Swain and Bounties on the 14.21 PBE | League of Legends

[@Thebausffs]

it's been a good run o7

[@smalldragon8267]

RIP king

[@victorthiago5115]

at least you will give less gold for dying a lot which is good

[@RlVlN]

Variety arc incoming

[@time2playtr601]

o7

[@Tepidtamales]

wpgg

[@SlfgjkAldfjgf]

Baus is living rent free in Phreak's head.

[@mortalace22]

Ganking the same lane over and over is less about gold and more about making that laner useless. It only takes 3 successful ganks in the first 15 mins to do that.

[@orshabaal8990]

Nope the optimal ganking pattern is essentially to analyze wincon before game starts, see how the wincon player plays, then camp the shit out of them and win through their lane. If your vayne is 6/0 in lane, you DONT gank top. You immediatelly go botside and start pressuring their t1 and possibly t2 and then the botlane should swap to mid or top, and you change to topside accordingly and keep pressuring objectives with the vayne. You dont want to ever give the enemies a chance to get her shutdown, and you dont want to force the vayne to play turbo defensively if you can prevent it, and you do that by hovering her all the time, aka play on her half of the map.

[@CyrusL]

Its not about the money its about the message

[@andrealasorte7747]

@@orshabaal8990 that mentality makes you lose games you gank where your camps are,sure you don't specifically camp them but if there is a play you can make top while your vayne is 6/0 you make it you don't just ignore the possibility of getting 2 lanes ahead instead of 1 also sometimes it's just as important to shut down a champ that might completely fuck over your comp or scale too hard if left unchecked,if your bot is 6/0 there is a good chance they keep snowballing without you as long as you keep the enemy jgl away from them

[@vibechecktsundere4912]

I’d argue in particularly volatile top and bot lanes that a single gank can be extremely decisive

[@graves55]

i dont know if i do that it heavily depends on the laner im ganking. If I gank a vayne it does next to nothing. I have enough experience to know it does literally 0. It just gives a bounty and then she has more gold than you afterwards if she gets it...

[@Rivelon]

Mr Bauss I dont feel so good

[@nfzeta128]

can still work by only dying to ganks.

[@eliteobi3608]

nah if he has 10 cs per minute he will still be worth a decent amount of gold ​@nfzeta128

[@nfzeta128]

@@eliteobi3608 yea it will still be nerfed but that's the only way i can see that the strat works. Otherwise Bauss would need to go back to just playing normally.

[@in_vas_por8810]

​@@nfzeta128He can't do that. I've noticed he has rodiculous tunnel vision when it comes to his playstyle. Proxy is so good, but he'll die 5 times in a row trying to get it started before playing safer.

[@nfzeta128]

@@in_vas_por8810 Baus just plays his strat because it's fun for him, not because that's all he can play. The guy's a former pro player.

[@NotQuartz]

Hey phreak, just wanted to quickly ask for you to consider changing swain passive’s display number to be the hp gained and not the stacks similar to Sion. The actual hp it gives feels worthless until you click on it and realize that it’s been giving 800 or so hp. Also falls in line with making him feel better to play, as players early on can see that first or 2nd back they already have the hp equivalent of a health component.

[@kyel_25]

I've played swain recently and I could have sworn it worked like this already. Could be wrong tho

[@ShuckedAeons]

@@kyel_25 I'm almost 100% positive that the status buff displays stacks but gives the actual HP value when hovered.

[@patrickalexander3570]

@@ShuckedAeons It shows on the Passive itself for Swain, but for everyone else you have to check the buff by clicking him and hovering over him

[@mylesluhm4099]

HP gained shows above your ability bar, the number on the passive is the # of stacks you have, you can also take the # of stacks and multiple by 12. But it does show your gained hp above your HUD already.

[@pedroeol]

Man I love League of Legends and it's awesome to see the passion you have from projects/reworks like this with this champ but also from previous ones. I don't play Swain but this actually is making me want to try and put proper time into mastering him xD

[@heziilah]

Love to see Swain getting some attention, its clear that a lot of thought was put into these changes. He's absolutely my favorite champion, so I'm glad that he's not being changed drastically. Super excited to try it out :)

[@leagueaddict8357]

He was ruined with the rework, old swain was better.

[@simpuff9017]

@@leagueaddict8357Yeah no.

[@carnage0685]

@@leagueaddict8357Every rework except Fiddlesticks, Warwick, Volibear, Pantheon, and Nunu were all varying degrees of bad. The worst of them are still Yorick, Galio, and Aatrox. That’s not to say Swain’s rework wasn’t bad but the aforementioned ones were just fucking tragedies, especially Galio and Aatrox who didn’t actually have anything wrong with their kits in the first place.

[@toukasheart6196]

Really like the champion bounty system changes. It encourages the more powerful players to fight each other instead of "abusing" a weaker player the entire time.

[@gunzStatic]

There is an oversight though, it does not seem to consider levels. So you can be equal gold but 2 levels behind and the game thinks that you and your opponent are equally strong. Levels should also be taken into account in the algorithm that calculates the relative power and bounty of the champion.

[@nfzeta128]

Yea because abusing weak players does a lot more mental damage than actually put the team behind. This meant if someone has good mental you can punish the jg for overganking a lane but most people, whether the champ feeding or their teammates mental boom before that happened which means bad game knowledge regularly f'ed the game because they boomed in game states where things weren't actually that bad.

[@unadax221]

Hell yea lets make two most fed members fight each other and the one who takes 1k bounty decides game winning team letsgoooo

[@nfzeta128]

@@unadax221 it just means who fights with their fed player win more.

[@rurulp8465]

But isn't it the other way around when the player already died a lot? Currently if you kill a 0/5/0 player you only get 100 (+50 assist) gold but increase your bounty by 100 gold. So if you die the kill didn't get you ahead on the enemy team (except for the 50 assist gold if it wasn't a solokill). But the new system will realize that the kill only gave you 100/150 gold and only increase your bounty by ~33/50 gold so when you eventually die the kill had more value for your team and was therefore better than in the current system. So the new system makes chain ganking a player worse, because they are worth less gold faster, but focussing someone who is already weak is better than before in the long run.

