I have mastery 5 on Swain and 2 of his skins. I really love Swain. I played him alot before he became FOTM. If his ult gets a 30 second cd, his gameplay will be so different from before. I loved the fact that his ult was forgiving, if you accidently used it, its not that big of a deal. I understand he was in need of nerfs, but this seems to change his play style too much.
BigPooStorm70 votesI hate Swain, but this is a straight up gutting... He will never be played again if this nerf goes through. If it does go through, this is the laziest balancing I've ever seen, just straight up triple the ult CD? I mean Riot was so cautious with Zed, reverting his ult CD and only keeping the Q CD. But with Swain? Nope, straight into the fucking shitter you go.
Cosmic Warper21 votesI hate Swain, but this is a straight up gutting... He will never be played again if this nerf goes through. If it does go through, this is the laziest balancing I've ever seen, just straight up triple the ult CD? I mean Riot was so cautious with Zed, reverting his ult CD and only keeping the Q CD. But with Swain? Nope, straight into the fucking shitter you go.
Just like when they nerfed his W for no reason. It really doesn't make sense. If the ult is such a problem then just revert the ultimate. I'll take the old ult on a 10s cd over this one on a 30s cd any day.
Arakadia8 votes'll take the old ult on a 10s cd over this one on a 30s cd any day.
As would I
SiG DxD5 votesearly nerf guts the bird
FrockSaints1 votesYou don't get it. Zed is one of the good guy champions. :)))))
Seriously. Because Swain isn't popular, riot doesn't really care about being careless.
Critkeeper20 votesThere are two ways to increase swain's counterplay:
nerf the cooldown so there are windows of vulnerability in which you can fight and kill him.
backload the effectiveness of his ultimate, so it grows more powerful over time as it is used, giving you an opportunity to deal with him before it ramps up.
Sire Hippington17 votes3 . increase the ramping up manacosts on his ult so he can't keep it running for the full duration of even a lengthy fight with only a roa for mana, which would open windows of vulnerabillity as he's need to cancle the ult to reset the manacosts at some point, just as he used to befor the rework and roa buffs.
underscores2222 votes4 . provide more counters to the drain-mage in general via items that reduce healing effects that aren't pigeonholed into two roles
Anu3isII5 votesTwo roles, one being every game, and the other is played almost every game and most of the times it can afford to buy that item, even when it doesn't "counter" anyone.
Also, as a sidenote, both items that were built from Last Whisper were buffed, so more people should buy them when needed.
Enloct3 votesBasically. In other words, the rework was stupid, pointless, and decreased is counterplay while reducing the skill needed to play him.
Feathermane12 votesI stopped playing him ages ago when I realized Riot utterly despises him and will do anything to keep him unviable.
Arakadia9 votesHe's not even like Yorick level of bad. But for 4 years he hasn't got a skin. Its not like he lacks concepts too. Prehistoric Swain, Dragon Master Swain, Pool Party Swain, etc. And we know he isn't getting a rework. So that'll be 5 years without a skin for Swain, who isn't even unhealthy. Just give him a VU already and stop using it as an excuse!
ofart11 votesIf they do that, they should definitely revert the last round of nerfs. I don't even think Swain's actually strong despite the winrate becase Executioners screws him so hard for 800g and he's still quite kiteable.
Toru Itai3 votesbut people don't buy it...... if only people would realize that deleting the enemy teams sustain actually helps you.
Surr20plz10 votesYeah it's dumb.
Kingnewgameplus8 votesIf this change goes through he will just be a really shitty maokai. Seriously why play swain if you can get an aoe damage reduction for just 10 more seconds of cd?
Trundle Bundle7 votesThe low cool down on his ult isn't there just to be forgiving, but currently is one of the more engaging aspects of playing him and contributes to his skill ceiling. When you play Swain, there are times when you have to know when to drop your ult even as a fight is going on in order to curb your mana consumption, and rely on kiting to pad out that time safely. Tripling the cool down removes the impact of skillful play and forces him into a straight up numbers competition even further.
It's not a good change by any stretch of the imagination.
Aptest6 votesI used to play swain back in the day.
I liked the idea that he has 4 skills rather than 3 skills and an ult.
Having the ult always on in a team fight is ridiculous. A better play pattern would be to force short 3-6 second bursts through mana cost gating.
That way the ult is both available and counterable within the context of the same team fight.
a 30 second cd on the ult makes swain more of a standard +ult character, which is less interesting. The absurd on-time on the ult atm is too much. Being able to pass the 15 second mark with swain's ult is absurd.
