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Why the Swain nerf should be changed or not go through at all

Zeph··3 votes·1,131 views

Recently I've come to learn that there is a nerf planned for Swain.

> Nevermove (W) root duration reduced to 1/1.3/1.5/1.8/2 seconds from 2 at all ranks

I have a feeling that the main reason swain is getting nerfed is because of death fire touch. Not only is the nerf unwarranted but it also doesnt even hit the mark of the goal i assume the balance team is trying to achieve. Frankly speaking, I feel that swain is finally in a decent spot for the first time since his release and nerfing the w duration is going to put him in such an imbalanced state that I don't even think he'd be worth playing anymore. His whole kit revolves around having sufficient duration on his snare. Since I don't want to just complain about nerfs I'd like to give some arguments as to why I think what I do.

Danger of imbalance The main reason why nerfing Swain in this manner is so reckless is because his entire kit revolves around the duration of his Nevermove. Decrepify, Swain's "Q" is a 3 second tether that breaks off entirely if someone walks out of range. That means that when used at max range, you will effectively only apply 1 tick of the ability if the enemy walks away. Nevermove was used as a move to keep the enemy in Decrepify's range since you could get the full damage off. Note that it already takes about half a second to walk up to the enemy when you land a full range Nevermove so you only have a 1.5s snare duration to use your q on the enemy anyway unless you flash on your enemy. Effectively, that means that you only have about 2 ticks of your "Q" under good circumstances and a 3rd tick if they decide to fight instead of run. If the duration of the snare is reduced to 1s then it's pretty much guaranteed that your "Q" will only tick once since they will just walk away after. Swain's ultimate, "Ravenous Flock" works in a similar manner. Every second one raven would attack the enemy. With the way it is now, you can reliably get 2(and a 3rd if they fight) ravens off if you take the time it takes to walk up to the enemy into account. Again, nerfing the duration of the snare you only get 1 raven tick. If you take auto attacks into account, you could sometimes throw 2 auto attacks. Nerfing the duration of the snare brings this down to just 1 auto attack. To put all of that into perspective, at level 6 instead of getting 2-3 Q ticks you only get 1, instead of getting 2 ravens you only get 1 and instead of 2 auto attacks you only get 1. Since most Swains will have 3 lvls in e, 1 lvl in q, 1 lvl in w and 1 in R the damage you miss out on lvl 6 by having 1s snare is: Q(25 + 0.3 AP), R(50+0.2 AP), Auto(64 dmg) amplified by his E by 14% which amounts to 158.46 +0.57 AP. You can expect a standard swain to have about 20-35 AP at level 6(also take into account 2%/2,5%/5% damage amplifications from your masteries).

Eitherway, the damage lost will amount to about 180 mixed damage before resistances just by reducing the duration of the snare by 1s. Take into account that a standard level 6 champion has about 750 base health to 1k base health. 180 mixed damage is about 18-24% of those amounts of health. Losing that much damage on your combo just because Swain has moderate synergy with deathfire touch is absolutely ludicrous and will absolutely destroy the balance of Swain. It's already hard enough to hit a max-range snare but now there is barely any reward for landing it because you will probably lose so much mana for so little damage that it will not be a favorable trade in most cases.

Swain also has all-in potential at level 3 or 4, depending on when he takes snare. Again, damage is diminished by a ridiculous amount because of the snare duration but I'm sure I've made my point clear by now.

The current state of Swain With all that said, let's talk about the current state of Swain. Right now Swain is a mid counterpick with clear strengths and weaknesses with a strong midgame where he serves as a front line mage. He excels at dealing with melee mids(like katarina, zed) but fails horribly at dealing with longer ranged control mages(like syndra, lux, azir, xerath, etc.). Swain has abysmal waveclear and has trouble with anyone that can shove fast enough to make him farm under turret. I'm pretty good at farming under turret but control mages will make you miss at least half of your cs by zoning you out with skill shots and just the natural state of farming under tower makes you lose more cs. Losing more cs under tower means you won't get last hits, means you won't get mana from your passive. You're also going to be forced to use your e and q under turret to not miss cs. Combine that with the fact that his auto attack animation is one of the worst in the game, you can easily see how a game can snowball in the enemy's favor once you're stuck farming under turret. But despite all of that, he is currently fine. The cs you miss is offset by your good kill potential on lvl 3, 4 and 6. Landing a max range snare can turn the lane in your favor against a control mage(except if they take heal/barrier/cleans, you're pretty much screwed then). You'll need at least 3 snares(to burn through their pots) to guarantee a kill, though. Sometimes 2 is enough. Eitherway, against control mages these snares are super hard to hit since all their abilities outrange you and you can only get these snares off if your enemy severely missteps by greeding for a cs. Note that since W is a snare, not a stun the enemies can still use non-dash abilities. Against a syndra, for example, even if I were to land a full range snare I'd have to dodge syndra's q-e combo as I walk up to combo her or I would be the one losing the trade. Same thing happens against other mages, cassiopeia, lux, even assassins like zed have ways to deal with snare by ulting or whatnot.