[@Danger357]

I appreciate you giving many examples to help illustrate how the new system should impact different game states. Very insightful 👍

[@captinlanders]

Man i love swains ult. you feel like a teamfight monster. hopefully the shift in power translates into your ult phases feeling better than worse.

[@f.09h]

Sounds to me like ults are supposed to be less healing so that the hero is less of a pure stat check, and more about the repeated demon flares (so, long lasting ults are MUCH better damage, which should scale with the swain player's skill and also trend winrate higher in low elo). The power of the ult in general is supposed to go down. Going in blindly with the expectation that they should feel better would be silly.

[@Freakattaker]

It looks like they're making him closer to Ryze where u just pump dmg at a close range and aren't a ball of stats that drain tanks stuff

[@noiseisgold3n42]

@@f.09h Ok but swain's ult in the first half of the game is already really bad. It is almost exclusively a utility spell, which he already has two of. So moving power out of his ult will only make him more oppressive pre-6.

[@N.I.C21]

does his ult heal more depending on number of enemies in it still? cuz it dont say that in ability description anymore

[@mofypok421]

@@N.I.C21 yes, it hasn't been changed

[@MaharajaLeagueOfLegends]

Great job Phreak!! I love the update to swain, really looking forward to playing him even more.

[@gahrzerkire1193]

Phreak cooked, sautéed, steamed broiled and the dish is immaculate. Ty. I haven't liked lots of your changes (to say the least). These bounty changes based off what you describe are excellent. Much appreciate the time and thought that went into this. Props.

[@warnocity3633]

Huge fan of the Swain work, I'm really excited to test it out! Thanks for giving such a great overview!

[@ac8598]

Honest question: Why are we talking about Swain supp? yes he is being played there but he shouldn't, and the reason is because he feels awful mid/bot. I would have hoped they ignore the supp part of Swain and just focus on making him feel better

[@desperxte2417]

they didnt sacrafice anything to make him better in supp? hes just going to be better in mid bot and supp and if people still want to play swain supp even tho he might be a worse supp than a midlaner soon they're free to do so no?

[@jmoak14]

They have reworked swain roughly 4 times to make him better solo laner and every single time he stays as support. This will never change. Its like trying to force lux back to midlane

[@Langharig_Tuig]

This. It's one of those mages that is simply forced into support because his other roles are so bad that theyre basicly griefing. The same applies to Velkoz and for the longest of time also Xerath.

[@minutenreis]

@@Langharig_Tuig "his other roles are so bad that they're basicly griefing" excuse me that guy is on live one of the best adc's (1% pr, 54.3% wr) and a really decent midlaner (0.7% pr, 52.9% wr). Thats the whole problem, he is permanently too high in sololane winrate and despite that people prefer to play him as support (similar problem to seraphine)

[@shapirodeluxe]

It’s simply that players want to play him support. If they didn’t he wouldn’t be played at all. Giving concessions to the role people actually want to play the champion is correct. If people want him mid they will rebalance him for mid.

[@derpferp4510]

Thanks again for making these! Hope your day goes well ^^

[@SectorZeroGP]

First of all, and as a 5.5M otp swain (mid) , let me tell you that i think i talk by all swainmains when i say "thank you very much for all that consideration you had with our dear champion" :´3 Now, focusing on the ideas, yes, im agree about what you are pointing in the video, essentially, swain is far way better as midlaner but is really unconfortable to play because of how space to counteprlay he lefts for the enemies (this is specially unfair for us when we face a champion that is based on the opposite principle, like yone or syndra, that basically not give any space to the enemy to counterplay them propperly). Also, the reason why supp has a better playrate but worse performance is because swain isnt a support, he feels more confortable to play there because of how the lane works, and because is an antimeta pick, however, the facts is that players cant reach his full potential in that role because swain needs to scale by items, and ofc, as a support thats hard (specially when your items are far way expensive than the others and you have to take more risks than a xerath). So... if the main goal is "making him feel better in mid and if is possible a bit stronger in supp" i think is a really nice direction. -------------------------------------- Im 120% agree about swain's E needs improvements, as you said many time ago, is just unfair for the player, because even if you use it perfectly you still depend of the enemies mistake to hit it, and if you cant, you dont use your combos, so the change loooks AMAZING :D About multiple demonflares, man i cant wait to use it by myself ;D The thing is R1 is same important because it gives you the healing you need to stay in the fight, so adding an extra hp scaling can compensate it (i mean, if the healing from R1 is the same or even better if we stack propperly, i dont really care about dealing less damage, because the multiple explosions would benefit a good swain over an average one). About Q, i think reducing the cone but amplifiying the range would be a good idea, but the thing you purpose can be really nice (specially because swain needs a lot of mana regen since he is a skill spammer after all). One of the best points of your ideas is that i see you want to give him consistency about some specific points that are what his otps usually wants, the battlemage experience. For isntance, the ah stacking part with the ultimate and the max hp scaling on draining are really nice examples. -------------------------------------- In general terms, my conclusion would be that your main goal is to make him funnier to play, and more satisfactory by taking power from the "passive aspects of his kit" to put it into the "active aspects of his kit". Like "yes, maybe now you cant bully a melee like you did before, but now playing against ranged champions will feel better" or "yes, maybe you dont deal the same dmg just for staying there on the middle of the teamfight without doing anything, but if you are good and you use more spells you will deal the same or even more dmg). If i can add any tip, i would suggest this 5 changes to take it in consider: ---1st: Increase a bit his aa range (this is what would make better some midlane matchups where the enemy has hypermobility like yone or irelia) ---2nd: Increase a bit the hp per soul, or at least give a bit of ah per soul ---3rd: Reduce Q cone, increase the range (basically, concentrate the bolts, sacrificing aoe but increasing efectivness). ---4thd: Add some Hp scaling to Q (maybe a scaling that is applied after the bolts stacking, like "whatever dmg you deal and then it adds +5%max hp), this would be great specially because it would add even more consistency with his new R ---5th: Make his W faster if he uses it on the 1200 units of his passive range Honestly, i can tell you that if you put at least 2 of thoose 5 it wont be necesary to make another change in the future for the champion I must say this minirework looks great, i cant wait to test it :D P.D.: Again, thank you very much for the effort you put in our champion :´3

[@nfzeta128]

Nice potential options, I don't even play swain that much any more but I especially like the 1st and 5th changes.

