Riot, please reconsider the Swain nerfs on PBE (Long)

Also posted on reddit here

As most of you already know, in the next patch, Swain is receiving a devastating nerf to his ult cooldown that will drastically reduce the opportunities that he has to use it. The intention of this nerf is to introduce more counter play to his kit and make his ult something that teams have to play around. As a long-time Swain main, I believe that this is the wrong direction to go with his kit. I, and many other Swain players feel that this change, if it goes through, will kill players’ enjoyment of the champion and in fact reduce counterplay and decision-making to his gameplay style.

First of all, a little background about me. I am currently a Gold V Swain main who has played the champion since early in Season 3. I peaked at Gold II in Season 4, and while neither of these ranks are in any way impressive, I feel that I’ve played the champion enough to formulate a valid opinion on his power and playstyle. Though the changes have been discussed frequently, no one has come forward yet and presented all of our issues with it coherently yet. As such, I am writing this post in the hopes that Riot will recognize our concerns before making their decision.

1. Taking away his core identity

This is probably the biggest gripe that I have with this update. When I first picked up Swain, I was actually shocked that his ult was on such a low cooldown. I had always thought that it was a turn on for a limited amount of time then goes on cooldown ult. Soon, I came to love the toggle function and understand it as a core part of his kit. When you ask yourself “who is Swain?” the answer isn’t “he’s a fairly squishy mid-range control mage,” but rather “he’s a drain tank.” That’s what his ult is all about, and that’s what makes his kit. Swain isn’t about walking around in human form poking people down with DoTs and occasionally ulting for damage. He’s about dealing constant DPS and healing from it. His ult is what ties everything together– sure, his skills do damage, but he would be incredibly weak without his ability to get into an enemy’s face and soak damage and harass.

Essentially, what this change does is make him more like Maokai: someone who turns on his ult for an all-in and then has to wait to use it again. That’s not who Swain is, that’s not how he was designed, and that’s not how he should be played. For those of you who’ve played WoW, the term we use is “homogenization.” Instead of giving each champion, or class, a separate identity, we make them similar to each other instead. That’s not a good thing at all. With the changes, Swain is no longer the demon-bird man who morphs and drains your life. Instead, he basically becomes just a discount Maokai, except he isn’t as tanky and lacks a gap closer.

2. Breaking his gameplay

This is the second pressing issue I want to go over. This change to his ult completely changes his playstyle in lane, and it does not do so in a good way. For those who are familiar with Swain, he’s a very potent lane bully. His level 6 harass is very difficult for a lot of champions to deal with, as he can land a snare combo and ult for 1 or 2 ticks of damage then back off. However, this is NOT a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with being strong in lane. It’s simply part of what Swain does, and a good Swain will know how to capitalize on his strength.

For those of you who say that he borders on oppressive, I concede that this is true, but I will also mention that he has always been like this. In fact, I feel that his previous incarnation was even more so due to the point-and-click Q which allowed him to dominate some matchups that are harder for him today (Yasuo and Leblanc), and he was perfectly balanced in the past. These strengths are balanced out by quite a few weaknesses, such as his complete lack of mobility, massive vulnerability in his human form, and susceptibility to grievous wounds. From what I understand, this nerf is meant to introduce more counterplay to his ultimate in teamfights, but it does so at the cost of completely gutting his laning phase post-6. How can Swain be expected to harass enemies out of lane if he has to wait 30 seconds before even turning his ult back on? It leaves him an extremely long period of vulnerability in which he basically cannot do anything, and it allows enemy laners to simply destroy him as soon as he turns off his ult since they know he will be useless the moment he loses it. In short, he loses a core part of his kit and functionality and becomes simply unfun to play.

3. Removing decision-making and counterplay

One of the marks of a skilled Swain player is his ability to properly manage his ult cooldown. 10 seconds may not seem like a long time for such a powerful skill, but believe me it is. Most matchups that I lose in lane are against those players that are able to capitalize on that 10-second window of opportunity, whether it be to go all-in against me or to call for a gank at just the right time. When you’re playing Swain, you have to be constantly aware of the map and realize when it is safe to ult for waveclear or harass, because you know if you get engaged on while it’s down, you are a dead, dead bird. Personally, I feel that this makes for very interesting counterplay that makes skilled matchups extremely fun to play. To make it clearer as to what I’m talking about, I will use a specific example: Riven. I’ve played against a few skilled Rivens in my career (for my ELO at least) and have both outplayed and been outplayed by them.

