Season 15 i about 1 month away from starting and I want you guys to know I will not instantly update all of the guides as I will need to do more testing for some of them. Some of them won't be an issue as close to nothing will change, one example of this would be Olaf, where he is basically the exact same. However, on someone like Dr. Mundo I will need to test more before actually updating it for season 15. It will probably take around a week or so for every guide to be fully updated. I will update the matchup spreadsheets where needed.

ABOUT ME

On League I go by Federals1, and since 2018 I have hit challenger with at least 900 lp every single season.



I have also hit Challenger on EUW



I was also the number 1 Darius in the world in season 9.



Over the years have gotten top 10/5 on Volibear, Dr. Mundo, Sett, Garen, Malphite, Olaf, Aatrox and Mordekaiser. Most of the time I will play on my main account, so you can check out what I do there.

I will be livestreaming at https://www.twitch.tv/federals123 , so if you want to check it out and see how it's going be sure to tune in! I will be answering any questions and trying to give my thought process while playing, giving general tips and such. I hope if you end up checking it you will enjoy your time.

FUTURE GUIDES

I will be making more guides in the future, some already being in the works. My goal is to make a guide for every single champion I am extremely confident with, and ones I've been playing for a very long time where I have unique insights to share.
I am currently working on multiple guides but I cannot give an exact date when they will be out. I will post them gradually as I finish them, so if you want to see when they are out for a new champion you can follow and be up to date. To make sure they are done quicker not all of them will them will have a matchup spreadsheet at the start, that alone takes me a week by itself, it's massive.

While you wait in the loading screen, or even before minions spawn, go on an external website and check what runes your opponent has. I use op. gg or u. gg, but any website that show runes in full works. You will be able to see exactly what your opponent's runes are, and it can play a big part in your very first trade and knowing exactly how you might want to play out the first few waves. Here's an example: you see the enemy has Resolve secondary. It's extremely important to see what he has in Resolve. You can check and let's say they have Bone Plating and Overgrowth. Now you know you should play out your first trade a bit differently, trying to proc down Bone Plating first, or knowing that if you go for a trade he has that extra block power. This is something you should look to do every single game to gain an advantage.

I have placed here a list of other high elo Garen mains that I enjoy watching so you can check out to see how they play Garen:

Erislash

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/erislash
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Erislash

Palcopaint

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/palcopaint

Riste

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/riste
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@risteband

This is the matchup spreadsheet for Garen, with every single possible matchup.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hoDv6XMqwK_ABrUaeqM0D8UP6jDbiw33G9m7USmCrLg/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Game Stages xEarly Game xMid Game xLate Game Champ insight xAbility Tips and Tricks xAll final items explained xAll Possible Runes

Boots,Pros,Cons xExplaining boots choices xPros xCons

Depending on what keystone rune you have your early, mid and late game will change quite a bit, so I will place a section for Conqueror and one for Phase Rush

Conqueror:

You want to look to fight the enemy opponent a lot. Garen has quite a bit of early game power when he takes this rune. In matchups such as Fiora, Aatrox or Camille if you take Conqueror you need to abuse it and fight them early on to gain a lead. You can have lane priority in a lot more matchups. At level 6 with Ignite if you also have Doran's Blade your all in power is massive and you can almost 100-0 some champions.

That being said, you are prone to getting hard kited if you aren't careful, and you might need to save your Q for the slow cleanse as you don't have the Phase Rush slow resist. Some matchups will still be lost even with the Conqueror damage so in those ones take Phase Rush for the safety it provides. You can look to farm up for you first big spike item, which is Stridebreaker, but you might be able to get there quicker due to your ability to put more pressure on the enemy and possibly solokill them more reliably.

Phase Rush:

Compared to Conqueror you won't have as much dueling power early on and your all ins will be much weaker. You need to play fights slower and take your time. Abuse your passive sustain as much as you can, because your actual dueling power isn't great. You want to farm up for your big first spike, which is Stridebreaker. You don't really want to fight a ton before that, as you don't have a way to reliably proc up your Phase Rush.

