Swains mini rework transforms him from a pseudo ap support and returns him to the solo lanes as a true AP bruiser. Riot nerfed his damage a bit but added a substantial amount of sustain to his kit to compensate, meaning we can go full Swain and become the biggest drain tank in the entire game. I'm excited for what's to come and I'm excited to show you the power of the bird whisperer. As such, we will begin with the pros and cons before continuing to the rest of the build

Exceptional Healing- With swain's passive getting a 7 hp buff per stack and his R becoming infinite as long as someone is within the circle, swain has the most healing and sustain in his kit since the days of the old bird ***********. Shows a lot of promise for swains role in the meta.

Consistent damage- Even though they nerfed his damage a bit to compensate for the healing buffs, he still has consistent damage and will be just as effective. It's just now he went from one shotting your carry to draining the life out of your entire team.

No Mobility- Swain's biggest downfall is his lack of mobility. He just has none. In a game dominated by highly mobile assassins and speed demon bruisers hungry to shred you to pieces, not having any mobility is a real kick in the nuts.

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  Conqueror is a good keystone on Swain because you gain a lot of adaptive power in trades and considering that you want to be in drawn out, long fights, you have a better chance at getting max stacks to further increase your healing.
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  Presence Of Mind will help us retain mana for most of early game until we get tear stacked up and can be less reliant on Presence Of Mind.
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  Scaling Tenacity is a welcome addition to our stats as heavy CC is another detriment for Swain as he again, has no mobility and we need all the help we can get.
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  Coup De Grace is good for bursting down enemies after the initial fight starts, and finishing off opponents early on when we lack damage.
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  Second Wind will help us sustain in lane so we don't have to entirely rely on consistantly landing Es and Ws, espeically when trying to spam early can lead to us running out of mana.
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  Revitalize is going to be our main healing rune and will pair with conqueror and Riftmaker to form a trifecta of sustain that will allow us to survive entire teamfights in the frontlines and lead us to glory. It's also a good rune to run if you have an enchanter on your team as it also increases the amount of healing and shielding you receive from other teamates.

Innate: Enemy champions drop a Soul Fragment upon death, which is then able to be collected by Swain.

Every time Swain hits an enemy champion with Vision of Empire or Nevermove, Swain gains a Soul Fragment which heals him for a percent amount of health based on level, and permanently receives 12 bonus health.

Active: Swain fires five bolts in a cone, dealing magic damage. Enemies can be hit by multiple bolts and each bolt after the first deals bonus magic damage.

Active: Swain summons a demonic eye at the target location, granting sight of the target location for 2 seconds, and exploding after 1.5 seconds. The explosion deals magic damage and slows enemies for 2.5 seconds. Enemies hit by this ability are also revealed for 4-8 seconds based on level. Every time an enemy champion is hit with this ability, swain gains a Soul Fragment.

Active: Swain launches a demonic hand, dealing magic damage to enemies hit. Once the hand reaches its maximum distance, it returns to Swain. Enemies hit on the way back are rooted for 1.5 seconds and are revealed.
Recast: Swain pulls champions rooted by Nevermove, granting him a Soul Fragment. This ability can hit multiple champions, with each seperate enemy hit granting a Soul Fragment. If Swain attempts to pull the enemy past him, The enemy is instead knocked back. During Demonic Ascension Nevermove's cooldown is reduced by 20%.

Active: Swain frees his inner demons, creating a zone around himself. This zone is fueled by Demon Power and will remain active as long as Swain has Demon Power. On first active Swain gains 50 demon power, and receives 10 demon power every 0.5 seconds as long as a champion is in the zone. If Swain has no champions to drain, he loses demon power every 0.5 seconds.

While Demonic Ascension is active , Swain is ghosted and drains all enemies within his zone, dealing magic damage every second and healing each second per target affected. The heal is reduced by 90% against minions and monsters. After a 2 second delay swain can cast Demonflare.


Active: Swain releases all of his energy, dealing magic damage to all enemies within his zone, and slowing them by 60% which then decays over 1.5 seconds.

Riftmaker
Riftmaker is going to be our mythic of choice as swain's rework makes him more fitting as a drain tank instead of a burst mage. Riftmaker fits that form and adds omnivamp to make Swains healing more potent. The build path for Riftmaker isn't all that great but since we're getting Tear first item it shouldn't derail things early.

