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The problem with Swain is that he now has 2 wildly unreliable abilities instead of 1.

StankyMuff·5/7/2016, 12:09:09 AM·17 votes·1,628 views

Swain's kit used to be 2 reliable basic abilities that were maxed first and gave his kit reliable damage and a way to land his W. The new changes completely threw his combo into disarray without giving him enough power to compensate for the unreliability.

He used to rely on his Q to slow the enemy so his W could land. If his W missed it wasn't catastrophic, it was his weakest ability in most cases and the guaranteed Q+E+R damage made it okay.

Now his Q can simply be walked out of if the enemy isn't snared by his W, and enemies can easily dodge his W if they aren't slowed by his Q. This is a very obvious paradox, but more importantly the changes to his rank order have made it catastrophic to miss a single ability. His E now scales the weakest with rank and his Q is far less reliable. That almost guaranteed Q+E+R damage is now only a guaranteed rank 1 E+R.

Some people are still maxing his E just because his Q+W are so unreliable but this just makes him a very weak champion. His kit is unreliable and he doesn't have the damage or utility to make this okay. He's now competing with Cho'gath for unreliable mage/tank but with noticeably less power, utility, and tankiness.

Additionally, his build paths lost quite a bit of AP while gaining 10-20% CDR, but his abilities received longer cooldowns making this a bad change overall.

tl;dr Swain does not have the stats that should accompany such a lategame, item dependent, unreliable kit. I'm honestly not sure how to fix this without just straight up reverting the changes to his Q or dumping power into his E+R. His kit in this current state will have to always be either oppressively strong when he lands everything, or pitifully weak if he misses anything.

25 Comments

Iceoh5/7/2016, 4:30:55 PM5 votes

I feel like that's how the updates have went.

Instead of having 2 unreliable spells, anivia now has 4.

exigentomic5/7/2016, 1:01:06 AM2 votes

Agreed. Plus, his W got an undeserved duration nerf before so it's not only harder to land without Q being targeted but it's also less rewarding. His ult. I think does less damage single target too so you can't count on killing the laner if you land W.

Hibeki5/7/2016, 5:28:07 AM2 votes

As a Swain main, I can safely say that none of his nerfs are justifiable. And no matter how you look at it, what he receives IS nerfs.

Anything they changed in his kit they nerfed in response. Ult rework? Cut back healing on creeps. Q change? Double the cooldown. E change? Lower base damage.

Before this latest patch, the ONLY thing I could ask for was to change Q's damage into every fourth second instead of every second, and to either give his W more cast range, or a bigger aoe and root.

Buffing his W and changing the damage intervals on Q to every fourth second is all he needed.

My Waifu Vanilla5/7/2016, 3:20:43 AM1 votes

They could walk out of the Q leash before so I do not see how this is some "new" thing.

Elewd5/7/2016, 4:38:14 AM1 votes

his new Q is more fun to play with than his old one tho, and it will continuosly hit things inside its circle, its great for waveclear. the silence on his ulti getting removed in a hotfix will make him feel really good.

Unpaladin5/7/2016, 1:29:49 AM1 votes

How do you think this could be remedied? Like, what if Swain's Q inflicts a stonger, decaying slow to the targets that are in the Q zone when it lands? Or has he been screwed over too hard for something like this to matter?

cocacolalips5/7/2016, 9:10:14 AM1 votes

I'll throw a bone at you, Morellonomicon is the first item every mage buys and the second most popular mage item right behind Zhonya. And you know what Morellonomicon does? Grievous Wounds, aka 8 seconds of 40% healing reduction. Poor Swain won't be able to teamfight ever again.

La Barbotte5/7/2016, 3:18:49 AM1 votes

his old Q had a max range too and could be walked out of........