Garen ARAM Build and Guide

Updated for patch 26.21. Ability details come from Riot’s official game data for this patch; ARAM balance numbers come from the League of Legends Wiki’s champion data.

A Garen ARAM build is fighter items with Health on a champion the mode barely touches: Garen takes 95% damage on the Howling Abyss and nothing else about him changes. A silencing Move Speed burst, a spin that hits everyone nearby and an execute all like a single lane full of targets, so you build to survive the walk in and to make Judgment hurt once you arrive.

The items are ours, read off what they do in patch 26.21. Win rates had no vote.

How is Garen changed in ARAM?

Garen takes 95% damage in ARAM. That’s the whole list, the only line the Howling Abyss changes for him. No damage modifier, no healing modifier, nothing on Tenacity (just the one line). Why so little? Because his kit is already balanced around walking at people, and the Abyss neither helps nor hurts that much: the lane is shorter than any on Summoner’s Rift, but there are five enemies watching him come. The small cut to damage taken is a nod to that walk. To be fair, it’s also a nod to Perseverance, which regenerates a percentage of his total Health each second only when he hasn’t recently been struck, and on a map where someone is always poking, “recently struck” is most of the game.

Why does Garen fit the Howling Abyss?

Because Judgment is an area around him and the enemy team is an area. Riot’s data for patch 26.21:

• Perseverance (passive): when he hasn’t recently been struck by damage or enemy abilities, he regenerates a percentage of his total Health each second.
• Decisive Strike (Q): a burst of Move Speed that breaks all slows; his next attack deals bonus damage and silences. Cooldown 8 seconds.
• Courage (W): killing enemies passively raises his Armor and Magic Resist; the active gives a brief shield with tenacity, then a smaller damage reduction for longer. Cooldown 22/19.5/17/14.5/12.
• Judgment (E): he spins his sword, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies. Cooldown 9/8.25/7.5/6.75/6.
• Demacian Justice (R): an attempt to execute an enemy champion. Cooldown 120/100/80.

Count what the map gives a champion with no range. One lane, so the walk is short and straight. Five enemies in a clump, so Judgment’s spin, which damages nearby enemies, is touching three or four of them instead of one. Minions dying constantly in a single wave, so Courage’s passive resistances stack whether he wants them to or not. And an execute ultimate on a map where somebody is always low. Where does it go wrong? 175 range against a team of mages who never need to come closer than their poke, and a Decisive Strike that breaks slows but does nothing about a stun.

What should a Garen ARAM build focus on?

Health first, because he has to walk through poke to do anything, then Attack Damage and Ability Haste so the spin comes back faster and hits harder. Four items from the current patch.

Trinity Force opens the build: 36 Attack Damage, 30% Attack Speed, 333 Health and 15 Ability Haste, with Spellblade adding bonus physical damage On-Hit to the attack after an ability and Quicken granting 20 Move Speed for 2 seconds when you attack. Decisive Strike is an ability that empowers his next attack, which means every silencing hit is also a Spellblade hit, and the Move Speed stacks on top of the burst the Q already gives. Honestly, the pairing could not be more obvious.

Stridebreaker is second, and it’s the ARAM item on this list. 40 Attack Damage, 25% Attack Speed and 450 Health, Cleave makes attacks deal physical damage to nearby enemies, and the active, Breaking Shockwave, deals physical damage and slows nearby enemies by 35%, granting 35% decaying Move Speed per champion hit for 3 seconds. Hit five champions with the shockwave on the Abyss and the Move Speed is absurd. The slow catches the back line, the Cleave keeps the spin company, and the Health is the Health (which is to say, a lot).

Death’s Dance follows, bringing 60 Attack Damage with 50 Armor and 15 Ability Haste. Ignore Pain spreads a percentage of damage taken over 3 seconds instead of applying it at once, and Defy cleanses the remaining damage and restores Health over 2 seconds when a champion you damaged within 3 seconds dies. Demacian Justice exists to make champions die within 3 seconds of Garen damaging them (that’s the whole spell), so Defy triggers on nearly every execute. In practice this is the item that lets him spin in the middle of five people and walk out.

