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Swain was overnerfed

Reichtor·12/20/2015, 9:28:20 PM·151 votes·7,526 views

So swain finally got his turn on the nerfing block. As a swain main, I didn't actually realize he was nerfed for like a week after it happened. I just thought I was on a terrible losing spree and then it dawned on me. Reducing his snare from 2 seconds at all levels to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0 was a significant drop. Swains early game offensive capabilities were pretty strong. Even at early levels, if harassing effectively...that two second snare was usually enough to guarantee a kill. I can totally see how the design team wanted to take some of the punch out of Swains laning phase, and this nerf did pretty much exactly what it was intended to offensively.

The problem here is that swain has zero mobility, and this pretty much gutted him defensively. Swain is extremely reliant on landing snares to survive ganks and dives. If you get ganked you have basically have two choices. Miss your snare and die, or land your snare on your laning opponent and their jungler simultaneously and still die because it's only a second and you took like a third of a second just on the cast animation alone. Obviously, this change was designed to force a choice as to which skills to take. Previously, it was one point in snare and then maxing laserbird and E. E is absolutely mandatory because it makes up so much of Swains damage. But even with the RIP laserbird philosophy, and maxing W first...it still doesn't get to be significant enough to be of any use during laning phase. Level 4 only gets you a 1.25 second snare on a massive cooldown. If you're willing to trade the extra damage from E, then you're only looking at a 1.5 second snare at level 6. But thats going to come at a significant cost in trading potential. I personally cant bring myself to take a third point in snare until 7 which leaves me at 1.25 until then.

In summary, basically Swain's offensive nerfs were much needed as he was oppressive in lane. But defensively he needs something to balance it out. Just a little bit of movement speed so he can survive...anything. Or even better, have snare give him a temporary percentage movement speed for each enemy hit and he'll be right where he needs to be.

Edit: Alternate suggest by Alfavhunter

Make it double in duration when swain is under 40/55/70/85/100% hp. The duration is doubled to 2 seconds when the condition is met

So if swain wants a stronger snare early on he either has to level it first or sit in a danger zone of under 40% hp

This also makes him stronger when losing lane and a danger for tower diving

His snare is still weaker early unless he is in a danger zone of hp, which is usually when he would get dove, it's unlikely for someone to dive a full hp anyone when not severely ahead as is

207 Comments

Very Hard Engage12/20/2015, 11:45:34 PM37 votes

to me, when i died to a swain, it was always, crap, i got caught out, oh well, good for him, he played well.

it was never an overbearing godly destroyer of worlds hes going to win because hes swain!

ive always felt swain was very fair, and that riot should've altered the interaction with DFT before hard nerfing his CC.

Subject 512/20/2015, 11:13:22 PM31 votes

Since pre-season, I have never been in a game with Swain. Even as an ally. This dude is a ghost and they still nerfed him. It's like their balance team, one of them just got rekt by swain and decided to nerf him despite his obvious troubles in obvious areas with obvious counters and obvious ways to avoid being killed.

Shac Norris12/20/2015, 9:47:29 PM9 votes

Welcome to AP Shaco tier.

Arch Mage Magnus12/21/2015, 12:15:14 AM8 votes

I've played Swain as my main for a little over 2 years now. I can guarantee that this nerf to his stun will be addressed soon by Riot. It really has crippled Swain; and I'll go into detail.

Swain has always been a snowball champ. If he loses early, he will NEVER recover; this is because he is a DoT mage. In order for DoT to be effective, you need to have more AP than your opponent has MR in all stages of the game. Late game, what's the point of being able to do 1500 damage over 5 seconds when a lot of Tops,Mids,Jungs, and ADC's can do 2000 damage in 2 seconds; most of which with autos that need no cooldowns.

Swain needed the 2 seconds on his snare to solidify a kill. Otherwise you simply poke, and poke and poke until your opponent gets a proper gank when you are pushed up and now you're behind. Also to anyone that has played Swain, he has his own issues. He has no reliable farming ability. He has one of the worst base AD in the game for last hitting. His ult is not very good for wave clear with minions, as half of the time your minions will last hit as can't control the targets your birds attack, also the mana cost for keeping it up isn't worth it. Also his snare has a ridiculously high CD (18 freaking seconds at level 1). Who else has a skillshot snare, for 1 second, with a 18 second cooldown at 80 mana? If you miss this.....you better run and hide behind your tower, because you are just waiting to get ganked.

Further more, even if you land your snare at this point, by the time you walk up to your opponent ( because usually you caught them at a distance) you might get your E off, but Q will only harass for maybe 1 tick and they are gone. So, there goes half your mana pool for a bit of damage. You'll never solidify a kill this way, because you can't burst them down enough, or get into position with 1 second; and if you choose to rank up his W instead, your other abilities won't do enough damage to even get close to a kill. So you won't be getting kills to snowball, CSing is hard as fuck with no reliable wave clear or execute minion ability, so you are basically hoping to just somehow out farm whatever mid or top you are against that has laning much easier.

At the moment Swain is virtually useless compared to champs that just do it better.

Penns12/20/2015, 10:26:10 PM7 votes

No hard cc spell should last for 2+ seconds on all ranks, so this was a good nerf... And if you didnt realize it for a week it cant be that bad lol

Nekusen12/20/2015, 11:06:44 PM6 votes

if the are reducing the snare time, they should reduce/eliminate the initial delay as well.

Naag One12/21/2015, 6:20:35 AM3 votes

any 2 second hard cc at level 1 sounds too much
glad this got gutted

BushidoBlade12/20/2015, 11:07:49 PM2 votes

As far as mages are concerned, I am quite happy with the duration nerf on Swain's stun. First off, you have two targetable spells, one of which makes it easier for Nevermore to connect for almost 100% guaranteed CC. Next, 3/4 of your kit is Fire and Forget abilities that don't need to be aimed. You just walk in to proximity of your target and bam, you're doing maximum dps. Not only that but you are rewarded for building tanky. So you are a tanky ap mage who counters assassins, with high damage and easy to hit abilities. And your CC used to be 2 seconds at rank 1. Now you're complaining that Riot overlooked the fact that almost all hard CC has been nerfed from 2 seconds down to 1~2 seconds across the board and forgot to hit Swain with it? This nerf has been a long time coming, it just took Riot longer than average to notice Swain because he's so unpopular, that is, until RoA became cost effective again.

Steel Blossom12/20/2015, 11:24:38 PM1 votes

But you can't deny that he's stupid strong in all-ins...he's like the only AP who can 1v1 a late game Nasus lol