League Of Legends' Swain Could Go One Of Several Directions With His Update

Swain is in a unique spot within League of Legends that champions occasionally find themselves in where their theme and character identity doesn't exactly line up with their actual gameplay. While his champion title of Master Tactician highlights his dictator position over the fierce realm of Noxus, his actual gameplay resembles much more of a front-line, DPS drain tank who prefers to face the enemy head-on instead of directing others to do so. As it turns out, those are two possible directions that his update might take the Noxian leader in, according to more comments about his upcoming rework.

Just yesterday, Swain was announced as the next champion that would be receiving a Visual and Gameplay Update after Evelynn, and while many players were excited that the AP tank would be looked at for changes, others were hesitant to see what path he'd be taken down. According to the lead champion designer Reav3, Master Tactician vs. powerful Warlock are two routes being considered. He said that while drain tanks can be problems at times, he currently considers Swain much more of a Warlock than a drain tank or a master tactician as far as gameplay is concerned.

"There is a difference between a Master Tactician that sits in a tent commanding troops from a distance and a ruthless, intelligent warlock with the power to rule a nation," said Reav3 when a user asked about how Swain's identities would be preserved after his rework. "I personally feel like the latter will resonate with Swain players more then the former."

Reav3 also clarified that these weren't necessarily the exact direction choices that they're 100 percent considering for Swain as they're still quite early in his rework, but more should be detailed in the designer's next blog update. He also compared the rework of Swain to Urgot's VGU in the sense that his kit will be overhauled to work more cohesively while they also try to preserve as much of Swain's current identity as they could.

"There is no world in which we will make 100% of Swain players happy as different players attach to different parts of his confused identity and that is something we accepted going into this (as with all VGUs)," Reav3 added.

Speaking of Urgot, it was also confirmed that the same design team that worked on Taric, the most recent version of Ryze, Galio, Warwick, and Urgot will also be taking on Swain's rework. Different people join teams at different times, so while it won't be the exact same group working on the now-called Master Tactician, it gives some idea of what to look forward to.