[@SectorZeroGP]

@@nfzeta128 ty :D

[@Daviddosi]

As a 1 milion swain i agree with the w it needs to be faster

[@SectorZeroGP]

@@Daviddosi a man of culture i see :v

[@carnage0685]

You guys have no idea how lucky you are. Usually Riot shits on everything. Just look at Skarner and Galio.

[@99_King_0]

I love swain mid thank you Phreak

[@danielshamlian2800]

Love the work. Swain seems really fun, and the bounty thing makes so much sense

[@AYAYA_XD]

ty Phreak for keeping pyke support hanging on/alive , it's a tough champ (can't build hp) but fun and challenging

[@GbergStacks]

I really like the direction that they went with swain, kind of giving him more utility with multiple R casts while also giving good burst dmg. As of 10/10 they updated swain to keep the dmg but lowered the utility he has by increasing the cd of demonflares from 10 to 12 flat and I believe that is the wrong direction to take him. In order to be a battle mage he needs to have more utility and healing to get more spells off which should be the priority over dmg and they should lower dmg in exchange for more utility and less reliance on rylais.

[@TheZompfgololol]

The swain changes look amazing. Thank you for your good work :)

[@Bigpapiwampi]

First things first. Thank you for taking the time to go over all this clearly and honestly. Honest question tho why was he even reworked in the first place. His old kit is literally BETTER than his current kit and makes more functional sense. Would there ever be a place when we can play some of the old champs we have so much nostalgia with? Some game mode where original champs can be played like vanilla WOW or something?

[@EmrysMerlin8807]

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to a special episode of the Phreak Show! On today's episode, Phreak gets all swiggty swooty and talks about his plans for Swains booty!

[@ShroudedNinja]

Hello Mr. Phreak, thanks as always for taking time to make these videos. Swain was my favorite support pre mini-rework (like you said it's bad now) and I'd like to share my 2 cents on the character after watching your video: -My impression has been that the main problem with player satisfaction with the current swain is that rylise makes his gameplay very binary. He uses his ult and then gets burst out or never dies, a lot of counterplay and skill expression around hitting/dodging E and W to keep in range is just flat eliminated by the rylise slow. As a swain player I find that this is a pretty unsatisfying gameplay loop regardless of which result happens and I can't imagine it feels good to play against. I personally think that rylise being removed makes swain (and many other dot mages) MUCH easier to balance, but I assume that is beyond the scope of the changes you are looking at. -The power budget in ult is also why support swain is so much weaker than his mid/bot counterparts, as he does not have the levels or money to survive the burst in many cases. (support swain was hurt by losing the bonus HP he got when using ult too) -I know you addressed the overall concern with adding to the power budget of R. I agree that in most use cases he will not get to access the additional value of multi demon flares, but the additional R power does not help the issue brought up in my previous points. -please don't remove his W that is a very satisfying part of his kit to me. It feels cool to use. -E speed and width changes might murder low elo, I'm here for it though. I also appreciate that levels in E will be useful now though. -I like the Q max/min adjustments, very smart change I think. Also the mana changes are nice. Overall I'm looking forward to trying some Swain support again, if nothing else he'll feel strong early with the E buffs. o7 Thank you Phreak.

[@garagavia]

Thanks phreak for sharing these design insights, it's very insightful

[@wunwunwunwun1999]

AATROX W TRIGGER SYSTEM DOESNT WORK AT THE EDGE OF W AREA PLS FIX

[@mrboo9253]

Let's go, get Husum here, it's time for the Swain!

[@ypztsp]

WAlk with Swain patches legit

[@themaimer5866]

Sprint with E

[@skaarlner]

I really like that if you pay out actual bounties it properly deletes bounties. I was afraid that if you had a 1k bounty and you die you go to 700g->400g->150g that woulda sucked, thanks for not doing that

[@1098765432wo1]

Hey Phreak quick question on the bounties. Is the firstblood gold handeld the same way as draven or pyke gold,?

[@nidsonteixeira]

36:01

[@1098765432wo1]

@@nidsonteixeira I heard that does first blood count the same as draven passiv or into kill gold.

[@IMasters10I]

As a swainer in Masters+ for a few seasons, I think the changes make sense, have a lot of work behind them and will be positive. I want to touch a few points in hopes of somehow Phreak or someone related sees this. I wont talk about E, since much of it goes in line with the video. First and most important, take very good care of W. The ability is unique in league, yes it has drawbacks, but let me be clear: I believe W is an elite skewered ability, as in, it gets better in higher ranks. Yes people get better at dodging, but the Swain player also gets better at using it, either in precision or creativity,. Swain W can make or break positions, think of it as forcing people to have to dodge. It is a versatile tool that while it doesnt "fit" the battlemage style (so what? is it bad to have other options?), is still very dear and probably one of the most rewarding for swain players, or for me, atleast. Second, for what reason is the comunity not fond of Swain's stacking? The answer, I presume, is because it relies on champion interaction only. So, as what happens with something like mejais, it's great when ahead, very bad when behind. The midscope made it even more dependent on Swain-Opponent interactions and, with the higher values /stack, exacerbated this relation. I think a healthy kit for Swain must adress this issue, otherwise he'll struggle to escape the stomp or get stomped character. Third, and probably the most controversial. Swain, to me is currently NOT a "draintank" as I hear a lot of people say they want Swain to be. What I mean by this is that in no way does Swain's survivability benefits from his damage dealt, In fact, he has no "drain" anywhere in his kit. Swain's R heals based on enemy hit, regardless of how much damage it actually does, I find that most people don't realize this. And in their defence, does it make sense to be that way? Lastly, Does Swain really function in a similar way to other battlemages? Taking the wiki for reference and comparing, I can't see that with his kit. I'm more inclined to believe Swain's role is in tandem with the juggernaut style. Especially taking into account his lack of mobility and disengage. I'm not saying thats bad, in fact, I personally prefer it so. Realizing this is a big step in looking at how Swain works in a 5v5 environment and how he fits in a comp. If you are having trouble agreeing with me here try this: "What if Swain was melee and not ranged?" and think from there. I sometimes whish he were. If you lasted this long, thanks for keeping up with me and best of luck.

