The Forgotten Mage, Swain

While I like Swain as a champion and love his play style It's hard to ignore his several glaring issues he has, the biggest of which is his Identity crisis. He tries to be what his lore intended but is put into a roll that doesn't support it. He's supposed to be a utility mage but also tries to be a front line brusier with his ult and short ranged slow, yes the range it's self isnt bad but the tether range is horrid and unless your in their face will be broken almost instantly making it a waste of mana in many cases. His early wave clear is non-existent, due to a massive CD on his only AoE pre 6 and is easily pushed to tower as early as lvl 3, which compounds the problem further as his only non-dot spell is his massive CD W making him fall even further behind, not to mention his early mana problems. As mentioned before his Kit is just odd, half support and half damage. I get its supposed to be a team fight oriented Kit it just confuses me sometimes what am I supposed to build? Playing him as a mage just feels awkward sometimes as I'm supposed to live as long as possible to do max damage but his Ult, Q, and E seem to want me in the middle of the fight other wise his damage potential is pitiful compared to many if not most midlaners.
In top lane he has many of the same problems, out pushed, out sustained, and many top laners do his job better as far as cc goes such as maokai, nautilus, gnar and the like, although he can be rather good counter pick, in bottom as support hes just outclassed by any true support. Swain has never been what you would call popular as long as I've been playing because other mages just do their individual jobs better instead of splitting their Kit. While I like our noxian general I think it's about time Riot took a look at him again.