The Tap version of Bone Skewer is much faster and deals additional damage.
A lot of your agressive spells are also your escapes. Make sure you always have a plan to get out of the fight.
Hitting an enemy with the Hold version of Bone Skewer will always pull them the same distance. Use it in melee range to throw targets behind you.
Pyke is very fragile so don't be afraid to temporarily run from a fight. You can regenerate a significant amount of health from Gift of the Drowned Ones when enemies can't see you.
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.
The stats provided here show several vital Pyke versus Swain counter statistics that can help us realize the differences between this set of champions. As an example, Pyke’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Swain’s ratio of NaN, indicating that Pyke may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Swain..
Pyke typically has a slightly larger longest kill spree than his enemy does. Typically, he takes less damage than Swain. This is usually reflective of differing health capacities, but it can also indicate that the one champion has less agility and thus is unable to escape additional damage when engaged or poked.
Both LoL champions are great. Both champs have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In League's current meta, Pyke usually loses when trying to fight Swain, with a 46.7% win rate. As a result, Pyke makes a bad counter for Swain.
While Pyke does have a lower win rate than Swain, when they face off with one another, Pyke also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less challenging champ to learn and master. You should be very concerned when picking Pyke into Swainas his relative depth means you may not be able to reach his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Pyke also has some 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 ton of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Pyke vs Swain matchups, Swain is the better champion with a much lower win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allied champions during team fights.
Pyke is a garbage counter to Swain. You will do well by focussing your play on maximizing your gold income and destroying objectives. If you do that, you should hold your own as Pyke against Swain.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Pyke in order to counter Swain during both the early game 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 pay attention to the build and stats presented above, you will grow your win rate by a lot and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Pyke often accumulates less CS as Swain. Champions who on average don't acquire much CS often don't have to have much CS to be effective, such as supports. They are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually need many items to be effective. In either case, try to do better than the values shown on this page to do well.
The best items to have in your Pyke versus Swain build include Youmuu's Ghostblade, Bloodsong, and Opportunity. When Pyke used at least these three pieces in his build, he performed much better when fighting Swain than with most other common item sets. In fact, Pyke had an average winrate of 46.7% when playing against Swain with this counter build.
To have the highest probability of vanquishing Swain as Pyke, Pyke players should take the Hail of Blades, Cheap Shot, Zombie Ward, Ultimate Hunter, Bone Plating, and Unflinching runes from the Domination and Resolve rune sets. Of all the rune combinations players used for Pyke vs Swain counters, this mix of runes yielded the greatest win rate. Notably, these runes gave a 46.7% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Swain as Pyke are presented for all skill levels combined. If you want to scope the stats and builds to a distinct division, you should use the selection menu located earlier in the counter matchup guide.