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Why did they change Swain??????

TesTaCull Prime ·10/29/2016, 2:09:03 AM·2 votes·942 views

So I quit playing LOL about 2 years ago....and I was a Swain main. I just started playing again and realized very quickly that despite his kit looking the same from the outside...this was a very different champ.... He was fine back then before any of the changes were made initially. I've been scouring online to try to find what the reasoning was for them to change him in the first place...but I can't find anything. Can anyone enlighten me on why these changes were made to begin with...and why his ult is now on a seemingly forever cooldown.... apparently now you max Q instead of E.... I'm just so confused. Why mess with a champion that was perfectly fine before? Rather than nerf the hell out of him why not just revert to the pre change thing....Swain was fine before it...and they ruined him. I'm just trying to figure out why...if anyone can tell me I'd appreciate it. Also is there any way to complain to riot or try to get them to fix him?

7 Comments

Vhan876510/29/2016, 2:17:41 AM1 votes

I certainly wouldn't call him nerfed now, but I don't entirely know if Riot gave reasons for his changes.

I'll try to see if I can dig up the old Mage Update post for ya, maybe there is something in there.

EDIT: Here is one of the links I was looking for: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-69-notes With or not that answers any of your questions, I don't entirely know, but I did skim over it and saw a decent amount of text regarding Swain, so hopefully there is something in there for ya.

Big Lincoln10/29/2016, 2:19:21 AM1 votes

this was actually a very good rework, and riot did it because Swain was incredibly binary and frustrating to deal with, so if he ever somehow became meta they'd probably nerf the shit out of him.

swain got fucking buffed and he was so good after the rework he became permaban for a while. almost everything he got was straight buffs out of it, the only iffy thing is his Q isn't targeted anymore. His R got changed to flat healing instead of % of his damage, which was a huge buff that turned him from a heavy AP builder to more of an AP bruiser. I don't really like this part because I'd prefer he be more reliant on higher amounts of AP, but in terms of just straight strength, he's very good now

CrazyBear198710/29/2016, 2:35:40 AM1 votes

Swain is still strong, just need to adjust to his adjusted kit.

Just played a game where i was TF against Swain in mid. He can burst me down to 10% life with his abilities.

Very annoying and very aggressive.

Just not instapicked right now as he has been out awhile, people want to try something new or different.

Wordofmask10/29/2016, 10:36:03 AM1 votes

There was a big update project called Mid Year Mage Update which focus on immobile mages. Of course Swain had been considered very high on this list but the Update team decided that he needs a full VGU which this update cant provide. So they tweaked his kit to make him viable before a full VGU coming.

As for the logic behind these Changes. They want to add more strategic elements to him and make him cannot 1 vs 5 face tanking as before. New Q solves his waveclear problem while numbers of his W E and R were adjusted to serve this direction.

Talisid10/29/2016, 10:52:45 AM1 votes

He's way stronger now than he ever was before. Trust me I left the game for several years and played a ton of swain back in the day.

Ultimately he's not that different. Before his Q used to be targeted onto a single enemy and once that enemy got out of leash range of the crow, the ability would stop doing anything. Now it is targeted at an area and it will change targets if its initial target leaves the range. It also deals double damage to minions. This makes it much better for clearing creep waves which was one of his key problems back in the day. His ultimate cooldown is a bit longer, which was changed so that he'd have a small window of vulnerability that his opponents could exploit.

Aside from that the rest of his kit is more or less the same. He tends to build at bit more tanky than before, I tend to build item 3027 item 3157 item 3151 and item 3065 instead of building item 3089 and item 3003 like I used to, but the end result and his overall playstyle are basically the same. Be a giant bully and waltz into the middle of the enemy team while you slowly grind them to death with DoTs.