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Now that the dust has settled, can we talk about the Swain rework? Kayle and ASol while we're here.

Flawless Fetus·8/29/2019, 4:29:07 PM·3 votes·5,021 views

I play a lot of Swain. Or I used to prior to his changes. It's my understanding that it wasn't intended to be a nerf, but I'm not sure how you could call it anything else. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I think for first time Swain's, it will help them. I think for anybody that could competently play the champion it's hard to call the changes anything other than a nerf. For context, here's the list of changes with a couple of my notes:

  • Base

  • Health Growth down by 5 - due to the new passive, this is definitely needed. No complaints.

  • AA range down by 25 - a pretty decent nerf considering these changes weren't meant to nerf him.

  • Passive

  • He no longer stores fragments, but gets +5 hp when he picks them up, as well as some mana (4/5.5/7%)

  • Q - this is where most of my complaints lie.

  • They removed the mana gain on kill. It was 3% flat at all ranks. This was a vastly superior form of mana regen compared to the current passive. If you, like most decent Swains would, you could kill multiple creeps with Q. This could refund 3/6/9% mana. Per Q.

  • They heavily increased the cd of Q. (7.5 - 2.5 ==> 10 - 4). At max rank it's nearly doubled.

  • They removed 100 range (we got that back in the next patch, so nbd)

  • They increased the spread. This effectively translates into less damage per Q unless you're in melee range.

  • They made it so Q pierces regularly now, instead of on kill, but it cannot pierce champs anymore - even on kill.

Overall, the Q changes removed/lessened mana regen, decreased damage, and heavily increased the cd in an attempt to give him waveclear. His waveclear was not bad prior to these changes, and it has gotten barely any better after these changes. Sure, it pierces now, but it deals less damage and has a longer cd. There's not much gained in terms of waveclear realistically. Especially if you want to account for the fact you'll always have less mana than you used to.

  • R1
  • mana cost 0 ==> 100 - Obviously a nerf.
  • Health on cast 150/275/400 ==> 125/200/275 (+hp per soul frag collected). Overall, this cuts close to even. Slightly in favor of the changes.
  • He now drains all enemies within range instead of just 3. This is undeniably a buff.
  • R2
  • Can now be cast instantly. This is a buff, I guess. Considering the nature of the ulti, there's hardly any reason you'd want to insta cast this, though.
  • Damage: 45/60/75 (+.21 ap per soul). You had 5 souls nearly every time you ulted. Obviously, that wasn't always the case but it was way more often than not. This isn't totally fair, but lets just call the ratio 1.05 for simplicity's sake. New Damage: 75% of health drained during the ulti (up to a cap). This translates into a minimum damage of 100/150/200 +.5AP and a maximum of 200/300/400 + 1.0AP. Because of the damage changes, you can potentially deal more damage. However, the minimum damage is pitiful and you need to charge longer for the max damage of the new ulti.

Overall, I'm not sure how anyone could pretend these changes were anything but a nerf. Overall, his damage went wayyyy down for +5hp per orb. On top of that, it removed loads of "skill expression". No longer do we have to manage our soul fragments. No longer do we have to strategically plan for our q's to kill as many creep as possible for the mana refund. No longer are we able to utilize the pierce mechanic to kill multiple champions. No longer do we need to plan on using the pierce mechanic to poke the enemy through their creeps. Now we're expected to spam q (I use the word 'spam' loosely, since they upped the cd so much) like monkeys, and ulti whenever it is up. Yes, I'm salty. I didn't think Swain needed nerfs. Riot talked like they didn't intend to nerf Swain, but that's exactly what they did. Not only that, but they did everything they could to remove the clarity between decent Swain's and good Swain's.

That brings me on to the recent changes to Kayle and ASol. Since her rework, I have played loads of Kayle. I thought she was fine, but shifting some late game power into her laning phase did make a lot of sense. However, that's not what they did. Kayle's 1-5 was shit. Kayle's 1-5 is still shit. Until this most recent patch, Kayle got a lot of damage and waveclear at 6. This allowed her to feel like an actual champion. Lol. Sure, it sucked being melee still but you were able to duel/trade if played properly. After the most recent changes, her waveclear and damage is gated behind level 11. At 6 you are ranged, but you can't do anything with that range other than farm. If the goal was shift late game power into the early game, why did they make her early game worse? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Like Swain, it seems they thought it'd be a good idea to remove some of the "skill expression" and allow her to be ranged earlier in the game. The clearly overlooked the fact that now she deals no damage until level 11, though. While I don't play ASol, it looks like - yet again - they're trying to dumb this champion down. They nerfed Swain while dumbing him down. They changed Kayle while dumbing her down. They changed(? like I said i don't play him, no idea of how you Sol players feel this impacted his power) ASol while dumbing him down. Why are we dumbing down champions to make them easier to pick up? I understand that it's possible for champions to be to niche or to 'hard', but I don't think there's anything wrong with having to invest some time in learning how to optimally play a champ.

