Talk:Swain/@comment-33172118-20180503190340/@comment-29964258-20180503231603

Note: I've played him maybe once since rework if at all.

"Ultimate has way too long cooldown for what it offers" Well let's look at what it offers, and break it down. It gives health, AOE damage, and health draining. Seems to me to be like Renekton's ult and Nasus's Ult, Each one gives max HP, AOE damage (Swain is longer range, so has a larger AOE but only hits three foes), and a champ specific trait. Nasus gets armor/mr and lower Q CD, Renek gets Fury over time and on cast, Swain gets health drain and Demonflare. All of these ultimates share a 120 second cooldown. As for being unreliable, I feel like Swain is a champion who wants a rylais. He wants to keep people in his ult range, is makes it easier to root foes hit by the E on they way out, and slows enemies in a cone on his Q. Rylais makes it a lot harder for foes to escape, which in turn creates more consistent damage

I will admit, I imagine it would be difficult to not get all five souls, as long as you remain in combat, but it would be horrid design to make it super hard hard to get it, especially as that is more or less half the ult's damage.

As for the abilities, His Q does get huge late game, especially because he, you know, has a scaling on it. Given that hitting a target with all five bolts at level 5 does 300-some +96% AP, sure, it does a lot of damage, but if he has enough AP to reliably do thousands of damage with it (requiring thousand+AP,) The melees should have had time to buy at least one MR item, be it a visage(if they like healing), adaptive (might reduce damage of secondary q hits as well), maw (if they like doing damage), or Abyssal (if they are also an AP bruiser, or if their team has more AP).

As for the E being easy to dodge, his whole kit is about positioning. If his foes are in the back, he throws the e through. if they can't get out of the way of the minions in time, (remember the root explosion is slightly larger than its collision box and it collides with minions) they get hit. If they dodge wrong, they risk exposing themselves to your Q. If they are between the casters and melees (as you see in top lane sometimes), and the E return won't hit, you can wait until the front wave gets low, and Q through them, hitting the foe with the blasts that killed the minions. Again, if he tries to pull back when his wave gets low, he is either running sideways, possibly exposing himself to your Q, or running through his casters, allowing you to try at rooting him on the E, or getting him to dodge the E poorly into your Q. If he is in a cloud of his minons, a W might also cause him to try and get out, and possibly fail due to minons blocking movement. Correctly placing it to one side of him will may force him to chose between getting hit by the W or dodging into where you are setting up a close range Q.

In a longer range matchup, you have to be even more careful because the slow, two sideded aspect of the E makes it easier to dodge. So yes, he does have a certain degree of synergy with teammates who can lock down targets. Theres actually a fair bit of CC that is a lot better with teammates to help lock down foes first. As in, just about all of them. Sure, his is not quite as good without at least a slow, but his W does slow (by a lot late game) for 2.5 seconds, which makes it a lot easier. As for his W, I would be very surprised if you needed to check nearby objectives or bushes for enemies every 20 seconds. If you feel you do, go buy a control ward or something, or ask the support/ jungler to ward dragon/baron if that's what you're worried about. There's a reason they gave that ability good combat stats, it isn't intended to be used primarily as vision. But if you're approaching baron, and need to see if they are there, it's a good way to see and maybe get souls from melee champs who don't want to get off baron.

Let's see, Swain's old ult was damn strong. The only thing that made it reasonable was the high cost for maintaining it, but in short fights he very much had potential to 1v5, or at least draw enough focus that they didn't have time to also kill his ADC before the ADC kills them. If his ult were a free version of that that lasted twelve seconds, that would still be strong. His ult wasn't weak in any way, but I distinctly remember playing a game with a swain mains who only used it if he had to, because he thought it took the fun out of the game due to how strong it was. That's why they changed it. Not because it was too weak or really too strong if they other team knows how to deal with it (grevious wounds, baiting out mana, going in on cancel, etc.), but because his strategy became ult and wade into the middle of them, which wasn't how they wanted him to be. They wanted him to consider where his foes are, his ult no longer has the same healing power so he can't do tower dives and such as well, but it has some and also can do arguably more damage, but the big thing is it doesn't have a cost. if he's lowish on mana he doesn't have to decide between a Q/E or an ult, he can do both.

Midlane I can see trouble if you have trouble landing his E. people tend to be ranged or more mobile, which makes it harder, and a gank can be responed to by running into the river rather than the tower. However, with his passive and E to chain CC, he can work well with a jungle with reliable CC (panth or VI), able to lock down movement so the squishier mages can be brought down. Toplane, it's a lot easier to know where foes will be when they go for CS, which makes it easier to hit them, and also top-lane tends to be less mobile, higher CC champions, so swain is able to hit more of his E, and when the CC to gain time to gap close, they walk into a point blank Q.

On a side note: My complaint is that on the wiki the Q talks about bonus damage per bolt when hit by multiple.
 * BONUS DAMAGE PER BOLT:
 * 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 35%
 * This makes it look like each additional bolt does More damage than it would have done had it been the only to hit so bolts 2-5 do 115-135% damage, however the looking at total damage and passing a DC 5 Wisdom check (theres no way 55+anything greater than one *55*4=88) reveals it to be the bonus damage meaning in addition to the first bolt, so bolts 2-5 do 15%-35% damage. This seems counter-intuitive with saying each bolt does bonus damage, and perhaps there is a less counter-intuitive way to word it, as not everyone checks the total damage, and may not realize the bonus is bonus to the first bolt, not bonus to subsequent bolts. (I only checked because I figured there was no way riot would let it be so high) Perhaps wording it as simply saying "damage per bolt" or "reduced damage per bolt" would make it clearer
 * This makes it look like each additional bolt does More damage than it would have done had it been the only to hit so bolts 2-5 do 115-135% damage, however the looking at total damage and passing a DC 5 Wisdom check (theres no way 55+anything greater than one *55*4=88) reveals it to be the bonus damage meaning in addition to the first bolt, so bolts 2-5 do 15%-35% damage. This seems counter-intuitive with saying each bolt does bonus damage, and perhaps there is a less counter-intuitive way to word it, as not everyone checks the total damage, and may not realize the bonus is bonus to the first bolt, not bonus to subsequent bolts. (I only checked because I figured there was no way riot would let it be so high) Perhaps wording it as simply saying "damage per bolt" or "reduced damage per bolt" would make it clearer

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