[@DarkinWithin]

@Phreak Idk if you read comments but not sure where else to reach out. In regards to Kayn Q, I agree removing the profane interaction is healthy for the game. The issue is that Kayn Q is now a total lockout, you can't even prime or place wards during Q and this lockout makes items like profane feel really clunky. If we could buffer profane similar to how it functions with Talon Q and Qiyana E (Talon presses Q, then presses profane during the dash and it casts when he finishes Q) profane would still have a sperate cast and animation from Q but would be much more user friendly. Appreciate your time and vids, cheers.

[@zachbiegel9290]

Hey Phreak, I just want to thank you for all the work you do. Balancing 160 champs and maintaining a fun player experience seems impossible. You're doing great! I am thankful for the transparency you provide. I know people give you a lot of crap but know that you are doing a great job. Thank you for continuing to give us insight into the balance changes. We appreciate you!

[@carnage0685]

My man single-handedly ruined Skarner and shat on his build diversity just for the sake of ruining it

[@Greg_Blavet]

I mained old swain because I loved the battlemage aspect and being a crow is cool. As You mentionned, the new one doesn't come close to being a battlemage. If you manage to make him one, I'll give him a shot again.

[@aquasnippy]

One thing I dont know if you guys thought about in terms of bounties is that kills take a person off of the map for a certain amount of time as well as giving gold. So i feel like 300 gold worth of one kill shouldnt be counted the same as 300 gold worth of CS.

[@Mildlyseasoned]

Update looks great! Very excited to play the new urf gamemode.

[@youss_lol]

As an ex chall Qiyana main but now chall ADC main for a bit over a year, if you want AD assassins to not be horrible you have to revert durability patch or buff their dmg early game for example Qiyana Q to 70 / 100 / 120 / 150 / 180. The 14.16 patch buffs to her early game werent enough to make up for the huge late game nerfs either, buffing AD assassins items is not gonna change anything. Also pretty hyped to see what the crit adc item changes are gonna be like, i am still hoping to see kraken slayer become a crit item again. Also think you should start removing the MS from the ADC items and give them more AD instead, for example remove all the MS from kraken slayer but change the AD to 55/60. I really dont like this new thing where you dont want adc items to have AD/Atkspeed/Crit, i think its good to have those items like kraken slayer for example but remove all the MS and give it more AD.

[@jamesmurray5600]

Hi Phreak, really love the work being done on Swain this patch to make him feel more satisfying in solo lanes and help balance him between the different roles he can play. This feels much more promising than the very small-scale work that other mages in the support role have often received, especially e.g. the Xerath mana changes that didn't really move the needle much. Is there any prospect of similar work being done for the others like Vel'koz, Xerath and Zyra? With Zyra in particular it feels like you've got her numbers into a much better spot but there's still a fair bit of good that could be done with reshaping her kit (and her very early game oriented base stats). It would be amazing to see this kind of work done for the others.

[@cluosion]

34:07 that means supports could roam mid game get killed at the cost of assisting another laners kill and it positively impacts team gold economy

[@nfzeta128]

New swain sounds like he'll be super OP. For all those reliability and Haste changes I think he can lose disproportionately more dmg, at least in later levels and still be balanced. I don't know the actual ratios so just going off of how you talked about them but he seems kind of like an aurora (the one a bit after launch) now.

[@professorryze3739]

Awesome changes. I just dont like Swain E changes. I still remember laning against electro swain and getting poked a lot from just E+aa or E+Q. I guess I will have to see how the tuning balances that. Definitely happy with this patch

[@nfzeta128]

The E has higher base CD and it's just more reliable. He's just a champion on his own now.

[@hoangtusamac5751]

Simon being punished for being too smart, i raise my middle finger to Riot

[@determination982]

Hey, as a Swain Top main since his rework release, and a challanger player in s10 and a coach now i want to tell you what I loved about the champion initially. To me he was sort of an Gangplank, so he have really good trades, that won't really give him a kill but will be healthy enough to survive the lane, while being able to get prio and bully opponent after his first component, the difference in these two champions would be that one have insane burst and global pressure, where the other is an full teamfight prolonged fights. So both of them have healthy safe-bully lanes, with some bad match up's But they both scale really well in different ways, that's the idea I would love swain to follow in TL;DR A change I always wanted for him to have is to move his passive stack from either W or kills/assists to his Q if he hits all bolts (with adjusting the passive to not make it broken), that gives better players a bit more floor to outplay and perfectly fills my idea of this champion. I would really hate for him to become an bot/support again, he is here only because back in the day with glacial glp he was really really strong here, and the idea just stuck in community even if forgotten (apart from certain matchups like kai'sa that swain is just really good into).

[@xspacewarsx3574]

Thank you Mr.Phreak for the Swain love :^)

[@Onmitsukido]

As a Swain main who plays him everywhere, I like the changes except the mana regen at the cost of base mana. Don't think Swain support needs extra mana regen due to starter item and not needing to use as much as solo lane Swain. Nonetheless, very excited to see how it goes. Also, please look at his playrate in conjunction with his winrate post-changes. Last time on mid-scope, felt like the hotfix buff was unnecessary bcs people were playing him wrong on toplane.

