Swain Strats

PatMcGroyn·Oct 16, 2014·2 votes·987 views

Recently I've been playing a good amount of Swain, and have been enjoying him a lot. I've been especially digging the Dade summoner spell setup with Flash + Ghost and distortion boot enchants; it makes his teamfighting ability INSANE. My current preferred item build:

boots - the boot choice being pretty flexible; Mercs for heavy CC teams, Tabi for AD comps, Sorcs for early - midgame power, or Lucidity for the CDR (which can be hard to itemize on Swain, at times).

I was thinking about different builds on him, ranging from a full damage YOLO build-

To a more tanky, potentially top lane bruiser build-

Just to be clear, I think is shit on Swain.

6 Comments

Nick CrusaireOct 16, 20143 votes

you're overthinking this. just get to 6 and press R and walk into the enemy team and get an easy Penta.

you only need things like RoA or boots if you plan on getting Pentas in the enemy fountain.

PatMcGroynOct 16, 20141 votes

you're overthinking this. just get to 6 and press R and walk into the enemy team and get an easy Penta.

you only need things like RoA or boots if you plan on getting Pentas in the enemy fountain.

It's all fun and games until they drop ignite on you, tho

TooterpillarOct 16, 20141 votes

These are close to the builds I do on him. I like to do the more tanky build for teamfights in late game.

Recently, my friend I have been doing Eve and Swain duo top in normals (we got bored of doing the typical team). If the enemy team in bot lane doesn't get fed, then it is a pretty tight, fun game. We have discovered that since swain can lock people down, Eve is perfect with her fast movement speed to finish off the kill.

EndlessSorcererOct 16, 20141 votes

My build as Swain is typically closer to Rod of Ages, Liandry's Torment, Zhonya's Hourglass, Spirit Visage, Void Staff. I like the early Liandry's Torment because it works well with his Q, E and ultimate to provide a lot of consistent damage and gives some Magic Penetration while the enemy carries are still squishy.

PatMcGroynOct 17, 20141 votes

My build as Swain is typically closer to Rod of Ages, Liandry's Torment, Zhonya's Hourglass, Spirit Visage, Void Staff. I like the early Liandry's Torment because it works well with his Q, E and ultimate to provide a lot of consistent damage and gives some Magic Penetration while the enemy carries are still squishy.

I could see that build being quite good, although I find it hard to rush anything other than RoQ into Hourglass on him, because of how helpful Hourglass is for his teamfighting.

PatMcGroynOct 16, 20141 votes

Liandry's is definitely a good item on Swain, because of his DoT and CC prolonging and amplifying the burn damage. I personally only build it if the enemy team has a beefy tank line. Because of how good Swain's ability ratios are, I prefer going for a more ap heavy (but still pretty tanky) build. It depends on the team, though. If my team needs more damage, I'll go for a higher damage build. If we already have a lot of damage, then I'll often go tankier.