While laning, try to use Death's Hand's piercing damage to damage opponents from a safe distance.
Vision of Empire is quite difficult to land on its own, look for skirmishes around the map where enemies may be distracted or crowd controlled so you can land it more easily.
Demonic Ascension may make Swain very hard to kill but he's pretty easy to get away from. Try building items that can slow opponents to keep them in range if their mobility is overwhelming.
If you're having trouble rooting an enemy with Nevermove, try throwing it at opponents when they are near their minions so the explosion surprises them.
Parrrley deals a high amount of physical damage. Items that grant Armor can help if an enemy Gangplank is doing well.
Once Gangplank reaches level 6, watch out for his global-range ultimate, Cannon Barrage!
The stats provided here highlight several significant Swain versus Gangplank matchup statistics that may help you appreciate the differences and similarities between these two champs. For instance, Swain’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Gangplank’s KDA ratio of NaN, demonstrating that Swain may be more central to his team's team fighting capacity than Gangplank. This observation is largely fueled by the differences in assists.
Swain normally has a slightly smaller longest kill spree than his opponent does. On average, he takes more damage than Gangplank. This typically indicates different amounts of tankyness, but it can also imply that the champion with increased health has less mobility and thus is not able to flee from additional harm when engaged or poked.
Both League champions are great champions. Both champs have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Swain usually wins when trying to fight Gangplank, with a 51.3% win rate. Thus, Swain makes a good counter to Gangplank.
While Swain does have a higher win rate compared to Gangplank, when on opposite teams, Swain also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less difficult character to pick up and master. You should be careful when picking Swain into Gangplankas his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Swain also has some amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Gangplank. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Swain vs Gangplank matchups, Swain is the better champ with a higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allied champions during late stage team fights.
Swain is a decent counter for Gangplank. Focus your tactics on maximizing your gold income and destroying objectives. If you are able to do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Swain against Gangplank.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Swain in order to counter Gangplank during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to learn a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and stats presented above, you should increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Swain usually accumulates less CS relative to Gangplank. Champs who typically don't acquire many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be effective, such as supports. These kinds of champions are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically have to have many items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the numbers displayed here to do well.
The top items to focus on in your Swain versus Gangplank build include Liandry's Anguish, Shard of True Ice, and Demonic Embrace. When Swain incorporated at least these three pieces in his build, he did much better against Gangplank than with most other common builds. In fact, Swain boasted an average win rate of 51.3% battling Gangplank with these items in his kit.
To have the highest chance of beating Gangplank as Swain, you should use the Conqueror, Presence of Mind, Legend: Tenacity, Last Stand, Conditioning, and Overgrowth runes from the Precision and Resolve rune sets. Out of all the runes players used for Swain vs Gangplank face-offs, this mix of runes resulted in the best win rate. Moreover, these runes averaged a 51.3% winrate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Gangplank as Swain are shown for every ranked division. If you want to narrow the stats and builds to a particular skill level, you may use the selection menu located above.