Zed vs Swain
How to Beat Swain as Zed
based on 4,933 Zed vs Swain matchupsHow We Analyze LoL Champion Counters
Zed vs Swain Matchup Summary
Best Zed vs Swain Counter Build
Items
Starter Items
Early Items
Core Zed Items
Optional Items
Summoner Spells
Skill Order
Runes
Guide to Countering Swain as Zed
Tips for Playing as Zed against Swain
Placing a Living Shadow before using Death Mark can give Zed a safe escape from combat.
Saving energy and spell cooldowns until you use your ultimate will maximize Death Mark's damage.
Quickly double tapping Living Shadow will teleport Zed to his shadow immediately for rapid escapes.
Advice to Win Against Swain
Buying an item with Grievous Wounds will make Swain much easier to kill during his Demonic Ascension.
Swain's passive is very potent if you are immobilized. Make sure to be extra careful around enemies who have immobilizing effects.
High mobility counters all of Swain's basic abilities: Death's Hand does more damage the closer he is, Vision of Empire has a very long delay and Nevermove must start returning back to him to be dangerous.
Zed vs Swain Counter Stats
How to Counter Swain with Zed in LoL
The stat comparisons shown here highlight some important Zed against Swain counter stats that may help you distinguish the distinctions between this set of champs. Zed’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Swain’s ratio of NaN, demonstrating that Zed may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Swain. This observation is largely a result of the difference in kills.
Zed typically has a slightly larger longest killing spree than his enemy does. On average, he takes less damage than Swain. This is usually reflective of differing health capacities, yet it can also imply that the one champion has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from additional harm when engaged or poked.
Differences between Zed and Swain
Damage Types Compared
Champion Playstyles Compared
Who is Better, Zed or Swain?
Both LoL champs are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Zed usually loses when playing against Swain, with a 46.7% win rate. Therefore, Zed makes a poor counter to Swain.
While Zed does have a lower winrate compared to Swain, when facing one another, Zed also has a lower learning curve that makes him a less time consuming character to pick up and master. You should be very concerned when picking Zed into Swainas his relative depth means you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Zed has almost no amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Swain. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when trying to counter champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not one best champion overall in League of Legends, in Zed vs Swain matchups, Swain is the better champ with a much lower win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during team fights.
Zed is a bad counter to Swain. Make sure you focus your strategy on maximizing your CS and clearing objectives. If you are able to do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Zed against Swain.
Other Champion Matchups Against Zed
Additional Information for Zed Players
How We Calculated Our Zed vs Swain Build and Stats
Other Useful Resources
Further Insights to Win this Matchup
To truly master Zed in order to counter Swain during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you listen to the build and stats displayed above, you will increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Zed often picks up more CS relative to Swain. Champions who on average don't get many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as support champions. They are capable of scaling properly off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often need a lot of items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the values displayed on this page to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Zed versus Swain build include Serylda's Grudge, Axiom Arc, and Opportunity. When Zed combined at least these three pieces in his build, he did a lot better countering Swain than with most other typical builds. In fact, Zed boasted an average win rate of 46.7% when countering Swain with these items in his kit.
To have the best probability of annihilating Swain as Zed, Zed players should use the First Strike, Magical Footwear, Future's Market, Cosmic Insight, Scorch, and Transcendence runes from the Inspiration and Sorcery rune sets. Out of all the rune builds that we analyzed for Zed vs Swain counters, this combo of runes yielded the best win rate. Notably, these runes averaged a 46.7% win rate overall.
If you need to view Zed vs Swain tips and matchup stats and build suggestions for a a particular division rank, feel free to choose one from the selection menu shown above. At first, the stats and build suggestions shown are computed using every match run with both champs.