Garen is one of the most mobile juggernauts in the game. As a champion he can be characterized as a strong rugby player with a big sword.
Although he is the most mobile juggernaut, he is still a juggernaut. Meaning Garen has sacrificed most of his ability for upfront damage and sustain in brawling fights. Garen is one the only champion in the game left with a targeted silence, which can make him very powerful in duelling other juggernauts and bruisers.
He can sustain tough lanes with his strong out of combat regeneration. With that being said, let’s learn how you can counter Garen.
Garen Abilities
- P: When Garen has not taken any damage for a while he starts regaining health per second. The generation of this passive is really strong, it gets even stronger at levels 7 and 11. Keep Garen in combat and thus, he can not regen his health back so easily.
- Q: Garen removes all slowes, gains a burst of movement speed and on his next auto-attack he deals bonus damage and silences the enemy. This ability is really telegraphed but Garens main trading tool. If you see Garen using his Q, run back and make him overextend if he wants to hit you. Keep in mind that his Q does silence you, thus do not try to use a spell combo on Garen if he is in range of Q.
- W: Garen shields himself from 60% of all damage and crowd-control. This ability also grants defensive stats passively throughout the game by last hitting. This ability does remove damage and crowd-control, but it can not be used while crowd-controlled and its duration is only 1-2 seconds. Meaning it is easily played around. Never use any crowd-control abilities upon Garen engaging with his Q and W. Garen has to use W pre-emptively, track at the visual animation and play around it.
- E: Garen spins to win and does damage to surrounding targets during 3 seconds. This ability simply does damage, try to keep yourself out of his range when he uses E. It is easily avoided by kiting him, if you did not get hit by his silence. Punish Garen from range thus, he cannot trade back.
- R: Garen tries to execute you with a holy sword falling from the sky. It does more damage to low targets. Garen also tags the last target that killed someone on the enemy team, his spells do true damage to that target. If you are tagged, noticed by a clear animation. Do not fight Garen, he will basically demolish any melee champion and if he catches up to a ranged champion, he may one-shot you.
Learn more about Garen’s abilities here.
Our Top Counter Tips
- Garen is a champion with a linear play-style which is centred around melee-ranged damage. By playing champion that simply out-range him and has instant crowd-control (so he cannot block a portion with his W). That play-style do counter Garen completely, if he can not catch up to you, he will not do anything.
- Garen has a good amount of sustain if not damaged so, by playing champions that can constantly keep him in combat he lacks sustain. In order to do this, priority in lane becomes important. If you push out the lane first, Garen cannot just hide in a bush until the next wave arrives. Make him vulnerable be keeping him in fights.
- Garen only has one option to trade in lane and that is to run at you. This will make it easy to bait him by stutter-stepping to make him gain a falls sense of security. When he overextends make sure to communicate with your jungler and punish him. Pray upon his tendencies, bait him into bad situations!
Champions That Counter Garen
- Gnar can constantly kite Garen, he can make Garen overextend and punish him with his mega Gnar. As Gnar bait out his Q, if you stutter-step well enough you may only need a Q and after you procced your W he cannot reach you. It is important that you use your Q after he has used his Q if he stays aggressive. If your caught in a bad situation you have your E as a safety card. Your mega Gnar E-R-W combo can set up ganks easily!
- Darius can constantly keep Garen in combat. Garen has no ability to take short trades versus Darius due to his low mobility. Darius has more upfront power than Garen and thus, just simply destroys him. As Darius you want to use your Q on Garen and try to bait him into a bad engage. After Garen engaged you keep the fight going by using your E to drag him back.
- Vayne can constantly keep Garen in combat and demolish him by her silver bolts and mobility. Vayne is such a pain for a Garen because of her mobility. Garen has absolutely no way to get to Vayne. Because of Garens low scaling, his only chance in this lane is if Vayne gets camped. So it is important that you as Vayne keep your lane warded and set up for your jungler to countergank.
Laning vs Garen
- Kite Garen, do not use projective CC spells before he used his W. Use slowing abilities after Garen uses his Q.
- Priorities having the push, do not let Garen shove out the lane and just regen back his health
- Poke Garen, so he cannot abuse his passive regeneration
Mid & Late game vs Garen
- In split-push scenarios do want to keep flanks warded, Garen is strong if he gets to you. Other than that, it is like laning versus Garen.
- Team-fighting against Garen is easy if you have your flanks warded. The only way for him to deal damage is to run at you. So, you kite him and make him only be able to engage with low health.
Read more: How To Beat Fiora