Once you get to Stridebreaker, you can start to trade up a lot more reliably in short trades. You can go in, proc your combo and run away. If you do that a few times it will allow you to then go in for a guaranteed kill. Phase Rush will also allow you to escape early game matchups that are completely unplayable if you don't have this rune.

Depending on what keystone rune you have your early, mid and late game will change quite a bit, so I will place a section for Conqueror and one for Phase Rush

Conqueror:

Because you took Conqueror you can actually buy Trinity Force as a second item, usually it's not as good as you tend to not want to fight in melee a lot but with Conqueror you can, or you can just go the default Phantom Dancer. Your dueling power will be very good, but there will be one issue: if you get collapsed on while you split push, you are going to die 8 out of 10 times. You don't have a great amount of escape tools, basically just your Q , and without Phase Rush you cannot outrun people, so your best option is to just try and turn the fight around, which you might be able to do since Conqueror gives you much better 2v1 power, 3v1 almost never.

As for your third item, you can go into Sterak's Gage or Black Cleaver if you are looking to go into a more bruiser focused setup, or just try to go for Mortal Reminder or Infinity Edge for the high damage. Garen's teamfighting is not great if you have Conqueror, as once you are on top of someone they can probably space you out just because you don't have the speed and slow resist to really escape.

Phase Rush:

Your dueling power isn't as strong in melee range, but your stick potential is massive. You proc Phase Rush very easily with Q +E + Stridebreaker. On side lane you can use the combo and do a constant hit and run playstyle where you chip the enemy low enough to where he is in kill range for a full rotation with your ultimate to kill him. If enemies try to collapse on you, you can proc Phase Rush and speed away. You really only die if you allow yourself to die and greed for extra turret damage/ resources.

Your teamfight power is much better than with Conqueror as you can keep up with the enemy you are diving onto due to the speed and slow resist. You can even look to possibly make enemies panic use long cooldowns/ summoner spells just by going in and then getting off your Phase Rush and runnig off.

Depending on what keystone rune you have your early, mid and late game will change quite a bit, so I will place a section for Conqueror and one for Phase Rush

Conqueror:

You are not gonna have a fun time if you get into the super late game with Conqueror. Forget going on side lane and just 1v1ing, depending on what champion you played in lane vs you might get utterly anihilated and chased down. You have no way to escape, and your teamfighting is pretty bad. The only way you're going to be useful is by being a damage sponge or by just using your ultimate to execute whoever is low and your Q silence to try and offer some form of utility. You can technically still Flash on top of an enemy, but more often than not it will result in them instantly having the team peel you off.

If you can get half of the spin duration on an enemy, sure, you can probably still kill them if you have 75% crit , but going on side lane is impossible unless you see everyone else on the map and ensure you don't ever get collapsed on. You really don't wanna get to hyper late with Conqueror. As insane as it seems, just having a different keystone for Garen changes the champion drastically through the mid and late game especially.

Phase Rush:

Usually you will have 75% crit at this point from Phantom Dancer, Mortal Reminder and Infinity Edge. If you want to go on side lane and provide pressure, you have Phase Rush to quickly run away. Most of the time they won't catch you, but the burst will be at an all time high, so ideally you don't overcommit to pushing turrets. Usually you need to get two Phase Rush procs to kill your opponent on side lane, so going in once, using your short trade combo, backing out, and the second time you kill. There are champs where your first full combo straight up 100-0s them, and you can actually stick on top of them to get the full spin duration due to the speed and slow resist.

In teamfights if you get on top of a carry and get the full spin on the people around the target you dove, you can solo win the entire teamfight because the enemies will pop insanely fast. This is the part of the game where Garen would play most as an assassin, trying to get a pick from a brush and dipping out quickly, or Flashing in and blowing up someone. Generally though, you really want to close out the game by around 25-30 minutes. Garen has some pretty good scaling with his crit build, but there's champions who can still beat him.

