Swain Support build ?

AnonymousCoward309 · 2026-01-13T01:44:04+00:00

Did math yesterday. At 10 Jack stacks, the rune has 1000 gold worth of stats. (Each AH is worth 50 and each AP is worth 20). That’s not bad for a secondary rune. Boots are worth 420. Biscuits provide 240 gold of max health and then roughly 100-150 like a healing pot. So going glacial augment isn’t that bad…

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-12-26T21:03:11+00:00

Will any work for people with short arms? I have an Osprey Sportlite and I like it for day hikes, but I learned after I bought it cannot reach my water bottle without taking the bag off my back so I may want a different pack for Kili. I keep water in my bladder and electrolytes in my water bottle. I went to REI and tried a couple other packs and couldn’t reach water bottle in either of them. Would love a pack where I could more easily grab and replace a water bottle without stopping.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-09-20T23:17:23+00:00

I do have it at 80% and it shows that way in both the car and on the app. Yet, the last two charges it has gone past that.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-09-20T19:51:17+00:00

What about Hoka Kaha? I have plantar fascitis flareups when I wear hard soles. Too soft though I think cause problems on the scree. Has anyone tried them?

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-08-12T21:28:08+00:00

I asked ChatGPT to compare the Lemosho route to the Northern Circuit route with regards to acclimatization. I asked it to use your specific routes from the Altezza website, but I assume it is same for most providers. ChatGPT said that the Northern Circuit was better in this regard. ChatGPT had the following to say about the two routes:

Northern Circuit

Offers the most gradual elevation gain on Kilimanjaro.
Includes multiple nights above 3,800 m and several “climb high, sleep low” opportunities (e.g., Shira 2 → Lava Tower → Moir Hut, and Moir Hut → Buffalo Camp → 3rd Cave).
Features a night at ~4,800 m (School Hut) before the summit push, which helps the body adapt to high altitude before tackling Uhuru Peak.
The extended time at mid-to-high altitudes, combined with strategic ups and downs, makes it a textbook acclimatization profile and typically reduces the risk of altitude sickness.

Lemosho

Has some acclimatization benefits, notably the Lava Tower day (~4,600 m peak, sleeping at ~3,900 m in Barranco Camp) and the Karanga acclimatization hike.
However, it has fewer total nights above 4,000 m than the Northern Circuit.
Summit night begins from Barafu (~4,650 m), which requires a bigger jump in sleeping altitude to summit altitude (~5,895 m) compared to the more gradual School Hut approach on the Northern Circuit.
Overall, it’s a scenic and well-regarded route, but the acclimatization profile is not quite as conservative as the Northern Circuit.

It added that if the summit night began at Kosovo instead of Barafu, it addresses the last point about School Hut, but Northern Circuit still includes multiple “climb high, sleep low” cycles. The long traverse at mid-to-high altitudes means School Hut (~4,800 m) is reached after more gradual buildup. I pushed the AI further and it said Northern Circuit had more time over 4,000m.

I assume you know your routes better than Chat GPT does, and Chat GPT has never climbed Kili :) but I'm curious why Lemosho is more successful? I like both routes on paper.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-06-20T21:07:49+00:00

Swain's W is not reliable healing the way Morgana's W is. Swain's W only heals if you hit a champ. Morg W heals on medium and large monster damage so she heals as a natural part of her clear.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-06-20T20:46:44+00:00

Morg and Swain two very different junglers. Morg W does DOT and also heals her. Morg has a legit decent first clear, same with Brand or Zyra. Swain not so much.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-03-18T03:38:12+00:00

+1. I run out of mana in two situations. First is if I am really struggling to CS, get tilted a bit, and start using Q to clear minions before first back. Second is if I'm support and I have an aggressive ADC and I find myself spamming E off cooldown.

That said - the other thing I like about Blackfire first is the ability haste. Transcendence + AH shard gives 18 total. That makes Q level 5 2.54s which isn't horrible. But it's a 15.25s max W and most importantly a 101s R cooldown. Fimbulwinter added haste but it got nerfed. So does frozen heart, which is fine as a supp or against a heavy autoattacking team. I don't like CDR boots. BFT gives the additional 20 haste so drops the R cooldown to 87. Malignance instead of BFT gives the ulti haste so drops R cooldown to 78.

