Swain nerfs: Why I disagree with them and a novel solution

Swain has nerfs on the PBE. I'm not arguing that he doesn't need nerfs, but I dislike the direction based on paper.

The nerf Ravenous Flock (R) [cool-down increased to 30 seconds from 10 seconds. need to confirm.]

The context > {quoted} > > Swain - We're interested in a model for Swain ult where when he turns it on during a fight is a significant thing for enemies to play around. At a 10s CD, especially with a decent amount of CDR (which he'll get) there's just not sufficient downtime there for it to matter enough. Testing significantly longer CDs as a result, looking at an approach where he gets one ult activation in an average fight, two in particularly long fights. > For both champs both the concept and the specific numbers are still being tested. It's early in the patch cycle right now, so hard to give a useful answer as to whether they'll go through without more testing. We do like both changes directionally so far though.

I can see what Riot are going for here. Increased risk-reward, gating, laning phase and what have you. It's not something that I like the look of on paper though for several reasons. N.B. for this I am making a number of assumptions. That people dislike his laning phase and his ease of access to healing. That team fighting ought to be a strength and that he should not be a lane bully and transition into a team fighting monster with a great late game - especially with counter play limited.

a) There are a number of other nerfs on his R, that while not influencing his risk reward do cut out some unnecessary power (range, refresh rate, bird#, lockout rate, etc.). b) It cuts out some of the use cases for his ult. Swain doesn't have much variance so I do worry about removing use cases. Admittedly I can see this cutting both ways. Fewer use cases, but the decisions made are a but more impactful.
c) His ult is a long duration DoT and does not have power concatenated into a short window- It's not part of Swain's 'combo' d) It's to short to make much difference in laning phase (outside of ganks) so there is still frustration against him. e) It doesn't solve the stated goal. There is just as much playing around his ult when he turns it on now as there will be if it's 30 seconds CD. It does increase the counter play, I'll give that, but counter play when Swain's ult is on is exactly the same.

End of Criticism: Novel solution As a combination of points b, c, d - Because his ult is a toggle DoT and because both the duration and number of surrounding unit differs there is much more variance in the ultimate's damage and healing. Some times it will have the impact less than a basic spell, others it will be more powerful than most other ults. For this reason I'd rather his ulti have a dynamic cool down -- Similar to his mana costs. There are some good reasons for not doing it, but I suspect it would work on his ult because it's not as feel based as say, Cass E (Opponent tracking of it and fail cases would be the main problems). A dynamic CD allows him to retain some use cases with trivial ult use (wave clear) for short durations, but if he leaves it on for extended periods of time (as he does when doing large trades or in team fights) it is down for a non trivial time.

Does this increase decision making? It would certainly be different decisions to a flat increase in CD. The different decisions is something I that is good -- I like it when champs have different decisions from one another. In the flat increase case the decision making is mana management and the temporal aspect of beginning the ult. There isn't much decision making in ending it the ult because of the prevalence of mana and the static CD. In the case of a dynamic CD the decision isn't as much in the beginning, but the ending. Ending or not ending has consequences on both mana and CD and you have to make a trade off. If Swain has his ult on for a long time and uses it as more in line with an ult rather than as a basic spell it has a similar window of downtime. There is a stronger element of prediction in this model too IMO. There has to be some prediction of the game state in the future and if the cost of a longer CD is worth the immediate power gained. I think this will make a healthy tension and interesting tradeoffs/decisions, as well as increase the skill ceiling. (There are two ways to increase skill mastery. Mechanical difficulty and decisions. Swain lacks much of either)

A dynamic CD is not without it's own problems. E.g. opponent tracking of the CD. It becomes very difficult for the opponent to know when the cool down is up or not. This is certainly a problem, but I don't think it is as large as it could be on another kit.. If it were burst, I'd agree. if it were part of a combo, I'd agree. i.e. I think it would be an acceptable trade off because of the nature of Swain's kit. The other problem I foresee is failure cases. There are failure cases in both. In the static CD option ult-ing too early is likely to mean an important cool down is wasted (the prevalence of mana means running out of mana isn't that likely. Swain can hold his ultimate for a very long time atm). In the dynamic case any such fail case is more likely to be for holding his ult on too long and not having the CD available again. Because the feedback loop is delayed the failure is less obvious.