PERSEVERANCE (P)

Not much to say here, the only real thing worth noting is that the passive doesn't fall off if a shield fully blocks the damage you would take, so you can use your W to not have your passive drop off or for the duration to refresh. Any type of status effect will also drop your passive , even if a shield would fully block the damage, so Nasus can just W you and your passive will go down.

Decisive Strike (Q)

This acts as an auto attack reset so you can use it to squeeze in a bit of extra damage. The biggest thing to note here is that while you have your Q animation mid air the target is not going to get silenced, so enemies can use abilities in the middle of the animation to block the damage like Riven E , or disrupt you like a Darius pull . His Q is also an uncancellable auto attack, meaning it cannot be stopped by any type of cc, so if Riven Q3 knock you back, your attack will still go through.

COURAGE (W)

Obviously the biggest thing here is proper W timing for the first 0.75 seconds, but there's also the fact that Garen has a unique type of tenacity. What that basically means is that if he has another type of tenacity when he uses W it will stack additively, meaning it won't get reduced in any way, so if you have Sterak's Gage and Elixir of Iron, you will have 100% tenacity for 0.75 second when using W . That being said, you will not be immune to crowd control effect, as there is always a 0.25 second duration that is a minimum amount.

Important interaction note:

The Voidmites (the small minions) that the Voidgrubs spawn each count towards 1 stack of your W, so if you get lane priority you can walk to them and use your spin to get like 12 W stacks for free.

JUDGMENT (E)

This is going to be your main damage and waveclear tool throughout most of the game. When you activate your E the first spin tick is instant and can be used almost like an auto attack reset, this is used in particular to not miss minions under turret by getting one spin tick worth of damage. In the early game a single spin tick will always get outdamaged by your auto attack, so what you want to do is if you know the opponent will outrun your spin and you can get either one extra spin tick or an auto attack, cancel your spin and do an auto attack. This is used a lot, more than one might expect and it's a decent way to min max your damage when looking to get people into your ult kill range.

Another thing you can do with your spin is mask your Q animation by activating it during the spin , so the enemy only has a sound and small visual indicator showing that you used your Q , possibly get into range faster than they might expect.

DEMACIAN JUSTICE (R)

There's not a whole lot to say here about his ultimate , what you see is what you get. The only thing I can really say here is that if the person you are targeting ends up getting too far away from you, or you somehow lose sight of them, your ultimate will not deal any damage and won't go on cooldown. This interaction usually happens when both the Garen and the player he has targeted with his ult Flash away during the ult animation.

Stridebreaker: You are buying this item basically every game. You might have 1 out of 200 games where you don't buy it at all, but almost always you get it. It is extremely good for Garen. The slow is very good and it gives you a way to activate Phase Rush quickly by doing Q +E + Stridebreaker.

Phantom Dancer: Another incredible item for Garen. You get 2/3 spins from this item just by itself, it's absolutely massive how much more damage you get with it and the high movement speed is also insane for Garen.

Mortal Reminder: Garen usually really likes this item due to the armor pen it gives and in most team comps the enemies have at least a healing champion so it's great for shutting down any heal.

Lord Dominik's Regards: You only build this if the enemy team has no extra healing, and when I say none, I mean literally no champion on the enemy team can mega heal off anything, because otherwise Mortal Reminder is just better.

Chempunk Chainsword: Seems very wired to place this as an item for Garen, but it's actually quite good in a setup where you want to do Black Cleaver but also need heal reduction, because you cannot buy both Mortal Reminder and Cleaver at the same time.

Infinity Edge: You can get this when you are going to get either 50% crit total from it or 75% . The damage amp is nuts and your spin will melt people insanely fast.

Warmog's Armor: Very underrated Garen item. You can take it dead last to make sure you full heal from 1% to 100% in less than 20 seconds because of your passive and the item combination. It will also allow you to roam around the map quicker and rotate faster. You can also take it as a second item right after Stridebreaker into some specific matchups where you can use the sustain to perma hit and run. It can be an extrmely annoying thing for the opponents to deal with, because literally any trade that you take, as long as you don't die, you will win.

