration (with runes and masteries), 156 armor and 138 MR, plus more. You're getting a lot for only 8,467g. All of the bases are covered.

No one believes me because Garen makes good use of the Chain Vest and Giant's Belt, but Sunfire Cape is not an ideal item on him because it doesn't synergize with his mid or late-game.

Sunfire is a very one-sided item that doesn't add to Garen's damage output. That 35 magic damage is certainly not worth the money you spend to get it. Using both Atma's Impaler and Sunfire Cape creates a lopsided build with some gaping holes in its offense and defense, and so Atma's Impaler wins out against Sunfire on account of it giving the same amount of armor and more overall damage, leaving you with other, better options for building HP.

Building Sunfire Cape and Force of Nature cost: 5,220 gold and leaves you with no damage, but a hefty amount of MR. You get: 450 HP, 45 armor, 76 MR, 8% movement speed, health regeneration, and 35 magic damage per second that's subject to being reduced by MR.

Spirit Visage, Heart of Gold and Atma's Impaler cost: 4,730 gold, not counting the extra gold you get from the HoG. With this, you get: 500 HP, 30 MR, 45 armor, 18% crit, 53-54 AD at level 18, 10% CDR, health regeneration, and gold per 10.

So the only real benefit the first build gives is a lot more MR, but 138 MR at level 18 with my runes and masteries is still quite a bit and should do a good job of countering magic penetration. If we add a Negatron Cloak to that, we get comparable on-demand MR for 5,470 gold - that's 250 more gold and still not counting the gold from the HoG - that can be built into a BV later on (assuming the enemy AP is absolutely melting face), and can ultimately provide more defense.

The only downside to this is that it uses up more item slots, but that's the beauty of the HoG. It can be sold if necessary and will end up making you some gold in the process.

So the real question is: why do this when we can build Sunfire and Force of Nature and get more MR? Because you're left building one 2.5k+ item at a time, which leaves you vulnerable, and if you end up getting zoned or otherwise shut down for a while, you end up falling further behind than building cheaper items. The MR from Spirit Visage should be enough when coupled with Courage's passive and active, which you have practically on-demand every 11 seconds thanks to the CDR.

Rather than build only for late-game like the other builds, this build, I feel, evolves as the game evolves. That's the whole idea.

The main difference between me and you guys is that you build an Infinity Edge and I build Atma's Impaler. Atma's Impaler, I feel, should be more of a core item than Infinity Edge. Ultimately, it's much more cost effective, with comparable DPS and defense.

Garen's mechanics are misleading. Infinity Edge costs too much money to build it before you get adequate defense, whereas with Atma's Impaler, you have the option of building offense while you build defense.

And this I think is the key to playing Garen: Building offense and defense at the same time. Sunfire, Force of Nature and Infinity Edge cost an astronomical amount of money and you're left building one item at a time, leaving your defenses open. Those three items alone cost over 9,000 gold - more than Ionian Boots, Youmuu's, Spirit Visage, HoG and Atma's combined, which gives you comparable damage and defense, if not more because of the 40% CDR. Add to this that you also need boots, and you're just over 10,000 gold with no CDR, the same armor, 50 less HP, but 50 more MR that you likely won't need.

Oh boy. For anyone who actually read that, thanks. These are all the thoughts going through my mind as I look at Garen and play around on Leaguecraft.