Swain with Karthus
How to Synergize Swain and Karthus
based on 1,407 Swain with Karthus pairsHow We Analyze Champion Pairings in LoL
Swain Karthus Synergy Summary
Best Swain vs Karthus Counter Build
Items
Starter Items
Early Items
Core Swain Items
Optional Items
Summoner Spells
Skill Order
Runes
Guide to Synergizing Swain and Karthus
Tips for Playing as Swain with Karthus
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.
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.
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.
Advice to Understand How Karthus Will Play
Lay Waste is very strong at farming minions and harassing enemy champions.
Ask your allies to help point out when you should use Requiem to get kills in different lanes.
Swain Karthus Synergy Stats
How to Play with Karthus as Swain in LoL
The Swain Karthus synergy stats shown here demonstrate the areas of his gameplay that do better (or worse) when paired with Karthus, compared to his overall stats. Significant differences are areas of focus that highlight how his gameplay changes when paired with this other champion.
Overall, Swain sees a very large drop in his KDA (ratio of kills and assists to deaths) when paired with Karthus. His KDA fell from NaN to NaN. This fall shows that Karthus helps Swain perform not as well in ranked LoL matches. Yet, the small difference demonstrates that this performance change is not very impactful.
When Swain is an ally to Karthus, he observes a little drop in his full damage dealt. This may indicate that Karthus does not help protection for him to dish out more damage or that his allyship also helps extend the match's duration. Similarly, when Swain is played together with Karthus on the same side, he usually scores many fewer killing sprees compared to when he plays on his own. This is contrasting evidence that he is worse when playing with Karthus.
Moreover, when Swain plays with Karthus on the same team, he typically receives more damage than when he fights alone. Taking more damage could mean that Karthus does a poor job of protecting Swain during team fights.
Synergies between Swain and Karthus
Damage Types Compared
Champion Playstyles Contrasted
Is Swain better when played alongside Karthus?
There is no perfect champion pairing for Swain that will no matter what be his #1 synergy. However, Karthus is a terrible ally for Swain. By being on the same side as Swain, he lowers their win rate by -4.7% to 46.6%. This signals that there is an easy to overcome and exploit strategic relationship between Swain and Karthus that allows them to perform worse together than alone.
Karthus has a lower difficulty than Swain. That means Swain players don't need to be cautious when enlisting Karthus allies to play with, as they will need a relatively low level of skill to work well with you.
Fighting together, you will likely see an overall large increase in your team’s capacity to deal magical damage. Combined, these champs can deal quite a lot of AP type damage.
In contrast, by grouping Swain and Karthus together, you probably will not be giving your other teammates a great deal of sustained damage output. We recommend you bring other champions on your team that helps cover this relative gap in this pairing's capabilities.
Regardless of the ability of your Karthus teammate, you should focus on maximizing your income, staying alive by avoiding foolish fights, and clearing objectives. If you follow these simple suggestions, you should do well anyway.
Other Champion Matchups Against Swain
Other Top Synergies by Role
Additional Information for Swain Players
How We Calculated Our Swain Karthus Synergy Build and Stats
Other Useful Resources
Further Insights to Win with this Champion Pairing
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Swain in order to synergize with Karthus during both the early game and mid / late game phases of LoL games, you should continue reading to learn a few extra tips and tricks for this champion pairing. If you listen to the build and suggestions presented here, you should increase your win rate significantly.
The ideal finished items to prioritize in your Swain and Karthus synergy build consist of Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Malignance, and Liandry's Torment. When Swain bought at least these three finished items in his build, he did a lot better as an ally of Karthus than with many other commonly used item sets. In fact, Swain boasted an average winrate of 46.6% when synergizing his build and playstyle to Karthus with this build.
To have the greatest likelihood of defeating your oponents, Swain players should use the Conqueror, Presence of Mind, Legend: Tenacity, Last Stand, Conditioning, and Overgrowth runes from the Precision and Resolve rune sets. Of all the rune builds players chose for this champion pairing, this combo of runes yielded the best win rate. In fact, these runes gave a 46.6% winrate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to pair Karthus with Swain are given for all ranked divisions. If you want to narrow the statistics and builds to a specific division, you should use the selection menu located earlier on the page.