The more I read, the more it sounds like top lane in general needs the rework, not Garen.

I'm pretty sure that this is the statement that everyone is peeved about. You say that Garen was "kind of too strong early game". Which infact he wasn't. Unless he was used as a counterpick to a specific pool of champions he beats.

Instead of just nerfing early buffing late, you took away his actual laning presence to give him this late game "power" that seems it won't change much at all considering his ratios were only slightly increased.

My problem with your critical strike argument is that you're making a AD caster, with already limited itemization, scale on a RNG that he can't purely focus on because he is squishy when you focus that.

Garen will now be: Easier to counter in his already weak, kitable laning phase. Without these very few and far between counterpicks, he will not be able to build presence in the game if he can't duel the opponent anymore because they can just kite him in circles around minions. Garen doesn't have optimal movespeed, and taking away the duration of his Decisive Strike only weakens his chase power in lane, which he needs to even get his combo off.

That seems to be what Xypherous is hinting at, possibly, though he isn't giving us too much insight on the specifics as of yet haha

come to think of it, its a little weird. you said you gave him more lategame tankyness, with his new w, so he wouldnt blow up, if built more offensive. on the other hand the e was changed, so it doesnt profit from building a lot of flat ad anymore.

will it still do comparable more damage than before, when i build a ghostblade, maw and infinity edge on him due to the better crit scaling? (thats a pretty expensive build by the way).

Garen counters Riven really hard in lane. I actually use him as a counterpick for Riven because I know I will win my lane really hard if I do pick him.

But, other than that, I don't use him at all really.

It's not just his ultimate I'm referring to.

Say at levels 11 and 16, when you level his ult, it grants a passive that reduces the cooldown of all his other abilities by 1 or 2 seconds (or the like).

Now he can really feel like that fast moving linebreaker lategame, without any power increase earlygame.

As a side note, resource opportunity cost carries different weighting.

If you fail an engagement, having low mana is almost always secondary to having low health (sometimes fatally low health).

Ability-restricting resources are basically limiters only in cases where you can continually apply your abilities.

If doing so would kill you, and/or your abilities are not defensive, low mana isn't much of a problem.
(You're in "base-or-die" territory anyway.)

The case of you missing with your abilities is also present, but this is kit based.
Darius and Garen don't have to worry too much about missing.

Further, if the duration of field-presence is short, missing doesn't matter much as you are free to return to base.

@Xypherous - The time you've spent talking to us and the insight you've given us among numerous Garen threads has been nothing short of awesome, even though you've said yourself that you're not the only one involved in these changes. That said, I'd like to thank you for putting yourself at the mercy of the internet for our sake.

I'm not going to discuss his non-ultimate abilities, since you've pretty much already said that while theorycrafting can prove useful, you'd rather see how things actually work in a live setting and adjust things from there. I'd rather talk about the mildly untouched ultimate.

So Garen's ult... Ideas have been thrown around, like a passive that increases mpen equal to crit, or simply "bite the bullet" and universalize him as physical damage. Others have stated their thoughts on how since his spin is his iconic ability, his ult shouldn't be really doing immense damage. Some have gone and compared it to other execution-type ults like Riven, Darius, and Cho'gath, which you've already stated you dislike.

Obviously there's always numerous ways things can be changed. My question is, even if it's already been shot down, have you or any of the others involved in these changes proposed any sort of change to his ult that could sway from the execution ability and possibly net him utility?

Garen counters bad Rivens bro. A good Riven will just level her shield first and soak his damage, avoid dying and match his farm. Thats a lost lane for Garen cause Riven will scale better.

Garen doesn't stomp Darius though which is oh so satsifying

SUP, XYPHIE!

I'm not sure I agree on what causes the snowballing in top lane. Most of the factors you name apply almost as much to mid lane.

The causal factor that I see in a typical snowballing top lane is that the winning player can hard-zone the losing player. The lane is so long that if you are pinned to your tower, you are out of experience range of the minions. A small dueling disadvantage becomes a large level disadvantage.
If two typical top laners both went to mid, the lane wouldn't snowball as hard because the losing player doesn't lose as much sitting under tower - the minions are close enough.
If two typical mid laners both went to top, the lane would snowball hard. As soon as one gets a dueling advantage, the other cannot enter his zone of control and misses out on experience until the wave pushes to his tower.

It's the length of the lane. The way to fix it is either to increase minion experience range or move the towers closer together.

Does Garen win with a 1 second silence? NNNNNNNNNNOPE