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Swain - Tactician

Viral Vermin·12/20/2017, 12:01:37 AM·3 votes·478 views

"Tactical decision, Summoner."

Thanks, Lux! I've always enjoyed playing "evil" (Noxian) Champions, so naturally Swain is a fun favorite of mine. He's on the rework line as we type, and I thought of suggesting a new game mechanic in conjunction with the recent shove of control mages into the jungle role. I've had these ideas about Swain for nearly three seasons, but they are made better if he can jungle, so here goes:

  1. Beatrice becomes Swains passive:

    * While Beatrice remains with Swain she travels overhead of the enemies Swain has autoattacked, giving true sight of the enemy Swain has last auto attacked. (This applies to minions and monsters. Last hitting minions negates Beatrice retargeting.) After an increasing duration of time based on level, if Swain has not auto attacked an enemy, Beatrice returns to Swain. Beatrice acts as a scout while over Swain, increasing his field of vision.

  2. Garrison is Back! *Swain's Q becomes Garrison, which positions Beatrice over a selected allied turret. While Garrisoned by Beatrice, the tower has increased true sight and attack range, and grants Swain the gold for minions killed. This is not a global cast ability which means Swain must travel to the tower he wishes Beatrice to garrison. *Swain's Q, if he chooses to be offensive, changes from Garrison to Distract! As commanded, Beatrice hastily flies to a target location taunting all enemies she catches within her range. At the end she performs an aerial loop and returns to Swain.

3 Comments

Arakadia12/20/2017, 3:35:00 AM1 votes

I personally feel that shoe horning Swain into the jungle role and objective control isn't very fitting. Riot also has made it clear that current Swain doesn't feel like a tactician and trying to make new Swain a tactician would be too drastic. I think this is smart, and I think focusing his theme as a dominating warlock leader of Noxus is a way better idea that would stick closer to his current character.

ModCaliCoastReplay12/21/2017, 2:33:55 PM1 votes

I like the turret interaction concept. I've been an advocate of having his tactician identity be represented by lane push/siege/map knowledge capabilities.

There are some leaks about his new identity - but who knows how accurate they are. The supposed passive is something like what you said but only kicks in below 35% health, which I'm worried will add a Volibear-like element to him that will make him much riskier.

I'm optimistic yet pessimistic at the same time. There's really no exception for the way present Swain feels. His Q-slow is possibly going away, and that will make it much harder for me to love him. If he doesn't have an area-based slow of some kind in the rework I'm possibly going to end up losing out on playing him much. Still, I'm hopeful that he can get something along the likes of the Urgot rework - something that just feels cooler, more balanced but still scary at the same time. I still hope he's a drain tank mage, with crowd control and killpower. They say they want to make him less binary, which is fine - but I've always thought he's already a lot more tactical than people think. His CS phase is brutal, and you can't really make any mistakes with him. And he has some utterly terrible matchups - Yasuo, Fiora, other nimble and durable melee tops who can get out of his Q at will. I'd accept less power versus the champs Swain currently dumpsters in exchange for more fight versus the nimbler fighter-types.

Preserve his Noxian identity at all costs, is my feeling. It still needs to be terrifying to have a fed Swain full of ravens charging down on you. Part of his other current feel is a brutal CS/laning phase that trends into a late game snowball if you excel at it, and I'm kind of hoping that high-skill-high-reward feel stays too.