Reign of Gaming

Agree with you that Swain don't really hzve any slot left for a DFG, so much strong item for him...Maybe if your team got an overall high tankiness and lack damage.

Concerning linadry, i don't know. Like you Bystekhilcar , i am less and less excited by this item, except on few champions and i think swain is part of it. Your spells sinergyse amazingly well with the passive, u grab a little bunch of health and MPen wich is great, because i'm not grabing void a lot.

RoA seems to me like a must have on Swain; give you all the char needs to work. Even if, with Athene, u don't need so much mana, you will lack a lot of tankiness by skipping RoA. Sure u can rush Rilay, but u will have even less damage, wich might be a problem cause deathcap is not really a rush item on swain for me.

Am I the only one to think that pre-6 Anivia has crazy damage if se hits her Q+E combo ? ;O

I'm only living for mid lane, mages gots all i love to have fun. My hugest problem is that i'm not that good at ganking other lanes often, even if i'm training on this. My game style is all about lane domination, harassing, etc...I'm so glad they changed the wraith camp, was making some mid laners so strong compared to others.

The first thing to care about in my opinion is the lane sinergy and the bot lane sinergy with the rest of the team. If there is lane where counterpicks are less important, it's bot lane. I mean, you can really have bad time in some situations (ex : Vayne vs Urgot), but usually you can pick bot lane without having too much risk to be countered : Graves, Ezreal, Corki have prefered match ups, but the most important is to have a nice combo with your support, and your team : if your team will be able to protect you hard in teamfight, Kog can be an awesome pick, even if the opponents have a tough early bot lane. Want to play safe until late game ? Ask for a Soraka, or dunno what. Wanna compete even in early phase ? Ask for THE Nunu !

If u really want an established list of counters, go championselect, best site for this kind of informations.

Hi guys !

I'm coming to you because i can't believe what my eyes are seeing, i want your opinon about Swain in this new season meta, must admit i'm kind of lost here...

Let's sum up what we have :

Swains spells :

Q : single target slow + damage

W : AoE root

E : single target dot that increase of 20% all damages coming from Swain

R : AoE sustained damage ? :D

Well, let's see the new items :

About tanky support :

In order to become Tanky, you need gold, but you can't really farm to earn some, you will need all G10 available :

Masteries in Utility (2 Gold/10)

Runes : Quint and/or Yellow. You can go double gold rune setup if you are versus a safe lane, if not take armor in yellow instead if you fear to be killed easily.

Items GP 10.

Later on, with items like Aegis, Zeke, Shurelia, etc... You will be a nice tank for your team with plenty of utility.

Safe picks mid : 

If i have to first pick mid, this is what i would take :

Orianna : no real hard counter, nice laning phase, nice mobility, nice teamfighting and late game. Anivia : My main for quite a long time, i think i can play her against nearly any mage.
Gragas : Same, no real hard counter, nice mobility and ganking, fall of a bit late game but no real threat in laning phase.

TF : TF can be countered in lane, but you pick him for his incredible ganking/splitpushing ability

First thing to keep in mind is that there is no real "safe" pick, the most important is to know your char, and his matchups. It's pointless to pick Orianna if you can't do shit with her.

1. Kata is a bitch in the mid lane, she got awesome burst and "high" mobility with Shupo. Vs a Katarina, the best is, in my opinion to play ultra-safe and counter her later on : when u see that katarina has been picked in the ennemy team, react by taking 2 or 3 disable to shut down her ult instantly in teamfight.

If you want that kind of disable in mid : Malzahar, Diana, Kassadin, etc... You can also lane swap if your top laner is confident enough to go vs her. Anyway, make sure you build early RM to avoid beeing insta-killed on the first move she makes.

2. I played a few game with Malphite mid, and it's really funny. When to pick him :

- You need a team with a nice global amount of damage : Malphite AP deals a lot early/mid but fall off a bit later on to build a bit of tankiness. If you go for him, make sure rest of your team will take advantage of your huge cc capacity in teamfight to deal awesome dmgs.

- You need to know what will face you (or ennemies musn't know you are going mid with him) : If your first pick him and don't "bait" the Pick and Ban phase, picking right after top and jungle, ennemis will know what you are planning and will counter your hard : Malphite gets rape by a lot of AP mids, and he needs a quiet early.

You can build a lot of different things on him (in no order)

Chalice : cool for mana/RM

Dorans  Sorcerer or MercuryAbyssal
 Frozen Hearth
 Haunting Disguise/Rabadon/Zhonya/Shurelia/etc...

Jungler :
 Maokai can do awesome ganks pre-6, and will still have awesome team fight potentiel with his set. You can also try Alistar or Nautilus !

Trinity is a tank item ? WTF am i reading ? Trinity is a pure damage item, for 4070 gold u got 250 HP. If u really wanted to go for tank item, u could buy so much more tankiness with 4070 gold...So please, don't tell us that Trinity mean end of damage on bruiser, cause trinity is all about damages....

For the rest, i agree with you even if i think this is not really new and pretty much obvious that melee bruisers have to go tanky. Don't mean that DPS is dead on bruiser, Jayce is actually one of the top pick top with most common build : Trinity GA BT.

Nice tread here ! But no word about AP Kog, ;(

What you are explaining is exactly what i ma trying to do (mostly for 5v5 premade) and i was so excited when i descovered that AP Kog was such a monster and no one was playing him... A mounth later, Froggen raped a tournament with him, with this awesome game where he went for 16 kills and a quadra at baron, forcing a double nerf on the poor little creature ;(