Swain top gives you much higher kill pressure than mid as nearly every matchup you can play as a lane bully and the matchups where they stay back and you can't kill them, you can get a massive CS lead and force the enemy team into losing a top laner.

Once you're more into your build swain also becomes very tanky, and with proper itemisation you can both be a signifcant damage dealer and give effective peel to your team unlike in mid where damage items are more needed.
This can make you truly a raid boss where ahead, in some situations being able to fully 1v5 teams, making him incredibily fun to play.

You want to start leveling Q first, walking up to first bush to prevent cheeses and immediately trying to gain wave advantage. Aim to be 2 autos ahead of your enemy on the wave and you want to be absolutely spamming your Q whenever they are in range at all, never let them get minions for free. Once you get level two lead, aim to deny them as much cs as possible, slow push and punish them if they walk up.
Generally players will not respect you as a lane bully, especially in lower elos, so you'll find you can easily force people to back, or even pick up an early kill.
The key to this stage is never getting too close to the enemy, staying a max Q distance and aiming to save your E W combo for if they misplay or try to chase you, 90 percent of your damage should come from your Q.

As you're playing to deny CS it's crucial you get as much CS as possible, last hitting minions is easy enough but I'd recommend using Q on cannons, if you do need Q on your wave try to only hit one minion, or aim to hit the enemy at the same time.

You will ocassionally have players just walk up to you level 1 to try and cheese kill you, if they do this, use ghost to get back to kite distance and kite them back into wave with Qs and autos.


Once you get 6 you can start harassing more under tower with your big slow pushed waves, you should if denying cs correctly also have a large cs lead. If you have ghost up you can usually 2v1 any ganks at this point by keeping them in the corner of your ult and attacking them max distance, aim to double hit your E and Ws as it will heal your significantly.

Mid game usually starts after you've taken the first tower, at this point you want to sidelane whatever lane has the objective, if you have your quest TP you can sidelane in the oppossite lane. If you're ahead and know you can 2v1, put as much pressure on these lanes and possible and try and get as many of their team as you can on you, you'll want to constantly track who is where on their team to judge how far to push, if you know you can fight them stay, otherwise pull back to your tower when they come, wasting their time and giving your team a lead.
You never want to let waves crash against your tower as it loses gold and XP for you and your team so always pick up crashing waves and push them back in.

If an objective fight is bound to happen, shove the sidelane past midpoint and roam up quickly (or TP), you never want to engage these fights head on, just stay to sides and max range hit as many as possible. Proritise high damage dealers in fights such as assassins or ADCs.

Late game is usually the period of the game post 30 minutes, idealy you want to of ended game before this point but sometimes, especially if your team is behind, it's not possible.
You play like mid game except you don't fight the enemies during your split pushes, as picks at this point will generally mean a free baron. You'll want to push past the midpoint of the map (or whatever point is safe with vision.) and them roam to your team to try and get a pick. When your team does get a pick, you'll want to get baron and try to end.