Sterak's Gage: Very good item to take as your last item against anti burst, or can be done in a more bruiser focused setup, or even somewhere around your 3rd item. Also, because your W and Sterak's tenacity stack additively, it means you will have 80% tenacity when you pop your W , and with Elixir of Iron you go all the way up to 100%.

Serpent's Fang: Very good item for Garen. The lethality from it is a very underrated aspect about it and the shield cut is very good vs a lot of matchups and team comps. A lot of bruiser top laners will buy Sterak's Gage to eat Garen's ultimate and this will make the shield go to half instantly.

Trinity Force: This item is usually only taken when you are looking to hard 1v1 your opponent and you need as much dueling power as possible. It's also good to take it when you run a Conqueror setup, but not always needed. Garen has one of the highest base AD totals in the game so he can use the Sheen effect really well. You can also use it in a lethality focused setup to absolutely nuke someone with just your Q .

Black Cleaver: Very good item for Garen, though the issue with it is that you cannot buy both Black Cleaver and Mortal Reminder, it literally locks the option to buy Mortal , so you can do it in specfic cases where you actually need it as a second or first item for the matchup you are playing vs or if your team is close to full ad and needs someone with cleaver to shred down in fights. If you combine it with your spin you will actually shred a lot in teamfights, almost half of the armor of an enemy.

Jak'Sho, the Protean: This can be done as a close to final item or the final item itself, the stats it gives are very good for Garen and it pairs up very well with your W passive, giving you even more stats. With just this item you can have 200 armor and 150 magic resist, and no other armor or mr giving item.

Iceborn Gauntlet: Can be a very solid item for Garen the slow actually feels pretty good, on top of the extra tankiness the item provides. It's basically the more utility focused Sheen item, so if you don't need the duel power of Trinity Force you can take Iceborn instead. You can also take this when you max your Q to get some good damage and have good stick potential.

Force of Nature: Solid magic resist choice for Garen if you are also looking to get a lot of speed as well. You won't be super low when it stacks fully due to the fact that you can use your W to block damage or cc, so you can use the magic resist and speed it gives a lot better.

Kaenic Rookern: Nothing beats Kaenic Rookern for bruisers who buy a lot of health, the shield is nuts and helps out a ton. If you want to never get 1 shot by Evelynn or half healthed by a Zoe bubble +Q , buy this and they will probably barely break it alongside your W shield.

Youmuu's Ghostblade: This can be very good if you are playing into a very squishy team comp, the burst and speed the item provides is pretty good. You can also do it in a high lethality setup.

Edge of Night: This item is built vs Vayne so she cannot use her E on you so you can stick to her, or can be tried vs Singed as he also cannot use his E on you as no spell of his breaks your shield. You can also try it in a lethality focused setup.

Opportunity: You only really build this when you are going for a heavy lethality setup, but it can deal a lot of damage.

The Collector: This is only built into a heavy lethality focused setup, but it can allow you to execute people from higher health totals with your ultimate , you can do it at almost 40% health in the late game due to this.

Axiom Arc: You buy this in heavy lethality setups and abuse the lower ultimate cooldown to kill people a lot around the map.

Serylda's Grudge: The slow is decent but usually after they are below half health they will die anyway if your ultimate is up.

Immortal Shieldbow: Can be done as a final item, usually when you get this you will have either 75% or 100% crit from it, and you go all the way up to 100% every single spin you do will crit without fail, so you will melt people. The shield is also decent protection, but nothing massive.

Sundered Sky: You can get this in matchups where you really need to sustain up hard and take only short trades. I haven't found anything in particular where's it's amazing, but it can work decently.

Hullbreaker: You can buy this if you really want to sit on side lane and demolish turrets. It works great to give you side lane pressure and it makes it to where the enemy cannot really clear out the wave as quickly due to the buffed up cannon.

Death's Dance: Not a bad item for Garen, though you take it dead last and no sooner. You can jump into an entire team and if you hard burst someone and get the bleed heal you probably win the teamfight, as long as your team backs you up. You can eat so much damage with this item.

