credits of the build to HUSUM, best swain player and creator of the actualizer build
honestly insane and really shows how FUN swain is when he HEALS and DRAINTANK

this was master rank, was antihealed and antishielded almost all the fight

I ulted too early but it was worth it

Experimented with Aery on Swain support. Here are my findings:

• Aery does about the same damage as Electrocute but Cheap Shot gives more damage in the end.
• The +250 mana from Manaflow Band helps during laning phase, especially if you're not building a mana item like Blackfire Torch as support.
• Precision secondary is a must. Presence of Mind + Cut Down every game in any role. The damage + mana is better than the health from Resolve.

Overall, I think Electrocute is better (on support) because of Deep Ward and poke potential. Mana isn't too much of a problem because you're not using Q for wave clear so it doesn't warrant going Sorcery, especially when the damage output is nearly identical.

Hopefully this sheds more light on the most optimal runes for Swain, since he is one of the few champions in the game that can utilize nearly every rune.

OP.GG: https://op.gg/lol/summoners/na/TheWilliamShow-NA1

Hit challenger on NA for the first time with Swain ADC

Quick idea for a mild rework

Increase base move speed from 330 to 350

Passive Permanent health per stack is cut in half, each stack gives 0.2% move speed, as well as 0.2% tenacity, with the tenacity from the passive doubled during ult.

Ult Energy drain speed increased from 15/s to 25/s At 2 or more targets energy regeneration increased to 45/s Ult dmg with the ap ratio changed from 2% to 4%, as true damage instead of magic damage. Ult healing increased from 1.5% to 7% bonus hp from the first tatget (remember that the bonus health from passive gets gutted) Ult healing increased from 1.5% to 3 5% for the second target Ult healing for the third target is an un changed 1.5 percent. More than 3 people in ult does not increase the healing. Targets in the ult have their move speed reduced by 12% Each target in the ult increases Swains movement speed by 3% Each target in the ult beyond 3 increases Swains tenacity by 5%

Edit: changed the values for base Ms and ult healing

Remember numbers are only my estimation and can get changed

I linger around here often enough that I've seen more than a few ambitious changes proposed to our dearest Grand General. Lots of speculation on how to change him in ways that remove roles, tighten up gameplay loops, etc, but a lot of them I feel are trying to do too much for what Swain honestly needs. As is, I wholeheartedly believe that when Swain *works*, He feels immaculate, and I think this is something that all of us experience to at least some degree, or we wouldn't have tethered ourselves to the man. Swain has a lot of peaks and valleys and I think the biggest issue plaguing the man is the depth of his valleys and the areas of his kit that are needlessly clunky.

Part of why I argue this, is that as Devs have mentioned time and time again, the issues that Swain has are "Satisfaction" issues, not really power issues. It's not so much that Swain's numbers imply the man is weak, but the experience of playing him often runs into pitfalls that make him feel like he's fighting himself, delaying or denying the moments where Swain truly feels like himself.

1. So what kind of low-effort requirements am I talking about? Simple, E needs to stop being caught on minions and monsters. You can change the hitboxes if you need, you can add pass-through damage back if it impacts waveclear, but fundamentally the hugest part of E's frustration in my opinion is that the ability promises a Boomerang projectile, but frequently....just doesn't come back. Swain E currently, and for most of his post-VGU life has had a primary issue of having a single effective range; the tip. Part of why the tip is the only really viable part of the hitbox is because the middle-ground between the tip and the return trip to Swain is frequently rife with things you do not want E to get snagged on. It means that enemies standing between you and the minion wave can harass you with impunity because either you will be dead by the time the projectile returns, or more likely, the projectile will simply never return, because you have to either angle E around the offending obstacles, or it simply gets caught on them regardless.

The highpoints of Nevermove are something I think should be preserved; the idea of getting meaty team grabs and the delicious HP that comes from it, I think is a good and satisfying gameplay loop, and the relative unreliability of Nevermove gives a bit of leiway for people to escape Swain's sphere of influence, an important piece of counterplay that I think should be included in any well-managed design. Swain needs to hit people to keep in range, and I think that's positive for the gameplay loop overall, even if Nevermove is frequently a pain point.

1. Probably the most minute change request I have, but one I think would ~help~ with some of Swain's clunkiness is being able to flash with E. I know this doesn't really come up as often as other issues the man has, but it frequently enough becomes a question I have to grapple with as to why far less reactable skills can be flash-buffered but our Dearest General and his 2 day Mail-order crow claw cannot. Like I said, my goal in recommending changes like this is mostly to start on smaller consistent issues that interrupt the flow of gameplay, and ideally amend from there, and I think simple things like being able to flash backwards while throwing the crow to cover where we used to be, or even just a simple Flash E without any of the awkwardness of making sure you don't accidentally get ahead of yourself and flash over your own E wasting both skills would do a lot to reduce the jank that is built into the kit.