[@aarondimas7312]

Swain top goes hard tho

[@yossune]

You almost got the point understanding items needed nerfs. But the main problem of items wasn't the basic stats but all PASSIVE/ACTIVE values. Once you'll understand damage should come mainly from kits and not external sources (runes/items) that will be a big W. (good job nerfing procs such as luden tho, that's the good direction)

[@realrazzi2263]

The champion bounty system changes do sound really good. Finally linking bounties to gold (idk how this wasn’t a factor before) BUT I have one big concern: In League especially in mid lane, a big part of laning is trading, pressure and farming. It is part of your skill to farm better than the opponent while trading favorably or pressuring them so they cannot farm. Why should I get punished outperforming my opponent in lane with a bounty into my head? That doesn’t make sense to me as it defines how “good” a player is. Additionally I am scared that the new bounty system is giving too much gold away, as I understood it will always work from the baseline of being equal in gold. However, I believe the bounty system should primarily be a monetary support to get back into the game but not equal to the enemy team. My reasoning is that the leading team must have: 1. mechanically outplayed (solo kill or team fight win) or 2. Outplayed enemy team macro wise or 3. outlaned enemy to get cs lead Therefore, the winning team should still hold an advantage after all bounties were collected, otherwise the goal of what bounties should do is missed imo

[@Squidmoto3]

My sister just started playing and asked a kind of interesting question: Why can't you see turret ranges? I couldn't think of a good answer so I guess I'm wondering Riot's reason. From my experience hiding it doesn't add anything. So many times i've had friends die and say "how was that in tower range", and then also even if you know it pixel for pixel... is that really a cool rewarding thing to know and use? I feel like it's just lame - but then the indicator is just a circle so idk, I wish it were incorporated into the terrain so it wasn't scuffed and was more clear.

[@blisswinters2527]

I would guess it's bc it makes it WAY easier to guess tower dive ability for higher level players

[@1098765432wo1]

It makes tower more of a safe place. As if everyone knew the range by heart dives would become far too easy and towers would lose even more of their defensiv value.

[@brisca1668]

@@blisswinters2527 opposite, most high elo players know turret range well enough for any practical purposes. showing the actual range does two things: it moves higher and lower elo a bit closer in terms of how much information everyone is working with (id say thats a good thing, but one could argue the skill expression dance- i think its kinda eh skill expression though). It also means that tower diving and people hugging turret range becomes WAYYY more common in lower ranks. Most likely the part of the community that enjoys a more chill game, which is what low elo gameplay often is, would find their enjoyment generally lowered, meaning balance changes that would suck for higher skill brackets.

[@emilemil1]

You can see turret ranges if you play against bots, which is what brand new players are expected to do. And yes, knowing what range things have is a rewarding skill to know, obviously, since you don't die to the turret and you can do cool things like attack from just outside its range, enter and exit the range in-between shots, juggle turret aggro when diving, etc. This skill goes beyond turrets too and applies to every ranged autoattack and spell in the game, knowing if you're within turret attack range is really no different from knowing if you're within Draven's attack range, and obviously we can't put range indicators on every champion.

[@kesegoe9488]

Tower range changes based on champ size

[@the_specialist2051]

I never saw the reason that Swain never had any Bonus HP Ratios on any of his abilities. His Passive & indirect stats from his core items always gave Health but it was more focused on making him meaty than tanky. Seeing a new Bo-HP Ratio on his R Healing is such an impressively smart move to his battlemage/drain tank gameplay Also, you noted that if Assist Gold became a problem it could be tuned down, I feel that would strongly impact Support income and I've always wondered if a solid idea would be to improve Assist Gold income when having a Support Item on you. Kinda turning Support Items in a stat list that Junglers had/have

[@Weewus]

would introducing swain's old bird like q to his w be a bad thing if it took more time for it to reach it's position? realise that it was not very fun to play against, but was this not mostly to do with you being able to cast it on top of a melee champ and them not being able to run away? In this iteration, there would effectively be a lag before that area appears proportional to the distance from swain. Think the thought process in having a zone control like ability (like a mini anivia ult or orianna w) on him makes sense together with his ultimate and current q. Imagine you guys would have some of the animations still around from this old q as well

[@smalldragon8267]

Phreak can you make Qiyana W range bigger. Having access to element make her smoother to play.Without having to walk to get grass then walk back to lane which is rather tedious.

[@markopyeshchyk1462]

bounty system looks cool but it would be better at this point to show inb game the TOTAL gold gained from killing a champion and not only the bounty gold. for example if you kill a 0/6/10 support in mid-late game it should be clear that you get only 100g (or if top gets permaganked).

[@orshabaal8990]

hello mr phreak, long time swain main here and I just want to remind yall about the fact that swains tooltip of E states that "Rooting a champion allows Swain to reactivate this ability to pull all enemy champions Rooted by Nevermove towards him, gaining a soul fragment for each." Yet, buffered mobility, such as tristana rocket jump and ezreal arcane shift will render the pull unusable, despite remaining rooted after their respective displacements. when i spoke to ray and phlox, it sounds like its on a to-do-list, but they need to find someone who can fix that part of the code. I know you are one of those guys who seem to look into that kind of stuff to see if you can fix it. would love if you could cast a vision of empire on this problem. thanks in advance.

[@RaphelMadeira]

I'm sad for no VFX changes I was hoping for something like this: W - should deal area damage to the ground after the explosion like Morgana's W (making it easier to farm for Swain Mid/Top) E - should have the SAME 1300 range as Lux/Morgana/Ivern's Q

[@ocoro174]

farm should not count towards bounty wtf. how are you supposed to play if not even farming is rewarded

[@quasar2880]

thanks for the timestamps and the hard work

[@SlyI42]

Very interesting video. I'm looking forward to test Swain and the new bounties. I like playing Swain and the champions design. About bounties I have mixed feelings, it was never a good thing to have an worse kda than the lane opponent, and giving him a bountie because gods knows why I have a bountie.