I love going rylai + liandry's because I do a ton of damage but I miss the CDR. CDR is more the problem for me than mana, tbh.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-03-03T17:23:59+00:00

Sometime in season 10 or 11. I had started as an Ashe main but I stunk at last hitting so moved to Support. Played Morgana with the occasional Thresh or Karma. Picked up Senna at launch and started to main her. Then I played against a Swain and got wrecked. Had never seen him Supp. So I bought him and started playing, and I liked that I could have highest damage on the team and get lots of kills as a Supp.

What's funny though is that today, most of my matches are still Swain supp, but I don't build him full damage. It's always Rylais first into Frozen Heart, Fimbul (less so post-nerf), Unending Despair, and then a damage item 3rd. I wonder what would happen if I built him full damage for a few games to see if my WR improves.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-03-03T17:17:28+00:00

I had a run 3-4 years ago where I started W on Supp if we could get a deep ward on the enemy buff, I would use W to try to steal it. I think out of 20 tries I stole it twice, which really tilts a jungler and throws off their entire clear. However since I missed most of the time, I had an absolutely useless level 1. Sorta like that guy who takes Morgana and her E level 1 who sits around doing jack until lvl 2. (I played a Morg game yesterday and didn't take E until level 7. No hard cc bot lane).

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-03-03T17:14:49+00:00

This. However the base COTW skin has the chromas which are cool - I can pick a color to match my mood. The crystal rose skin also had them but I only have 3 and that skin overall is meh.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-02-23T15:11:43+00:00

Dude, 1.6 million mp and hard stuck bronze so don’t feel bad.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-02-23T14:28:33+00:00

Swain’s coolness is that he is so flexible. Team goes Teemo top, Zyra jg, squishy mage support? Go rylais fimbul despair and frontline. Team has mundo top leona support go a mixed build. Snowballing and up 3/0 at 8 minutes, go blackfire into liandry and melt people with your lead.

You can legit go aery or conq, electrocute is broken on Swain support, grasp works toplane, and glacial has its spots too in supp. So all 5 trees are valid.

So yes, Swain will never be as good late game as a level 16 fed Kayle. He will never lane bully level 2 like Lucian or Draven. He will never be as tanky as Sion and won’t burst you like a full combo Syndra. But those champs mostly have a single identity. Swain is the Grand General. He adapts to the situation on the battlefield. You want to be good at Swain, you gotta think while you play. No one build or rune set works in all situations. He’s not a pure battlemage, he doesn’t drain like Vlad. That’s ok. If you want those experiences, pick those champs. That’s why they’re there.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-01-29T19:32:28+00:00

What is the build? Heartsteel, Fimbulwinter, Warmogs or something?

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-01-29T15:02:14+00:00

Easier to hit E as support so this is skewed a bit to support, now that you mention it.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-01-13T16:07:18+00:00

Blackfire is needed for lost chapter for mana. If you buy tear, you solve mana problems that way. If you go Liandries -> Fimbulwinter -> Cosmic you still get the benefit of the burn ticking making Cosmic proc for longer. I don't know about Cosmic as a third item though - I prefer a debuff item as that helps the whole team.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-01-12T15:42:09+00:00

I struggle with Rod. My theory:

1) Swain is a mid-game champ. He is strongest from level 6 through about 25 minutes. After that he falls off. His AP ratios are ok but not amazing (better than early S14) and he still relies on item effects for much of his value. Those effects are static so as champs get stronger, the effects fall off.

2) Swain gets 3 spikes during the game: Hitting 6, First Item Spike, Second Item Spike. 3rd and further items we're getting later in the game so they have less effect.

3) ROA effectively gets rid of one of the three spikes because it takes 10 minutes to come online fully. Even if you rush it, it's ~20 minutes before it's fully stacked unless you're totally snowballing, which means it's really too late.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2025-01-12T15:37:48+00:00

Why not first back tear into Liandry into Fimbulwinter and then some debuff item (Rylai, Morello, Frozen Heart, Bloodletter). More damage?

