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Skill usage
Garen's health regeneration is greatly increased due to his passive, 
Perseverance. This only activates if he can avoid receiving damage for 7 seconds, giving him exceptional sustainability in lane.
Decisive Strike can be used effectively to push lanes, as this ability also affects turrets and inhibitors.- Using
Decisive Strike to catch up with, silence, and deal damage to a fleeing champion is the perfect precursor to a killing blow with Demacian Justice. - Garen can be lethal in early game fights, especially after getting his ult. Judgment deals good continuous damage to enemies. And Decisive Strike's speed boost is good for chasing enemies. Demacian Justice also does extra damage based on how much health the enemy has missing.
- Last hitting minions after leveling Courage will permanently increase your armor and magic resistance, improving Garen's tanking ability.
- Garen's best starting skill is Decisive Strike, as it can be used to last-hit,silence,speed up and has a very high burst at first levels. Remember that a silenced enemy cannot use summoner spells.
- Activating Judgment just after a Decisive Strike can give you the speed boost and the slow reduction you need to get away.
- Unlike other abilities, Judgment remains active when Garen is stunned because it is not a channeled spell.
- Beware that Demacian Justice can be blocked by Banshee's Veil and its damage depends on the enemy champion's magic resistance and health.
- Demacian Justice can be activated during Judgment on an enemy at low hp. This will cause Garen to immediately cast it after finishing his spin. As long as the enemy champion remained near you when you activated Demacian Justice, you can kill that champion, regardless of how far away they are.
- Garen's Decisive Strike 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.
- Courage and Decisive Strike mix well for a powerful chasing, and escape combo. The speed boost from Decisive strike letting you get into, or out of range, while the damage reduction of Courage allows you to take reduced damage from nearby minions and enemies when chasing or escaping.
Build usage
- Garen has no ability costs, making cooldown reduction items very strong.
- The Brutalizer is a good early item for him.
- Garen has high AD ratios, making building AD viable.
- Since Garen's damage is purely physical (except for his ultimate), armor penetration items greatly benefit him.
- His Judgment does benefit from critical strike, making items such as Phantom Dancer increase by little the damage output of that ability as well as his basic attack.
- Garen 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 Template:Mi, due to Demacian Justice dealing a high amount of base magic damage.
- Tank items can make Garen an effective off-tank in combination with Courage. Also, Sunfire Cape can work really well with Judgment and items like {{ii|Atma's Impaler) 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.
- Tank items can make
- A Spirit Visage synergizes with Perseverance, increasing his regeneration out of battle.
- By buying some armor pen and some flat attack damage runes makes Garen really strong in the early game. You may also want to buy some flat armor or magic resistance per level runes to make Garen tanky as well as being able to deal an amazing amount of damage early game.
Recommended builds
Champion spotlight
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