[@Xeroskia]

Once again requesting for gold gained by teams to just be a visible stat on the scoreboard, either individually for each player or totaled as a team (or both, ideally). Basically the way Smite does it; it works well enough for understanding overall comparative team power potential and is just more accessible information for those that seek it mid-game and allows better decision making.

[@Cheetahsarecool]

Okay first up: I like that the bounty system is now more focused around the actual gold someone has. But then I have a follow-up question: Why is the bounty-system not PURELY based on gold? After all that would simplify it a lot and imo it also makes a lot of sense (you have more gold than your opponent = they are harder to kill = if you kill them you get more gold and if they kill you they get less gold). That would also make the ganking calculation simpler and more consistent. Example: You are top, get ganked and die and lose farm (gold + xp). The enemy top gets an assist, more farm and maybe one tower plate. When looking at the new system presented in this video it would need to calculate quite a lot of complicated stuff to estimate the fair shutdown (assist gold on top but also kill gold on jungler so the death of you counts as -450g, but then also the farm diff and idk how turret plates play a role as well). But when just comparing gold then it's pretty easy. You have about 425g (assist = 150g + ~150g farm + 125g plate) less than the enemy top so you killing him should give you more gold and him killing you should give him less gold. Though it still doesn't factor in the xp-difference, but that could be done similarly (enemy top is maybe half a lvl up so kill gold gets adjusted accordingly). Because my overall logic is that when looking at the scoreboard, I look at the person's items and their lvl (or in the raplay at their actual gold) and based on that I conclude wheather or not that person should in my mind have a shutdown. That is what would make a bounty-system feel fair to me.

[@benjaminaasen412]

Swain might be my favorite champion to play. I think his W useage in min is so rewarding. Walking down and helping a gank, scouting, getting an extra canon minion on a sidelane. I think why Swain feels bad to play is if the enemy has ranged CC tools his ult is hard to be usefull. But i think he currently is in a really nice spot as a "enemy team is a lot of meele, Swain is good here. He cant be picked in all teams but a very strong situational pick, and i dont see why thats not a good spot for a champion. But of course im only one player, others might dissagree :)

[@Golden-ek2ku]

Actually really love these swain changes. I hope he doesn't jump to a 55% winrate, but ya'll are good at your jobs despite what people say so I imagine it won't stay there long. I don't know exactly how well the bounty changes will land, but my instinct tells me they'll be healthy. I just wish it showed when a champion has negative gold value (occupy the same space as normal objective bounties in a red font that just says -150 gold or sum). It seems mosly intuitive so probably not necessary but it would be nice especially for junglers to immediately know who's worth killing and who's not.

[@MrHighfiveit]

Thank you Phreak for addressing the perma 3 man camp mid i hope it has the desired effects

[@tomundisclosed2343]

what did he say?

[@MrHighfiveit]

@@tomundisclosed2343 the repeated ganking of one player is going to be less worth

[@hayin2041]

I think one way to buff adc or nerf mage impact not their power is that let mage do lee damage on turret and objectives

[@MrMaos97]

Great work Phreak!

[@kestrelloz]

can we have a passive-ult qiyana rework? it’s been 4 years that we otp are suffering and the last nerfs kinda stomped us

[@sharpieman2035]

This might be the last nerf that kills off Bausen’s law. They completely got rid of the streak mechanism…

[@garagavia]

Farm bounties seem a bit scary to me but we will see how it plays out

[@nino7551]

Hi phreak i love those patch review and thx for the timestamp ! Do you have any plans for the bruser class ?

[@marlfox1848]

I like the new Bounty System; It sounds much more balanced and understandable. You mentioned though that the amount of gold you earned is a factor in how Bounties are made, so repetitive kills on the same target/dying multiple times from repeat ganks will yield less money and will influence Bounties slower in a way. This is great but I have one... thought... to this; What about Mejai's? Is there a world where stacks from Mejai's being earned can be a factor into the Bounty system in the sense of gold efficiency for the free AP you're gaining from stacks? Mejai's users tend to grab the item when they know they're going to get tons of kills but if it built the Bounty on these users faster, it then becomes a notable risk/reward. Similarly, I feel like Heartsteel and endless-stacking champions should also be considered for this conversation as well as they are not only gaining gold but stats as well. Should the Nasus who is sidelaning build a Bounty slightly faster when he's building permanent damage? Should Veigar build Bounty faster because he's getting AP from not only last-hitting but harassing as well? ASol? Smolder? I don't think it needs to be a huge modifier but I do feel like their endless power should be considered to some degree. If champions are exempt from this, then what about Items only? TL;DR - Is there a world where calculating Mejai's and Heartsteel Stacks into this new Bounty System is appropriate? If not, that's cool. I figured I'd bring it into the conversation. Being repeat ganked by a Mejai's user feels super bad and quickly scales them regardless of gold gained. And Heartsteel users like Sion in a late game scenario can feel hopeless to deal with in a world where most items are being nerfed.

[@DanniellosXxMt2Xx]

That nerf on healing from r with ap feels so bad and I think multiple demon flares is too much.

[@TheTitanium70]

So first getting Swain thing out of the way: I think overall the changes sound alright, primarily because it lowers Rylais value drastically. The Multi-Flares are exactly what I've been asking for, (aside from full revert), so yay! How well it turns out, and what will break next only gameplay will show tho. OP Swain always feels good to play, but I'm kinda doubtful there will ever be balanced Swain that feels good. But hey, surprise me! So to Bounties. The main thing I notice is communication: We know when we have a positive bounty. We don't know about a negative bounty. While I think we don't need to see the actual value consistently (IMO that's true for both positive and negative) an indictor might be good for the game overall, maybe like a downward arrow: > / >> / >>> to show a JGL or Roamer that it's really not worth it to Ult/Flash for that kill. Also sidenote: What happened to that "Keep Button Pressed" feature that was introduced earlier, I really enjoyed that one and worked on getting used to it, only for it to stop working once I did... fairly annoying. Bugged? OP? Unhealthy? Or what happened there?

