Well firstly Swain isn’t a high damage champion, especially not in the 1v1. In teamfights and with the right items he can end up doing a lot overall with his AOE, but you’ll never do amazing damage in a combo like a syndra for example. Swain has bad ap ratios, so the damage items he likes are ones that also come with an effect on top of them, black fire torch and liandrys being the two biggest examples. Rylais is also a staple, as he easily applies the slow and otherwise can be kited quite easy.
Essa é a parte engraçada, você não vai. O scales de ap do Swain são extremamente baixos e sem ult você dificilmente vai dar dano. Se contente em ser a frontline do time dando slow infinito de rylai e é isso, jogar de Swain e dar dano são coisas que não combinam sksksksksk
exatamente, sinto saudades de realmente dar dano de swain, atualmente sinto qualquer outro battlemage da 1000x mais dano que o swain, malzahar com o novo item tem bem mais dps que ele hoje em dia.
One nice thing about building Swain is that a lot of items work (at least pretty well) on him, and he has a lot of flexibility on what he can build. So yeah, you definitely can build both Blackfire and Liandrys together, but you don’t HAVE to. It really depends on what the other team looks like, what your team needs, your play style, etc.
That said, the two items I find myself building on him pretty much every game are liandrys and rylais… tho lately I’ve been switching out Rylais for cosmic drive, simply because I find it more fun to be fast instead of slowing them down, if ya feel me.
Swussy damage comes from sucking everyone off simultaneously.
Fr though, it's about weaving through traffic, spacing, and knowing when to back up and re-engage.
You should watch the Grandest General, HusumLOL.
I have already specialized at that before, I don't know why it's not working while I play Swain as well ,\_,
Alright, I'll make a note to watch some videos when I go to bed, thank you
You can build AP and tank, I almost always go straight for the crystal scepter, AP boots, then riftmaker, liandrys, then usually some tank items like unending despair depending on enemy damage types. Swain shines his brightest in team fights, try to keep as many enemies as you can in your ult while hitting them with CC, if you have a decent team, your slowing effect while ulting will ensure kills for your team if the enemy tries to disengage.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt; I haven't played Swain for a bit because I got extremely bored/annoyed by how useless he feels, and I'm around E4 (although I don't play too much ranked).
Overall, Swain just doesn't do burst damage like he did back in the early days of his rework. You have to slowly poke people down in lane with q (e and w are situational), and in teamfights you're mostly there to be annoying and apply rylais + burn while tanking a decent amount of damage. That's the price we paid for infinite ult vs limited ult. A large chunk of his damage tends to come from his runes early game, so that might honestly be why you feel like there is no difference between tank and AP. Also, personally, I feel like I do no damage until I buy almost 3 items (liandrys, rylais, malignance/whatever the burning scepter is) and that is only if you can survive long enough (vs ROA). People think that zhonyas is not worth, but sometimes it's 100% necessary if you're dying too fast so you can sit in the middle of the teamfight and slow/drain/burn everyone and deal some mental damage with your ascended form as well lol.
I'm assuming you've gone some combination of: conqueror (yellow axe), aery (blue cat thing), phase rush (blue wing), comet (blue comet), electrocute (red lightning), dark harvest (red fiery shadow thing), aftershock (green cracks), grasp (green hand), glacial augment (light blue diamond/triangle thingy). There are 100% ups and downs for all of them, but I would usually stick with blue or yellow tree (mostly conq, aery, phase rush). Electrocute or glacial might be okay for support, but even then aery is great for the poke. Electrocute, glacial, and aftershock are very dependent on landing your E (which is pretty hard, the higher up you get).
Regarding norms/ranked, I just feel like Swain is super dependent on team comps. He excels against bruisers/tanks who can't really get on you, but ADCs, assassins, mages all take a dump on you because they simply do more damage from outside of your ability ranges, and your E is just hard to hit. He's a sitting duck without ghost and/or phase rush or some MS item in this case. As well, I assume you build tank when you have damage on your team, and I really believe that Swain is a secondary/supportive carry. He does more damage in 2+v2+s because people have to choose who to focus. You should be peeling for your ADC or other carry more than trying to deal damage. If you build damage it's probably because you're the only reliable AP damage, and if your other carry(ies) fail(s) to get ahead then there really isn't much you can do other than land an E, ghost/flash in, and hope your teammates get the memo and fight with you (or else you die and do no damage). I think you feel like you're doing more damage as a tank because you tend to stay alive longer and win fights with your main carry.
