Swain and Olaf have had a pair of reworks revealed on the PBE, as the Noxian general and the Freljordian berserker get updated.
Swain and Olaf are two champions with wildly different places in the League of Legends Meta right now. Olaf is a pick that's seen a lot of competitive play and has incredible utility in the jungle. While Swain… Well Swain is one of the least picked champs in all of solo queue and has bad win rates to boot.
That's why a pair of reworks, that hit the PBE on Tuesday, look poised to transform how Swain and Olaf are played. And the biggest changes? Well, it seems that both their ultimate abilities got some tweaks that could give you the chance to use them for a lot longer.
Olaf Rework
Olaf's rework is set to change where some of his power lies, making him less of an early game gank machine, and more of a scaling monster.
His passive, Berserker rage, now grant's max effectiveness at below 30% health, and offers less attack speed at early levels, but adds life steal. This means less chance of 1v1ing enemies.
His Q, Undertone now has an armor shred ability, but reduced damage scaling and mana cost. This seems to give it more damage overall, and a tweaked minimum range makes it a bit harder to hit now.
His W looks like it might be completely changed. Olaf's W no resets his basic attacks, gives him a shield, doesn't give him life steal (that's on the passive now) and gives even more attack speed. This is a very vanilla jungler ability.
The big attraction is his R, or ultimate. Now hitting an opponent with a basic attack or your E extends the duration of Ragnorak by 2.5 seconds.
The tooltips seem to imply this can be refreshed forever. However, it scales from an initial 6 seconds duration, to the refreshing 3 seconds, giving you a half-second window to hit someone. Which with all the attack speed buffs in Olaf's kit means, yes, this is a permanent ult, so long as you can find something to hit.
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Swain Rework
For Swain, a lot of the changes seem bent around helping him find his niche and theme again. Swain's lore is that of a master general. Now with improved tools for this, and the ability to wade in and decimate opponents, he feels more like the badass his backstory implies
His passive has removed his pull, and given him more health regen and healing. Q has had it's damage highly nerfed, making up for the fact so much damage has been shifted to his R.
W now display's enemies in range like Twisted Fate ult. Far more fitting for a tactical genius. Meanwhile, the pull has been moved onto E, making it a more reasonable active ability, than synergizes with his Ult.
As for his Ult, Demonic Ascension has now had its duration lowered, but augmented with something called Demon Power. Swain starts with 50 Demon Power and it drains at 10 Power per second. But so long as you're draining an enemy champion, you gain 20 demon power per second.
Keep the Ult going for three seconds, and you can cast Demonflare. This is similar to before, but now it slows as well. It also no longer ends his Ult. Meaning Swain is effectively able to wade into enemy groups and start wrecking them. It feels a lot more like old Swain, which is great.
Overall, this pair of reworks Swain and Olaf seem like great improvements. Although Olaf spammers might be a bit upset by his tweaks. These changes hit the teething problems most people have with both champs and vastly improved them. But while they seem good on paper now, these PBE changes might not ever make it to Live. So enjoy them while you can!