[@advbassdrop3956]

Bro they havnt lowered rylaiz value at all the more you ult the more you demon flare and they added a health scaling rylaiz gives ap and health and keeps them in ult its literally better noe you can just instead of build slow burn you can build slow haste and just perma demonflare they have changed nothing

[@TheTitanium70]

@@advbassdrop3956 So does every single other HP item in the game.... Except those others actually do something else.

[@advbassdrop3956]

@TheTitanium70 making your ult infinetly easier to keep up is alot or do you not realize that? You could have a million haste but if you only have base ult uptime doesn't matter

[@josephdifiore8471]

Characters that fulfill the battle-Mage fantasy: Swain, Vladimir, Sylas, Kassadin, Ekko, Galio, Diana, gragas, Cho gath, Rumble, Aatrox, and Mord Characters that fulfill the Grand-Strategist/Tactician Fantasy: Sort of Swain, TF, Ryze, and Taliyah, though none of them fully capture the fantasy. Characters that have being a tactical and grand strategy genius as the major part of their backstory and champion concept: Swain. Why do you think Swain's Fantasy is better as a battle mage than a grand strategist? To me, his most character defining ability is not his R; it's his W. I love that spell.

[@TheArccam]

Hi Phreak, so Yuntail wild arrows. Why does it exist? I understand the idea of making unique, interesting items, and a burn crit item is cool and all. I don't get why you designed this one though. The burn is a flat amount of damage and comes conditionally (Based on crit). It only offers AD and while in the early game ADCs prefer that (since runes give them the attack speed to take advantage). That doesn't change the fact that playing of rune cooldowns is extremely inconvenient (jungler ganks right after lethal tempo/hail of blades goes on cooldown). The item therefore loses out to the two skirmisher items (kraken/stattik) or the most powerful first item buy (collector). I would have thought maybe that if you're going to change this item to be better, you can make it anti tank and have the burn be true damage and scale with levels. Or just make it a % health burn, that would make it more viable as an anti tank and even anti bruiser item. Rather than the current state it's in, where it's a joke item that no one touches, simply because everything it does is done better by other items. The burn aspect makes it less of a danger as a burst item, yet the idea of a % health burn makes it powerful for penetrating tanks. I can see someone rushing I.E then running a zeal or attack speed item. Then running LDR and finishing it off with Yuntail, assuming they have some form of enchanter for things like movement speed or healing. I know that you probably don't cover this in your patch rundown. Hopefully you see this, and adjust Yuntail to be the centrepiece to anti tank damage. Obviously, it must rely on higher crit values, so that it's not abused should you make the passive true damage or % health. You are likely going to have to significantly reduce the AD on it as well, to mitigate the early burst potential. Another option is to give it the giant slayer passive. Again, not a game designer, but this item is not viable without one of the three options mentioned. Maybe something to think about for Season 15

[@infinitegaming2884]

Swain is absolutely one of my favorite mages.

[@slaice2220]

You need to make sure that the price for killing a champion is dynamic, depending on its gpm since the last death.

[@emilemil1]

I agree that Swain W is a crappy spell since you can only hit it alongside other CC (E), but I think his E is really good and very satisfying to land, it's by far my favorite skill on his kit. Yeah it's pretty unreliable (mainly at short range), but the payoff when you hit is huge. AoE root + knockback that also gives permanent health. The main issues I have with Swain (aside from W being boring) are first of all that his trading can be very awkward, if you go in for a Q (which is short range) after landing E + W you're often opening yourself up to be counter bursted. This could be solved by making E stun, silence or give you speed boost after the pull. My second issue is that his E and Q are at their strongest when he's right at the battle line of a teamfight, he wants to have all opponents on one side of him for those spells to hit the most targets, but that's at odds with his ultimate which is strongest when he's positioned like a tank or bruiser in the middle of the enemies. This could be solved by capping the ultimate to drain 2 or 3 enemies, change the second activation to send out a wave forward instead of hitting in all directions, and/or make the second activation stronger the longer he stays alive in a fight.

[@svnms8841]

I'm SO happy about the bounty changes, as someone relatively new and with experience on other similar games, it made no sense to me. On another note, do drakes matter for bounties? They were omitted Can a team be 3 drakes up or even have soul and they still wouldn't be more likely for the enemy team to get objective bounties?

[@Phreak]

Drakes count and are unchanged

[@moo4700]

@@Phreak hey man can you save rumble please

[@lupuz3269]

@@moo4700 no rumble doesnt need saving

[@ZeekarPRIME]

What a wonderful thing to wake up to ❤

[@polishmushroom6633]

Spamganking enemy top will still make them mad and run down or troll so i prob will continue to do that so we have a 5v4 adventage But everything else very good changes i like them👍

[@Kampsycho]

Cool changes love em c: on swain and bounties

[@DealthTheGreat]

Can you look in reworking ghost poro. It currently rewards placing wards in dumb spots like middle of lane or on your summoner platform to ensure maximum stacks, not a logical rune

[@MartialArtsForY]

I love me some swain top, hopefully he’s still playable there

[@Goessen]

I’ll give this a shot but I really do believe the swain’s w needs to be heavily replaced.

[@SgtRoebuck115]

Im confused why were moving on to Swain if Corki is still not at an acceptable level? Im so upset with how he turned out I cannot believe he was changed at all.

