I made it home from my weekly volleyball league this past week in time to catch the majority of the Garen livestream. It was a little tough to tell what was going on, in large part because Riot’s Jeff Jew was trying to talk about everything so quickly that a lot of what the champion actually does was lost. I picked up on some of the specifics in the Q&A after the livestream and luckily the guys at LoL Wikia have catalogued everything. Here’s a look at the Garen skill list:
Innate (Passive): Regenerates .6 percent of Garen’s max health per second after 5 seconds of not receiving or dealing damage.
Decisive Strike: Garen gains a small speed boost and his next attack will deal bonus damage and silence the target. This ability can critically strike.
Commanding Presence: (Passive) Increases armor and magic resistance by 0.5 per minion kill. (Active) Reduces incoming damage by 15-35 percent (depending on skill rank) for a short period of time.
Keeping the Peace: (Toggle) Garen spins around, dealing area of effect damage that scales with attack damage. He is able to move during the ability and cannot be slowed. This ability can critically strike.
Demacian Justice: Deals magic damage to an enemy based on the amount of health they’re missing (1 damage per 2 missing health). Cannot be used during Keeping the Peace.
For an “awe-inspiritng, furious maelstrom at the forefront of an assault,” I’m a little underwhelmed. The best thing about him seems to be his passive MR/armor gain, which from the sound of the livestream is capped, though maybe I heard things wrong. Other than that his initiation combo seems to be a speed burst -> whirlwind combo for slow immunity, which doesn’t make him immune to stuns and certainly won’t keep him alive unless you blow the damage reduction at the same time, in which case I’m pretty sure everyone will be crying OP. The fact that his abilities can crit will likely be decent on SR and overpowered on Treeline and his ult is just another finisher. As soon as he’s up on the test realm I’ll give him a playtest and let you know what I think.
The patch that introduces Garen has officially gone live on the Test Realm. So far I’ve only had the chance to sneak two games, one of which crashed in epic fashion so I’ll have to hold out on the real feedback. I can give some impressions, though, regarding the newest addition to the League of Legends list of champions.