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Questions about Swain, how to build, identity, etc.

Crowe Stalker·7/29/2015, 9:52:36 PM·1 votes·973 views

Hello everyone, Something has been something on my mind for quite some time now and I wanted to get a thread open to a question I have. Let me start this off by re-affirming that Meddler recently replied and said he thinks Swain is in a good position right now Looking at his LoLking stats, I find this oddly accurate. This to me is really odd because I feel like despite this, he could still use some kind of rework on his kit.

I feel like whenever I play him, his kit has conflicting themes. You want to harass your opponent as much as possible, but positioning your Decrepify is literally the most strategic detail about him. Other than that, he has a AoE Root, a Point and Click Deathfire Grasp built into his kit (minus the health percent and just using a flat DoT in it's place) and his ultimate is designed around teamfights, but A) can only hit three opponents and B) It's Relevance (both in damage and healing) is decided by how much Ability power you have as well as your Mana Pool, rather than how long it's actually on or how much health your opponents have. I feel like his kit could be better if it was designed to do percent health damage on certain abilities (mainly his ultimate) but I concede I don't know the champion well enough.

So... Just who is Swain to all of you Swain Mains out there? Why pick him over other champions? Do you think he fulfills his fantasy properly, or do you think he could use some reworking to his abilities?

2 Comments

SquishyArchon7/30/2015, 7:36:49 AM2 votes

I was an exclusive Swain main last season and climbed with him to diamond so here is my 2 cents.

First of all, don't worry about "positioning his Q." While you could make the argument for increasing damage output, I guarantee you that you will end up hurting your play beyond any small benefits you gain from maximizing the Q tether duration. Just don't worry about it.

Aside from that, Swain is actually insanely strong in that his E amplifies all of his damage sources by a whopping 20% at max rank. This has great synergy with his ult which allows him to build tanky and sustain a lot while still dealing huge "burst DoTs" of damage. It's hard to really explain...you just kind of have to play him more and see for yourself. If you land a W on someone, immediately E/Q/R all together at once on them with orb-walked auto attacks as you chase them down and you will see the insane damage you put out with relatively little AP.

Ult is perfectly fine as is only hitting 3 people. You get substantial sustain from it and anymore would be overpowered.

As for why pick him over other champs.

Not many people know what he is capable of so you have the element of surprise
He brings more tankyness to the team
Very easy laning phase and has few to zero truly bad matchups. Passive mana sustain, ult health sustain, point and click harass, high trade combos. Swain is just one of those characters who is really hard to beat 1v1 in lane.
Provides a lot more sustained damage end game as opposed to characters like Annie/Leblanc/Lux/etc who are prone to cooldown rotations.

Oh and as for a build, I like: Dorans + 2 pots Catalyst -> RoA Boots somewhere along the way (Usually merc treads) Zhonyas or Deathcap (Behind vs. Ahead) Abyssal (unless literally vs 5 AD) Then tank up for the last two (FH & Spirit Visage make a great combo on Swain)

And actually, if I won my lane hard and the enemy mid AP isn't threatening then I would also skip the abyssal and go straight for the FH as my third item after deathcap. FH is one of my favorite items for Swain, just look at all those stats. It's great.

Crowe Stalker7/30/2015, 7:22:03 AM1 votes

Going to bump this...