[@y2wok]

If swains W or E had an "Ezreal W" effect would be interesting to see

[@ImpPoster]

*Love* how you're consistently reducing swain's healing in order to give him more burst. Oh and the optimal tactic of using Demonburst the moment it's off cooldown instead of stacking charges is a great move for the strategist fantasy. Are you sure keeping his identity as a battle mage wasn't a typo on your end? Sarcasm aside, I'd suggest removing the healing from his passive, increasing the bonus hp from his passive, maintain the healing of his ult, increase hp ratio on his ult. If the power budget comes up short then consider making demon burst a soft cc and removing demonburst's damage. I like the angle of trying to give swain's abilities more reliability. Checks off the goals of keeping him viable in all three roles and smoothing the parts of the kit that feel bad to use. The power shift from his ult to his qwe isn't bad, as it just increases his ability to trade during laning phase without drastically reducing his team fight presence. I'm sad that you didn't have the animation budget to consolidate Swain's kit. W is completely out of place for a battle mage. Something closer to Hwei's Gaze of the Abyss would give stronger zone control and scouting at the cost of the half way across the map range. The current W is too punishing to use when champions can walk from one side and out the other before it bursts.

[@Bladius_]

You complain about R change making him feel less of a strategist, but then say W needs to be removed? The ability he has that most exemplifies that, by far. Lmao dude. Champs are allowed to have "weird" abilities, that aren't 100% on-theme for the class, it's fun and adds variety.

[@ImpPoster]

My hope was that area denial would feel more strategic then a cross map skill shot that punishes afk players. Swain's origional kit had a lot of ways to control the battlefield with area denial at mid to long range. The video mentioned that swain is a qr champion and took steps to make his e more reliable to land. With the cdr, vision, and slow nerfs his w gets stretched too thin on its power budget.

[@lordogakor4383]

The only change I would like to see on Swain is if they give me back my old swain, before the whole rework that he is now :(

[@nfzeta128]

36:25 I do think assists should be devalued somewhat. I think they have been out of hand ever since you got more gold for them with base and bounties a while ago. I think that's part of the reason support is inflated and also why getting roamed on and ganked repeatedly didn't have real trade-offs. People could get 'free' gold without it counting much in terms of comeback mechanics. At least it required good wave control but I still think it may have been too 'free'.

[@MarkGeraldZamora]

Phreak! Thank you dude! it's so easy that you nerf Adc and I always win against them thanks man!

[@jaredkyleleonano2937]

Phreak I love xin zhao, can you change his ultimate so he has the option to knockback all enemies including those marked by challenged? (Maybe by holding R instead of tapping it)

[@spaghetimilk561]

Champion shutdowns should be shared between all participants in the kill

[@garagavia]

No then your support is griefing you by trying to help

[@seanboglio3605]

I agree with this answer. Making supports question if they should do their job or not doesn't seem fine EVEN IF that would concede reduced snowballing. Also... it also would nerf comebacks.

[@spaghetimilk561]

@@garagavia if u want solo gold then solo kill, it’s not grief if u need help to secure a shutdown, and you shouldn’t be able to funnel gold just by a lucky last hit

[@in_vas_por8810]

Thats just the way you perceive it because you've been told that all gold should always go to your most fed person/carry. Imagine they dont help, and you die, again. Funneling a viable tactic, but sharing the gold can be just as valuable if your team is actually playing like a team. Thats the whole reason they could even get the shutdown in the first place.

[@oishiich.4814]

The bounties changes are very good thing for sure

[@virys96]

Bounty changes atlasst, thank you Phreak, like you said you don't know what's going on behind the scenes but often it feels wrong...and it's been like this for soooo long...

[@jahuuuu9625]

Baus gonna be stuck in Emerald with this one

[@عليمولايونعمالمولى]

come on I'm sure he can get d4!

[@nfzeta128]

lol Baus just prefers his playstyle, it's not that he needs it.

[@Kazenoha04]

Hey Phreak, I heard something like wards are going to not give gold and exp anymore, any changes to champions invocations? like teemo mushs, nidalee traps, shaco boxes, heimen turrets? I mean, I dnt get why those give gold, just saying. (cool changes to Swain)

[@Waterseeker_]

Question: When Swain was first reworked he could tear Soul Shards out of champions that were CC'd by allies. Why not bring this back? Even if you need to nerf his passive scaling it's a lever that disproportionately affects Bot Lane, where there are twice as many champs, and doesn't really change anything about Mid or Top.

[@Keurgui1]

It was winmore and not skewed for solo lane swain

[@karanea]

that would make him even more teamcomp reliant

[@Langharig_Tuig]

It was giga broken or absolutely worthless... You have a team of decent CC appliers? it's broken. You have no CC on your team? It is worthless. In League of Legends a core of the balance design is that champions should have agency of all of their abilities. The only exception to this is probably Yasuo ult. DotA2 is less shy of designing in a way that enables very specific hero interactions for example... I will never forget the horror that was "Tiny Bite"

[@Keurgui1]

@@Langharig_Tuig Well Yasuo has agency in his ultimate if he’s able to land a nado at least

[@Langharig_Tuig]

@@Keurgui1 And the same was true for Swain with his E. But it's generally a really bad design, at least in League of Legends. Another example of that bad dependent design is Nilah. Pair her with an enchanter supp and she is strong or at least balanced, pair her with any other support and youre effectively griefing...

[@halfLotusMusic]

Would you consider heal buffs to Swain ult? 1% per bonus health is pretty irrelevant unless you are full tank

[@AlexHamelMusic]

Not gonna lie, any champion feels good compared to playing my main, GP lately. Feel like I'm fighting a war with a toothpick.

[@sleepless1566]

Hey hello, i wonder what are your thoughts on midlane assassins? It feels to me like the class is intentionaly left bad and unable to do their job. Ignoring outliers like leblanc.

[@Whocares-th9fw]

I love the fact that Swain is getting some love... But can't we do something like this with Seraphine? She has good winrates but feels bad to play in all three roles.

[@manosswainmain779]

Why not nerf Swain's R strength by making it a semi-toggle like before 2018 VGU? You could tune the numbers in any way you want and you won't gate Swain's most appealing ability behind a massive cooldown. It seems weird to me how such an (already weak - at least in the feels) spell can be even more nerfed in terms of strength, AND you also put it in a 120 sec cooldown