Riven has the power to all-in a Swain at level 6. However, she is weak when her Q and E are not up, and as a Swain player, I will take that opportunity to harass her. However, I cannot keep my ult on indefinitely, and once it is down I am vulnerable. Normally, I try to disengage from the fight safely, but I’ve lost kills to smart Riven players who immediately flash-re-engaged on me when I left myself open and destroyed me while I was a sitting duck. That’s the type of counterplay and decision-making that will be lost with the “new” Swain. Now, it will become very difficult to win a Riven lane, and not in a “you counter me way,” but rather a “there’s nothing I can do” way. You cannot afford to aggressively ult, because you are forced to save it for defense when Riven attempts an all-in you, and she can easily disengage you with her mobility if you do try to go aggro. Without that power, it becomes far more difficult to harass Riven to a point where she can be killed by you, which makes her all-in that much more powerful. In short, you lose control completely. This is true for a lot of other lanes as well, especially in the mid lane, where you simply can’t choose to trade aggressively at all against strong burst champs.

4. His ult is not inherently broken

This is not strictly a complaint but rather a rebuttal of many claims that I’ve heard on the boards and reddit that Swain’s ult is inherently broken and cannot be balanced. I find this statement to be statistically untrue. Swain has historically been one of the most balanced champions in the game. His ult had healthy counterplay in its downtime (which, might I add, was never more than it is now) as well as grievous wound items which put a big damper on his healing. Furthermore, his winrate has always been very consistent. Unfortunately I can find no statistics for him further back then back 6.7, but if you look at the chart on http://champion.gg/champion/Swain, his winrate prior to 6.9 hovered at a very reasonable 49-50%. I’m fairly sure that this has been true for a long time running as well, because he has never seen any major balance changes nor has his pickrate really spiked past 2 or 3%. It was only with the mid-season magic “rework” that he took a major dive (largely due to a frustrating ult bug and people getting used to his new Q) then returned to a decent 46% winrate once the bug was fixed and people learned to max Q first. It was 6.10 that first “broke” him with the new ult that scales off AP rather than damage done, and despite Riot’s attempts to nerf his healing, he still remains incredibly powerful.

5. How to nerf him

There is absolutely no denying Swain is incredibly powerful right now. His healing is incredibly oppressive and cannot be shut down by anything aside from grievous wounds, and he has the option of building very tanky and still dishing out tons of damage. There’s also no denying that needs nerfs. But increasing his R CD is not the way to do it. By doing this, they are killing him for the loyal Swain players who have been playing him for years, and introducing a form of “counterplay” that does not mesh at all with his kit. Instead, I propose we simply make one change that should reduce his power greatly while letting him keep his core gameplay and identity consistent: REVERT THE CHANGES TO HIS ULT.

Riot’s logic (if you were following /u/shinkazuo on /r/swainmains) is that the new ultimate would make it easier to balance Swain, as it would be simple to just tune the numbers if they were too high or low. It seemed reasonable at the time, but experience has shown this to be untrue. Giving Swain a flat healing amount introduces all the problems that it was meant to avoid: the ult becomes impossible to balance because the numbers are either too low or too high. The old Swain ult is tried and true. It has remained balanced for all the years that it remained unchanged, and it allows more healthy counterplay to Swain’s healing in the form of building MR. Just chalk 6.10 up to an experiment gone wrong and put him back how he used to be: a niche but balanced pick for people who truly enjoy and have mastered the champion.

Finally, I will end simply on this. PLEASE DO NOT FORGET WHY SWAIN WAS BUFFED. The buffs were originally meant to give Swain more healing power against tanks. They turned out to be too strong for him at all stages of game, but they were meant to be buffs nonetheless. I simply ask that Riot remembers that the intention of the changes was to make him stronger, not to later neuter him into the ground. Please, for all the loyal Swain players out there, I beg that you do not alienate us and the champion we love. Please consider these thoughts before you go through with the changes on the PBE.

TL;DR Nerfs gut his laning post-6, force him to play defensive, makes him un-fun to play and destroys his core identity. Revert his ult change instead of upping the cooldown for more balanced champion.