Talk:Garen/@comment-29815662-20160831104430

When Garen's rework first came out, I was absolutely dominating with him. Playing the crap out of him took me from silver 2 all the way to gold 1. He became almost perma banned. I was destroying gnars and teemos. Just flash, silence, spin, ult - done. Then, seemingly overnight, he became virtually unplayable. I couldn't figured out what happened. The 5 movement speed nerf really didn't seem all that bad. But in hindsight I figured it out.

Part of it was his villain mechanic. For one, it used to make people who killed you the villain, so if your lane opponent got an early kill on you, it was actually advantageous because you came back doing a ton of %hp true dmg. Plus, it was bugged causing the true dmg to calculate of off garen's hp rather than the villain's. That meant building hp not only made you tankier, but also significantly increased your villain dmg making it really easy to make a come back.

The other factor was the introduction of the keystone masteries. Thunderlords was a massive buff to ranged casters against melee brawlers. Whether you take grasp of the undying, or thunderlords on garen, it's not going to help you in the same way thunderlords does on a ranged caster like gnar or teemo. Whether you're farming, or attempting to poke, it's a lot easier for them to proc thunderlords than it is for you to proc thunderlords or grasp on the undying on them. You used to be able to take some punishment with garen while you were last hitting, but now you can't get anywhere near a ranged caster because they'll proc thunderlords and chunk half your hp with 1 ability and 2 autos.

That and a lot of times the only way garen can win a trade is by Qing his opponent and running away while they're silenced. This strategy doesn't work with thunderlords at all, and can be tricky to pull off with grasp of the undying because you have to be in combat with minions for a few seconds. Silenced or not, all a ranged opponent has to do is chase you with 3 autos to proc thunderlords meaning you either lose the trade every time or spin on top of them while they auto-kite-auto flee into their minion line so you can take dmg from their wave and now have to flash away with 1 hp so you can cry while you walk back to base.

Goodbye Garen. May you rest in peace for another 4 years while you wait for another temporarily beneficial rework.