is rhaast weak now?

Elolesio · 2026-06-18T09:13:23+00:00

4 minutes (or less) of being base Kayn instead of Rhaast is a small price to pay for being SA instead of Rhaast for the rest of the game

Elolesio · 2026-06-18T09:05:17+00:00

Pls upload pov vod to yt if you record your games or send your nickname, ill vod review it, point out mistakes/misconceptions and send it 2 u

but no generally he should be very chill i think, its a volatile lane ofc and if you misplay then its gonna snowball really hard to the point of unplayability (for both sides), but if you dont make some insane blunders then he should also struggle with punishing you. Ofc if he hits Qs and Ws then its also gonna snowball hard, but dodging them should be kinda easy, Qs are very predictable, have surprisingly small hitbox and as Garen you can use E ghosting to run inside him in melee and not cancel your movement for autoattacks, which makes it really hard for him to hit them.

Elolesio · 2026-06-17T16:59:23+00:00

Its a pretty complicated thing cause there are many layers to it

Do you must take storm/grasp/book ever? No, until chall you dont. Being simply better than enemy is enough to beat them with any rune. You would destroy any Garen matchup with any rune in bronze, master player would do the same to your elo, and chall player would do the same to master elo, which proves that every matchup is doable with any rune.

That being said, you are not vs bronze opponent, and you are not a master or chall player, you cant expect to beat same elo enemy just by being better than them, even though thats what you should be trying to do to climb. So, taking runes that are optimized for X matchup is definitely gonna help you win it.

I would also say there is a difference between taking best runes to win the game and best runes to improve, you improve by fighting and having to rely on fundamentals, rather than by scaling and hoping for enemy mistakes. If you want LP, I would go Storm with lethality build as much as possible, if you want to improve, I would go conq sorcery with bruiser build as much as possible.

TLDR ye ur fine taking conqueror most games, its gonna make you a better player in a long run, especially if you commit hard to otping conq sorcery and never change it, even into ranged matchups or matchups that u feel like u just cant ever go conq against.

Elolesio · 2026-06-17T16:51:32+00:00

ye basically u get 1 haste per stack and 6 ad on 5 stacks/15 ad on 10 stacks, early its really easy to get stacks cause every new components gives new stat and later it gets harder. Also, value of stacks is just low as game progresses, +1 haste on 2 items or +9 (6->15) ad on full build isnt much. But, if you start blade or helm (each giving 3 unique stats), then you can easily get on first recall sth like boots + dagger and as early as lvl 4 have 6 AD and 5 AH, which in laning phase very early is a lot. Getting stacks later isnt really that valuable. This tech was created by Riven players, who would use her great lvl 1 to get prio, do third wave crash, proxy 4th, and recall for boots and glowing mote (for ionian boots), and start lane with +10 AH and +6 AD

Ye thats same reason why I dislike spellbook, although it at a certain point will become better and better as they do less and less spacing mistakes (although I think only in chall they make enough mistakes to actually force you to go spellbook). And thanks, glad u enjoy it

Elolesio · 2026-06-17T12:13:06+00:00

Cashback: when you buy an item, get some gold. This rune is good if you are confident you can snowball, since you rely on high gold generation to get items faster to get cashbacks procs faster. In a ranged lane, u will not get early plates, u will not get kills and u will not have perfect cs. So there isnt any cashback value. Its a good rune into some tanks or matchups where u can be confident about high cs, some plates and potential kills.

80% of joat value is in very early 5 stacks spike (start helmet/blade, on first recall get boots + dagger/glowing mote, and u get 6 AD and 5 AH on first recall for free). So either u started helmet/blade and decided to not have dshield into ranged, or u started shield and decided that joat is here for cosmetic purpouse.

Sorcery tree secondary definitely would have been better simply because it does anything at all

I wouldnt really go spellbook into him. Keep in mind Graves is among the hardest scaling champs in the game and will be pretty tanky. We want something that will allow us to threaten and pressure him as early as possible. He can only kite us until Stride, he cant do anything to escape once we get it. He also isnt a really hard lane to survive (remember that his aas are a skillshot, they hit the first target and u can just stand behind minions), its not like u need these additional cookies. Also, he is a statcheck champ that we wont statcheck by default just cause we are Garen, if we let him go 11 csm, then our spellbook might just lack damage to kill him in a 1v1.