2. I can't rightfully put this in my list of "Minor changes which wouldn't require much tinkering" because Swain's passive does need a lap, and I don't think there's a version that wouldn't require more extensive tuning, but Removing the infinite HP scaling and just giving him appropriate base-stats for his intended role and class would do a great job at levening his roles and some of the frustrations that people face both as and against the man. His current passive is definitely bot skewed because it's just easier to get souls in bot, but viewing Swain's Bot lane performance as just an issue of getting more health I think is pretending the issue is more simple than it actually is. Swain's issues in any role are pretty universal by habit of...being Swain, but whether you're on his best role or his most mediocre, by virtue of the scaling passive, Swain's laning experience can be very feast or famine. He's currently reliant on the HP from his passive to be tanky enough to serve as that pseudo-frontliner he's supposed to be, and that means in any lane that outranges or outmaneuvres you, bot-lane or no, you'll quickly end up a pick-bot that can only ever really take small trades since you don't actually have the bulk to live through the damage you're supposed to be taking. I don't know what personally I would replace the scaling health with (My personal thought is temporary Armor/MR based on Souls up to a max), but whatever the solution is, it would require something a bit more hollistic than stopping E from cucking you on an errant void-grub.

So uh, yeah, those are some of my thoughts. Do you guys have any specific "Low-effort" changes you think would improve Swain's gameplay feel without necessarily reinventing his wheels?

R ==> higher damage, higher heal on a single target (closest to Swain), lower for every target beyond the first, make the heal weaker for 2 champs sucked, and round out with current values at 4 and 5 so he can still be a teamfight monster while nerfing him bot and support and buffing him mid and top

R2 ==> bring back CD getting lower with ulti haste, I can't see the issue of Swain being an ulti haste-reliant champ, there are so many already
Think how Olaf goes Hexplate, Nocturne goes both Hexplate and ulti hunter, Shyvana goes either too
And Swain should go either every game too (utli hunter or malignance) without it being an issue

R2 slow being more frequent will make him not need to build Rylai as much, I'd even take it for a significant damage decrease in the R2 explosion (not really the R2 explosion damage is a big part of his identity, so maybe reduce the damage of another area)

E ==> make the projectile travel to target distance (where the mouse is) and then back instead of max range and then back
this makes it better vs melees and mid range champs and makes it a more reliable and a skill-reliant spell
as a power trade Id say make it only root 2 people max (furthest from Swain, so closer to E coming back)
because, to be fair, the current frustrating E has the mega dopamine hit of hooking 3 or 4 running away champs of the enemy team and the fight ending at that moment

passive ==> make the heal scale, make the stacks grant less health, add more ways to gain stacks
2 ideas ==> hitting all bolts of Q grants a stack, sucking a champ with R for 5 seconds straight grants a stack

I see how this can be all top buffs, but I can not think of ways to make the Syndra mid matchup better without altering Swain as a champion completely

rito its as simple as that, and you can do it

Some clips I hit on a good day on the rift in Diamond 2-1 lobbies. I am Katarina and Swain main that streams on twitch-> https://www.twitch.tv/evylzz

Just had a really good game, tower for the win here

I just went on pbe to check, since it just launched on pbe. Old Swain used to be my all time main way back in the day so I was excited to see he was on here. He isn't.

Swain is one of those champs whose rework DRASTICALLY changed how he played, and I know there are quite a fair bit of people, including myself, who miss old Swain's goofy bird form. So he should easily be feasible to add in League classic given the champions that are currently available. We have Lux (who was released on October 19 2010), Ahri (released December 14, 2011), Vayne (released May 10, 2011), and Skarner (released August 9, 2011). Swain is older than ALL four of those champions, as he was released on October 5th of 2010.

I do recall that Riot mentioned Xin Zhao isn't included because he was BONKERS when he released so riot wants to figure out tuning him first before is addition to league classic. I don't remember too much of Swain's history as I started playing the game in early 2017, so I am unfamiliar if he had some gamebreaking release or something.

In that case I understand if riot is holding off on him, but to my knowledge he is like... never talked about (unless someone can prove me wrong if there was some controversy with his game balance, I just have no clue).
I feel someone should ask Riot if they forgot to add swain for... some reason, or if there is a reason why he isn't there, when we have several characters who were released after him being included in classic. They should commit to the bit with classic, not pick and choose because I am fairly certain EVERY champ has an old version that someone is nostalgic about.

I see a lot of people potentially misinterpret this so I wanted to put forward my theory. When Swain gets a soul fragment from Warwick he says, “She was closer than he realized,” which I think references Warwick’s short story, “If They Run.” In that story, Warwick uses a Zaunite tube runner as bait for gangers by chasing her towards the more dangerous parts of Zaun and letting them find her. When they do his goal is to kill them all and spare her, but his machine pumps that stuff into him and he loses himself to bloodlust. He is not fully aware of everything during this and can only hope that she is far enough away from him that he does not hurt her during his carnage. Afterwards he is immediately routed to chase fleeing gangers and never finds out if he accidentally killed her, the story leaves it ambiguous. But Swains quote indicates that she might’ve been just close enough for him to accidentally make her a casualty of his violence.

4 man swain E on drag contest, cosmically rare swain E dub, legit. Medal Clip

This video is one of my first coaching sessions. I coach an Emerald Swain Mid player looking to make the climb to Diamond and beyond. Many Swain players in this rank are mechanically proficient, but struggle with consistently creating winning scenarios to snowball a game. This session focuses on taking consistent fights around neutral objectives, and explores vision setup, priority usage, and fixing E usage.

I think a lot of people here can find value in the main takeaways.

The dopamine in this teamfight went through the roof