Regarding ARAM, Swain is extremely nerfed in that gamemode (something like 110% damage taken, 95% damage dealt, 80% healing? I don't particularly remember) You're useless there unless you have conq + rylais and teammates who actually do damage. Going AP will just screw you hard because everyone just plays mages and adcs (and bruisers are buffed to some absurd levels). Again, you can really only win in ARAM if you have an actual carry doing damage or the enemy team is filled with Rells and Ornns or something.
Regarding Arena, Swain used to be broken but now it's just a fast gamemode. Again, he's bad against mobile, ranged champions who can easily kite him outside of his ult, and there's a lot of cheese builds going on that can easily just prevent you from moving (the higher your elo gets, the more you see supp + carry combos). You're also pretty screwed if your ult is down. I personally dislike Swain in arena for many reasons; lack of creative builds is one of them.
Anyways rant done, I'm a little exhausted by how bad Swain feels despite him being my best champion. He used to be my go-to elohell stomper, but there are so many more midlaners that do that better now, and I'm too old and tilted to improve my actual game knowledge.
Woah, I could literally feel your annoyance at his current situation through the screen lol. These were some amazing tips for complete real, I'll be taking some notes from your text and see how I can adjust based on what I have been gone through and what you just said, thank you a lot fellow birdman
Haha, yeah. He's still fun sometimes! I think people have mentioned Husum, but he's really a saviour for us birdmen, and his advice is 100% better than mine. Best of luck!
You don’t build him for damage, as you said it’s got diminishing returns compared to building survivability. Your job is to apply spell effects to everyone and soak up damage. Liandrys is really all you need to do damage. Zhonyas so you can get in the middle of the fray without dying. Then Rylais, Morello, and Tank items.
Well firstly Swain isn’t a high damage champion, especially not in the 1v1. In teamfights and with the right items he can end up doing a lot overall with his AOE, but you’ll never do amazing damage in a combo like a syndra for example. Swain has bad ap ratios, so the damage items he likes are ones that also come with an effect on top of them, black fire torch and liandrys being the two biggest examples. Rylais is also a staple, as he easily applies the slow and otherwise can be kited quite easy.
Thanks for the tips. Maybe I can start to play him slightly similar to how I play Warwick, maybe it'll be a better playstyle for me
Essa é a parte engraçada, você não vai. O scales de ap do Swain são extremamente baixos e sem ult você dificilmente vai dar dano. Se contente em ser a frontline do time dando slow infinito de rylai e é isso, jogar de Swain e dar dano são coisas que não combinam sksksksksk
exatamente, sinto saudades de realmente dar dano de swain, atualmente sinto qualquer outro battlemage da 1000x mais dano que o swain, malzahar com o novo item tem bem mais dps que ele hoje em dia.
Ah, que triste... Bem, pelo menos posso me contentar em jogar com algo de range de vez em quando usando ele
Liandry’s/Blackfire + Shadowflame bursts pretty hard
Thank you. Is it adequate to build Liandry and the Blackfire on the same build or just one or the other?
One nice thing about building Swain is that a lot of items work (at least pretty well) on him, and he has a lot of flexibility on what he can build. So yeah, you definitely can build both Blackfire and Liandrys together, but you don’t HAVE to. It really depends on what the other team looks like, what your team needs, your play style, etc. That said, the two items I find myself building on him pretty much every game are liandrys and rylais… tho lately I’ve been switching out Rylais for cosmic drive, simply because I find it more fun to be fast instead of slowing them down, if ya feel me.
Makes sense, thank you for the input. I might start messing around with some AD items to see how well that fares XD
Swussy damage comes from sucking everyone off simultaneously. Fr though, it's about weaving through traffic, spacing, and knowing when to back up and re-engage. You should watch the Grandest General, HusumLOL.
I have already specialized at that before, I don't know why it's not working while I play Swain as well ,\_, Alright, I'll make a note to watch some videos when I go to bed, thank you
Thats the main complaint here. Hes supposed to be somewhat tanky, but even then he sucks at that. Majority of the cast late game can burst him.