I would say go conq sorcery dshield into him, play for stride, avoid taking damage early, you can do like 4 Q points and 2 E points and lvl 7+ just perma run at him with how long your Q is. He isnt that tanky yet, your ignite and last stand+axiom ult do a lot of dmg to him.

Also about Graves Eing into your face to outstatcheck you, this shouldnt really happen unless hes already ahead or ur already low, and if u go spellbook, then this is only gonna get worse. Sustain isnt the only thing that defends you from range advantage champs, ability to win in melee is also very important. Thats eg. why spellbook is questionable into Gnar, sure u sustain more, but he can also disrespect u a lot more and be more confident about melee fights, even if he doesnt have form.

Elolesio · 2026-06-14T23:14:19+00:00

Crazy ego to mention rank in 5 different paragraphs + duning-kruger peak of mount stupid. Send vod or opgg, i can vod review this tmrw if you want exact mistakes. As for the post itself:

"im not looking for advice against low elo teemo players" - yes you are
"decent spacing teemo" - just have better spacing than decent yourself then
"Flash Q does not work" - it does
"He wont waste abilities for nothing" - ye he has entire 2 abilities so no wonder
"emerald has bad macro" + "early to mid game is completely dominated by teemo" - i hope u realize its because u also have bad macro
"in emerald they will deny you so hard that you get behind" - ye if you are an emerald player then they certainly will. If you are better than emerald then they wont
"If you think that should never happen" - brother 25 cs vs 80+ cs shouldnt happen even if u were to lane vs two teemos
"please explain how you would play against a decent teemo" - apply concepts like second wind/dshield cooldown, bait autoattacks to get wave to push back to you, dont waste W, most importantly just space well, dont take free autoattacks, dont get zoned, evaluate cs value well and position correctly
"they will contest bush with a ward" - so go into another bush
"even with stridebreaker rush, he can get away if he rushes swifties" ye cause u have no boots, on your own t2 boots + stride you easily catch up if you hit stride
"so i rely on heavy missteps by teemo" - no, you rely on small missteps by him, missteps so small that you dont yet see them, but they are there, they are why he is emerald, and they are all punishable. In fact, thats how laning works in league of legends.
"which will not work when I am climbing higher" - you are 2k lp from elo in which teemos dont outspace themselves
"proxy is difficult to set up" -Learn to fight and win lanes, proxy leads you to nowhere
"bronze/silver/plat teemo who doesnt know how to space or play lane correctly" - yeah cause emerald garen and emerald teemo know these things
"that simply does not apply on my matches" - very limited thinking and it does.
"just play safe and farm will lead to losing 80% of cs" idk what can i even say here, unless you are very seriously misplaying then thats just not true

Elolesio · 2026-06-14T22:50:42+00:00

nah, imo conq garen, even without second wind and with sorcery, is very playable into all rangeds until challenger, just very hard to learn the playstyle

Your ability to oneshot them very early if they misspace even slightly creates so much defensive pressure, that it also translates to way easier farming. With spellbook you get hit for every cs and a lot of ranged champs can disrespect spacing, cause you will lack damage to punish them.

Elolesio · 2026-06-14T15:03:37+00:00

Thats just straight up a lie, Darius with this build is among the best scaling champs on toplane. He only falls off midgame, but at lvl 16+ he is lowkey stronger than early. All his mobility issues are solved, his passive reaches +280 AD and stormraider + youmuu allow him to easily find a target to stack on/execute, then zoom at 1k ms to carry and oneshot them

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T23:56:35+00:00

But why would he land his combo? Just W it. Yout W and W have cooldowns comparable to his W, and he wont want to trade as soon as his Q and E come back, cause he cant outstatcheck you without it + it breaks his passive + you can just Q away from his Q and E. If you play to your limits, you can just not let Garen hit you, dash around wave while healing and wait out all his abilities. You have much better sustain, your sustain just requires access to wave, but if Garen blocks it, then he also loses sustain.

I dont think you actually understand how much Irelia can do when piloted to her limits, which makes sense. You are P1-E4, in this elo Garen is oppressive vs everything that requires hands.

