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 and warding the mid bush to prevent cheeses, if they try to walk up to the mid push q them and back off. Aim to be 2 autos ahead of your enemy on the wave and Q the enemy whenever they go to CS/ use an ability, once your q is on cooldown back off till it returns.
Max sure you stay at max Q range from the enemy at all time to prevent them jumping on you, into champions with engage you will want to hold your E as a defence and if they engage on you pop ghost and exhaust and run them down.

In terms of the wave in most matchups you should be able to force prio and slow push into a 3 wave crash where you will want to back to prevent a gank and then aim to keep the wave frozen. Repeat this while always poking and you should have lots of kills potential.
Once you have a level lead and ult you can start using your Es aggressively and use your E, W, Q combo to deal significant damage, once you have ult, if youve established a lead, it is usually safe to push them under tower more as you can safely 2v1 a lot of matchups with ult and ghost by kiting them and healing from them with your E, W combo.




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'll want to push your wave up past mid point and roam for plays, swain is not a split pusher, so to win games you'll need to play with the team and help with every objective, Swains teamfighting at this stage is incredibily strong so it is important to spread your lead.

An example of this would be pushing wave out, roaming mid for kill, helping aquire tower and then returning to catch your wave. You want to save you quest TP for when you need to go botlane for dragons so you can prevent enemies taking your top towers.

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.
During this point it is crucial to stick with the team and never venture past mid point alone. Wait for a good engage and peel your carrys. After getting a pick always rush baron and try to end.

You are a fairly bad duelist especially later on so you generally only want to fight with your team after laning phase.

Your general strategy is to stick with who ever is your highest dmg dealer and protect them in the fight, try to hit your E W, combo on as many people as possible to high up and use your ghost to dodge and kite abilities.