Weird Pick #172: Mid Lane Garen

Mid lane is full of champions who win by pressing four buttons in the right order. Garen's answer is to take the buttons away.

Nobody drafts Garen mid to out-scale anyone. They draft him because the enemy locked a squishy mage into a short lane, and a silence plus a movement speed buff is a very rude way to introduce yourself.

So how does this actually work?

Weird Pick #172

Mid Lane Garen

Off-Meta Build

Mid lane is full of champions who win by pressing four buttons in the right order. Garen's answer is to take the buttons away.

Nobody drafts Garen mid to out-scale anyone. They draft him because the enemy locked a squishy mage into a short lane, and a silence plus a movement speed buff is a very rude way to introduce yourself. Mid lane is also the shortest lane on the map (the part people miss): the distance a melee champion has to cover to reach a mage is smaller here than anywhere else, and Garen's whole problem in life is covering distance.

How to Play Mid Lane Garen

Abilities

Q, E, W to start, then prioritize R > E > Q > W

Summoner Spells

Flash

Ignite

Starting Items

Doran's Shield

Health Potion

Health Potion

Strategy

Don't spend Decisive Strike [Q] to farm and don't spend it to poke. It's a silence, and it's the only tool in the kit that answers a mage who's about to combo you, so hold it until they start one. Everything else is patience: hold the wave near your tower, take the trades they offer at melee range, and let them decide how many times they want to walk forward

Core Items

Stridebreaker

Mercury's Treads

Force of Nature

Black Cleaver

Dead Man's Plate

Sterak's Gage

Mid Lane Garen Runes Setup

Garen Mid Lane Runes

Precision

Resolve

Precision: Conqueror, Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, Last Stand

Resolve: Second Wind, Unflinching

Shards: Adaptive Force, Adaptive Force, Health

When to Pick This

The green light is a mid laner with no dash. Immobile artillery mages and control mages have exactly one plan against a melee champion (keep him at range), and that plan needs a button Garen can turn off. Against them this stops being a weird pick and starts being a counter pick.

The item path helps just as much. Mid lane is where the magic damage lives, and Mercury's Treads plus Force of Nature is a stack of magic resist that no mage in that lane can itemize around. Garen is one of very few champions who can simply buy his way out of the matchup he's in.

Don't take it into an assassin who's happy to farm and roam. That's the version of this game where nothing you do in lane matters.

How It Works

A Silence Beats A Rotation

Most mid laners are a sequence. Interrupt the sequence at the right moment and the whole thing falls apart (unlike a stun, a silence can't be cleansed by walking away from it). Holding Decisive Strike [Q] for that one moment is the single skill this pick asks you to learn.

The Lane Is Short

Melee versus ranged is a losing fight in a long lane and a coin flip in a short one. Mid is short. That's why this works mid.

He Buys The Matchup Away

Magic resist scales badly for mages and beautifully for the champion buying it, and there's a point in every one of these games where the enemy mid laner lands their full combo, watches it do almost nothing, and stops walking forward for the rest of the lane. That moment is worth more than any amount of damage, because it hands Garen the wave, the river and the timing on every objective near it.

The Execute Doesn't Care How The Fight Went

The execute is real and it's the reason a losing skirmish still ends with a kill on your side. It also means the enemy mid laner can never take a trade down to half health and call it fine.

Potential Pitfalls

Anyone With A Dash Simply Leaves

This is the matchup that ends the pick (and it's a common one). A mid laner who can move backward faster than Garen can move forward gets to pick every trade in the game, and there's no build path or rune page that fixes it. Look at what they locked before you lock Garen.

He's A Bad Roamer In The Best Roaming Lane

Mid lane's real value is being close to everything, and Garen turns up to a gank with no ranged crowd control and no way to catch anyone who saw him coming. Every minute he spends walking to a side lane is farm he gave up for a fight that probably won't happen. So stay in lane.

The Wave Runs Away From Him Early

Before he has items, Garen clears slowly and shoves badly, so the wave sits wherever the enemy mid laner wants it. Hold near your tower and accept the missed minions rather than chasing the wave up. A Garen standing past the river entrance with no vision is the easiest gank on the map.

Mid Lane Garen Conclusions

Garen mid is a draft answer. Point him at an immobile mage and he takes their lane away from them with a silence, a movement speed buff and two magic resist items (Mercury's Treads and Force of Nature), and there's nothing clever about it. That's the appeal.

Point him at anything mobile and it falls apart just as fast, so this is a counter pick or a blind pick you regret. At least the enemy draft tells you which one you're getting before the game starts (more warning than most off-meta picks give you).

Suggested Tier: Tier 3

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