Rapid Firecannon: Extremely niche item, you don't really build it but it can be fun to have an increased Q range, but most of the time you basically never do it. Can be fun though.

Guardian Angel: Can be a decent last item if you know you need to trade 1 for 1 in a late game teamfight. Usually late game a single fight decided the outcome of a game, so if you revive but the enemy you took down doesn't it can be enough to win you the game.

Dead Man's Plate: Very solid item for Garen, the speed is really good and even though your Q cleanses slows, the slow resist is not bad.

Randuin's Omen: Can be built vs crit champions such as Tryndamere, Yone, Yasuo, etc. Into Tryndamere specifically you can do it as a 2nd or 3rd item to deal with his crit damage, because his crit chance will probably be 100 very quickly point.

Thornmail: You don't really do this item on Garen as you go for Mortal Reminder, but there are some niche cases where it can be good.

Spirit Visage: The passive increases both your W shield and your passive healing, but usually you want to build it when there is also some healing or shielding enchanters such as Soraka, Sona or Seraphine.

KEYSTONE RUNES:

Conqueror: It gives Garen a lot of dueling power in the early game to take more fights and to actually get lane priority, the issue is in the mid to late game you having no Phase Rush means you can't split push unless you see 4 people on the map, because if you get collapsed on and you are not insanely fed, you are always dying or killing everyone.

Phase Rush: Insanely good rune for Garen. It's really easy to proc it once you get Phase Rush, and once you get 2/3 items it feels more like the only way to die is if you allow yourself to die, unless they have some lockdown tool like Camille ult or Mordekaiser ult . You won't have the early game power Conqueror gives, but your mid to late game will be much better.



RUNE SLOTS:




Triumph: Very consistent rune. It can really help you to clutch out fights with barely any health remaning.


Absorb Life: Can be taken if you want the extra sustain on lane, though it's been nerfed quite a bit.


Legend: Alacrity: Can be taken instead of Legend: Haste, but usally not the case unless you need the Attack Speed for early fights.


Legend: Haste: Better than Legend: Alacrity in most cases.


Last Stand: The best one out of the 3 from its respective space.







Taste of Blood: The only real take on that particular tree slot


Eyeball Collection: Best one from its respective space generally.


Ultimate Hunter: Works well as Garen really likes to have his ult up sooner.







Nimbus Cloak: Generally good rune and the rune Garen will take when he has Sorcery secondary most of the time.


Transcendence: Can be done instead of Celerity.


Celerity: Very good rune for Garen, has solid synergy with his Q speedup and the fact that he usually takes Phase Rush.


Waterwalking: Can be taken instead of Gathering Storm if you have your lane pushed up and can roate


Gathering Storm: Default take here as want to have more damage in the late game and generally the take.







Demolish: Solid rune if you want to take early tower plates or split push a lot.


Shield Bash: Not really worth it but can be okay with the W shield, most of the time never.


Conditioning: More scaling as you get into the mid game and you don't need Second Wind for lane sustain.


Second Wind: Best rune in its respective space for sustaining in the lane.


Bone Plating: Works best against combo but for Garen you can still just go Second Wind most of the time.


Overgrowth: The only rune you take on that slot, Unflinching is horrible and Revitalize doesn't do much for Garen.







Magical Footwear: You usually rush boots as Garen so these aren't great, but if you don't it can be okay, but still meh.


Cash Back: Can be taken if your primary is Sorcery to get more gold going into the mid and late game.


Triple Tonic: Decent rune, the extra pot at level 9 is pretty good, you can do 3 points Q into E and still have fully maxed out E due to it at level 9.


Biscuit Delivery: Can be used if you want extra sustain, but most of the time it's bad and you can just take Second Wind instead


Cosmic Insight: Generally good rune, the reduction on summoner spells feels pretty good.

Normally I don't place a section explaing the Boots choices, but for Garen I decided to do it as I think it can help out a lot as he has an good amount of choices, almost every single boot works on him.


