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Lately, I'm playing Garen a lot and I always play with the summoner spells Teleport and Flash.

While playing Garen, I try to buy the Sunfire Cape as my 1st item.

Should I give up from the Teleport and got Smite instead to buy the Cinderhulk enchantment instead of the Sunfire Cape? Why?

I got this doubt after reading this post that compares the Cinderhulk and the Sunfire Cape

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I think you will want to get Sunfire over Cinderhulk. Pretty much everyone who runs TP/Smite have built in gap closer. Garen has none. That said, challenging smite could be helpful simply to live longer or chilling smite (whatever the current name is) can help you gap close a little. This doesn't fix though if you get caught you have no way to escape. You need the flash/ghost to escape in this instance. The big champions who do this are Shyvanna/Hecarim. This is because they have natural gap closers that can double as escapes as well. Whatever you do, never run TP/Flash.

In conclusion, the main reason you can't run smite on Garen is his lack of gap closer. Even if the scaling health ends up being better late game it still doesn't bring what you get from flash/ghost. Get Sunfire and start off farming chicken camp if you want that level 2. He should be able to solo that relatively easy.

EDIT: You can make it be viable taking the TP/Smite. Essentially you will try to make yourself a strong duelist with challenging smite and attempt to force their team to split up for your team to take objectives. You need to ward really well to avoid being caught since you have no escape. This allows you to still join team fights and put pressure elsewhere. This is probably the best playstyle IF you actually want to run TP/Smite but I recommend against it. Flash+TP > TP+Smite > Smite+Flash.

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  • Garen Q = Gap Closer
    – DropDeadSander - EUW
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 6:23
  • @DropDeadSander-EUW not exactly it is unreliable vs ppl like kayle who also have thier own innate MS steroids
    – Kim Minseo
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 14:44
  • @DropDeadSander-EUW Movespeed increases aren't typically gap closers. Especially ones that last as short as garens. They certainly help but they aren't a replacement for them. The only reason Ghost can be argued as a gap closer is it's duration. You can be cced through the duration of Garen's gap closer but it's much harder to CC someone for 10 seconds which is the duration of ghost.
    – dphil
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 14:46
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Both work fine, TP Flash with Sunfire cape is good and TP Smite is also good. They have advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages for Cinderhulk: Extra smite incase your jungler dies or is a squishy jungler like Shaco Easier to win a hard lane vs a opponent with large damage(so you want to build challenger smite.)

Disadvantages no strong gap closer as Garen but your Q. Costs more gold to build as you have to buy the jungle weapon in your first back. So sets you behind in getting a MR or Armour item.

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I'm not a big fan of Cinderhulk top laners and here's why:

  1. You give up your global presence. Getting rid of teleport was a big thing for like a month, until people realized that you can't help your teammates control Dragon or help out with ganks in the bottom lane. It's just not worth the extra item.

  2. Sunfire cape is an overall better item for top laners. It helps with CS, gives you armor (typically needed for top lane), health and in this meta you're going to be playing tanks in the top lane.

Garen doesn't really need Cinderhulk to be effective. Garen is a silencing, big tank who deals AoE damage in team fights and finishes off low health targets with his ultimate.

I'd stick with Sunfire Cape.

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    Putting health as a plus for sunfire cape is pretty disingenuous, considering cinderhulk gives more. In fact, the scaling health is one of the biggest advantages. Also, cinderhulk does not give up global presence - most people drop flash, not teleport.
    – Aaron Dufour
    Commented Jun 11, 2015 at 17:03
  • @AaronDufour I was just listing all of the things that sunfire cape gives you. The question stated specifically giving up teleport for smite. That's why my answer included the teleport version of the argument.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Commented Jun 11, 2015 at 17:49
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    Nobody played Smite Flash top, so your first point makes 0 sense. He mentioned TP Smite so he loses no presence.
    – Charkz
    Commented Jun 11, 2015 at 18:23
  • also cinderhulk and sunfire have the same passive effect so both help with farm.
    – Charkz
    Commented Jun 11, 2015 at 18:28

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