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.
Karthus can cast spells for a short duration after he is killed. Move away from his corpse to be safe.
Make sure you always have enough health to survive Requiem, even if you have to go back to the base more frequently to heal.
The stats shown on this page emphasize some influential Swain vs. Karthus counter stats that may help you figure out the distinctions between the two. As an example, Swain’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Karthus’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Swain may be more central to his team's team fighting capability than Karthus..
Swain typically has a similar longest kill spree as his enemy does. Commonly, he takes more damage than Karthus. This often reflects differing health capacities; however, it can also hint that the one champion has less agility and thus is unable to kite away from further damage when engaged or poked.
Both LoL champions are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Swain usually wins when trying to fight Karthus, with a 55.7% win rate. Therefore, Swain makes a fantastic counter for Karthus.
While Swain does have a much higher win rate than Karthus, when on opposite teams, Swain also has a greater difficulty level that makes him a more complex character to pick up and master. You don't need to be too worried when picking Swain into Karthusas his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Swain has some amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Karthus. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there is not one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Swain vs Karthus matchups, Swain is the better champ with a noticably higher win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during late stage team fights.
Swain is a great counter for Karthus. Focus your strategy on increasing your gold income and destroying objectives. If you do that, you should do very well as Swain against Karthus.
To truly master Swain in order to counter Karthus during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and suggestions displayed above, you will grow your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Swain usually picks up a similar amount of CS compared to Karthus. Champs who on average don't take many minion kills typically don't have to have much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. They are capable of scaling well off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champs with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically require several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values reported here to do well.
The most crucial items to have in your Swain versus Karthus build include Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Malignance, and Liandry's Torment. When Swain incorporated at least these three items in his build, he performed much better when facing Karthus than with most other typical counter builds. In fact, Swain had an average winrate of 55.7% when countering Karthus with these items in his kit.
To have the best chance of vanquishing Karthus as Swain, you should take the Electrocute, Cheap Shot, Eyeball Collection, Ultimate Hunter, Coup de Grace, and Presence of Mind runes from the Domination and Precision rune sets. Out of all the runes that we analyzed for Swain vs Karthus clashes, this set of runes yielded the highest win rate. Moreover, these runes gave a 55.7% winrate overall.
If you want to view Swain versus Karthus tips and counter builds for a a particular division rank, feel free to choose one from the selection menu displayed above. If viewing for the first time, the statistics and guides shown are computed using all rounds played with both champions.