Garen/Strategy

Skill usage

 * health regeneration is greatly increased due to his passive, . This only activates if he can avoid receiving damage for 7 seconds, granting him exceptional sustainability in lane.
 * can be used effectively to push lanes, as this ability also affects structures (turrets and inhibitors).
 * Using to catch up with, silence, and deal damage to a fleeing champion is the perfect precursor to a killing blow with.
 * can be lethal in early game fights, especially after getting his ultimate. deals good continuous damage to enemies. And  speed boost is good for chasing enemies.  also does extra damage based on how much health the enemy has missing.
 * Last hitting minions after leveling will permanently increase your armor and magic resistance, improving  tanking ability.
 * Getting within the first few levels along with  can help in farming minions to increase your armor and magic resist
 * best starting skill is, as it can be used to last-hit, silence, or speed himself up, and has very high damage at early levels.
 * Because of strong early game damage from, lanes well with a partner with an early game stun such as  or.
 * Activating just after a  will grant you both the speed boost and slow reduction, greatly increasing movement.
 * Unlike other abilities, remains active when  is stunned because it is not a channeled spell.
 * Beware that can be blocked by  and its damage depends on the enemy champion's magic resistance and health.
 * can be activated during on an enemy at low hp. This will cause  to immediately cast it after finishing his spin, as long as the enemy champion is within range of  when the spin ends.
 * makes him a powerful chaser, easily closing the gap and silencing enemies before they can cast a slow, when that does happen he can simply activate Judgement to remove it. It can also be used to make a swift escape.
 * and mix well for a powerful chasing, and escape combo. The speed boost from  letting you get into, or out of range, while the damage reduction of  allows you to take reduced damage from nearby minions and enemies when chasing or escaping.

Build usage

 * has no ability costs, making cooldown reduction items very strong.
 * is a good early item for him.
 * has high AD ratios, making building AD viable.
 * Since damage is purely physical (except for his ultimate), armor penetration items greatly benefit him.
 * As benefits from critical strike, items such as  increase the ability's damage output as well as his basic attack.
 * also grants movement speed, which helps keep himself in range of opponents when using.
 * does not get any bonuses from ability power, rendering it completely useless on him. He can, however, choose between damage and off-tank roles, having excellent affinities for both of them. He does, however, benefit from magic penetration such as, due to dealing a high amount of base magic damage.
 * Tank items can make an effective off-tank in combination with . Also,  can work really well with  and items like  can make an off-tank Garen a serious threat.
 * However, Garen's lack of hard crowd control makes it difficult for him to fulfill the main tank role, making him just an initiator/disrupter offtank.
 * and synergize with, easily allowing him to regenerate ~1% of his health each second.
 * Using armor penetration and flat attack damage runes further improves early game. Armor/magic resistance runes are also recommended, for tankiness.

Countering

 * damage output is very high early game; avoid early confrontations.
 * Harass in lane every few seconds, if possible, to minimize the effect of.
 * When face-checking bushes, be very careful. players have a tendency to hide in bushes, due to the synergy between his silence from  and damage from.
 * is a cooldown based champion. Therefore all of his spell cooldowns are very high. Try to attack him when they are on cooldown.
 * Ranged champions can stop Perserverance (unless goes farther back, which has him give up last-hits) and farm in lane while a safe distance from him - generally also having abilities to let them keep away from  even if he charges at them. Ranged carries in particular will scale far stronger than  in this situation, avoiding his early-game advantages while securing their own late-game advantages.
 * Be very cautious when low on health and is off cooldown.
 * It is often worth the investment to purchase armor to counter high physical damage.
 * Like most melee champions, is quite vulnerable to ranged harassment.

Champion Spotlight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcHIxooCfow