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Swain Build Guide by

Fear the power you do not see - In Depth Swain Guide

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70 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Vicious Skittle

Swain Build Guide By Updated on

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Great guide, not only very good in explaining how the champion works but also very well designed, great stuff

Voted +1

Very in depth, gives a good idea of what the champion is like before really trying him and gives a good explanation of how to play him well.

Voted +1

I really like this guide, since it covers all the bases. I do have a quick question though. Is Biscuit Delivery worth it for the extra mana and hp the cookies provide? (it also displays Biscuit delivery in the part where you explain the runes even though the text on the side says Perfect Timing)

(2) |

I was wondering if you think that this build would work well with Wukong? I think that AP would be really strong on him as his decoy scales 60% off of AP and it would do massive damage in bunched up team fights

(57) |

Absolutely. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

(2) |

I think so too, I'm gonna test it out and write a guide if it does well. Make sure to add Carlton0Banks on North American servers I heard he's cool

Voted +1

Great guide. I had never thought of playing Swain before reading your guide, but now I do. +1 from me.

(57) |

Appreciate it

(15) |

Hello, I definitelly wouldn't put example build without , since it's very important for most AP mage champions, because if your enemies get MR (which they usually do, at least later on), then by doing so they will make your huge amount of AP quite useless.

And since most of people on this website tend to use builds, that are on top, then I would say that its quite confusing.

(57) |

I disagree with being 100% core. In most games, you'll only play against 1 maybe 2 champions where is efficient.

For example, using a few popular champions (according to lolalytics) and their standard builds, you only get the situational lane opponent, the support and the situational jungle ever getting more than the MR breakpoint to make void staff useful.

needs to penetrate about 36 MR to be cost efficient, which translates to roughly 90 MR if you have no other forms of magic pen. If we assume you don't have sorcs and don't have a nomicon and I use 5 popular solo queue champions you'll find won't be a must buy.

Top lane - . Probably buys and a possible Maw/Visage. If she just mercs, void staff is bad. If she gets more then that, void staff will be good vs her.

Jungle - . Exactly the same as the top lane, but is a lot less likely to buy more than just mercs and is also less likely to buy mercs full stop.

Midlane - . unlikely to buy any MR. Super rarely would buy a banshee, but that is so niche it's bad for a general use guide.

ADC/Marksman - . Pretty much no ADC gets MR. Maw is super rare and even then they would need more than just a maw to make efficient. Not to mention items like is arguably more useful against most ADCs because they survive through support healing and lifesteal sustain.

Support - . Will pretty much always get over 100 MR at 6 items, assuming she builds a combination of 2: Athenes/Locket/Zekes/Mikael. However your target should rarely prioritize a support. Even more so if they're tank supports (don't focus the etc etc)

TLDR: In my opinion needs to have 2+ characters that you want to kill to have over 90 magic resistance baseline (so no aftershock). is gold inefficient unless you penetrate at least 36 MR and the breakpoint for that without any other flat pen is 90. I would only suggest getting this if the enemy team has either a target you need to burn through in order to win and they have a second character with decent magic resistance. Otherwise, the flat 15 pen from plus the extra health, small AP and Grievous wounds are more valuable.

With the current soloqueue bruiser/carry meta (, , , , , , , ...) odds are you actually don't need a . There are of course exceptions to this, the biggest one being thanks to his

(15) |

Where did you get to value 36 when you are talking about cost efficiency - did you calculate it specifically for Swain? And if so - did you make calculation depending on the full build? Because you can't just throw number 36 there, since efficiency of magic penetration heavily depends on champion's damage (base/scaling) and obviously on your current build (aka amount of AP).

Plus, those things that you mentioned - those are just assumptions - you assume that they won't build something - aka you assume that your opponent won't respect your damage. Yes, you are right that it might work against players, that don't really think about it that much, but you should always be ready to adapt to opponents, that actually know what they are doing.

In addition - you have only one example build - maybe it would be valuable to add more with tooltips, for which situations are they good.

EDIT: I googled it and noticed, that it's being shown on official wiki, even though such information is completely irrelevant without context, which is base damage + AP ratios of certain champion, where you should do math. What if Riot creates champion, who deals 1000 base damage with ability, but has only 10% AP ratio on it? (Yes it's very unlikely that it would ever happen, but I believe, that you got the point) - Magic penetration is the only stat, that influences outcome of the base damage of the champion, which is something, that you always need to consider.

By the way - " Void Staff needs to penetrate about 36 MR to be cost efficient, which translates to roughly 90 MR if you have no other forms of magic pen." - As far as I know, flat penetration items apply after % is being applied, so I am not sure, why did you mention the part "if you have no other forms of magic pen".

TLDR - throwing cost efficiency here is nice, but without context, it still doesn't really bring any real value.

Hey dude, really cool guide! Did just want to point out a few things; first, some of your runes are a bit outdated (none of the ones you actually use in the build, just the alternatives) and it makes me wonder if changes to runes power, cooldowns, etc. would make you change your mind on anything. Second, the item section for has the picture for instead. Would you ever consider spirit visage as a viable item?

(57) |

Thanks! I must have missed a few things when I reworded some of the guide last update, I'll fix them in the very near future.

Visage is not viable, it was originally in the guide to tell people to avoid buying it as it was sometimes viable pre-rework but that time is long passed and isn't even a thought in most players minds. I personally would never buy it in any situation.

Ludens Echo is also not super viable as you need it first/second for it to be "good" and you simply can't give up RoA and more often than not you can't afford to go more damage with a ludens, but it's not a total write off.

(1) |

I really like what you did with the BBcoding, could you make a guide explaining some of that?

Voted +1

Great guide

Voted +1

Trying this build now.. thanks for this

Hm with Ultimate hat, you only get 18 seconds off of 120 ? or am I doing my math wrong. BASED ON THOSE NUMBERS, seems like to me, ManaFlow is better as it gives you necessary mana during landing phase.