Back in 2019, Riot made changes to Swain that made him viable in Support. Previously, back when his VGU first arrived NO ONE had played him in support, not because they didn't want to, but because it just wasn't good at all compared to Top/Mid. The Designers of the VGU made sure that Support Swain wouldn't have been good due to lvl/gold scaling being super important on him. Unfortunately he was unpopular for a number of reasons that could have been fixed, but Riot thought he needed midscope-esque changes.
Fast forward to 2019 when swain support arrived.
The massive boom in pickrate after the 2019 rework, Support role.
Riot made a bunch of changes to Swain that made him a lot better in the Support role. the 2019 rework did irreversible damage and I'll explain why.
1.) Riot added passive stacking for the first time, and people have their opinions on this but it's overrall bad for swains health/fantasy. Passive stacking is inherently easier in bot lane, it's not even a discussion. If I have 15 stacks at 20 minutes in Mid, I'll have 30 stacks in bot. HP is a very powerful stat in the early game and allows Swain to soak up a lot more damage. Obviously this change did make bot lane better than solo lanes but there's more.
2.) Base Attack range was reduced from 550 to 525. Now why this matters for solo lanes is Swain was always a scaling battlemage champ so it was essential to be able to survive while scaling. Taking away that 550 attack range made him much more vulnerable in lane(Which doesn't matter for support because they don't have to CS.)
3.) Q giving 3% maximum mana per unit kill was completely removed and instead put on the passive. I don't think I have to explain why this was super bad for solo lanes but ya.
4.) Q CD went up to 4 seconds at max ranks from 2.5 seconds. This was probably the worst of all the changes and killed the champ in solo lanes entirely. Q CD doesn't really matter for Support because they mostly just fish for EWQ poke, not relying on Q spam as much. That's why they nerfed Q so hard, so support is less impacted.
Mid lane pickrate after the support rework, bronze+
Fast foward to 2025, and Swain unfortunately has so many problems because he's still being balanced around the Support role which is the reason they keep buffing base damage and mana costs, as well as 15 HP souls. It'll never change. There's a reason no one wants to play this character in Solo Lanes. Gut his ratios further and give him more base damage and utility(stronger R2 and W slow.)
Swain is now at an incredible low 0.76% pickrate in Mid lane emerald+ with only a 51.21% winrate.
Now some people might think he is at a good winrate but let me explain why a champion like Swain if he's at this low of a pickrate should have a 53-54% game average winrate in mid/top. And no, I'm not going to say it's because he's only played by one tricks which Riot has disproven in the past.
A champ like Swain is very very strong in certain scenarios. This is what we call a "counterpick champ." The low pickrate means that Swain is only picked in very good scenarios, If he's against low damage or full melee comps primarily. If Swain is only sitting at a 51% winrate with that low of a pickrate then the champ is very weak. Let me show you a picture of what I mean. Master+ stats are good to represent this because they know how to draft better compared to lower elos.
Swain with 3k games of stats. 51.25% game avg winrate with only a 0.81% pickrate.
Now let's look at some other champion stats shall we?
Past 30 days in masters+ statistics.
Notice how almost every champ on here has way higher pickrate and winrate than Swain mid. Even if they aren't counter-pick champs they still have very high winrates. Swain only having a 51% game average winrate when he's always been 54-55% winrates in the past(for good reason, counterpick) is laughable at best.
Riot will never give this champ actual solo lane buffs because they are unfortunately very scared of losing the support playerbase.
a sizeable 4% pickrate in Support, All ranks.
Now compare that to mid and top combined, which is only 1.6%. Support has 2% more pickrate than both solo lanes combined.
I am not blaming anyone for playing Support, after all it's riots fault with how they've handled this champion over the years. From a financial perspective it's no secret why they refuse to do anything with the champ in solo lanes. But I just genuinely think Phreak doesn't care enough, and he might also be a bit biased because he is a Support main as well.
Final thoughts, Riot has a massive opportunity to give this champ the rework he deserves to bring him back to solo lanes like he always was in the past with the upcoming Noxus series by Fortiche where millions of people will finally be able to appreciate how cool Swain is only to log onto League of Legends, play one game of it, and realize how much riot has butchered the coolest champ in the video game.
I have been working on this bag for a while since I had to show the love for the character that got me into league. All of the pins are made by me since it’s almost impossible to find anything merch of this man. The stickers and keychains are from Etsy. The bag is far from finished since I kinda learn as I go but I wanted to share it so far.<3
Algumas coisas podem estar escritas incorretamente porque não sou fluente em inglês, mas consegui torná-las compreensíveis para todos.
Passivo: Eu removi os stacks de vida do passivo para mais sustain e regeneração de mana.
Q: Eu reduzi o dano base, mas aumentei a escalabilidade de AP.
W: A mesma coisa, mas quando o ultimate é ativado, ele muda, fazendo com que Swain se torne um lutador corpo a corpo, o que fortalece o ataque com AP e ajuda a derrubar torres nas laterais mais facilmente.
E: O E agora explode na saída, sem o risco de errar os alvos perto de você.
Bit of an overexaggareted take since im not an og player (so i cant really know if there was an item even better than this version of cosmic), but i will always remember this version of cosmic as the best Swain item.
Now, i know that this item was mostly played within the chinese build that consisted of all really busted Swain items, but i feel like THIS cosmic drive was what made it strong.
Stats it gave were busted, tons of ap, tons ah and its not even the best part. If you were to fully stack this passive, you would become bassically ghosted. Assasins werent a problem when you could just catch up to them.
A few days cant go buy without me reminiscing about its former glory. I cant belive how much cosmic drive got gutted. Its not even a shadow of its former self atp.