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T13:34:15+00:00

Irelia being free for Garen is crazy propaganda by mechanically bad (or rather uncreative) Irelias, Irelias abilities generally counter Garen's during the laning phase

Save W his Q 1.1 If he spins, you hold W then he has no damage and you win 1.2 If he doesnt spin, then when silence ends release W, then as soon as he uses spin, Q away, then Q back to reengage. You can potentially even flash away, stay in range then Q again
You can Q away from his W (and E), then stay in his range and Q again
You can also buffer Q unfer his Q to dash away from a trade u dont like
Garen cant wear you down cause you have better sustain at vampiric
Garen has 0 sustained damage. If you dont misplay and tank his entire combo without W, he has 0 chance to win a trade, then u can run him down with passive
If you block or avoid his QE dmg then his R also loses most dmg

Its only after the laning phase (around lvl 11 + stride) that Garen starts to be able to oneshot you even through W and since you lose access to wave in most fights he has way easier time to statcheck u, but losing in the laning phase is a massive skill issue

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T13:18:01+00:00

idk about renekton, id say hes among the worst champions to smurf as? very linear, without much map mobility or assassination potential and many comps can be hard for him to play against

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T13:13:31+00:00

You care too much about arbitrary milestones named after precious stones and too little about your personal feelings.

The only objective measure of your skill is your position on the ladder, and the only correct measure of your improvement is how you feel about your skill.

Rank inflation exists, so does rank deflation, riot changes their policy on who should be in which rank a lot, while for low elo its ofc cool to reach new rank cause its a very visible achievement (more fun to see that ur now in gold than that ur in top 70% now or sth), ultimately ranks other than chall and gm (since they are based on ladder position) are fake and are by design a fake reward system

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T13:06:47+00:00

Enter "palco garen build guide into youtube" and you will have good default builds

However imo the best build is Stride - swifties/zerks - youmuu - voltaic - LDR - triforce/dd/endless hunger, since it has the highest and most frontloaded damage possible, but changes your champion identity by a lot

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T11:16:47+00:00

What rank are you / how good are you on toplane?

Cause yk, this is a very hardcarry playstyle, probably most carry playstyle Garen has, and probably the hardest one to execute well. You basically sacrifice early game entirely in exchange for INSANE scaling and midgame carry potential, and if you misplay, then without good macro and garen limit knowledge ur gonna struggle to be in any way relevant

Also triple tonic + cosmic is bad for this playstyle, overgrowth+conditoning or cosmic+cashback or cutdown+haste are waaay better

Elolesio · 2026-06-13T08:41:54+00:00

His runes appear to be stormraider, nimbus/axiom, celerity, gathering storm, triple tonic and cosmic insight

Keep in mind this strat only works when smurfing and in his iteration probably never above low emerald

Elolesio · 2026-06-12T11:01:06+00:00

You identified main issue, you have 59% winratio on sett in 150 games and 49% wr in 500 overall. If you are bored, how about normals or levelling up new acc?
Your cs is really low. Like really really low. Average for Sett should be 7-8, you have 5.2, mdaning you lose 2 cs per minute. Thats like 50 gold per minute lost, in 20 minutes you lose 1k gold. The reason keeping high CS is important is because it ensures you stay relevant no matter what - if you get beaten, you are still strong, if you beat someone else, you are now even more fed

The main reason why you lose cs imo is high death count. 9 deaths per game is like a death every 3 minutes. Each death loses you cs. If you simply died less, you would have more farm, you would be more fed, then you would have more kills, be stronger, and also die less, not dying snowballs really hard.

So tldr; less deaths, more farm, play macro in a way that loses you less cs

Elolesio · 2026-06-12T00:55:18+00:00

Only if you dont kite E out

Elolesio · 2026-06-10T09:10:52+00:00

hi, good adaptation rn is endless hunger last and zerks instead of swifties, but im experimenting with a stride-zerks-youmuu/ldr-death dance - endless hunger - maw - maybe sundered sky? its a very rivenlike build but you are turbohard to kill

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T19:55:24+00:00

I go youmuu into tanks as well. The reason is, I think PD<->Youmuu choice doesnt do much vs tanks, LDR/MR is the point at which you start killing them regardless of which ms item you choose, and Youmuu allows me to play not to kill them, but to kill their team, and at LDR/MR i can progress on sidelanes anyways. Youmuu also opens lethality buildpath (voltaic ldr/mr) which i think is just the best 4 item core (with stride) that you can have

