My initial impressions about Swain were unflattering to say the least. He just didn’t “bring it” like other champions did. He caught a buff, though, and I have to say, I’m starting to like the guy. I almost bought a skin at full price for him!

The bottom line for me is that Swain does have a fun playstyle. He has a lot of control, the nice bonus of healing himself in lane for what sometimes feels like a lot of mana, but the mana comes back. Oh, he also does great damage. With an ignite it’s very easy to get some early kills in a side lane.

The biggest place Swain struggles is the big team fights. Yeah, sounds counterintuitive with his bird, but he just doesn’t heal enough to keep himself alive through a full-on, five-man explosion of AoE. He’s great against three, though (hmm, might have to try him on TT some time soon), and he only gets better as the numbers go down. The fact that he can slow you, stun you, then immediately slow you again means you better hope to god you have Flash and he doesn’t.

Though the current metagame seems to limit Swain, I don’t think it’s a stretch to do well with him in ranked games.

This post is about as long overdue as they come, but I just got my first chance to test Swain and all I can say is, I understand all of the complaints. Despite having one of the cooler character models, a great looking ult, an interesting design concept, and a nice AOE cc, Swain has a tough time farming and, thanks to his low AP ratios, a tough time turning a kill.

I think the biggest problem Swain faces is that his design was changed last minute so that he no longer had a Maledict type spell. The fact that Torment now only increases the damage you deal at a flat rate means you have to stay right on top of your target to give respectable damage. The obvious problem there is that Swain is a caster, not someone you want in the mix. Plain and simple, Swain was rushed out, released too quickly when Riot decided that the Maledict mechanic wasn’t readily identifiable to young players.

Swain also suffers from his low cooldown ult. I’d much rather see it deal respectable damage, be capable of keeping him alive in a fight than the current mediocre damage/negligible heal combo he has. His ult is his only real farming tool as well, which is a big problem if you don’t have much AP. A full ult is incapable, in many cases, of even killing off caster minions. That’s a big problem.

If you’re an experienced Googler, you know a lot of this stuff is set to change, but for now, Swain remains near the very bottom of my ranked-game-viable toon list. We’ll see how he looks tomorrow.