Xenos111115 votesLike seriously, at least wait to see if the 
nerfs make him more balanced. It's the same old shit of Riot reworking a champion to be too strong and then gutting them to the point they never see the light of the rift.
The Yetii Rider4 votesSwain has access to more CDR now with GLP, so it should be less noticeable. Same reason they nerfed Fizz's E CD, balance around CDR.
Zavern19 votesIt is still triple the current cd. Even with CDR, triple is still triple.
The Yetii Rider6 votesIt is still triple the current cd. Even with CDR, triple is still triple.
Ezreal got 40 seconds added to his ult CD at all ranks. But it's fair, because his Q reduces his CDs. CDR is very relevant when determining CD nerfs.
BigPooStorm15 votes[{quoted}](name=The Yetii Rider,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=U6fkPsJm,comment-id=000400000000,timestamp=2016-06-15T01:39:18.188+0000)
Ezreal got 40 seconds added to his ult CD at all ranks. But it's fair, because his Q reduces his CDs. CDR is very relevant when determining CD nerfs.
Not really a fair comparison since Ezreal isn't completely reliant on his ult for damage. Swain without his ult is basically a non-factor
Battlecast Sona4 votesI find this is the major problem in mindset people have with these changes. After the rework, Swain does a huge amount of damage with a E->Q and potentially W and his CDs on his spells are quite short, even with only 20-30% CDR. I don't think Swain's ult is quite as important to his impact as you're implying. Important to his survival certainly, but he still does plenty of damage without it.
GigaPube4 voteslost all respect for riot after seeing this. ive heard so much of their shit like "yeah we realised our mistake and this is how we're fixing it and this is why we think this fix will work better", and then they go right back to pulling this shit
why does someone who can transform into a bird need a 30 second cooldown to do so when its pretty much a riot-implemented principle that it costs 25 mana to start, but it still is, or should be, a toggle on/of ability. this is like if only 1 of udyrs stances were a lot stronger than the others they put that one on a 30 second cooldown. they changed swains ultimate to not have a less than 1 second cast time, now they propose this
i really hope they choose to buckle down and figure something else out. why not give the ultimate other features or ways to nerf it, like if swains ult ravens arent flying to anything they fly off and dont come back or something. if thats too much of a problem you can maybe balance him by rewarding the acquisition of his ult ravens by increasing the damage of his Q by the amount of ult ravens that have hit them before his Q. boom thought of that in a few seconds
come on riot you can do better
Mazariamonti4 votesSwain gets a couple patches to be good, afterwards he'll be unplayable for the next three seasons. With Zed? Well Riot doesn't want to be too hasty.
Also, he's not really that bad if 'someone' buys executioners and/or brings ignite. You want to beat a swain after the most recent nerfs? Bring ignite and your problems are solved. Have the adc spend 800 gold on executioners and your problems are solved.
I'm not even sure if Zed is still a problem right now since I ban him all the time, but I'm going to keep banning him out of spite now.
Zarkkast3 votesNow you don't even need grievous wounds to counter Swain. All you need is a disengage. Just bait his ult and then engage again.
Fenikkusu13 votesWell, did you expect anything different? Whenever a mage becomes to strong Riot goes crazy with the nerf bat, but when its an assassin they take their time like its a newborn baby.
Eevee In A Jar1 votesAssassin's usually specialize in taking down one champion at a time. Swain is AoE, isn't crazy mechanic-intensive and has insane amount of sustain. Completely different type of champs and roles you can't compare like that.
Arakadia2 votesMechanics shouldnt effect how they treat different champs imho.
Eevee In A Jar2 votesYou're not getting the point. Swain barely has to put in any effort to stomp in a team fight whereas let's take the OP assassin everyone has in mind the previous fotm batch; Zed. Zed has to do a lot more just to assassinate 1-2 people whereas you can easily dispatch more than that as Swain and only have to do half the things Zed has to do to pull them off.
Arakadia2 votesZed is 10X safer than Swain.
Swain is maybe a little too strong, but also people have no idea how to play against him.
And you still haven't explained why a champions difficulty should affect how their balanced.
Eevee In A Jar1 votesI'm not disagreeing with you on the 10x safer than Swain. But again Swain isn't hard to play and doesn't change the fact that what he has to do isn't mechanic intensive (aka not hard to do at all) and that little amount of effort will tremendously turn the tide in a team fight. And maybe people have no idea how to play against him where you're playing but Swain is a bit difficult to deal with outside of laning phase even at high ELO's where everyone knows how to counter.
