In addition to the project of fully reworking one champion each year, Riot also conducts mini-reworks for some unpopular or ineffective champions. Notable successes include adjustments to Tahm Kench, Janna, and most recently, Ahri.
After receiving substantial changes to her abilities, the nine-tailed fox immediately made a strong comeback in the Mid Lane, from solo queue matches to professional tournaments. The next target Riot is aiming for is also a Mage champion, none other than Swain.
The Noxian Grand General has begun to see some changes on the PBE test server. Recently, Riot Truexy, a member of the League of Legends design team, shared detailed changes regarding Swain and mentioned the direction to help this champion return to being a true Mid Lane Mage rather than a Support champion as he currently is.
Details of Swain’s changes on the PBE server:
Passive: Ravenous Flock
– Removed the ability to deal magic damage when harvesting soul fragments from enemy champions
Q: Death’s Hand
– Cooldown: 9-3 seconds reduced to 7-3 seconds
– Mana cost: 65-85 reduced to 50-70
R: Demonic Transformation
– Cooldown: 120 reduced to 120/100/80
It can be seen that Riot is willing to sacrifice Swain’s passive damage for the ability to deal damage through continuous Q spamming in the early game. This change will allow Swain to reach his power threshold without having to wait too long. It also helps this champion compete with popular Mages like Ryze, Viktor, and Ahri…
Additionally, Swain’s ultimate cooldown has been significantly reduced by up to 40 seconds when fully upgraded. If combined with the right runes and masteries, players can use this champion’s ultimate continuously in team fights, dealing tons of damage to the enemy team.
However, there are also many dissenting opinions regarding this change. The gaming community believes that completely removing Swain’s passive damage is unreasonable. In continuous skirmishes, dealing damage by leveraging crowd control from allies is a key aspect of Swain’s identity, especially when this champion is in a Support role or when combined with other champions with strong crowd control.
Swain is also considered to have limited mana in the early game and struggles to build items like Tear of the Goddess. Therefore, the cooldown reduction on his Q does not truly compensate for the damage lost from his passive. As Swain is not a champion with long-range attacks, combined with the lack of mobility abilities, what players need from this champion is movement speed rather than damage, mana, or any other factors.
In response to the myriad of differing opinions from the community, Riot Truexy stated that he and the team will listen and strive to make reasonable adjustments for Swain. The design team at Riot indicated that they will deliver an upgraded and significantly strengthened version of Swain in the near future. The ultimate goal is to make this champion more popular in matches and easier to approach for the majority of players. Swain is expected to continue receiving significant adjustments on the PBE server and will be officially completed in version 12.6.