Any changes made to the Demacian knight will have to wait until the next League of Legends Public Beta Environment (PBE) cycle before going live.
As the 9.19 PBE cycle draws to a close, Riot Games has decided to revert all the Garen changes to his live values for the second time this month, according to Surrenderat20.
Earlier in cycle 9.19, some uncharacteristic changes were added to Garen that increased the knight’s attack speed while sacrificing some tankiness. The attack speed that the Demacian gains per level increased from 2.9 to three percent. Garen’s Judgment ability (E) also dealt additional damage per 20-percent attack speed, instead of solely scaling off of level. His ultimate ability, with the early 9.19 changes, dealt true damage to all champions, not just villains.
These buffs came at a cost, however. Garen’s tankiness took a hit, lowering the armor and magic resist on his Courage (W). The changes would encourage some odd builds by promoting attack speed and damage items, like Trinity Force, over tanky options, like Sunfire Cape.
Now that the PBE cycle is nearing its end, Garen’s kit was reverted to the values on the live servers.
This isn’t the first time Riot has decided to take the Demacian back to the drawing board. Garen had the same update in the 9.18 PBE cycle, but the changes were reverted before that patch went live.
Riot unsurprisingly seems reluctant to pull the trigger on these changes. With Worlds 2019 around the corner, introducing such a big rework this late in the season could drastically disrupt the meta. Garen might find himself in the bot lane, taking over the ADC role. And if the changes prove to be overpowered, Riot wouldn’t have the opportunity to tweak them while the pros are competing at Worlds.
While Riot may bring these changes back to the next cycle, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that they’ll ship to the live servers before Worlds.
