Talk:Swain/@comment-87.120.65.203-20120723093403/@comment-79.50.132.16-20120723144454

For laning phase Brand should be ok, clears quickly if he wants, has good enough harrass and a lot of burst; he should be very vulnerable to ganks while being able to roam well (he has good burst for ganks but unreliable single target CC, so dont gank weak lanes).I dont know him very well however.

Swain wins most mid lanes once learned, he's harder to gank than most mages, has good harrass with medium range and a lot of single target damage. If he gets advantage he tends to snowball into a monster since both his damage and toughness go up. He struggles against hard pushers however (by picking Swain i triggered an hilarious amount of Heimer picks); he ganks well due to CC, single target damage and tankyness and he's capable of counter-ganking quite well.

For teamfights i think Brand is better, he has a lot more AoE damage than Swain. The former is more of a traditional AP nuker during teamfights, but he's very combo reliant so it's actually quite hard to land an "ideal" AoE devastation. The latter behaves more like a bruiser: get in, blow up their carry as fast as possible, use your CC and ultimate to survive enough to get your spell back and blow up someone else. Swain can have mana problems during teamfights if you dont have blue buff or a major mana regen item. He also is the first ignite/exaust target usually; for this reason and the fact that he focuses on single targets, if the rest of your team is crippled, you probably won't be able to win teamfights on your own, even if fed.

TL, DR: Brand is a tradional nuker, he is bursty and does more damage in teamfights; Swain is a tanky mage, he has a better laning phase (imo), has high single target (DoT) damage, but low AoE damage; you're better winning your lane and roam to make your team snowball.

Keep in mind that i main Swain so i'm far from unbiased ;)