Currently, Swain is mainly played as support as he is weaker than other mages in League of Legends. But with the changes announced by Riot, we can expect Swain to be more viable in the future.
Swain, The Noxian Grand General, used to terrorize top and mid lane with his annoying abilities before his rework. Unfortunately, in Season 12, he is very weak in the early game as a solo laner. His only waveclear ability is on a high cooldown & mana cost to reliably farm and scale into the late game where Swain is relatively strong. Even as support, his pick rate is less than 1%.
Associate Game Designer on the Summoner’s Rift team for League of Legends, Riot Truexy shared that some changes to Swain will be coming to PBE later this week. Swain is finally getting some buffs after a very long time.
Swain Changes
- Ravenous Flock (P)
- No longer deals 20-105 (+30% AP) magic damage
- Death’s Hand (Q)
- Cooldown: 9-3 >>>7-3s
- Mana: 65-85 >>> 50-70
- Demonic Ascension (R)
- Cooldown: 120 >>> 120/100/80
Now let’s go over the changes. Swain’s passive allows him to collect souls from immobilized enemy champions. He also pulls them closer to him and deals 20-105 (+30% AP) magic damage. But, after the changes, the magic damage part of his passive is getting removed.
Swain’s Q, Death’s Hand, is getting its cooldown reduced from 9 seconds to 7 seconds at rank 1. Also, Rank 1 Q now consumes 15 less mana. This will let Swain spam his Q to attack the enemy or help clear minions.
Lastly, his ult Demonic Ascension will have its cooldown reduced from 120 seconds in all ranks to 120/100/80 seconds, depending on your ultimate rank. So rank 3 ultimate at level 16 will have a 40 seconds less cooldown.
Time will tell if these changes can bring Swain back to the solo lanes. Riot Truexy stated that this should help Swain in mid and support by giving him access to his meaningful spells. The changes should hit the PBE servers pretty soon before patch 12.6 is released. These changes are subject to change depending on how their testing goes.
Release Date
Swain’s changes should be implemented in the live servers with patch 12.6 on March 30, 2022. Based on feedback on the tweet, Riot Truexy also stated they would look into the removal of passive damage more before releasing these changes on the live servers.