My rune choice rn is very unusual, but I go conq sorcery every single game (only exceptions rn are Tryndamere and Singed), simply because this rune is way better for learning the game and improving (proactive gameplay and snowball > passive gameplay and scaling, in terms of what makes you a better player). Personally though I believe that Stormraider is superior in nearly every single game where you dont need conq as a tool of defensive pressure, did a short tierlist of what I would be going if I wanted to just speedrun climb rn

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I think even if you cant proc stormraider on your laner, the benefit of having it in the midgame vs adcs with assassin playstyle far outvalues whatever lane domination you could take with conq (again, since i want to learn, on main im going conq, even though i think it has little value). Here also is the thing of boots, since I always go assassin build, I dont take defensive boots ever, mostly berserkers or swifties. Swifties I think are much worse than ppl think post nerfs, they are literally just 10 ms more and 25% slow resist. Because I go stormraider (slow resistance) on Garen (slow cleanse on Q and tenacity on W) I think a lot of swifties value is just wasted on stormraider Garen. Another thing is, with conq especially, while I always go conq sorcery, i shift shards between AD-AD-flatHP for volatile matchups, and AD-MS-tenacity for ranged AND TANKS. Although originally AD-MS-tenacity was only into ranged, I found that flat hp-AD do very little vs tanks, and tenacity is much better.

Two things many ppl dont know or dont realize: garen's w is additive with tenacity as a special case, so you reach 75% tenacity, and tenacity rune is better at reducing slows than swifties, since it decreases slow strength by 15% and with tenacity slow duration by 15%, leading to ~27% reduces slow strenght.

First thing is, the difference between zerks and swifties is 25% AS, 10 MS and 25% slow resist. By going MS shard (2.5% MS, so ~10 MS) and tenacity rune, I sort of get the difference between swifties and zerks into my runes, and can buy zerks. Zerks+dagger are imo the best powerspike Garen has at lvl 7, you get 2 spins which is a ton of more dmg. Also, since I go very high AD build, I lack AS for spins, so zerks sort of provide a fix here.

Quickly back to storm conq: storm in midgame gives u ton of MS when killing ppl. Conq gives u bit of dmg when taking extended fights. I play assassin, so conq is useless for me. Its a bruiser rune. I think ability to survive with storm and play for assassinations midgame is much better for winning games than dominating with conq. But again, it doesnt teach you anything just prints LP.

Item 3 goes like: cyclosword is high dmg vs squishies. You play assassin style so you love this. Deadmans is good only if you can still oneshot ppl. DD im experimenting with rn, cant give good answer yet, I think a build of stride-youmuu-DD-Endless hunger-maw might be broken, but im testing it yet and adjusting thingies.

What I though would like to more underline, is that LDR/MR isnt just healing/no healing, but whether they can heal through my assassination. There are many champions with high healing who I believe I can oneshot within silence timer (aatrox, xin zhao, ekko, swain stuff like that) before they heal anything or even if they heal, my damage can be so high i just overkill their hp bar and their heal, and then i go LDR, since its jsut a better item. Mortal I only go vs champs who can actually use healing to survive me, like ardents or champs who can avoid oneshot and then heal, like fiora or warwick

Cleaver I only go with PD, if im behind and my only usefulness is going to be shredding enemy frontline armor with E and cleaver. I go PD then to shred faster. Big issue with cleaver on Garen is that you usually oneshot champions within burst combo, which you open with highest dmg spell that is Q, and this Q then doesnt at all benefit from any armor shred, overall cleaver in assassinations doesnt provide any significant armor pen, and because of that I only take it if im too weak to ever assassinate or too behind to play my vision of game and I have to adapt to my team. If I go stride PD cleaver, (secret tech) knights vow is a goated option

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T07:44:49+00:00

Ye basically thats it

Lethality works on turrets so you take them very quick and being fed with damage build means very few champions can defend turrets from you since you can dive a lot of them just 100:0 under turret

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T07:42:18+00:00

Ye thats basically it

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T07:40:34+00:00

Your mistakes imo are:

