For the first time since League of Legends Patch 10.15, Swain will be receiving somewhat major changes in an effort to make his kit stronger overall and with a better identity that players can get behind. These Swain buffs will be coming to the PBE this week and are set to hit the live servers by Patch 12.6, Riot Associate Game Designer Truexy revealed on Twitter. But will these changes be enough to satisfy Swain players?
Despite being dubbed the Noxian General, Swain hasn't really been a strong pick in League of Legends. The champion has lacked a sense of identity for some time now. At present, his kit is quite niche and is much too unreliable compared to traditional mages. There are just too many other champions that are better than Swain at what he tries to achieve – his range is short, making laning a little difficult, and so has mostly found success in the support role with his survivability yet has enough damage output to be more useful as a mid or bot carry.
To try and add more power to this currently underwhelming pick, Riot devs are testing out some changes to Swain. Although Truexy cautioned that the expected buff is of small to medium extent only, but hopefully it would be enough to make the champion a more viable pick as a carry or solo laner.
“The goals here are shifting power out of less satisfying places and into the spells that make Swain, well Swain,” Truexy wrote. “This should help both Swain in mid and support by giving him access to his meaningful spells.”
Swain changes on PBE and next live patch
Regarding shifting Swain's power, the League of Legends dev team has decided to take down his passive a notch in favor of strengthening his Q and ultimate. None of the buffs are damage-oriented, but instead are to reduce mana costs and cooldowns.
As such, these changes are more so to help Swain be more annoying in lane, being able to spam his Q more often—especially as this is the ability that actually serves as his main source of damage. At the same time, the champion can transition into the mid-game and potentially synergize well with poke comps, including providing a threat to swing the momentum of the game with his Demonic Ascension. This could help Swain scale a bit better overall, but he won't be a late-game champion.
As for his passive, Swain will no longer deal bonus damage that scales with AP whenever you pull in an immobilized champion. It will, however, still count toward a soul fragment. Below are the exact changes by the numbers.
Passive: Ravenous Flock
- No longer deals 20-105 (+30% Ability Power) magic damage
Q: Death’s Hand
- Mana: 65/70/75/80/85 >>> 50/55/60/65/70
- Cooldown: 9/7.5/6/4.5/3 seconds >>> 7/6/5/4/3 seconds
R: Demonic Ascension
- Cooldown: 120 seconds >>> 120/100/80 seconds
However, the buffs may not be enough to lead to any meaningful change in Swain's pick rate and win rate. According to some players who main the champion, not having any damage buffs to offset the passive changes will make his burst damage combo worse – and the ability spamming in lane won't negate that.
As these changes will first go live on the PBE servers this week, Riot devs still have time to fine-tune them and we might see further buffs yet. If they go through, players can expect them on the live servers likely by Patch 12.6.
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