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Runes: Standard Runes
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health
Spells:
Flash
Teleport
Items
Ability Order
Ravenous Flock (PASSIVE)
Swain Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Renekton
My go-to ban. Renekton has so much mobility, healing, and burst that you will have trouble dealing with this nasty crocodile.
Leona
As with all other Synergies, CC is your friend and Leona is jam packed with CC
Leona
As with all other Synergies, CC is your friend and Leona is jam packed with CC
Champion Build Guide
1. Why Play Swain? Noxus needs you |
2. Pros and Cons Champion strengths & weaknesses |
3. Gameplay Gameplay and Ability Combos |
In the current meta, it is a running joke that top lane does not impact the game very much. Oftentimes that can be true, unless your top laner is snowballing and taking over the game, many top laners do not bring a lot to teamfights. Many top laners spend much of the mid game split pushing, which don't get me wrong is a viable strategy, but that hinders your ability to impact team fights.
Swain on the other hand will bring an immense amount of utility to team fights. Consider several areas that he excels in.
Area of Effect damage
When Swain gets into the middle of a teamfight and uses his Demonic Ascension he will begin to pump out consistent magic damage to anyone in a wide radius around him. Dropping his Vision of Empire onto a cluster of enemies can add a large amount of burst damage and slow onto the group, in addition to healing himself and restoring mana. Using Nevermove will also do group damage on it's initial pass-through. Though his Death's Hand bolts will stop at an enemy champion hit, any bolts that do not hit a champion at point blank range will continue a short distance and possibly hit another champion. Overall, if you are involved in the majority of teamfights, do not be surprised when you did the most damage over the course of the match.
Peel
Swain's ability to root and yank an enemy is fantastic when you need to pull an enemy assassin off of your Carry. A well executed Nevermove will allow your Carry to reposition and possibly even eliminate the threat.
Sustain
Swain's passive Ravenous Flock allows him to recover immense amounts of health and mana whenever he is able to pull a hard CC'd enemy, or when he hits an enemy champion with his Vision of Empire. There is nothing better than being in the middle of a teamfight, dealing a ton of damage, and then walking away with full Health and full Mana like nothing ever happened. Not to mention the constant healing he receives from Demonic Ascension and the bonus health that he gets as well. To summarize how this bonus health works, suppose you have 50 stacks from his passive, either from landing his W or pulling CC'd enemies. This equates to a total of 250 permanent bonus health. When he activates his Ultimate Ability, he gains a bonus of double that health, therefore suddenly you have 500 extra health for that teamfight! Just imagine lategame when you have nearly 100 stacks!
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+ High AP (Magic) Damage + Amazing in teamfights + Built in sustain + Synergies with many Meta champions + Rarely banned + Safe First Pick Having an AP top laner who also can serve as an unkillable raid boss brings many benefits to a team comp. With many midlaners picking AD champions, such as Zed and Talon, there will be times where you are the only AP threat on the team. Because of this, your enemies may build armor but disregard building any Magic Resistance, allowing you to carry in teamfights. On the other hand, if they do invest in Magic Resist, it may free up your ADC or AD Jungler to do hefty damage. Overall, Swain just brings so much to a team. |
- Immobile - Weak against all-in champs early - Can pull an enemy into your team on accident - Cannot split push well - Countered by Grievous Wounds - Few Skins T-T While he excels in team fights, he suffers when it comes to duels with high mobility champions. If you aren't hitting your abilities, you simply aren't going to be doing much damage. This can be countered by building Rylai's Crystal Scepter and slowing the enemy, or going Glacial Augment as your keystone rune, but these are not always the best options. If you are struggling in the early game and cannot get your Rod of Ages early, you will also be somewhat squishy until you gain a few stacks on the item. |
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Thank you for taking the time to read my guide, this is my second ever guide written for any video game! I have been a gamer all my life, and have recently started streaming full time. One of the BEST ways anyone could support me is simply stopping by my stream leaving a follow and saying hello!
I hope that even Swain Veterans can appreciate this guide and hopefully there were little gems of information that everyone came away with from it. Please check out the notes for the item builds and runes as there is more information tucked away in there. I hope that if there are corrections that I need to make, that people kindly let me know in the comments, and I would be happy to make adjustments!
Over time I hope to add more to the guide to keep it relevant. Eventually I would like to add more matchup specific information, as well as a full breakdown of different runes. I know personally I shift between running Grasp of the Undying, Electrocute, and Phase Rush as my keystones, depending on the matchup. And if I feel especially trolly, I will run Glacial Augment and pick up a Everfrost and really add some more utility to teamfights!
Also, I am not the most artistic person in the world, so if there is anything I can change with the formatting of the guide, please let me know! I would love to make adjustments to make the guide easier to ready. And lemme beat you trolls to the punch, "It would make it easier to read if you just deleted the guide, har har, Kappa", well too bad for you, I don't care about deleting it, just care about improving it!
So once again, thank you so much, if you gleaned anything from the guide, please like the guide and if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to drop a comment!
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