Less obvious ways to balance Swain's ulti

Swain received some substantial nerfs last patch, but it's looking increasingly likely that he will need further nerfs. The problem with is almost entirely with his ulti. That is what needs to be targeted. For an easy to execute ability it is surprisingly complex and has a lot of parts that could be tackled.

Number of birds. After the update they increased the number of birds to 5. I suspect the reason for doing this is to create a wider variance into his kit. However, this has not actually eventuated. Why? Because they kept the healing in a 1v1 at roughly the same rate as when he had 3 birds. All they did was increase his optimal case while not decreasing his sub-optimal case. This was actually a good change and should not be nerfed, but leads into the context for the rest of the possible nerfs.

Range reduction. Swain has an multi range of approx. 700 units (I don't know if this is centre-to-centre or edge-to-edge, but I'd guess the latter) Because of this Swain is able to drain from too large an area too easily. His access to his healing is too easy - especially in team fights. This doesn't reduce his healing directly but makes it more difficult to get the high end of healing. It increases his variance. Off all the changes to Swain, I think this the most necessary.

Reduce his 1v1 healing. I'm going to gloss over these, least they become too maths-y. The tl:dr (and the too long didn't write) is there are a variety of reducing this while retaining his group healing.

Reduce initiation pulse rate. Bird waves happen every .2 seconds up to 5 targets and cannot hit the same target again for 1 second. The situation where this is beneficial is where there are more than 5 targets. I.e. minions. Either simplify this to 1 wave per second up to 5 targets or further cut the minion healing. It's much too high when Swain can leach off so many at once. A secondary consequences of reducing the pulse rate is it makes going into range of Swain more generous for the opposition. (i.e., can get in and get out before the a new bird fires)

Increase lockout of pulse rate. Swains birdies cannot his the same target for 1 sec. Increasing that would increase the counterplay/escapability, given Rylai's is such often so desirable on Swain. It also significantly decreases his damage _and_healing.