A Buyer's Guide to League of Legends: Swain!

Swain the Tactician is a powerful early-game caster champion with some strong spells, but be wary of being focused in team fights!

Riot Games has been quite consistent with their new champion updates and, while they have just released the newly re-worked champion, Lux, this week's "Buyer's Guide to League of Legends," will be on the champion introduced about two weeks back: Swain, the Master Tactician. Now, before I begin, many of you have probably watched Phreak's Champion Spotlights where, while he does a great job of highlighting his champions' individual strengths, I would warn you against just directly copying his build for all games that you play, especially as you move up the competitive ranked brackets. Some champions can end up feeling quite sub-par if you don't build items that capitalize on their strengths in relation to teams, and sometimes Phreak's item builds (like for Swain) can be problematic as teams get more organized and roles become more defined.

To backtrack a little, Riot's second newest champion (Lux was introduced yesterday), Swain the Master Tactician, originally felt like a quasi-rework of the Warcraft III's Defense of the Ancients' (DotA) powerful Vol'Jin, the Witch Doctor. Upon closer inspection, however, Swain and the Witch Doctor are similar only in the fact that Swain originally had an ability (Torment) that operated similar to Vol'jin's "Maledict" skill, but Riot found that, to any non-DotA player, this ability was entirely too confusing. Long story short, maledict's great utility was that the damage a player took from other attacks while cursed by maledict would directly translate to maledict dealing more damage over time. It wasn't unusual to see maledict dealing damage in the realms of 300-400 every 4 seconds (in DotA, that's huge).

Swain's Torment originally operated similar to Witch Doctor's Maledict, but because of its unclear nature, Riot decided to change it to simply dealing damage over time and increasing the amount of damage that Swain deals to the affected champion by +20%. Witch Doctor's maledict was a ground targetable skill that could hit multiple champions and could be "amplified" by anyone's damage, but this seemed to be too powerful in League of Legends, so it was modified to a single target spell that only affects Swain's damage. Mathematically, Zileas assured players that Swain's Torment remains similar in damage from the change, but Riot Games also offered refunds for those not satisfied with this change.

With regard to Swain's other abilities, this peg-legged tactician comes with some fairly standard spells on top of a very awkward ultimate spell. His Q spell, Decrepify, has his bird shoot a laser at the opponent, dealing damage per second and slowing his opponent (although you can "break" the leash by running the opposite direction). His W spell, Nevermore, is a ground targetable spell that requires a few seconds to take effect, and then it immobilizes and deals damage to anyone on top of it. Think of something like Cho'gath's Rupture ability, but faster (and change the slow effect to an immobilize). His E spell is Torment which works as explained above. Where it gets rather odd is Swain's ultimate, which transforms him into a giant walking Raven. Swain's mana is constantly drained during this ultimate (so it is possible to keep it up forever if you have the mana regen), and for the whole time, he automatically sends out ravens from his body. The ravens hit random targets around Swain and then return to him, healing him for half the damage done.

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