50 Games of Swain... Again.

So I recently made a thread about playing the lowest win rate champion in the game 50 times, so I figured it would only be fair to repeat my experiment now that Swain has the highest win rate in the game.

Data

Not surprisingly, I managed to do much better this time; 33 wins and 17 losses for a win rate of 66%. Despite my previous successes with tank Swain, this time I played AP Swain exclusively, and only built semi-tanky in a few games. I've been playing in both Top and Mid, with preference to Top.

Builds

Generally I've been experimenting with 3 different concepts for building AP Swain: Lane dominance, surviving burst damage, and kiting. Runes for all builds are: Mpen marks, Armor seals, Scaling AP glyphs, AP quints (occasionally running MR glyphs and scaling health seals against tough lanes) Masteries: 18/6/6

For winning lane I typically start off with morellonomicon, followed by Zhonya's and Abyssal (order depends on team comps and lane opponent), then finishing with GLP, deathcap, void staff and/or spirit visage. This build usually ends up being quite squishy, so I don't recommend it if you are against any form of burst damage or assassin (in any lane, not just your own). The success of this build is basically due to one thing: Lost Chapter is busted. Basically unlimited mana and 25 AP on Swain for only 900 gold allows him to win lanes he has no business winning. I kinda expect this to get nerfed. Another advantage of this build is that you hit 40% CDR one full item earlier.

For surviving burst damage, replace morellonomicon with ROA and consider spirit visage as a 3rd item. For kiting use GLP instead. I typically run ROA into ranged burst mages like Victor, Lux, Annie, etc... or against impossible melee lanes such as Irelia. GLP on the otherhand is much better against champions like Trundle, Volibear, Udyr, etc...

Another thing I've been trying is GLP as a 3rd or 4th item in addition to ROA. Swain still likes all the stats it gives and it doesn't need to time stack like ROA.

So why is Swain so broken right now?

The short answer is hes not. But surely I'm just a biased Swain main, right? Correct, but let me explain.

As of right now, Swain's overall win rate today according to op.gg is 57.82%. His win rate for 6.10 according to Champion.gg is 56.7% for Mid and 55.74% for Top. However, in Diamond his win rate is 53.32% in NA, 52.63% in EUW, and only 51.56% in Korea.
Now obviously any champion approaching a 60% win rate needs changes, but 51-53% among players capable of testing his limits is quite reasonable. I would argue that because of his team fighting strengths, a balanced Swain should hover around 53% win rate (similar to how Amumu often sits at 55%, but never sees much high level play).

Also, while Swain is seeing more play than usual, he is still most likely being played by experienced Swain players, and should expect a higher win rate (similar to Heimerdinger).

I think the key distinction here is the difference between broken and overpowered. Swain's kit is not broken, in fact its actually quite weak and flawed, but right now he is just an incredibly overpowered snowball of stats that crushes anything that gets in his way. The only way to beat this is either have more stats or more range. Bruisers are not popular or strong right now, but they can out-stat Swain significantly. Look at Irelia, she has more health armor and MR, more burst, more dps, hard cc that cant miss, higher sustain (at least early on), and she can dodge most of Swain's damage. Not a fun matchup at all, and likely impossible for Swain assuming equal skill. If Irelia, Olaf, Lux, Anivia, Xerath, etc.. were the top picks right now, Swain would be terrible.

PBE nerfs

So here's where I complain about why the PBE nerfs are unjustified.

Nope. Actually, out of all the Swain changes this season, these are the first changes that I agree with 100%. The only thing I'm minorly concerned with is how the healing reduction will affect his 1v1 at level 6.

The issue I do have, is while the nerfs will likely fix his win rate, they wont fix the flaws of his kit that makes him able to swing from worst to best soloq champion with just a few number changes.

Kit Design

Swain has no mobility. Swain has short-medium range. Swain's damage is unreliable and avoidable outside of a team fight. Swain is mana gated.

These are not flaws. These are Swain's legitimate weaknesses. He is the juggernaut of mages. These are the justification for his strength, and the limitations you abuse if you want to beat him.

The real flaw of Swain's kit is that his main damage spell (Q) is also his only legitimate form of disengage. This means that any time Swain wants to trade at all, he is essentially all-in, and as soon as Swain can't win all-in, he goes back to being useless outside of low elo. Its like you double the damage of arcane shift and tell Ezreal players to max E. Sure it could be really powerful and fun one-shotting people with AP E-max Ezreal, but its not safe, its not reliable, and it will never be viable in high level play unless it gets buffed ad absurdum (like Swain is currently).

IMO the best way to fix Swain's flaws would be to completely rework his E. A short range, damage only spell that you max last doesn't really serve any purpose in any kit. However, seeing as how Swain is not scheduled for another rework anytime soon I think the best way right now would be to just make his W more reliable. As I explained in the previous thread, a 0.875 second delay, 125 radius spell is literally impossible to hit without setup from some other form of cc. Its not a skill shot, its a derp check. Having only a 1 second duration and a cast time means it only really buys you a bit over half a second, even if you do manage to hit it. Changing it to be 1.4/1.55/1.7/1.85/2 second duration and 0.75 delay would allow it to actually be used as a viable engage/disengage, and quite honestly could even justify further nerfs to Swain's damage. Rewarding skill placement and reducing reliance on being and all-in stat ball would be a good thing, no?