Warcraft III Reforged’s Forsaken Kingdom DLC has added a new neutral tavern hero, Garrick the Forsaken Paladin, and he has quickly become one of the most talked-about picks in the game. He is also one of the most misidentified. Many players see an undead paladin wielding the Light and assume this is Alexandros Mograine, the old Ashbringer and father of the death knight Darion. That is not the case. Garrick is an original character from the DLC, a Forsaken who still follows the Light. He is not a member of the Mograine family, and he is not the man whose death became the patricide chapter in Warcraft lore. The confusion is understandable: both are undead-adjacent figures associated with the Light and both are natural enemies of the Scourge. But in the tavern, the new hero is Garrick.
The version question matters here. The Reforged client on KK Battle Platform at 2.0.4 does not include the new hero; the hero appears in the 3.0 build. Many of the download links floating around for 2.0.4 are actually older 2.0.3 packages, and the full install is around 30 GB. Getting it through cloud drives is its own mini-game. Thunder (Xunlei) can take split 4 GB parts and offers a 10 GB free transfer allowance, so it can be downloaded in batches at speeds that range from roughly 7 MB/s down to 900 KB/s—usually faster than Baidu. Baidu has the advantage of accepting the full 30 GB in one go, but speeds often sit around 500 KB/s. The 123 Pan client gives 20 GB free, then asks for 1 yuan to unlock the remaining 8 GB or so. Quark is roughly a 10 GB proposition unless you have a membership or a fresh account. Alibaba Cloud Drive ran at about 900 KB/s and completed overnight.
The official route is cleaner but more expensive. A Warcraft III purchase from the Argentine store cost about 20 yuan back in July 2023; the same purchase now sits around 180 yuan, and adding the new DLC brings the total close to 400 yuan.
Then there is the launch problem. After updating W3Champion and the Battle.net Warcraft III client, W3Champion found a match in about three to four minutes but then reported that it could not find war3 and failed to start. The fix is to disable various proxies, including Tailscale. The official 3.0 Reforged build has also removed native LAN, so bridging is required for LAN play.
In game, Garrick is a neutral tavern hero available to all races. His kit is unusually pointed at the undead. Righteous Fury (F) is a charging AoE that slows and reduces attack damage, which makes it good for pulling apart undead formations and interrupting surrounds. Consecration (C) is the core counter: it heals living allies, burns undead units, and reduces healing received by undead. That last part suppresses the Death Knight’s Coil, the Lich’s sustain, and Destroyer regeneration. It does not heal Garrick himself, because he is undead. Holy Aura (E) gives nearby allies magic resistance and boosts healing effects, directly blunting the burst that comes from the undead’s Nova-Coil pattern. Purifying Fire (R), the ultimate, cleanses debuffs from allies and buffs from enemies, stuns in an area, deals heavy damage to summons, and can strip Frost Armor from a Death Knight. Skeletons, Infernals, Destroyers, and beetles all suffer against it.
That is why undead players are told to focus him first. As long as Garrick is on the field, Nova-Coil damage is reduced, Death Coil healing is cut, and the undead army’s sustain engine sputters. He is a strength hero, but not an especially tanky one, so the counter is straightforward: undead players will spend everything on a Nova-Coil combo to remove him before he can keep the pressure up.
The lore correction is worth making separately, because the Mograine story is not the Garrick story. Alexandros Mograine was the first Ashbringer and the father of Darion; he was killed by his elder son Renault, who was manipulated by a dreadlord and stabbed his father in the back with the Ashbringer after Alexandros was exhausted. Kel’Thuzad later exhumed Alexandros and raised him as one of the Four Horsemen. Darion led a force into Naxxramas, defeated his father—by then an undead death knight controlled by the Lich King—and recovered the Ashbringer. Later, at Light’s Hope Chapel, Darion sacrificed himself to free his father’s trapped soul and was raised by Arthas as a death knight. That is the patricide thread players often refer to, but the original killer was Renault.
Garrick is a different character: a Forsaken paladin, undead in body, still wielding the Light, and built to make undead players miserable. He is not Alexandros Mograine, not Darion, and not the Death Knight’s father. In the current W3C ladder, human, night elf, and orc players can all buy him from the tavern against undead. For undead, he is a priority kill; for everyone else, he is a new toy with a very specific job.