So I was thinking about swain passive and actually reworked swain.

First let me introduce myself, I'm french so excuse me for my bad english if it happens. I am not a pro player, I actually never made it beyond gold V, but I read a lot of dev blogs and am really interested in game design, so I think a lot of how I would change champions, trying to be as neutral as possible and respecting riot policy. I usually don't come here to talk about that but I thought I had a really great idea and even if I doubt it will be picked as is by riot (especially since swain isn't their priority), it might give them ideas.

Now about the change. I wasn't actually thinking about swain at first but about champions with mana regen passives. What are they and why is swain the worst of them in term of design? I'll go from the best design to the worst design in my opinion and we will see how swain cumulate a lot of flaws. Then I'll explain to you how I ended up thinking about major changes in the character playstyle that would fit him, add more choices and interactivity with the opponent.

Passives that allows you to sustain more mana :

1. Lissandra. She doesn't actually regen mana but ignore 1 spell cost after some time. Cooldown is reduced for every crowd control she lands.

pros : Allow passive play but give a far greater reward in case of succesful aggressions. Huge punishment for failed aggressions. also it doesn't accumulate by being more passive and you gain nothing by not using the free spell.

cons : Not really any that I can see, she could probably have another passive, but if we need a mana regen passive thise one is the model I'd use.

2. Xerath. Regen mana by landing auto attacks on an ennemy, greater reward on champions, based of a cooldown.

pros : force xerath to come out of his confort zone and interact with a champion while still allowing passive plays. Basically as good as lissandra.

cons : doesn't reward for playing the character normally as you'd expect. counter intuitive compared to the rest of the kit. still good.

3. Veigar. Regen mana based on missing mana.

pros : If Veigar choose to not miss a single creep he can but he'll not have the mana to do anything else, wouldn't be good on other champs but considering veigar kit it makes sense having to choose between farming or keeping mana for more safety while still rewarding you for your farm.

cons : no direct interaction with opponent, you can buy veigar passive for gold making this playstyle not unique at all. (graal)

4. Cho'gath. We all know, he farms and regen.

Pros : fit his playstyle and theme.

Cons : Boring, no champion interactions. but still fit his playstyle so it's not a problem. still a quite bad passive IMHO, but it's not the subject.

It isn't really a mana regen passive but you all know where I'm going for now because swain passive is this one :

"Whenever Swain kills an enemy or structure, he restores「 9 + (Swain's level) 」mana. On enemy champion takedowns, he regains an additional 9% maximum mana."

So based off other what do we see. First let's say it honestly, we can ignore the part about killing a champion, that's not an interaction with ennemies it's just allowing swain not to be useless in fight if he does his job, but that's not really a passive and you can't play around that. What his passive is : regain mana for every minion killed. That's what his passive actually is. So what is the problem? well again the lack of champion interaction is making this passive quite boring. But it is also like veigar an item passive, but even worse it's a damn doran ring. And you can't really play around this passive, you don't have choices to make with the passive. If you are going to miss a last hit, even if you do it intentionaly and not because you are not good enough to farm well, well you'd miss it passive or not, especially considering the gold you miss is far more important than a few mana. You don't choose to use this passive or not, it's simply something that allows swain to snowball if he isn't stopped from farming but it really is an invisible force.

So we have a passive that :

-give no choice whatsoever. -doesn't interact with other champions in a meaningful way. (same as with last hit, killing a champion is a reward in itself and you don't think "ho I'll kill him to regen 9% of my mana). -Grant an invisible snowball in laning phase for you or your opponent depending on your ability to farm or not.

We can all agree that they all are completely the reverse of what riot game is doing right now. So what would I change? I actually thought about quite a few things, but I'll not start with the passive, I'll start with his e :

"Active: Swain afflicts the target enemy with a curse that deals magic damage to them over 4 seconds, amplifying Swain's damage against them for the duration."

I saw that spell and thought that it really was bad too. And I was thinking that we could add interactivity between swain spell, force him to play against champions to get his mana regen and saying goodbye to the invisible strength this spell have. Here is the new version :

"Swain deal minor damage to an opponent and if he is a champion curse him for 4 second, while cursed swain other spells gain a bonus effect. At the end of the duration the target is dealt aditional damages for every curse trigered"

So before I go on the bonus effects, as you can notice I deleted the invisible strength of a DoT and damage increase spell to add it into spell interaction, and since the spell have no point in being a DoT it will be direct damage with clear damage boost if you use your spells on him. Basically it's the same spell but clearer and with more intuitive counterplay. (even if it's actually the same way to play around it). Now the bonus effect :

-Swain passive is now transfered into his q : on cursed target, if you manage to deal the full damage duration, you gain a huge mana refill effect.