And why shouldn't a champ difficulty affect how they're balanced? So if there's a champion where all you need to do is press Q and you can basically get a kill no matter how bad you are or how much of a bad decision it was to do what you did, Riot should keep buffing it and rewarding you? If all of Swain's abilities were skillshots except his ult, I guarantee you no one will complain because that WOULD make him considerably harder to play. There are certain champs like Garen or Xin whom against certain matchups you can basically just punch the top left side of your keyboard to get a double with minimal amount of mechanics involved really. Does it make sense to give such champions so much power? Why play other champs at all if they are hard to play and don't net the same amount of reward? (Not saying Xin or Garen are strong atm) That's not how balancing works. You're just asking an already retarded-easy champion who's currently strong state to remain the same disregarding BALANCE.
Sure there are effective means to counterplay but no one can deny Swain is too powerful right now. Even if Zed was safe, it isn't difficult to kill him at all.
Arakadia5 votesHigh skill cap champions shouldnt have plain out better stats/nubmers just because there harder to play/master. They maybe should be more reward/fun or have better chances for outplays.
Riot does not make difficult champions stronger than easier champions, not on purpose.
You seem to think Swain is on the difficulty of Garen or easier. Lets take a look on why your wrong:
He requires mana management much more than most champions.
If he can't cs, he will get oom much easier. He really needs his passive to get mana back. But his AA' s animation suck, he has bad base AD, and untill before the rework his waveclear sucked.
Much of his damage is in his Q which requires the enemy to stand in it. Placing it so enemies stay in it is not easy.
His W requires aiming.
He's easilly kited. Still a problem.
He's prone to burst.
He's all DoT.
He's immobile.
Sure, Swain is no Azir or Cass. But people underestimate him.
For counterplay, he has much of it:
Ignite: Shuts down his healing
Exe Calling: ^
Morrello's: ^
Any item that builds from Exe: ^
Easilly Kited.
Easilly Bursted.
Champions who can heal up damage such as Mundo or Voli or anyone with good enough lifesteal.
Magic Resistance.
Health Shred (Health is a big deal for Swain)
Poke.
CC.
If you look at say... Annie. If a decent player plays Annie, they can carry a game quite easilly and much more than if that same player played Azir. Notice I say a decent player, not Challanger. Its not fair Swain gets gutted because he is simpler than some assassins who by nature are complex.
lccarus3 votesI have mastery 5 on Swain and 2 of his skins. I really love Swain. I played him alot before he became FOTM. If his ult gets a 30 second cd, his gameplay will be so different from before. I loved the fact that his ult was forgiving, if you accidently used it, its not that big of a deal. I understand he was in need of nerfs, but this seems to change his play style too much.
You basically just stated, to summarize, "I liked that I didn't have to think before I acted, now I'll have to put more thought into my play, I don't like him anymore."
Arakadia4 votesNo, not really. Swain requires much more thought then you think with much more counterplay than people think. I could list it if you want.
This nerf is a gutting. Part of his playstyle is having 4 abilites and no ult, like Udyr. This will force you to put more thought in your play, and ruin Swain.
KushDid4202 votesYou really didn't need to add the "I'm mastery 5 and have his skins" part, you could've just said you're a regukar swain player.
However as a Mastery 6 Swain player on the verge of Mastery 7, Swain really could atleast get the CD on his ult nerfed like to 15, but not this hard.
I agree with you Whole though
specter4243 votesThey should just revert the change on his ult that made it a flat heal. Instead they will throw him into the dumpster where Fizz, Zed and Leblanc belong but somehow avoided.
Nymzo2 votesHere how I would see Swain gameplay:
Passive and all basic spells: q and w same as now, e would be a skillshot.
Ult: Available at level 1, no cost for transformation, staying in this form does not drain mana anymore but there no ravens that attack nearby foes and heal Swain, cd 10 or 20.
Instead, his basics spells would be empowered, giving him spellvamp (like someone suggested). However, the spells would cost double or triple the mana of the original cost.
This would turn Swain into a brand new champ, a skillful player would have to think when he would need to transform since using the spells in Bird form would cost A LOT of mana.
Arakadia1 votesThats cool, I'd like to see how his spells are empowered. I think him wading through battle fits his theme. That sounds pretty cool though.
Nymzo2 votesMaybe he could gets additional movement speed and/or ignore units collison in bird form if you really want to be in the heart of the battle.
Xietnin2 votesSwain's getting cassiopeia'd? Nearly every time I come to the board, I find something that has me depressed about playing LoL. EDIT: I meant the Casiopeia'd the time before the current Cassiopeia that got nerfed to the ground and was no longer viable due to being flat out broken.
INoble KnightI2 votesFirst his direct nerfs, then the nerfs to ROA (which nerfs him again), now this? I just started to play Swain and I found him fun and counter able but this is BS. Now another possible main gone.
