Talk:Swain/@comment-8921599-20131214041631/@comment-15244341-20131215115815

Swain is bad vs AP assassins such as... LeBlanc or Syndra and that is about all I an think of. Swain is pants on head retardedly good against Kha, Zed and Talon by virtue of them being squishy melee heroes and his build being more tanky than most midlaners. Plus Zhonya's Hourglass as a second item. He trades too bloody hard against melee champions. I actually very rarely lose lane against Fizz because he gets outraded badly at levels 1 to 3.

The damage loss from ignite is on the 6 (level 1) to 85 (level 18) damage mark. It makes me a bit sad, but it just means that you have to auto a bit more. There is no point in giving E extra range to compensate for 85 damage. He already does far too well against matchups with his range/melee farmers to give him even more range to cope with that.

Q is fine as it is. Since it is fairly good when maxed second (maximum damage potential) making it be closer to the enemy means no one is escaping from the 900 tether range with a 40% slow applied to them unless they have superjumps. This is not the counterplay Q offers now: go in and take the damage or run away and break the tether.

W is fine as it is. It is the only skillshot he has (unlike Cho) so to play Swain you just have to be good at using it. The delay is fine beacuse a 2 second root is amazingly good and what Swain needs to get around his poor range.

Swains whole thing is his ultimate's healing. The tankyness might be good, but Riot has removed all AR/MR bonus from shape-shifting ultimates. Not seeing why Swain should get it. The movespeed sounds nice, but again, unneeded. Swain has mobility problems by design, and this shouldn't be changed because it is part of how he is balanced. It is already hard for low mobility champions to peel him off (he has decent to good CC) and most high mobility champions can't really trade/burst him if he is doing well. If given more mobility, he will be even harder to peel off.

Plus let's not lie. You buffed his damage. 25% AP is higher by a lot than 20% AP on Ravenous Flock. 10/10/15 less damage is trivial. He would get 15% AP more damage in a teamfight per second. As long as he has ~60 AP he deals more damage at any level in a teamfight. And it's more likely even better, since one target has Torment on him/her.

I honestly feel he is perfectly fine as he is. The Torment nerf is a bit of a low blow, but the passive buff has made him reaaaally good now. You just have to assume he has picks he is good against and picks he is frankly terrible against and choose him accordingly. Or just prepare to suffer, I guess.