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.
All of Riven's damage is physical, prioritize high Armor if an opposing Riven gets out of control.
Riven has a great deal of mobility but she cannot move very far with any one skill. Rooting or silencing her during her combo will greatly reduce her effectiveness.
Riven excels at dueling multiple melee attackers at once, as she will be on an almost equal footing damage-wise. If pairing up against Riven, don't go in as double melee until she has expended her full combo.
The stats provided here underscore some strategic Swain versus Riven matchup statistics that may help you grasp the distinctions between the two. For instance, Swain’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Riven’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Swain may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Riven. This observation is largely fueled by the differences in assists.
Swain normally has a slightly smaller longest kill spree than his enemy does. Commonly, he receives more damage than Riven. This is usually reflective of different amounts of tankyness, but it can also hint that the champ with more health has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from additional harm when poked or engaged.
Both League champions are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Swain usually loses when taking on Riven, with a 48.9% win rate. As a result, Swain makes a bad counter for Riven.
While Swain does have a lower win rate than Riven, when on opposite teams, Swain also has a greater learning curve that makes him a more challenging champ to learn and master. You still need to be cautious when picking Swain into Rivenas his relative depth means you may not be able to reach his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Swain also has some amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Riven. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when trying to counter champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Swain vs Riven matchups, Riven is the better champion with a lower win rate, similar champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during team fights.
Swain is a somewhat poor counter for Riven. You will do well by focussing your tactics on maximizing your CS and taking out objectives. If you are able to do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Swain against Riven.
To learn all of the intricacies of Swain to counter Riven during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to pick up a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and suggestions shown above, you will increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Swain typically accumulates less CS relative to Riven. Champs who typically don't earn many minion kills usualy don't have to have much CS to be effective, 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, typically require many items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values reported here to do well.
The best items to use in your Swain versus Riven build include Malignance, Zhonya's Hourglass, and Zaz'Zak's Realmspike. When Swain included at least these three pieces in his build, he did significantly better vs Riven than with most other common counter builds. In fact, Swain had an average winrate of 48.9% when countering Riven with these items in his kit.
To have the best chance of beating Riven 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 rune combinations players chose for Swain vs Riven counterpicks, this set of runes yielded the highest win rate. Notably, these runes provided a 48.9% winrate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Riven as Swain are presented for all ranked divisions combined. To filter the statistics and builds to a particular division, you may use the selection menu above.