My point is, Nevermove has an absurd amount of counterplay and nerfing the duration of it is going to put Swain in such a bad spot that he's going to be pretty much pointless to pick. And let's be real, there's already not that many instances when you actually want to pick him with the current meta. You mainly pick him for his lane bullying potential against melee mids and for his great midgame power spike with zhonya and roa. Zhonya/ROA has a combined increased cost of 800g right now so it's extremely hard to get a good timing for this power spike, especially since the average game time is much shorter now with all the preseason changes. With TP becoming less popular and ignite becoming more popular, grievous wounds is more prevalent than ever(especially with all the new items).

Deathfire touch synergy DOT-based champions like brand and swain definitely have synergy with deathfire touch but if that really is the problem then why not just solely nerf deathfire touch, or change it in a way that it doesn't give advantages to dot-based champions? Actually, if you really feel insistent to nerf Swain then I really don't know why you would do it through his Nevermove duration, since his torment(deathfire touch) is the main abuser of deathfire touch.

Lolking data If we look at the Lolking stats of swain:

As of nov 24, swain has: 53.18% win rate and a 3.33% popularity rate in gold. 52.69% win rate and a 2.93% popularity rate in plat. 47.88% win rate and a 2.83% popularity rate in diamond. Note that there is about 3% variance in winrate depending on the day. On nov 22 swain only had a measly 49.28% win rate, for example. This moderately sized variance can easily be explained due to the low sample size of swain players. With such an abysmal popularity rate I can only believe that the reason for swain's higher win rate is because the small handful of people that actually know how to play the champion inflate the win rate. While I am aware that Lolking stats are in no way definitive proof of the balance of a champion, I feel that we would have surely seen massively different data if Swain was truly unbalanced.

Proposed nerf/change I really don't feel like swain should be nerfed but if the dev team really is not satisfied with Swain then I have some proposed changes. I'm under the assumption that people are dissatisfied with Swain's trading potential via deathfire touch so I suggest toning down the base damage of E and increasing the scaling to make it feel less oppressive in laning phase. The only downside to this is that in a standard swain build you don't go heavy AP since you're forced to itemize into survivability to be a successful front liner. Alternatively, and ideally, just change the interaction of deathfire touch with DOT and feel out how it affects swain.

Links: http://www.lolking.net/champions/swain?region=all&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=platinum#statistics http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Swain

8 Comments

Ionian2 votes

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] loving this nerf

Gafkay2 votes

To start off, I main Swain so I may have a bias, but I will try to be as objective as possible:

The reason why Swain absolutely does not need a nerf is because he is not overpowered. In fact, I find it quite hypocritical of Riot to want to nerf Swain. To explain why I will compare him to Azir. Azir has a horrid win-rate because he is mechanically difficult and quite popular as oppose to Swain with a good, but not great, win-rate who is extremely unpopular (those that play him play him more times than not so the statistics are skewed heavily) and is mechanically "simple". Riot has given claim after claim that Azir in no way needs a buff because of his win-rate since those that know how to play him already do too well with him and so he was nerfed several times in a row. Swain is at the point where if you master him you can expect a 53% win-rate at equal skill which is on par with most other champions. If we look at a champion like Amumu who has a 57% win-rate at the time of writing this, we can easily see how unfair it is to nerf a champion that is mostly only played by the people that take ample time to master.

Z Statistic1 votes

I have a feeling that the main reason swain is getting nerfed is because of death fire touch.