Berserker's Greaves: They used to be your go-to boots, but they've slowly lost a lot of power through repeated nerfs and now I feel like they're not always a take. There's still matchups where you take them, but not as many by far. You only gain a single spin from them now, but you can upgrade them later on into the game into Zephyr.

Boots of Swiftness: I think generally speaking they are now the default boots choice for Garen. The 60 Movement Speed is really good, and combined with the slow resist it's really tough for peoeple to ever catch you.

Plated Steelcaps: Solid boots vs a ton of auto attackers or some specific lane matchups where you wanna surive, such as Tryndamere.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: They can be really good if you need your Flash up sooner vs specific team comps, and combined with Cosmic Insight you can have your summoner spells up my quicker than your opponents might expect

Mercury's Treads: Very underrated choice. The tenacity you get from your W will stack additively, meaning you won't get diminishing returns from it, so if you use your W you will have 90% tenacity for that small duration, meaning you can basically go through any crowd control effect and keep going. This is great in some lane matchups such as Gragas or Kennen.

Symbiotic Soles: I think they are actually very good, especially when you look to proxy a lot. Getting a 4 second recall is great to quickly reset after you clear a wave behind the enemy turret and to ensure you get out in time, as well as allowing you to stay in lane for a bit longer than normal before rotating to an objective on the other side of the map. Once they actually upgrade into Synchronized Souls they become even better, making you very quick around the map, giving you a lot of side lane pressure and rotation power.

+Very good sustain for lane, his passive, doran's shield and second wind combo is very good for healing
+Can shut down dive champs/ carries just because of how his ult works and how much damage it does
+Can proxy and steal jungle camps very easily due to your E damage
+Very tanky even when not building that many resist due to his W
+Can rotate around the map very well due to his Q speed
+Extremely hard to kill after level 13 if he has Phase Rush
+Has high kill ranges, if you lose even 30% of your health he can full combo and kill you
+Extremely fun to play, as funny as this pro is, I actually think he is VERY fun to play with Phase Rush
+Can build both as an assassin or as a frontline bruiser
+Huge side lane pressure with Phase Rush

-Doesn't have a whole lot he can do mechanics wise, he is very linear and can be hard to fully surprise opponents
-Weak early game unless you take Conqueror, and if you take Conqueror then his mid and late game will suffer a lot
-Cannot side lane in the mid to late game without Phase Rush, or he gets locked down and killed
-Easy to kite without Phase Rush
-Needs at least Stridebreaker to really have any sort of impact on both the map and lane unless you run Conqueror
-Lack utility, if he falls behind all he offers is damage

If you liked this guide, perhaps you would like to check out some of my other ones as well. As I make more guides for more champions this list will be updated to contain all of them. Simply click on the words below the champion portrait and it will take you to the respective guide.

Volibear Top Guide

Darius Top Guide

Olaf Top Guide

Dr. Mundo Top Guide

Mordekaiser Top Guide

Udyr Top Guide

Here there will be a list of all the significant changes I am going to make going forward on the guide, so you can look here to see what the newest updates are, or old ones:

Update Log

Patch 14.23
7th December 2024:
- added Udyr to the other guides chapter
4th December 2024:
- changed Boots of Swiftness to Plated Steelcaps when playing vs heavy AD
- changed Boots of Swiftness to Mercury's Treads when playing vs heavy AP
Patch 14.20
9th October 2024:
- added Mordekaiser to the other guides chapter
Patch 14.19
5th October 2024:
- added other guides chapter
1st October 2024:
- added Chempunk Chainsword and Iceborn Gauntlet as items for Garen, as well as a new build called "DEBUFF APPLIER"
- added table of contents
- changed Berserker's Greaves to Boots of Swiftness as the general boots choice
- added Teleport for summoner spell choices
- added Ionian Boots of Lucidity as another boot choice
- added a section explaining all of the boots choices
25th September 2024:
- added some visual flair and coloring to every guide chapter section exept pros and cons, no need for those