TLDR: Swain's nerfs were whack - especially since Riot talked like they weren't trying to nerf him. Removing skill expression from champs like Swain/Kayle/ASol is also dumb.

I messed up my poll options. Lol. The last option, 4, should be a no.

15 Comments

Vhan87658/29/2019, 4:48:35 PM5 votes

I'll be honest, since his actual rework and we lost Swain as a champion, I didn't play nearly as much Uriel Septim because I felt the identity of the champion (as well as his play style) was lost to the rework.

Throwing that completely separate discussion to the side for now though, I personally enjoyed the changes to Swain more recently. I can't speak numbers about the mana regained nor the damage amp's from the passive translating to ult, but from the perspective of how Swain feels to play since the changes, I personally think he feels smoother to play. The wave clear before the Q changes honestly wasn't bad but didn't feel good; I'm not Sol, I don't want to have to stand to the side of a minion wave to feel useful, nor did I like having to play so tightly around bush vision. Having the chance to be safe near tower and wave clear feels better in my opinion. As for the passive changes and ult; good riddance. There should have never been 2 cooldowns for Swain's ultimate in the first place, it was obnoxious. The champion went from a toggle ult to a timed burst ult that scaled off of whether or not the enemy was dumb enough to let their soul's be ripped out of their chest? It was clunky and felt bad to play if the enemy had half a brain and you had CDR, so you're ult was up but either you literally couldn't use it or using it at the time would be a waste cause of the lack of souls you had. The new scaling feels bad if behind, yeah, but for good Swain players it just judged how effective you are at Soul Stealing.

Melk and Cookies8/29/2019, 11:36:44 PM2 votes

[deleted]

mark60288/29/2019, 5:01:20 PM1 votes

As someone who used to be one of the best swains in euw i've played maybe 30 games on this rework and call for a revert.

This rework is a joke to be honest.

Neither the character nor the playstyle has been preserved and no one gonna give me that shit he was unhealthy or whatever. He was an underplayed champion that was extremely strong (mains at 60+% winrate) with a steep learning curve requiring 150 games+ to break the 55% winrate. Look at other supposedly "high skill cap champions" who break even at like 20 games played. With pyke, qiyana, akali, irelia, sylas no one can tell me old swain was somehow a problem for the game. If he were he would have seen more play in general and in high elo/pro play especially. in regards to his drain tank playstyle i raise you aatrox or hecarim. Or riven. Rework them all please if drain tank is oh so bad. Once they give his ult a huge mana gate and a cooldown he was basically fixed. New passive was all he needed MAYBE new E tho i wouldnt have liked that. Just a little modernization nothing big and ofc a visual upgrade.

Riot just took a huge shit on the mains into the face especially regarding beatrice/his character but that's what riots designers are best at. Completely shitting on mains of a champion, disregarding everything players loved about it and flush it down the drain to make him a generic hitler archetype and coming up with this kit. You just need to look at his W to understand they had no idea what to do with this champion.

So please revert. You can keep the new one call him legolas and be done with it. Even less people play the new swain than the old swain. What a fuckin disgrace.

figold6668/29/2019, 5:16:26 PM1 votes

I can speak for Swain and A Sol.

I like the Swain changes because it reminds me more of pre-rework Swain. Grabbing Grasp and constantly harassing your enemy laner works even better as it builds a little HP lead, and the ult buffs allow him to 1V3 again.

The A Sol changes were meant to nerf him. Pre-mini rework he had one of the most toxic play styles in the game, being able to quickly wave clear then roam and the enemy laner was stuck under tower Csing. To make him easier to balance in the future, they removed his early game wave clear and roam potential in favor of making him a late game champion and more burst oriented. Yes this completely destroys the identity of the champion but why should Riot care about the 0.01% of the player base.

Titanium708/29/2019, 5:44:32 PM1 votes

I like to go back a little further... Swain was deleted in that so called "rework" - that's fact. Nothing making Swain Swain is left, absolutely NOTHING.

But for the sake of discussion: The biggest problem with the new Swain - IMO - is the Ult. Without his Mana-Devouring frontline playstyle Swain simply no longer feels like Swain. The recent changes, dont touch this problem and therefore don't really change much for me although I play him bot with a firend of mine now which is quite fun.

