Swain's overly painful weaknesses and underwelming strengths
I keep telling myself that I am going to write this and I am finally doing it. I adore playing Swain but his weaknesses when ever he is even slightly behind makes him actively miserable to play as.
Now to be honest swain's combat pattern is super simple, he nevermoves(w) and then key rolls and ignites...But due to this all in pattern and the lack of secondary uses of his spells he is actively miserable to play when slightly behind.
I think this mostly hinges on his lack of wave clear. Which yes it's his weakness but at least EZREAL has AD, Swain cannot even last hit fighter minions after two turret shots. He cannot use his abilities to clear AND harass and due to the Q and E targeting he is primarily single target to a fault he cannot just cast one spell to harass he needs to both E and Q to get any decent damage out. It doesn't help that his current skill rank up pattern just to have reliable damage leaves his AoE, W, in the dust until late game. Then you get your ult and you think "Great! I can lane clear!" and your crows completely randomly target the wrong minions making nothing die quickly...Then allies show up and clear the rest of the wave leaving you in the dust mid game.
At minimum change to make him at least not suffer AS MUCH while behind is simple.
Add one more level of AI check on the ult. So instead of... (Live!Ult targeting)
- Champions!(Random within range!)
- Minions!(Random within range!)
Change it to. (Suggested!Ult Targeting)
- Lowest Health Champions!
- Lowest Health Minions!
This would only change one thing about Swain, it would allow him to actually deliberately last hit with his ult. It doesn't improve his damage, it doesn't change how he plays, it just makes it so he can kill that one minion his ult keeps RNG ignoring. At "Best" it will let him kill the lowest hp player in the deathball a bit easier, because lets be honest how many fights is Swain in where he stands on your WHOLE team?
Any Swain player who has walked into a huge minion wave knows the pain I feel, they toggle on the ult and watch these random minions get attacked when swain should practically have a toggled crowstorm on him at least as far as minions are concerned but instead you stand in the minion wave as it slowly out damages your healing as nothing dies and your mana pool dwindles.
Of course I would ALSO like to have more AD on him early game so he can last hit worth a damn but that's me.
