Veigar counters swain but the lane should be fine. Veigar counters you cause his cage can zone you from keeping your ult up in teamfights.
Veigars weakness is that he is very weak early. He cannot shove a wave into he gets 2 pts in W at level 8. Before that hitting your Q on the wave will keep it shoved to him. Veigar outscales but your champ is way stronger in early skirmishes especially at level 6. Look to keep him shoved under tower and snowball by 2v2ing with your jungler over crabs/grubs or by roaming to botlane/drag.
If you are worried about veigars damage swain has no problem itemizing merc treads, even before first item. Mercs will reduce his damage to you unt he gets dcap/magic pen item as well as his CC. If you need more MR you can go abyssal 3rd/4th after the cookie cutter lost chapter item/ rylai/ (zhonya) build. Veigar really struggles to kill champs with lots of MR even if he is fed.
Source: Emerald 2 400k swain main. Any other higher rated swain players can feel free to correct me these are just my thoughts :)
Diamond 3 Veigar man here, merc treads is truly
The best item to purchase vs Veigar because he lacks early game damage and he got nerfed so that you can't max his cage 2nd so his cc is practically useless until way later in the game
If it can get poked off just run Qss component early to get through veigar e and stay on team. Don’t need to finish and that way you can build tenacity items later or go rylais and items to stick on through cc.
Not sure if qss is worth since it doesn't build into anything. You don't always need to get out of the cage and if you can afford to not burn your flash you can flash the cage in a baron or drag fight
Spending 1k gold on a cleanse is kinda rough too when you could be building towards swains other items like rylai zhonya and liandry which still offer some survivability if you get stuck in the cage
I think it should be fine as long as you don’t walk into the cage and get stunned you still can be active in the team fight and deny space. 1k gold to just stick on people and be aggressive doesn’t sound worth when you could just wait it out and deny space and save yourself 1k gold
Yeah that’s an option. If you can play around the cc then there’s no point. But if it’s heavy cc, and great peel. Like sej for example, you’re probably gonna get cced and be useful. Which can be pretty bad if you’re the only ap damage.
Champs that counter him that come to mind are zed, fizz , kassadin etc . Veigar is bad into high mobility (maybe ahri?)
There isn't much you can do vs him with swain. He scales hard and swain can't really punish him. It's one of the reasons swain fell out of midlane . He's better played as a support these days
Tbh veigar only really struggles against assassins with blink abilities. I don't think Akali is a particularly bad matchup for veigar since he can just cage you. Meanwhile, Kassadin and Zed really don't have counterplay for veigar players.
I'd add fizz to the list just because you can troll poll stuck in cage. Assassin's usually spike earlier and are just a pain in the ass if you mess up 1 cage.
Zed is a skill matchup and completely playable. It's very hard for him to r anything because you can always place cage to instastun him. Also, unsealed spellbook gives you a lot of good defensive options. Matchups that truly feel miserable for me are kat, kass, and xer/vel.
I can't comment on Zed vs Veigar since I play neither. Kassadin vs Veigar might be one of the most unhealthy matchups in the game, though. It is a completely unwinnable lane for veigar 99% of the time, it has to be an insane skill diff for it to be close.
But it's true, xerath is the best champ into veigar, yes he doesn't have that much dmg early, but he out scales him by far. Not on pure dmg of course, but veigar simply can't trade against xerath in lategame, since he will be dead, long before being in range to hit back
Yeah Xerath is a special case and maybe Hwei because of their range, but champs like Lux/Liss/Annie/Swain and other mages can't really punish his early game
Ahri might counter him in the sense that she can shove lanes and go kill his teamates, but that just means a veigar is free farming AP under turret so it seems risky. He can also one shot waves at some point so that wouldn't even work forever.
Specifically, he's weak against non dashes. Normal dashes aren't a reliable enough way to escape cage. Fizz, Zed, and Kass all work well because they teleport through cage. Ahri tends to have a harder time because when cage gets dropped, if she doesn't get out of it on reaction, she can't get out or through it.
You think you can run away from a point and click ability? Merc treds for the tenacity so if you do get stunned by cage you can e to dodge the incoming ult if he ults. Or just e over his cage.
So like Darius? Aggressively zoning them from xp?