Force of Nature closes it when the enemy team is mages, which on the Abyss it usually is: 400 Health, 55 Magic Resist and 4% Move Speed, and Steadfast grants 70 Magic Resist and 6% bonus Move Speed after taking magic damage from champions 8 times. Eight instances of magic damage is one walk down the lane. Against attackers, Randuin’s Omen instead, with 350 Health, 75 Armor and 30% less damage from Critical Strikes. Boots are Plated Steelcaps or Mercury’s Treads by the same logic.

How do you play Garen on the Howling Abyss?

• Q the carry, not the tank. Decisive Strike silences the target of the empowered attack, and the silence matters on a mage, not on a bruiser.
• Spin in the middle, not at the edge. Judgment damages nearby enemies, and the middle of a clump is where “nearby” means four champions.
• Courage before the poke, not after. The active gives a shield and tenacity for a brief moment, then a smaller damage reduction for longer, so cast it as the first spell flies.
• Save Demacian Justice for the champion who’s about to leave. It’s an execute, and on the Abyss the low target is always the one walking back toward their fountain.
• Max E. Judgment drops from a 9 second cooldown to 6 by rank 5, and it’s the spell that touches the most champions.

How do shopping and Mark change the game on the Howling Abyss?

No recall means the fountain is the shop, at the start and after each death, and the lane’s relics are the only healing between. For Garen that undercuts Perseverance: the passive wants him unstruck for a while, and a lane with five pokers rarely grants it, so the relics do the job his passive usually does. The buy order follows that. Health components first, so the walk to each fight doesn’t end before the fight does. Then the damage. Finish Trinity Force before Stridebreaker. The catch is the Sheen component, which does little until the whole item is there, so if the gold is short take the Health piece of Stridebreaker first (Garen with 450 extra Health is a Garen who arrives).

The snowball spell, Mark, is unique to ARAM: land it and you may dash to the champion it struck. The pick is locked before the game loads. On Garen it’s the dash the kit never had, and 175 range means that matters more than on most champions: snowball, dash, Decisive Strike silence, Judgment, and the enemy mage has gone from safe to silenced in a straight line. Funny enough, the thing that makes this work is that nobody expects Garen to arrive from range, because in every other game mode he can’t.

Is Garen good in ARAM?

Yes, as a front line that executes. The 95% damage taken is the only help he gets and the only help he needs, because the map supplies a short walk, a clumped team for Judgment and a steady stream of low targets for Demacian Justice. What he can’t do is reach a team that refuses to be reached, and a poke composition that kites him for the whole lane turns Garen into a man spinning in an empty corridor.

The top laners who do that on the Rift are in the Garen counters guide. Our guide to LoL roles explains what the top lane asks of a fighter. Everything above has a page with patch history in the item database, and cosmetics sit on the Garen skins page.

Long story short: Health first, Q the mage, spin the middle, execute the one who runs. That’s the Garen ARAM build in a sentence. Then you respawn, buy the next Health piece, and start the walk over.

FAQ

Is Garen nerfed in ARAM?

No, slightly the opposite. The League of Legends Wiki’s champion data for patch 26.21 lists only one modifier for him on the Howling Abyss: 95% damage taken.

What items does the Garen ARAM build use?

Trinity Force, Stridebreaker, Death’s Dance and Force of Nature, or Randuin’s Omen against attackers, with Plated Steelcaps or Mercury’s Treads.

Does Perseverance work on the Howling Abyss?

It works the same way, regenerating a percentage of his total Health each second when he hasn’t recently been struck, but constant poke on a single lane means it’s active far less often than on Summoner’s Rift.

Why Stridebreaker on the Howling Abyss?

Breaking Shockwave slows nearby enemies by 35% and grants 35% decaying Move Speed per champion hit for 3 seconds, and on the Abyss it usually hits several champions at once, which solves his lack of a gap closer.

Is this build based on win rates?

No. It’s assembled from Garen’s patch 26.21 ability text and the item data, with no statistics in the mix.