Sorcerer's Shoes
Sorc Shoes will be our boot of choice because magic penetration will be valuable throughout the entire game, but Steelcaps fall off later in the match and the magic resist from Merc Treads is negligable past mid game. The only reason to get Merc Treads is if the enemy team has overwhelming CC.

Winter's Approach Fimbulwinter
Winter's Approach a.k.a Fimbulwinter will be our main source of mana because it's a Tear item and we gain health based on Swains maximum mana. Meaning we get around 500 health from this item while still getting enough mana to not run out every teamfight. This item also fits in with Demonic Embrace which we will also be buying and with new Swain passive makes stacking health extremely easy. It's also very cheap and helps transition our build into the mid game.

Demonic Embrace
Demonic Embrace will be our second AP item and add a burn effect to our abilities. It's a good AP bruiser item and the absurd amount of health we're getting will fit this item perfectly as we gain AP equal to 2% of our bonus health. With just Demonic and 50 passive stacks you get 24 bonus AP. With Riftmaker, Fimbulwinter, Spirit Visage, and Rylais you get a total of 58 bonus AP. Add that to the 60 base AP from demonic and the item gives us a total of 118 AP, and that's with only 50 passive stacks. On a good game with say 70 or 80 stacks, that total becomes 122 AP. Not to mention with full build and 70 stacks we get 5040 total HP with 840 of that coming from Passive. This item is essentially everything swain wants in an item.

Spirit Visage
Spirit Visage adds health to Demonic Embrace and adds more potency to our healing to pair with Riftmaker's base Omnivamp and omnivamp per legendary item. It also adds some magic resist, gives us more health regeneration inbetween fights, and makes enchanter supports healing more potent on you. It's a great item on Swain and helps establish his Drain Tank build pathing. It's also another item for under three thousand gold which will pair nicely with Fimbulwinter.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter
Rylai's Crystal Scepter is our final item and another solid health item that feeds into Demonic Embrace. The base AP is decent, the price is cheap alongside Fimbulwinter and Spirit Visage, and the slow on its passive is really good for Swain as it can activate off the Damage Over Time effect from his Ultimate. This makes teamfights easier to track as it's harder for the enemy team to move around and reposition.

This is going to be the early, mid, and late game for Swain MID. You want to buy a tear and start E(or W if you chose the other ability page), and either chill at tower until minions arrive or invade with your team to get a kill and an early Soul Fragment. The most important part of early game is split into two main points. Keeping up with farm, and poking the enemy laner. You will always want to keep up on farm because that's where a majority of your gold and exp come from. Falling behind in either means falling behind in general. So make sure you keep up on farm. Secondly, poking the enemy laner is important because you need to stack tear for Fimbulwinter, and the more you land skillshots, the more stacks you'll have by the end of laning phase. during the mid game having an extra 300 hp can make a lot of difference in teamfights.

Mid game is going to be spent farming inbetween objective contension and teamfights in the middle of nowhere. Again, keep up on farm as much as you can to keep up on levels. Make sure you're not giving up dragons towers for free unless absolutely necessary.(example: if there's more pressing matters elsewhere or if defending said objective would be essentially suicide.) For dragons you always have the option to make a steal attempt with W as you can hit dragon from deep in your own jungle with no repercussions.

Late Game you should still keep up with farm until you get full build. Once you're full build it's not important anymore and you can focus on objectives and teamfights a lot more. At this point you'll have around 4000-4500 health based on your stack amount, and have enough healing power to sustain through a teamfight, just make sure you don't let them focus you down because we don't have a ton of resistences with this build. While at objectives you can root enemies with E and then not pull them to delay them a whole 1.5 seconds. This gives your jungler time to smite the objective with as little resistence as possible. Just try to root the jungler as they'll obviously have the best chance of stealing.

This is the conclusion to Menace To LoL Swain. With Swain's new rework he has transformed from a psuedo support to a full on Drainer. He lost out on a little damage but the amount of survivability makes up for it tenfold. With this build you get 2 seperate sustain items, 2 sustain runes, tons of mana, a good amount of AP, and an INCREDIBLE amount of health. It's very much a go in, mitigate everything they throw at you, and then get out or hunt them down with W and E as they run. It's still pretty early into his rework so numbers can be changed very quickly, but for now it's best to just enjoy what you have. Thank you for checking my guide out, now go out there and kick some ***! GLHF!