In his current state you pussy around the fight fishing with E before eventaully going in with Ult hoping it works out. The small skirmishes old Swain used to be a GOD of now are MAJOR problems. What do you do in a 2v2 mid/late game? Ult? If they disengage or get backup, you wasted you only combat tool. You're instantly dead weight for any following fight. Don't Ult? Then you're basiclly useless in this 2v2 and risk giving up kills! (It's not that other Champs never face this problems, they abolutely do - but Swain doesn't! THAT was his power, THAT was a reason to pick him!)

Old one was constantly at the brink of overextending trying to punish every small position mistake the enemys may make. Forcing trades whereever whenever possible. And god forgive the pure soul who tried to jump on him! His range was weak, but anyone within this range was basicly dead.

In fights he was also alot more interesting since besides simply standing in as much people as possible hoping everything goes well, you actually had to go for this juicy mana-resets to keep on fighting and fighting and fighting. Especially with the enhanced mana resets from Athenes and later Presence of Mind this was even more important and even more fun to use!

Sadly we can't go back...

What I'd really wish for... (Copying myselfe from another thread)

  • I'd actually take the god damn minigame back + Make it so only at 5 stacks the explosion triggers at all (or removed it all together IDC - noone, abolutely noone needed this explosion in the first place).

  • Cut the Ults CD to pieces (30s/20s/10s).

  • Bring the ramping up Mana costs back + increase passives Health and especially Mana restore (Especially on kills, I.E: Double Proc on Kill).

  • Reduce his range on all spells Q/E/R.

  • Rebalance his numbers from there.*

THAT would at least be SWAIN! The mana hungry battle mage monstrosity you dont want to EVER be close to! Not what ever im playing now...

Sigh... a man can dream, right?

*I'm actually curious if such a change would make him better or worse... x'D

Kenneky8/29/2019, 5:54:08 PM1 votes

As someone who barely plays mages (specifically battle mages) I really like his new passive. His new passive make me deal with assassins much better as someone like Talon or Neeko. I like that he is naturally tanky, but that comes with a cost - his damage, because of that he lacks burst damage which is understandable, I don't have problem with that. His ultimate is kind of meh, It's like It's missing something, but not sure what. Overall I really like his rework and also his visuals, I like them birds... I am a new player that never had the chance to experience the old Swain (I started playing League nearly a year ago) so you can take my comment with a grant of salt If you will. That is just my opinion. About Aurelion and Kayle, never played them so I have nothing to add.

MasterDClone8/29/2019, 6:15:30 PM1 votes

u should edit out the 4th option as it is the same as the second

Wild Geese8/29/2019, 7:35:32 PM1 votes

I like the new Q, because swain feels like he's a bully in lane again. The passive is a mixed bag more on that later. But I hate how his ult feels really bad at early levels, he isn't tanky enough to really use it yet, and its damage is awful against a single target, the healing is minuscule too, and without items like Liandry and Morello to make it useful, it's just bad - feels like almost nothing. Because the scaling is so low, it mostly relies on the base stats which are: 35 / 50 / 65 damage and 20 / 35 / 50 heal. The thing being in the early game you're probably only fighting 1 or 2 people, and aren't that tanky so the low level 1 stats feel even lower.

Though there's this problem with new Swain's ult in general compared to his old ult, is the Old ult wasn't a aoe, it was a rapidfire autotargetting projectile swarm of ravens, but the damage and heal was much faster because it shot up to 5 times a second instead of once a second in an aoe, it also had a higher base damage/heal by about double - if you had 5 targets this meant you were draining about 10x more.

So yeah, new Swain is cool but his Drain is laughable for the risk you take by casting it, making him supremely level and item dependant to utilize his ultimate offensively. At least his Drain actually works in TFT. ..

So altogether considering everything: Why do they give him gaining permanent health on his passive, gaining % health on his passive, but refuse to make his ultimate heal useful instead like old Swain players would like?

KicktheDoor9/8/2019, 9:17:15 AM1 votes

I've been playing Swain mid with Electrocute and it's been working out so far. Personally, I don't like RoA even through it's standard on most builds. The 20% CDR from Ludens plus 10% from Transcendence feels a lot better and let's you spam Deaths Hand, much like you could before. I rush ZHG right after for max CDR than build Rabadons for even more damage. IMO the higher damage output / ultimate scaling makes up for it. Luden's also makes it much easier to farm since you can pop Deaths Hand twice to clear waves.

My main issue is dealing with mobile assassins (Fizz, Zed, Katarina, Talon) even if you're playing right, they shoehorn you into building crap like stopwatch, arm guard or RoA to survive early game, while they keep stacking damage. Why doesn't E give you vision on enemies you hit in the fog?

Daddy Ants8/29/2019, 5:00:44 PM1 votes

R1 mana cost 0 ==> 100 - Obviously a nerf.

Considering you don't need to save up 5 souls to activate the ult anymore, It's not a nerf.

The standard cost for any ultimate is 100 mana.