Why isn't Swain picked more often?
As the title says, why isn't Swain picked more often? He's a champion with high damage, tankiness, survivability, and CC for a mid laner. Having all those traits together should make him an irresistable pick.
5 Comments
First off, Swain has no reliable form of waveclear. That's a big blow to his early game potential. Second, he's extremely item reliant. You need at least Spirit Visage, Rod of Ages, and Archangel's Staff to be relevant in game. Third, he's easily countered. Any AP mid can just buy Morellonomicon and his healing becomes negligent.
I would say that it is due to how well one needs to know him in order to play him well. His play style in not as straight forward as many of the popular mid-laners because as far as I've seen, he doesn't have a "basic combo." Also, he is a very mana-gated champion; unskilled Swains run out of mana incredibly often (knowledge of champion, again).
The main counter to swain currently is the prevalence of ignite, especially since most mid-laners take it nowadays. To counter this, I see Swain taken as a top-laner a lot as of lately, though. Yes, Morellonomicon is available too, but is generally not taken over Athene's given the wave-clear meta (It is generally considered that these two items are mutually exclusive due to the very similar stats they provide.)
Overall, Swain is a strong champion, but the player must really know what he/she is doing to make Swain feel strong.
I play Swain a fair bit so I thought I'd throw my ¢2 in here.
Starting off, Swain has no farming ability. This isn't even about wave-clear, just the ability to last hit minions. He's going to be building AP but he needs to farm using his auto attack. Big weakness right there and it keeps getting worse and worse as laneing goes on.
Then you get to lane pressure. Even if you can farm with his aa's perfectly most mid lane champs can bully Swain. His range is relatively short, he has high mana costs, and he can't build AP quickly. Sometimes this can be fine. Huddle up under turret and farm as best you can in safety. Other times it can be disastrous as your opponent roams and gets fed ganking your teammates.
So he can't build AP fast, you ask? Swain really needs tank stats to survive the enemy team, damage so he can hurt them, and a large pool of mana so he can keep his ult up long enough to be useful. What's one item that gives all of that? RoA. Swain is incredibly dependent on RoA and RoA has one awkward build path. Sometimes you can grab the Blasting Wand first but more often you'll need the sustain from Catalyst first which delays getting any AP for a fair while.
So you hit 6 and got your ult? Swains ult is amazing, no question, but it's also one of the few abilities in the game that is still mana-gated by the time you're roaming in mid game. Most mages can just throw anything they want around at this point but Swain still needs to carefully watch his mana bar if he wants to be useful to his team.
All that said Swain is one of my favorite champions and there are ways to work around his weaknesses. In part, like RomanorumLegio says, you really need to know how to play Swain. You can't just pick him up and spam on the enemy. Also, as a counter to DocRedgrave, after RoA there's no one build you need on Swain to be useful. He is item dependent but which items you want will depend on your play style. I prefer to get RoA into Liandries. With careful positioning you can burn most or all of their team for the entire fight which is pretty huge.
Swain is only a slightly above average 1v1 with okay point click nukes and disable. Other than that, he really doesn't have waveclear, he gets destroyed by ganks due to being squishy early and having no escapes, and worst of all he scales very badly lategame. Ult burns a massive amount of mana, and is countered by Ignite/Exhaust. Furthermore Swain gets trolled by QSS really hard. You thought Skarner hated QSS? Yeah, I kinda feel bad for Swain here.
Compare to someone like Karthus. Karthus is harder to gank and abuse because he actually has safe long ranged waveclear. Furthermore Karthus can effectively build the EXACT SAME ITEMS AS SWAIN and does like twice as much damage that isn't really trolled by QSS or summoner spells. Oh yeah and Ryze also basically is like Swain except not terrible lategame and actually has SOME waveclear.
In addition to all of the excellent points made by others in the thread - the fact that Ryze exists is an issue too. Sorta the same problem that Graves has with Lucian.