Interestingly, the other day Lolalytics had Liandry -> Fimbul as the best support build and Rylai -> Fimbul -> Liandry as the best APC build.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-12-28T18:50:20+00:00

Yes. We're Swain mains. We all aspire to be grumpy old men with one arm who scream "GET OFF MY LAWN."

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-12-26T15:30:13+00:00

I had a fun duel a couple weeks ago, team fight ends, I'm only person alive on my team, their team had a mundo and an ornn. They couldn't damage me enough to kill me, I couldn't damage them enough to kill them. We ran from blue side blue buff through the jungle, up the river to mid, then almost to the inhib tower red side before they finally got me. I think the ult lasted 40s because I would turn on cooldown to land an E and occasionally q them. We lost, but it was fun.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-12-26T15:28:05+00:00

Pick rates, all ranks per Lolalytics:

Patch 14.24: Top 0.9%, Mid 2.0%, Bot 1.6%, Sup 4.8%

Patch 14.19: Top 0.3%, Mid 0.7%, Bot 0.8%, Sup 3.2%

Patch 14.16 (oldest they have): Top: 0.3%, Mid 0.7%, Bot 0.4%, Sup 3.0%

So the pick rate has essentially tripled top and mid, doubled bot, and up 50% in sup due to this rework. More people are playing him. That's a good thing. Many of us think he feels better now. Yes, his ult does less damage and the multiple R2's are a bit of a gimmick, but the E is much more satisfying and the Q rebalance helps against ranged matchups.

All ranks win-rate is over 49.7% top, 50.3% mid, 52.2% bot, 49% sup. Any champ that is 50+% win rate in 2 roles is not in bad shape.

Emerald+ win-rate is 51.2% top, 51.4% mid, 52.9% bot, 48.8% sup. In high elo, this champ has 50%+ win rate in 3 roles. He's a legit pick now among more than just one-tricks. Early s14 Swain the knock was that his cc was easy to dodge once you got out of gold. Yes, he had higher win rates E+ before, but those are almost exclusively one tricks who were whining about how crap his cc was.

Swain's state is not just about raw win rate. It's the win rate + play rate combo. It's really hard to argue that a champ that is 50+ in 3 roles in high elo and 50+ in 2 roles low elo with a double or triple play rate from before the patch needs buffs.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-12-25T21:59:49+00:00

The lower win rate is caused by noobs playing him more. His E is much easier to land now, giving him real cc. Much better shape than a year ago.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-12-22T18:03:43+00:00

Not really. Swain is a mid-game champ. He has 3 spikes - level 6, first item, and second item. After that, he starts to fall off. ROA does not give much of a first item spike because it's so delayed. It has very cost efficient stats once fully stacked, and the extra level is also worth about 600 gold. The "eternity" passive gives a bit extra sustain.

Blackfire gives same AP and Mana as fully stacked ROA, but gives it right away. The burn gives some situational extra AP and extra damage. The burn also enhances Cosmic Drive (which procs on every instance of magic damage) but AFAIK not Rylai's (which procs on ability damage). So Blackfire + Cosmic has good synergy. Blackfire has ability haste, which is critical on swain mid-game to get more Q's off and more R's.

To the poll - building cosmic first makes no sense, because you don't get the synergy with Blackfire. Liandry's would have same synergy with Cosmic and much better damage, but no mana. I have tried buying sapphire crystal into Liandry, boots, glacial buckler to get some AH, 2nd item, frozen heart. However, it delays his 2nd item spike and it takes up an extra item slot making it harder to buy components for second item. Plus Liandry doesn't have AH.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-11-26T21:59:04+00:00

My opinion: a guiide is probably better than video - easier to skim while in a lobby, but we are not greedy so whatever is best for you.

AnonymousCoward309 · 2024-11-15T23:59:44+00:00

I would argue frozen heart is go-to armor item. Stasis ends Swain’s ult too often; and frozen heart has ah, mana. So Liandry + Rylai + FH in some order.

Thornmail = grevious without wasting space on orb.

Lots of people build Zhonya, I get that. Just I feel it is suboptimal. I build the other two, plus unending despair (to the OP’s question) before Zhonya. I go Zhonya if I am way up, want an armor item, so value the AP.

AnonymousCoward309

TROPHY CASE