That would be as correct as saying that Donald Trump's most recent fuck up is the reason he won't get the nomination. It's more of the straw that broke the camel's back.

Swain has been very powerful for the entirety of season 5, especially top lane. You thought Vayne top was cancer? Try Swain top. It's disgusting. It's more disgusting than Uncle Steve implanted memories on him teaching you how to ride a bike so you'll let him live in your house, give him your food, and allow him to spread all over the galaxy.

The main strength Swain has is two method of kiting people closing in on him: W and Q. This Swain nerf targets his oppression vs melee more than ranged as roots are not nearly as detrimental vs a longrange mage as a melee. Syndra don't care about Nevermove in a 1v1. Can she still ult Swain? Yes. Renekton on the otherhand is tearing his hair out.

This nerf really only hits his power vs melee i.e. top lane.

As to why people didn't really pick him often in Season 5, who would you rather play: a flash assassin, bruiser, or tank OR a bird dood who literally does nothing but walk at people like a more complicated version of Singed?

I personally like Swain, but I like others MORE.

Zeph1 votes

I find it hard to believe that you read this entire post in just 5 minutes. It's really not that hard as a melee champ to dodge the snare. All renekton would have to do is either dash to dodge the snare or bait the snare out by missing 1 cs. It's on a 18 second base cooldown at level 1 so it really isn't as cancerous as you claim it to be.

Eitherway, there are more effective ways to deal with his kiting if you really feel that it is such a problem. You could lower the strength of his slow as well.

It seems you just haven't understood the point of my post because Nevermove is so interconnected with his entire kit that you're better off nerfing only his slow if you want to maintain any semblance of balance.

Romans 81 votes

A lot of melee champs have dashes now- it's actually fairly easy to dodge his snare and combo him if you play right. I didn't want to reveal this information because he's my main, but I don't him to be nerfed. Q.Q

Lowel2 votes

I don't know what to say.

You're saying Swain, as a middle range mage, is very powerful against melee, which is true, and that the nerf is good cause he shouldn't be that strong against melee.

What are we doing to do with long range champions ? Should we nerf them cause we can't do much against them ?

Should we nerf assasin, which are good at bursting people, because they are good at bursting people ?

In league we have high mobility champs, burst, long range, middle range, small range, melee, tank, sustain etc. It normal to have some hard match up.

I dont expect, as Soraka, to win against a Riven. I don't expect to win as Akali, against long range and heavy CC.

You picked Renekton as an example, I dont expect to win against him with a champ that renekton counter.

Swain is a lane bully against melee. Just like many other champ that are lane bully for their reason.

The nerf is wrong.

Z Statistic1 votes

You're saying Swain, as a middle range mage, is very powerful against melee, which is true, and that the nerf is good cause he shouldn't be that strong against melee.

Basically. He's too strong against melee. Not because he's ranged. He's just too damn strong against melee in particular. He'll still be ridiculously strong against melee after the nerf. To be real, one does not usually W first then Q. W has too long of a delay to reliably set up again and again. Instead, Swains will go for Q then W because the leash range on Q is so damn long (actually, it's as long as his W range).

This actually healthy play because it forces Swain to be relatively close to the target. There is one other alternative though: Wing a wave the meleer is trying to last hit. That is particularly deadly as Swain can Q the target at his leisure without worrying about retaliation. Using Q on them during this part means that the melee really only has the option to retreat unless they are extremely buff.

The W nerf helps curb that playstyle so that a melee doesn't get rooted for seven centuries with no options other then retreat once it expires. Using W on a wave the melee is hitting is smart play on the Swain part, but it's a bit too punishing.

The other option that would accomplish the same thing (nerfing Q damage or slow) would have other consequences (making him overall weaker instead of weaker just vs melee), and I'd say that's a worse option as Swain is disgusting vs melee, not ranged.

Lowel2 votes

Still not a good reason to nerf Swain.

His W CD is 18 sec level 1. Cost a lot of mana too. He can't spam it. Some champ are strong against melee, middle or long range­. We shouldn't nerf them cause they are strong at what they do. If they were WAY TOO STRONG, i'll be glad for the nerf, but now you're talking about Swain, which have a lot of counter play and way to fight him.

18 sec cooldown. An ability easy to dodge (if you keep moving). Swain really immobile with all the mobile champ in FOTM.

BTW Q leash range is not that long.

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