Phreak (Design Lead of LoL) just made a video talking about different upcoming changes to the game, and one of the main points was the Swain upcoming rework. He said the rework could have been done for the next patch if there weren’t other projects, but he’s still a few patches away.
Swain’s Current State
Swain is a pretty high win-rate champion in every role and every ELO, so a straight buff wouldn’t make sense. But he also doesn’t feel good enough to play, so they’re trying to make him more fun. First, he feels bad to play in farming roles, and his most popular role is support, even if currently that’s his weakest role in terms of win rate. But they want to make him work better as a mid laner and an AP carry too, not just a support. So they will make him better to fight against melee and ranged champions as well as make his farming more consistent.
Changes to Swain’s Abilities
There won’t be any massive changes like completely new spells or new animations and visual effects, but every single spell is going to be touched, so there will be changes to every ability. They will make his Q better to be used against ranged champions since right now it only works well against melee champions, and they will also reduce its mana cost a bit.
So they want to make it more reliable in more situations, especially in high division Elo, which is interesting. I wonder how they will make it work better against ranged champions—maybe increase its range or make it not spread out so much if you use it on further targets. We’ll see.
Improvements to E and W
They also want to improve the consistency of his E. They are changing how his missile works, making it less clunky and laggy, and fixing how it accelerates. It will also be faster since right now it is pretty easy to dodge it, so it should feel better to be used. And it also goes back faster to Swain and is not getting blocked by minions, so it will also be better against melee champions if you hit them with it coming back. So it will be more consistent in hitting ranged targets and also better and faster in hitting melee champions too.
They’re also doing changes to W’s power, changing things like their AP ratios. Phreak agrees that the W doesn’t really fit the rest of his kit very well, and it feels like a random ability on the side that doesn’t really fit the battle mage playstyle, and it would only fit a poke mage instead and made him a very long-range champion with a lot of utility. But right now, W feels a bit out of place, so the Q and R are the primary abilities, and W is more of a flavor ability like Ashe’s E.
Ultimate Adjustments
And finally, they are also doing big adjustments to the ultimate. They’re not 100% sure what they will do yet, but there are two possibilities. One possible change that felt great was giving him more Demonflare explosions so you would explode when you use the ultimate instantly, and then you get it back every couple of seconds from draining to do it again multiple times, so you have multiple explosions. And the other version would be to Demonflare instantly when you transform, and then you just have the dot for the rest of the ultimate.
But he wants to have the Demonflare explosion instantly when using the ultimate for sure. They’re just not sure yet if they want to give him multiple explosions or not, if that will be too OP. So this could make a really cool new combo if you instantly cast The Demonflare when you transform. It will also slow down enemies hit, so it’s going to be easier to hit them with your E too and pull them towards you, and then you Q into them too, so that’s going to be a really strong combo.
Conclusion
It will still take a couple of patches, but they’re really close to shipping the rework, and that’s what we know for now. It sounds pretty damn good to me, especially the ultimate and E changes. We’ll see how they plan on making the Q easier to land on ranged targets, but let me know what you think about the changes so far, especially if you’re a Swain main.