I've personally found killing Garen with Cho to be difficult, but at the same time Garen does next to no damage to Cho. So there's that. If you want to lock him into top lane or something.

Just use Jarvan. Have yet to lose my lane in a ranked game or normal game against a Garen while playing Jarvan. He silences you? Auto attacks still do a s*** ton of damage to him

Poke him and you won't ever lose. Easy as that, since he has no ranged abilities.

Also, his ult has like a 140 second CD. It is nothing compared to Darius'.

LOL YOU GOT OUTPLAYED , doesnt mean he needs to be nerfed L2PLAY the game!!!!

Learn to counter him the right way, play with him then learn to play against him, i never lose to garen. EVER!!!

He is in the best spot he has been ever, perfectly balanced. quit being a noob.

I played as garen the other day and I was going against a cho. It turned into a sustain fest. But what made this Cho a good player was he would position himself to where he was facing me so his passive spikes would hit me every now and then reseting my passive. Cho wasn't much of an issue early game and i had a good amount of last hitting and harassment. It came down to forcing me to build mr. Cho starting hurting me more than I could him. There was a bad play on me and my junglers part that really gave him an advantage. Cho to me is a good pick against garen and strong to have in your team comp. That's why I liked their pick of him top.

1 How many champs have more than one initiation?
2 Silence isn't CC?
3 True of any ad bruiser/off tank

Your points are true of AD Bruisers/ Off tanks in general. Garen is slightly OP atm. His sustain is crazy especially in a meta where health is so cost efficient. Plus he does INSANE damage without building anything at all. His E increases damage scaling as you level it. He does too much damage to ignore and he's too tanky to focus.

How can you claim he is OP when he JUST GOT BALANCED? He is not that hard to counter or even lane against. If anyone claims Garen is even slightly OP, blame the meta people follow so religiously. Throw Caitlyn top lane and boom, Garen and your precious meta are done for.

Now please end this ridiculous thread.

Garen's Q is a poor man's initiatior imo. Bruiser/tanks are favorable in general because of this new meta with health and %damage/armor shred. So yea Garen would be seen as a favorable pick. That being said If you can't win your lane against a Garen then focus more on the farming getting those last hits, and hope you can get a mid or jungler to gank soon. As for team fights I've seen Garren come in and clean things up after his team has been shredded. It's quite impressive. If you know that you guys are low health then it's time to back off against a garren and kite him if you can. Go push lanes or get dragon. He's a strategic anchor but sometimes instead of trying to crush everything in sight just side step the anchor and walk around it. You can ignore garren's damage most games to mess stuff up still and he'll usually be in the thick of things and should get cc'd hard.

Garen is one of the few balanced champs where he can carry, its a good strong choice, has few strong counters yet doesnt feels overwhelming.

Leave Garen alone GD, learn to play.

People saying that Garen isnt tanky so focus him are dellusional a lvl 18 Garen with around 11 k gold will have around 15000 physical effective health and around 13000k magic effective health, unless you are looking into bursting all your CDs and ultis on him you are not killing him.

Garen is also an AD caster so take that into consideration he will have a decent burst even without damage items, but once he does QE he has to wait until it comes back up. The best way is simply avoid being caught in such a bad position to begin with CC him and move away from his E radius while you murder his team.