Swain is in need of a few good buffs to be honest
new swain's kit is okay on paper but the numbers actually seem kind've weak.
the flock healing is pretty pitiful to be honest, when it should be something that helps him succeed in a trade. i've been playing him as much as I can recently and it boils down to that he's just too fair. in a sion sort of way, but waaaay worse, because his highlight moments don't even come close to sion's, which is huge aoe disruption engage and massive lane bullying. his w is actually useless. the delay makes it impossible to land unless you time it literally right as they have been rooted and the damage isn't even anything special anyways. it's too difficult to regularly accrue the 5 shards unless you are sieging for extended periods (something new swain isn't terribly good at). his e is one of the easiest abilities to dodge in the game and it feels horrible not being able to root someone on top of you when it just smacks onto a minion in lane or something, which makes trading vs bruisers with engage, like camille or riven, borderline impossible. even though his q can restore mana, swain is still extremely mana hungry and suffers from requiring waaaay to much from his itemization - he needs health, he needs resistances, he needs ap, he needs pen, he needs mana, he needs cdr - hes like vlad, except who is extremely mana hungry and doesn't have generous base damage.
the big gripe i have is with the ult. it's got a pretty massive cooldown for how mediocre it actually is - for one, you can't even cast it without a shard, and while visually you look totally badass you're walking around with pretty pitiful damage and healing. if you're successfully sitting in the middle of the enemy team, the healing doesn't matter anyway because you just get cced and die. this wasn't really an issue for previous swain since his healing and damage was numerically superior at pretty much all stages of the game compared to new one (especially with his old damage amp). the health is barely noticeable and demonflare takes ages to charge up. since it can be bodyblocked, most teamfigths with swain either end in him dying before he can even proc it or it just getting bodyblocked and the adc laughs in your face while the crit you to death.
his q is great, it's really the only part of the kit you feel good using besides maybe the pull. overall I feel as if swain has been gimped a bit and he's built like sion - a lot of counterplay but none of the awesome high moments. i think his ult cooldown should be lowered and the healing could do to be bumped up a bit, or the threshhold to proc demonflare to be lowered. currently you need to be sucking at least 1-2 champs in a skirmish and also probably the wave to have it come up ever at all. his e should travel quicker, and his w needs a lot of QoL changes to be honest. it's not even that useful for 'scouting' or whatnot since its got a huge cd and mana cost, and the delay prevents it from actually hitting anything ever. you've basicallly got a dead ability that zones for 1.5 seconds and does nothing else. i don't know what else is needed without pushing him over the edge but theres a lot of things that make swain just feel awful to play when he's behind and not even that great when he's ahead, when everything he does is dodgeable, blockable, and not even that fantastic when it lands.
hopefully riot can see this and consider some small buffs next patch to start out and we'll see from there.