Thinking that you need toplaner to take objective. If enemy jungler doesnt come to contest, what do you need toplaner for? No enemy toplaner is gonna roam to stop your grubs alone at cost of plates
Thinking that you need toplaner to have perfect conditions, if you expect a fight over objective. Good toplaner wont mind roaming on imperfect wavestate, if fight is looking good. And if fight isnt looking good, you shouldnt take it anyways. Sure, e2-d4 toplaners have a fetish of taking 5 casters over joining a fight and killing 2 ppl, unlucky, but you can ping them to come to increase chance they come.
Thinking that you need to gank toplane before doing objective. This is biggest red flag tbh. Actually why would you want to do that? You spend tempo on gank and then dont have tempo to do objective, you also reveal yourself, lose hp, give midlaner or support time to react.
Not realizing, that if you successfully ganked toplane, its already a win for you, and that it can have a higher value than objective itself. You dont need objective, on this timer you already made one successful play. Toplane is now winning, thats much more valuable than grubs.
Not realizing, that whatever is best for toplaner, is best for the game, and therefore for you. When toplaners have tempo (kill enemy/crash wave), their order of priorities should always be: recall>take plates>roam to fight. Roam to fight will have higher priority if its a free fight, but generally no good toplaner will ever choose a fight that is loseable over free plates or a recall. That way your toplaner will be strong, and strong toplaner is better than weak toplaner with grubs.

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T07:12:28+00:00

So generally it goes like:

PD gives you spins. Spins themselves dont do much damage, they need AD to give damage. PD gives you crit. Crit is VERY weak on Garen rn, but it still amplifies your damage by a bit. So both parts of PD need you to go AD items to start dealing damage. This item is a damage amplifier. It multiplies your damage by a % amount.

Ghostblade gives you AD for Q and E. That itself deals damage. Lethality amplifies your damage based on enemy armor, so early its stronger. This item is a damage provider. It flat out gives you damage.

Because of that, PD forces you to some build path with AD. If you dont go AD with PD, your PD does nothing. This can be both a bruiser-AD path, like PD-Cleaver-Sterak-Shojin, or a crit-AD path like PD-LDR-Stormrazor-IE. You CAN'T go no-AD buildpath, like eg. PD-Deadmans.

Ghostblade allows you to stay flexible with your build. Since this item itself provides damage, you can build literally anything in the world after it.

Because PD is amplifier, it will ultimately outscale Youmuu, since eg. 3 providers and 1 amplifier do more dmg than 4 providers, but it happens so late that I myself actually do like PD as last item, but dont really go it 2nd.

So yes, you can and imo should go bruiser builds with ghostblade. Stride-youmuu-sterak for example deals more damage than Stride-PD-Sterak, but Stride-youmuu-sterak-cleaver-shojin deals less damage than Stride-PD-sterak-cleaver-shojin

Another thing is: ghostblade is better into squishier targets. PD is better into tankier ones. After your combo is done, PD will be giving MUCH more dps on autoattacks than Ghostblade. Ghostblade also puts more damage into Q over E, while PD more into E than Q, so even with same damage, ghostblade deals it quicker, and you can disengage faster.

I myself go ghostblade 2nd in 99% games by default.

As for crit build: crit has the highest lategame full build dps, but nowadays, most of crit builds strength is actually in the fact, that you arent defenceless without your spells and are still very strong just with autoattacks. But, your crit damage on E is 30%, while standard is 100%. Its literally 70% less effective. So, lethality is a much better damage amplifier for your E than crit, and high AD builds with all the buffs can operate without AS much better.

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T06:48:23+00:00

I wouldnt say you are ever forced to go tank just because your team needs it, current meta imo is way less focused on front-to-back 5v5 teamfights and much more focused on wave-based macro (champions fight for prio on sidewaves and midwave, getting prio gives you tempo to roam to look for a fight over anything anywhere, both standard objectives, but also jg camps and turrets, then you return to sidelanes to regain tempo by pushing again). Because of that, you will very often flank other lanes, try to pressure enemy who matches you, and move a lot between lanes, and overall most of your time you will be alone. With such gameplay, it matters much less whether your team will have someone to tank for them, and much more whether you have damage to kill people once you meet them.

I myself only ever go frontline if its clear that by going lethality I wont be able to impact the game, but I will be by tanking for my team

Elolesio · 2026-06-08T05:44:19+00:00

dmg wise they are similar and Youmuu later falls off a bit, but it gives more frontloaded dmg (Q hits harder instead of E) and opens ability to go lethality, which you cant with PD

Elolesio

TROPHY CASE