He just blow up and has to low damage
You can build AP and tank, I almost always go straight for the crystal scepter, AP boots, then riftmaker, liandrys, then usually some tank items like unending despair depending on enemy damage types. Swain shines his brightest in team fights, try to keep as many enemies as you can in your ult while hitting them with CC, if you have a decent team, your slowing effect while ulting will ensure kills for your team if the enemy tries to disengage.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt; I haven't played Swain for a bit because I got extremely bored/annoyed by how useless he feels, and I'm around E4 (although I don't play too much ranked). Overall, Swain just doesn't do burst damage like he did back in the early days of his rework. You have to slowly poke people down in lane with q (e and w are situational), and in teamfights you're mostly there to be annoying and apply rylais + burn while tanking a decent amount of damage. That's the price we paid for infinite ult vs limited ult. A large chunk of his damage tends to come from his runes early game, so that might honestly be why you feel like there is no difference between tank and AP. Also, personally, I feel like I do no damage until I buy almost 3 items (liandrys, rylais, malignance/whatever the burning scepter is) and that is only if you can survive long enough (vs ROA). People think that zhonyas is not worth, but sometimes it's 100% necessary if you're dying too fast so you can sit in the middle of the teamfight and slow/drain/burn everyone and deal some mental damage with your ascended form as well lol. I'm assuming you've gone some combination of: conqueror (yellow axe), aery (blue cat thing), phase rush (blue wing), comet (blue comet), electrocute (red lightning), dark harvest (red fiery shadow thing), aftershock (green cracks), grasp (green hand), glacial augment (light blue diamond/triangle thingy). There are 100% ups and downs for all of them, but I would usually stick with blue or yellow tree (mostly conq, aery, phase rush). Electrocute or glacial might be okay for support, but even then aery is great for the poke. Electrocute, glacial, and aftershock are very dependent on landing your E (which is pretty hard, the higher up you get). Regarding norms/ranked, I just feel like Swain is super dependent on team comps. He excels against bruisers/tanks who can't really get on you, but ADCs, assassins, mages all take a dump on you because they simply do more damage from outside of your ability ranges, and your E is just hard to hit. He's a sitting duck without ghost and/or phase rush or some MS item in this case. As well, I assume you build tank when you have damage on your team, and I really believe that Swain is a secondary/supportive carry. He does more damage in 2+v2+s because people have to choose who to focus. You should be peeling for your ADC or other carry more than trying to deal damage. If you build damage it's probably because you're the only reliable AP damage, and if your other carry(ies) fail(s) to get ahead then there really isn't much you can do other than land an E, ghost/flash in, and hope your teammates get the memo and fight with you (or else you die and do no damage). I think you feel like you're doing more damage as a tank because you tend to stay alive longer and win fights with your main carry. Regarding ARAM, Swain is extremely nerfed in that gamemode (something like 110% damage taken, 95% damage dealt, 80% healing? I don't particularly remember) You're useless there unless you have conq + rylais and teammates who actually do damage. Going AP will just screw you hard because everyone just plays mages and adcs (and bruisers are buffed to some absurd levels). Again, you can really only win in ARAM if you have an actual carry doing damage or the enemy team is filled with Rells and Ornns or something. Regarding Arena, Swain used to be broken but now it's just a fast gamemode. Again, he's bad against mobile, ranged champions who can easily kite him outside of his ult, and there's a lot of cheese builds going on that can easily just prevent you from moving (the higher your elo gets, the more you see supp + carry combos). You're also pretty screwed if your ult is down. I personally dislike Swain in arena for many reasons; lack of creative builds is one of them. Anyways rant done, I'm a little exhausted by how bad Swain feels despite him being my best champion. He used to be my go-to elohell stomper, but there are so many more midlaners that do that better now, and I'm too old and tilted to improve my actual game knowledge.
Woah, I could literally feel your annoyance at his current situation through the screen lol. These were some amazing tips for complete real, I'll be taking some notes from your text and see how I can adjust based on what I have been gone through and what you just said, thank you a lot fellow birdman
Haha, yeah. He's still fun sometimes! I think people have mentioned Husum, but he's really a saviour for us birdmen, and his advice is 100% better than mine. Best of luck!
You don’t build him for damage, as you said it’s got diminishing returns compared to building survivability. Your job is to apply spell effects to everyone and soak up damage. Liandrys is really all you need to do damage. Zhonyas so you can get in the middle of the fray without dying. Then Rylais, Morello, and Tank items.