Swain's Ravenous Flock (Ultimate) Idea [Suggestion]
I just had this thought last night and I wanted to post it on the forums to get the community's thoughts on it. I would also like to start out by saying that I am in no way suggesting that Swain needs a buff, this is more of a visual improvement suggestion. The beef I have with Swain at the moment is that he looks less powerful than he actually is. I believe it's important to make sure that the appearance of abilities reflect the damage output.
What if you didn't cap the amount of crows swain can have flying around but rather had diminishing power output per crow for each increase in number of crows. For our purposes, let's assume that Swain activates his ulti and is 1v1 while no minions or monsters are around. In this instance (for simplicity's sake) let's say while he's fighting one enemy his crow will hit for 20 AP each time. Now let's say it becomes a 1v2, now two crows will proc for 18 AP on each hit. Then let's say it's 1v3, now three crows hit for 16 AP each time. 1v4, four crows for 14 AP, ad infinitum...
So this mechanic change would bring some interesting gameplay decisions. One scenario I see Swain thriving in, similarly to what he already does, is when he fights around minions and monsters for the heal proc. So that'll stay the same in some sense. Here's another scenario I see interesting, because of his birds doing less damage to champions in team fights, if a change like this was implemented, Swain players would have to make more calculated decisions before entering a fight. For instance, let's say enemy team is pushing a wave of minions... Currently, Swain may be able to engage 1v3 and defend the turret no problem since the crows would attack Champs when they came under turret. With these changes that I'm suggesting, the birds would attack champs as they came under turret, but because there are 12+ crows for all the enemies around him, there would be a diminishing return on damage to the champs. The other side to this scenario is now Swain could have sustaining power close to Mundo when he ulties around a lot of enemies.
Is this viable? I'm not sure and I'm not at liberty to suggest that in any way it is. That's for a Rioter way smarter than me to do the calculations on (which they may already have).
My goal with this post is to spark a discussion with fellow Swain enthusiasts on how to bring Swain into a similar tier as all these new champs, i.e. their visual representations matching up with their power. Illaoi's abilities (and especially her Q with that thump sound) is a perfect example of Riot matching a champ's ability visuals with their power output. What are your thoughts?
