Try to position yourself so your ultimate's knockback is most effective.
Xin Zhao is a great initiator to combat. Lead the front to start a fight and use your ultimate to do the most damage possible.
Be careful about attacking Garen in brush. It often will lead to taking full damage from Judgment.
Stack armor items to lower the large amount of physical damage that Garen deals out.
Judgment deals maximum damage when only hitting a single target. If getting out of its radius isn't possible, move through allied minions to reduce damage taken.
Try to run away from Garen as your health gets lower, as he can execute you quickly with Demacian Justice.
The stat comparisons shown on this page feature several important Xin Zhao against Garen counter stats that may help us appreciate the differences and similarities between the two. As an example, Xin Zhao’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Garen’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Xin Zhao may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Garen..
Xin Zhao often has a similar longest kill spree as his opponent does. On average, he receives more damage than Garen. This often reflects differing health capacities, yet it can also indicate that the one champ has less agility and thus is unable to escape additional damage when engaged or poked.
Both League champions are great. Both have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Xin Zhao usually wins when trying to fight Garen, with a 52.6% win rate. Therefore, Xin Zhao makes a good counter to Garen.
While Xin Zhao does have a higher win rate compared to Garen, when facing one another, Xin Zhao also has a lower learning curve that makes him a less complex champ to pick up and master. You should be be fine when picking Xin Zhao into Garen.
Furthermore, Xin Zhao also has only a small amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Garen. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when facing champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Xin Zhao vs Garen matchups, Xin Zhao is the better champion with a noticably higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during teamfights.
Xin Zhao is a good counter to Garen. Focus your play on maximizing your CS and clearing objectives. If you are able to do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Xin Zhao against Garen.
To truly master Xin Zhao to counter Garen during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to learn a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you listen to the build and tips shown above, you should increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Xin Zhao usually picks up a lot less CS compared to Garen. Champs who on average don't get many minion kills often don't have to have much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. These kinds of champions are able to scale properly off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often need several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the numbers shown on this page to do well.
The best items to use in your Xin Zhao versus Garen build include Sterak's Gage, Spear of Shojin, and Titanic Hydra. When Xin Zhao combined at least these three pieces in his build, he did much better vs. Garen than with most other common item sets. In fact, Xin Zhao boasted an average win rate of 52.6% when countering Garen with this build.
To have the greatest chance of beating Garen as Xin Zhao, Xin Zhao players should use the Lethal Tempo, Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, Coup de Grace, Cosmic Insight, and Magical Footwear runes from the Precision and Inspiration rune sets. Out of all the rune sets players chose for Xin Zhao vs Garen counterpicks, this order of runes yielded the best win rate. In fact, these runes gave a 52.6% win rate overall.
If you would like to see Xin Zhao versus Garen tips and matchup stats and build suggestions for a a particular player tier, feel free to select one from the selection menu above. By default, the statistics and guides displayed are calculated using every game completed with these champions.