I see how this spell could be a problem by making his opponent reduce his interactions with swain, but since he have to be cursed to grant the mana regen effect he can force swain to launch his e, wait for it to end and then go in. Also it would really increase the value of placing your root on someone since that would allow you to channel the other spells, but of course if you do that you'd miss the root added bonus :

-root duration is reduced to 1,5 seconds. if you root a cursed opponent place a root zone under all ennemy champion near the cursed target. The zone doesn't follow them and root them for the same duration after 0,875sec (same as original spell) these additional spell does not deal damages.

Ok so this one is a fantasy of mine, since my point was simply to rework swain passive I didn't focused as much on aditional effect as I should. But the point is to show the philosophy of the effect for this spell. Basically the curse mechanic ask you to focus on a target (which is already what swain kit was doing), but doesn't reward your team for helping you catch it. i was inspired by fiora ult when thinking about this one. Of course this isn't an ultimate so the effect is avoidable if the opponents aren't too clamped and it doesn't deal additional damage. It's still massively powerful so it could be replaced by something else, but I still wanted something that asked swain team to cooperate with him. ho and what I didn't say is that the origian l target root is refreshed by the aditionnal root (making it 2,375 sec instead of 2 the original 2 second), I thought there should still be a bonus for catching the cursed target if he is alone.

And now the ultimate added bonus on cursed target :

-Ravenous flock will always hit the cursed target. after the cursed target is hit 3 times 1 additional wave is instantly sent to ALL ennemies around. this wave does not allow to regenerate on minions.

When playing swain and fighting against 5 ennemies, you might want to kill a target but your damn pigeons keep hitting mundo, irelia and hecarim instead of the jinx that you managed to root. With this change the target you choose will be prioritized. Now the curse bonus is simple, you have to hit with 3 wave because there is 1wave/sec and the duration is 3 seconds, therefore you can't burst the target with curse effect and you can't proc it multiple time in one curse. Also it forces swain to commit to gain the maximum effect. I made it so that it wouldn't regen on minion because that would probably be op but that can of course be changed. And obviously the best part of the spell : it's a fucking ravenstorm! a real one!

So as you can see i did my best to add interactivity between swain spells and improve clarity. of course there is a lot of added power here so that would require some nerf elsewhere (already nerfed the root for you, don't thank me). but what about choice? ho and wasn't swain supposed to be a tactician? sounds more like a witch here! ho and where is his passive?

Well all these answers will come with it actually, I thought about a passive that would reflect swain playstyle, and ability to keep cool and use his spell when needed for the good reasons. it would also reduce swain all in power and allow counterplay if he simply try to launch everything at you :

"passive - High ground

Swain get an armor and magic resist bonus for each of his spell that is NOT in cooldown. this bonus only apply after 1 second of visual contact on a nearby opponent"

So first let's start with the basic idea. it's encouraging you not to just play without thinking of what you are doing. When you launch a spell you become vulnerable and it should have a purpose. Though you must note that when swain ult is activated it isn't in cooldown and still grant him his bonus, he will stay quite resilient until you wore him out of his last drop of mana. Now what about the part with visual contact? well I couldn't find better actually. This idea simply emerged because i needed something to play around in laning phase. cause otherwise that would be a free resist bonus and it would have to be really weak to not be op in lane. With this added feature you can hide in bush and try suprise swain while he got no resist. it also means the laning dynamic isn't completely up to swain which would be frustrating as hell.

But also it makes sense, you don't kill a general in an organized battle where the tactician saw your army and what they are doing. But you can win the war by killing the general sending an assassin, and that's exactly that. If you have a swain in the ennemy team with a champion in your team able to approach him without being seen and eviscerating him really fast you might be able to change the tide of the battle. I think this adds a nice dynamic to the game that fits the theme of swain, while also allowing a pick that draws aggro away from the adc which doesn't really exist at the moment.

And that's it for my idea about swain. i'm sure it have a lots of problems and I'm certain it will not be swain kit if he is ever reworked, but I hope this would give ideas to riot about this champ! I really hope I'll have feedback about it at least from swain players, I really like thinking about game design ideas and I'd really be happy if people like it!

Have a nice day!