Day 1 impressions on Season 9 Garen -

I got to play four games today (while having double ping the entire game for some reason, rip) in pre-season 9 and I can already tell you guys that this season (if Garen does not get buffs/good changes) is going to be tougher than season 8.



Let's talk about my observations of the current high-elo meta and how this impacts Garen.



1. In high elo it's incredibly difficult to tell who you are laning against. Garen runes mean so much for the champion to survive laning phase. Grasp literally can be a saving grace vs Camille/Renekton but if you lock in Grasp with the anticipation that the enemy Aatrox/Kennen is going middle but it happens to ACTUALLY be Aatrox/Kennen top - congratulations - you're screwed.



Garen is a tremendously weak laner in high elo, which means your runes must be so precise that if you choose foolishly you will have an increased chance of dying or being heavily denied because the rune you took is worthless vs the laner you're actually up against. All successful midlane/toplane champions in the game right now can easily go mid instead of top (or vice versa) and it heavily turns the game for a Garen main to guess (and hit lucky as to who he's actually going up against).



Therefore Predator and Phase Rush, with maybe Glacial Augment may be the top three rune pages to take imo. I expect Dark Harvest to be nerfed into the pre-season so I am not investing in that rune as I am thinking long-term. Grasp requires stacking in lane to have real value so chances are taking the rune will be very high-variance (unless I take ghost/flash, possibly). Precision and Inspiration are much more attractive secondary choices right now as they are no longer giving difficult stat hoops for Garen to jump through.



If I were to possibly take ghost/flash Garen every game, I could allieviate then problem of accidentally getting a ranged matchup instead of a melee. However, this doesn't solve the problem fully as ghost isn't really as good vs the likes of Renekton, Fiora, Trynd as you forfeit the chance to kill them with ignite in some situations.



I don't have the answers I need yet but right now Klepto Garen is looking very unlikely because of this wildcard matchup problem. After/if Dark Harvest gets nerfed, the rune will need to have something real attractive for Garen to be picked over Predator with Ignite.



2. This Turret Plating system might be really bad for Garen. Keeping your tier 1 is okay, however if you're up against a laner who wins in all trades and take Demolish - prepare to give them a ton of gold by taking plates. Sion, Aatrox, Camille, Renekton, Grasp Teemo, Annie, Urgot, Fiora, Tahm Kench, A good Chogath, Jayce, Phase Rush Quinn/Kennen, Ornn, Darius, and more are going to feast on this aspect of Garen not being able to match their damage and having to forfeit priority and the tower gold.



To slowly curve this problem to be tolerable for Garen - spin max might actually surface again. The reason this could be true is that if you're at your tower and you're getting zero jungler help - chances are you might be PvE'ing at tower. The faster you can get the wave off your tower - the less likely your laner will have a chance to chunk the tower with Demolish and get Plate Gold. You also shorten the window that you can get tower dived while you have 6-10 minions under your tower.



Tiamat, Spin Max, Cinderhulk/smite and an extra point in W could all be possible choices to handle this problem, but it appears that defending the tower as Garen is as much of a priority as it was last season - perhaps even more.



3. Jungle is appearing to remain the same, which means Garen can't help his jungler early in many situations. Garen taking ghost/flash might allow you to reach your jungler first to burst the enemy jungler for a kill, but if that cannot be done in other situations - Garen will not be able to help his jungler contest camps or Rift Scuttler. Nasus is plagued with the same problems that Garen has right now. Garen is thriving just a tiny bit better because he doesn't need to hit minions to heal - but both champions make things immensely difficult for their junglers because there is almost no gaurantees that their toplaner can actually leave lane to help.



So, finally -



Situational but highly effective runepages for a specific matchup are dying out, and many Garen players I think will have to take generic (safe-vs-all) pages that hinder his scaling potentially if he/she doesn't guess their matchup correctly.



No rune page and playstyle is safe for Garen right now other than Predator and some rune that can work with the matchup lottery that they were provided with when used with Ghost/Flash. Predator works vs almost everyone because enhancing Garen's mobility is a priority above anything else for the chanpion in this state of the game. Regardless - expect another season of painfully sitting under tower, trying to not get tower dived.



Some Garen players prefer Predator top. I really prefer Midlane with Predator so you guys and girls might see me mid a bit more than top this season. We'll see.

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