What happened to Swain?

So as you all know, was a champion who was reworked earlier this year. Ultimately, Riot's aim was to make Swain a mid lane mage and allow him to 'have high thematic moments' which is referring to his demonflare element, and be a tanky monster.

What happened? After all the nerfs, Swain is now a sub-par mid laner and bot laner, top lane shouldn't even be mentioned. His Q and waveclear early is ABYSMAL. Mana return on q may as well not exist with the way it functions. You don't start to see mana return until you build and stack your , or if you decide to grab a (which is something Swain should not be doing early anyway)

Old was a frontline AP bruiser who was able to walk into the enemy frontline and absorb a ton of damage, peeling for his team and being a great asset if you knew what the hell you were doing. Given, his kit was outdated and I hoped for a GOOD rework. I wanted them to build off of what Swain really was and deliver on that battle mage, ap bruiser fantasy, because there really is no other champion exactly like the old Swain.

Swain's current R not only feels like dogshit when you try and pop demonflare because you do negative damage until you get about 3 items in, but the COOLDOWN IS UNBEARABLE. You get some pretty good healing and a chunk of hp on cast, but the end result and the buildup no longer feels like a 'high thematic moment' and instead it feels like I just wasted my time trying to kill someone with the one thing that makes the ult unique.

Swain is meant to be a tanky monster when he uses R. He is meant to be a pseudotank with his playstyle and should be able to be the team's frontline during teamfights.

Now just feels like a CC yank-bot, being a back-line mage and being extremely team-dependent in order for him to flourish.

As a Swain fan, I just feel like the champ is weak af rn and isn't as rewarding to play anymore, it honestly feels like a chore and a burden to play him in solo lanes because there are other mid lane mages that just do what Swain does 10x better.