Swain's early game is scary D:

I think this is definitely a champ that was heavily reliant on mana pots to survive in past seasons. In fact even with mana pots and blue buff he could still have mana issues if you weren't careful. With the removal of mana pots swain's early game has become an absolute nightmare. For reference, his E-Q-W combo at level 3 is approximately 200 mana, swain's total mana at that point is 400. He runs out of mana so quickly that he can't do much until he gets blue buff/mana regen item. That's ok I guess if he's in a passive lane, but trying to trade effectively with an opponent just isn't feasible.

In my first Swain game I was up against a Yasuo, which in the past I thought was a pretty simple matchup because your kit counters an all in pretty effectively. Except after the first trade which went pretty well I found my mana was really low. At which point I couldn't even walk up to the minions because if he ran at me I wouldn't be able to use my full combo. Now I'm not a Swain main or some crazy good player, but the hurt of no mana pots is really quite noticeable on this champ. Mid-Late game Swain is fine though and feels pretty much like before so I was able to come back in the game and we won so there's no need to mess with that aspect.

It should be pretty easy to fix this by lowering early game mana costs on swain's abilities because to raise mana/mana-regen in the early game probably wouldn't feel like much help because the costs are just so heavy. They could then scale back to current costs late and Swain would feel a lot nicer.

If Swain mains out there who've played him in the pre-season have any ideas/advice I'd be happy to hear :)