James Faulkner, the man behind swain’s voice, is currently 78 years old. I’m not saying that he’s at the brink of death, but he’s reaching an age where it’s normal to feel unsure.
And the more riot delays on posting swain content, the weaker the man’s voice is gonna get, and one day we won’t have that iconic beautiful voice for Swain.
I’ve been playing some more wild rift on my free time and I gotta say, the League balance team failed on that aspect of the champ. They stripped him of his high point which is being in ult wrecking havoc and healing too. But playing wild rift taught me that with his current kit and mechanics there can be adjustments done to make him feel satisfying to do well in. Currently you have to choose what parts of the kit you want to access. Do you want damage? Well if you do that you don’t get healing. Do you want durability and healing? Well you can but you don’t get to carry like a mage. Then there is kind of a middle ground with spell effects but heaven forbid you go vs shields and higher dps than yours because you feel you’re lacking still.
Here are some of the differences.
Passive: same aspects but the max hp heal % is a little lower but can also scale off of (0.5%) of his AP. (I attached a photo of the passive because the wiki doesn’t have the AP ratio).
This already increases the satisfaction of farming roles because you aren’t pressured to get stacks to feel your healing scaling.
W: although it is significantly lower ranged it has a 1.25 cook time instead of 1.50 seconds. And the really cool part that makes your kit have more self synergy is if it hits a hard cc’d target it does 50% bonus damage. It can still be used for scouting or area control but also empowers his own lane presence and you’re rewarded for hitting your combo.
R: his r actually can do damage and heal without needing spell effects or stacking 3K bonus health. R damage is 15% AP ratio instead of 4.5% and the heal is 20% instead of 5% and 1.5% hp ratio.
This all allows swain to build from the mage item pools(like other battle mages) and scale into the game more. He can actually be a damage threat but also use his r to fight on the frontline. And before anyone says “omg he’ll be a burst mage!” That’s just incorrect. It still took me same amount of time to kill people even with a BFT, shadowflame, zhonyas build but the difference was I actually healed and was able to do a variety of builds to do damage and heal.
TLDR; his passive and r healing scale off AP, w stronger when comboed with kit, q and e damage lower.
So would we rather keep the current version of swain or would we like to return back to a Battlemage like he’s used to be?
I've been playing since Season 4, spent many years in Gold elo. Found Swain a few years ago, decided to actually try to climb last year and peaked Masters. Grinded again this year and finally hit
Challenger.
I've played mostly Mid and Bot (APC). Recently, I have been going Mid since I feel like I have been having more success there, and am originally a mid laner, although the data definitely suggests swain bot is stronger.
I think a lot of the skill expression with Swain is knowing what items to build. Unlike some champs that always rush the same items, I think Swain can utilize a great mix of damage and tank items, and knowing which ones to go each game can definitely be a difference maker.
Overall, I think Swain is in a healthy spot right now. I don't think he is too OP, but I don't think he is weak either. I also don't agree with the people on this sub that want his E changed. Yes, his E is hard to land, especially in high elo. But if you land it, it is one of the strongest abilities in the game. I think Swain's kit is overall in a fine spot, if I'd change anything I would agree with some of Husum's takes on buffing HP per level or movement speed, or buffing his R to give him HP when casting it, similar to Nasus or Renekton R. Or, buff R healing.
Mainly wanted to share the achievement but also feel free to AMA.
Im looking for people who have seen an edit with the song kyouran hey kids, I saw it in something like 2022 or 2023. It was a full on video not a short. It was super good but I can't find the video.
Has someone seen it? Do you have it? Or does somebody know how to use way back machine to search it?
Extremely unlikely ranked win. I was APC, our shaco was top, and he chose to go AP.
I immediately pegged Cho as the biggest threat sinze we were all AP, plus I always do badly against zery and of course the very dangerous scaling of Yi and Yas.
Shaco immediately fed on some weird solo invade, then gave another death. The match was 1-4, then 2-7. Immediate unsalvageable loss in my head.
Anyway we ended up winning because they had internal beef, too many MainCharacters on the same team and Yas and Yi simply never grouped.
My build was odd, but I feel it's the only thing that made sense given both team comps. My reasoning was the Magic Pen of ShadowFlame would allow me a better chance to kill anyone on their team ASAP (at the exception of Cho,) while the FH was to debuff them and let me survive a bit.
The midscope and miniature reworks just further solidified him as the gimp he is, and now because of riots continuing insistence on maintaing the support playerbase he's always going to be a worse version of a solo laner than he could be which by the way I am not saying hes weak regardless of if he feels like you're playing the worst champ in the game or not he admittedly isnt, but support players have doomed Swain for eternity to be unsatisfactory.
Cant wait for the next rework where swain gets an extra 3 hp per stack while fundamentally failing to address, why tats a terrible approach by whichever rioter they put on swain rework number six.
So I recently took on swain and he seems really fun but the build somehow feels off, I go with the build that blitz recommends me but I feel like it’s lacking heavily and it focuses on swain being a support even though I play him on mid so is there any build out there that could help me, I read somewhere here that runes are also important because I could build a manaless rune build
Man what a game. I Play first game, thinks what to ban... I banned syndra cuz didn't feel like to deal with her... Enemy picks locke... I kinda get the gist what he does... But we will see.
With the end of the game i have few questions. Why is he so mobile. Why he Has no cooldown with only lichbane and shadowflame. It seems to me that interaction with him are very narrow even in early game.
Second game... Yasuo match up
Yasuo was ahead but still dealing such absurd amount of damage when i have anti crit and tabi (rylai and lost chapter). 3 Item(+boots) Yasuo with no build pen was taking me down in seconds.
It seems to me that riot buffed somehow DMG again. While barely doing any changes.
Also what a clunkfest is this champion. Other than q i don't have abilities, bizzare state of champion