Analysis on Swain (my main, my boi, my berd)

Since this guy has been reworked, this guy has been one of the best champs in the game. Before, he was very fun, and now he is fun but completely viable. So I am going to talk about this Lucius Malfoy bird mutant. https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/40Z27mzz7.jpg Swain is an insane engage god, but with no escape at all, unless if you rely on your e. So let's start off from the top. His passive is a secondary poke tool (more like poking toward you) and it can heal you a tiny bit, it can help you lane a bit, and to close the gap between you and your enemy laner without having to turret dive. Also regularly collection soul fragments from killed champs can easily replenish your soul fragment collection from a team fight, even from your own teammates, so your set for another big ult. His q is a ridiculous harass move that has a short cooldown and a great amount of damage. It is his main form of waveclear as well, time it when a minion or two are low in the front so you can potentially kill or well damage the others in the back. This skill works like a shotgun in first person shooters, it fires a wave of multiple shots that can all hit a single target or more, if you land all of them on one target, it will do a LOT of damage (MAX THIS FIRST BEFORE ANYTHING). His w may not work well for battle or waveclear at any rate, but if timed right and land a hit you get a free soul fragment, and you can hit multiple targets at once. It's a decent poke with a slow, that spans over a wide target range. Enemy champs with low movement speed and rarely any form of dash will have trouble dodging this ability. This could also be used to kill a low health recalling enemy champ, that or just make them mad rofl eggs deeee. His e is another form of lane bullying I use, it can be used to get a soul fragment and use as a way of cc. It CAN be used to escape... but it doesn't guarantee complete escape, just don't activate your passive when they are rooted. Remember that the return part of the attack explodes on the first enemy hit, and can root and damage several enemies in the range of the explosion, so you can root a champion behind a wave of minions at the tip of the range of the e. Finally his ult, this is what makes swain be swains and it goes a thing like https://sadanduseless.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/derpy-bird.jpg You basically become a bird man and drain health from surrounding enemies.... so basically like before his rework. This time he has demon flare as you all know which is like swains ult mixed with a karthus e and nunu ult. Its damage magnifies when you have more soul fragments so unless your going to try surviving from an ignite or something, don't use it until you have 5 soul fragments. This is what turns a fight around all the time is when you pop this because the heal and the demon flare damage is insane. Always use this in a team fight, its a deadly nuke that, sure you might die sometimes while using it, but as long as you got the demon flare on the enemy team, it can possibly turn the team fight around. OOOR you can get an instant pentakill with an ult if your that fed. Also, this skill takes at least one soul fragment to activate, no mana needed or your money back.

Swain can either go mid or top but mostly mid because most mages can't counter swain. Swain is a decent pick because he can counter certain champs that usually would be destroyers to mages like yasuo (yes, as it turns out this bird boi can counter yasuo), riven, and teemo (he kills everything) as a few examples. However he does have a few counters as well, such as darius, twitch, vi and so on. What you want to do for laning is poking your enemy laner with your w, and your e passive q combo, to build up damage and your soul fragments. When engaging, you can use your e and your ult if you want. ALWAYS use your q up close as possible if you can, it will do a lot of damage, that is why you activate e first so you can bring them into the range of more of your q's bolts. During team fights, you can poke the entire enemy team with your w before your team engages if you want. Once the team fight actually begins, activate your ult and continue using your e and q, and of course your demonflare, on the entire enemy team. (also if you die while you casted demonflare and it damages the entire enemy team and kills someone, put in "Self destruct" just for the heck of it)

For builds I would always recommend as a few. Raily's can slow opponents with your ult hp drain field, so you can keep the enemy champion(s) in range of demon flare until it explodes. ROA can help build up swains hp, mana, and ap all at once which are all necessary for building this champion. Liandry's is Liandry's, and the hp always helps. Last but not least the banshees can help deal with DoT's like teemo poison, poison in general, burns, and so on since they are mostly ap, also the shield can really help swain when it comes to dealing with enemy champions with a high damage skill like lux with her ult, and karthus's ult, SpElL ImMuNiTy! The rest of the build is up to you, just make sure it can help swain with hp or ap, since your hp will be already covered with your ROA because of the massive mana increase.