Tatsumi Oga2 votesI feel like this is another in a long, disturbing, trend riot has created. When a champion has a kit that is inherently difficult to balance, they nerf them into the dust and move on. We've seen this with Kassadin, they kept trying to change him and eventually just gave up, made him useless, and never touched him again. We've seen this with Akali, her overwhelming presence as a mid laner was a problem, but riot's solution to this problem was to remove her viability. We've seen it with Ryze, they changed his kit numerous times and he kept being too strong, then they nerfed him so hard even with his kit he isn't a strong pick anymore. Now we see swain, someone who despite being fairly unknown for a while has always been strong, got changed, became too powerful, got changed, still powerful, then now is getting his knees crushed in. I would love to see changes to this, but I'm not hopeful.
Mouse5342 votesThe only problem I see with this change is that it might make him more dependent on stat checking, meaning he will ONLY change when he KNOWS he is going to get the kill or is getting backup.
This change seems to be a reaction to his near infinite up time for his ult when he runs 40% cdr, which causes an issue with no real thinking about WHEN to ult.
Just another way to state the issue is that his current ult functions like an on/off zoning switch as opposed to an actual ult, 'Am I fighting? If yes then ult, if not then turn it off.' Having plenty of zoning capacities in the first place, he needs his ult to be just that, an ult that can change the tide of battle.
His R should not act as yet another zoning tool to force people to back, but turn Swain into a team fighting nightmare that is THE dot/zone guy. I personally think his ult is the embodiment of his dot/zones, turning him INTO a moving dot/zone.
http://champion.gg/champion/Swain/Top suggests that may be the case with the above issue, look at the difference between 30% and 40% cdr (runes being the main difference). Spiking from a 54.09% to a 59.72% win rate respectively. Even if this is not the case, cdr on him seems to be an issue.
Arhkadian1 votesAs a 
main, i absolutely hate having to fight swain in the mid lane, but these nerfs are really harsh. his ultimate isnt that powerful that it needs a 30 second cd, imo.
Blåbæret1 votesHis ult is ridiculously OP. It negates any poke you do, and it literally gets him from 10% to 100% in a few seconds when he decided to tank minion waves. You can't win lane against a swain that know what he's doing.
Jhaerik2 votes10% to 100% in a few second
So literally every AD champion in the game. Literally any AD champion can buy a vamp scepter and go from 10-100% in a single minion wave. Riot fucking hates AP champions. They remove spell vamp items, gut Vlad's sustain and now they are gutting Swain. No wonder mages are becoming something that is only seen in the JG or as a support role. AD's do better sustained damage, have better farming, far better late game damage, and also have sustain. The only solo lane mages that see play are burst mages picked into squishy comps. The only reason mages still exist is to counter armor stacking... they fail in every other way.
Axxuka1 votesI have mastery 5 on Swain and 2 of his skins. I really love Swain. I played him alot before he became FOTM. If his ult gets a 30 second cd, his gameplay will be so different from before. I loved the fact that his ult was forgiving, if you accidently used it, its not that big of a deal. I understand he was in need of nerfs, but this seems to change his play style too much.
I main Swain since Season 3, was the main champ that made me rise my Elo each season from Bronze I/Silver V to Silver I or Even Gold V (Season 4 and 6 gold V thanks to him mostly). I'm actually trying to find new mains to play mid because if the nerf goes through, every reasons for wish I played the champ will be long gone. The changes are too dramatic. It disgusts me because I even got a pillow with Tyrant Swain Splash art on it custom-made... Yes, I love the champ that much and every changes he gets since the MYMU are just distancing me from him.
I also mainly played : 
With Vlad+Xerath being the only ones I see as an improvement with no gameplay dramatic changes (the other MYMU mage updates change the gameplay much more)
My Main question is : Why Change something that was fine before ? Even if it was borderline OP for long-time players of the champs, you created problems where there was none of them during that MYMU (
) Those three champs were fine, not perfect since Swain needs a rework, but fine. Now they are problematic and it just makes me want to abandon my best champs, since I have to start back from scratch gameplay-wise.
Arakadia2 votesYour right. If this turns out to gut Swain, I'd rather they just revert him. His Q change was fine. I think it would be ok if they just changed his Q and nothing else.
I really love Swain. Someone below assumed I picked him up just now because he is FOTM, but I love his lore, his theme, his character, his look, his kit, and his personality.
Your so correct. They made more problems than before it feels like. They've changed gameplay so heavilly, it sucks sometimes. I hope that if they gut Swain, they atleast make him viable like Mordekaiser after his screw up.
Swain might be the first champion Riot reworked and ruined for me. I hope not.