Swain's Kit is actually Genius

#WALL OF TEXT, SORRY I WROTE THIS BEFORE I REALIZED I HAD TO PRESS THE ENTER KEY SOMETIME AND IT DOESN'T REALLY WORK WHEN I SPLIT IT INTO PARAGRAPHS SINCE IT ALL FLOWS TOGETHER. SORRY!

Say what you will about his looks, his hair, his cane, his birds, whatever. Put all that aside for a moment because his kit is actually fucking fantastic and I think that in this case we're gonna have another WW on our hands where he doesn't get a single change ever because he's so balanced. One of the big things I was worried about was wondering how they were going to make his kit more skillful without making it overly difficult and complex. They accomplished this beautifully with his low skill-floor, high skill-ceiling kit. Sure, anyone can figure out how his W works and try to land it on someone or use it for vision, but this spell is useful for so much but you can only use it for one thing at a time. Use it to scout the Jungle? Now you can't use it in lane. Use it to get an extra soul to sustain yourself? Now you lose a lot of vision for your team. You can use it to zone the enemy back since it lasts a long time, has a massive range, and is AOE. Or you can use it in his combo. Speaking of his combo, did I mention how well his kit flows together? The way his E works makes for some fantastic players and complex combos where you E and instantly W where the opponent is going to be when you pull him back with your E/Passive. That is a perfect example of the low skill-floor/high skill-ceiling I was talking about before. I haven't even mentioned his Q at all. His Q is the perfect addition to his kit. The Graves like mechanic where you need to land every pellet on the Q in order to kill someone means that Swain is rewarded for being closer to his enemy for more damage. It's not too difficult to get that close because you have your E (remember that kit flow?) but you put yourself at risk since you're intentionally putting yourself at melee range as a mage. Perfect for making Swain feel less oppressive vs melee's in toplane since he can't kite them forever like many other toplane mages. Unlike old Swain, he actually has to interact with his opponent in toplane. It makes me wonder how this game design even came to be seeing as how he was primarily designed for midlane (a lot of the principles still apply, pulling most mages closer to you makes it easier for them to land their combo, and assassins as well). I didn't even talk about his ultimate. His ultimate is the perfect homage to old Swain (even though he doesn't turn into a bird. I'm talking gameplay not visuals.) in that it is basically the same ability made much healthier. The cooldown is considerably larger which can be a let down for some but it is for the best. Swain has more power put into his kit now and his ultimate is allowed to feel a lot more, well, ultimate. Running down a teamfight with my big birb was always the best part of Swain, the rest of his kit was pretty average at best, although it was fun to melt people with dots. They managed to keep that part and make it better, the last burst of the ultimate feels really satisfying.

If I had any complaints about Swain's kit, they would be:

• There's not any dot's in his kit other than his ult which doesn't really count. I would have been really happy if they managed to sneak a dot into at least one part of his kit. Maybe on his E or his W?
• There's no bird abilities in his kit at all. This kinda makes sense but they could have very easily made his W into a bird ability seeing as how the birbs are his Eye in the sky. It honestly would have made more sense thematically than making it like a weird TF ultimate effect.
• The soul part of his passive is really lame. It may as well not even be there. You don't lose stacks for anything except for your ult and you gain them so easily just by using your kit in the way that's intended. In any moment where you are gonna cast your ult, you are probably gonna have at least a couple of stacks from landing your E or W, and in a teamfight you are going be landing that on even more people. All in all, this part of Swain's kit feels really underwhelming and doesn't really effect his gameplay at all. Maybe if your ultimate expended all stacks on cast rather than on recast, and the healing/aoe damage would also be amplified by souls, I feel like that would be a worthy tradeoff.

#TL;DR/Conclusion Swain's kit is extremely good. It has a perfect low skill-floor/high skill-ceiling balance while also being fun with tradeoffs. Best of all, his gameplay still feels like the gameplay of old Swain. He's only lacking in a few departments mainly revolving around stuff that was missing from old Swain, but regardless I believe that he will be the next WW when it comes to game balance. Only time will tell.