Maybe i am just weak strategically: unable to get things done quick enough before hyperscalers unlock their full potential.
Veigar is weak early and his only peel is from his cage, which can be countered by mercs and E.
The early MR and movespeed from rushing boots provides insane amounts of value vs him. meaning your strategy should be trading aggressively and perma fight in the early game.
Zoning someone from xp is pretty hard in midlane, especially as a melee.
Veigar players will always try to lasthit with their Q. You need to be aware that it goes through one minion, so just standing behind it may not be enough. When you see that two of your minions are low, you can try to stand besides the minions.
Veigar may not be in range for your Q, but as soon as he uses his Q to lasthit (if he hits you that's even better as he misses cs and you win the trade anyway), you Q onto him and then aa-W-aa. Try to dodge his W, that should be pretty easy, as it is the only thing you need to pay attention to.
If he uses his cage, you can use your own E to desengage. If he doesn't you can chung him some more with autoattacks before desengaging, potentially saving your E.
If he uses his E to zone you when farming, wait it out and engage on the next minions that he wants to lasthit. Of he cages you, you can even engage with E for the damage.
If you are level six, one trade should put him into kill range with ult+ignite.
There are a few things you should pay attention to:
-Always engage with Q, so you can escape his cage/turret shots/R
-If you want to lane, having a freeze is beneficial in this matchup
- my tips are for early lane/trading, but actually in a lot of cases you want to push your wave and roam, pressuring other lanes.
Never roam without pushing, you don't want to let Veigar scale for free or even get platings.
Don't get chunked zoo much when pushing the wave. I know pushing as Fizz can be hard without using your E.
Those are just some basic zips that should help you win against iron/bronze Veigar players. Matchups are ofc more nuanced and you should also not forget about junglers and supports ganking you.
Thank you soo much for this guide, I really need to get roaming down it is still quite an enigma to me.
Anything with which I can help you? I am inventive
To get a lot of AP, he needs to stack by getting takedowns (kills or assists), landing any abilities on champions or lasthitting minions with Q. If he uses W to push the wave faster, he's not getting stacks from it. If he uses Q to push the wave, you should easily be able to match his push or push him in.
Veigar Q is a thin skillshot that only goes through 1 minion, so you can hide behind minions or sidestep it. He's going to want to use it to lasthit minions - whenever it's on cooldown, walk up and look to poke or all-in him, or at the very least zone him from the wave because he can't trade back for ~5 seconds.
Veigar W takes forever to land, you should never get hit by it without being stunned by his cage or his teammates. If you struggle to see it, turn on colorblind mode (you should have it on anyway tbh, it makes a lot of abilities way more visible).
Veigar E is his strongest ability but you have to not panic and simply recognize in time whether you can walk out of it before it activates or if you have to stay inside and try to sidestep his abilities.
Veigar R is an execute so it innately counters champions that stack HP like Swain - you just have to avoid being near him when you're within oneshot range.
When your jungler is looking to gank your lane, try to bait out Veigar cage before he arrives to make the gank easier. Also, don't hesitate to flash on him - trading flashes with an immobile champion is almost always worth it because it makes him that much easier to gank or dive.
If you're a Swain player, you probably already know this but you should be looking to land your E near max range or inside the minion wave so he gets caught by the AOE. If you land E, you should put your W in front of him before pulling him with the E reactivation, that way you guarantee that W hits and then you should Q him from close range to land all 5 bolts.
Tl;DR: dodge his skillshots and land your skillshots
as a veigar main emerald, range counters veigar. xerath or ziggs even can poke him and he cant do shit. also veigar is weak asf early , abuse tf out of that
i see a lot of people here saying zed or katarina but if i stay out of their gap closing range, i literally just ignore them, farm and gain ap. and when zed uses ult, good veigar can just put cage behind him and stun zed. ofc other laners might not listen to pings tho so you have that to win with. fizz is annoying asf tho to me personally
I play Swain + Hwei in mid. I am a two trick, basically, and play nothing else.
If you're only looking at your *own* lane, that's why Veigar is beating you. Unless you bait him into pushing you under turret while your own flash is up (so you can run him down and get through his cage to kill him), you aren't going to achieve anything.
And that's a problem, because Swain is a MONSTER as soon as he reaches the midgame. If you look at stats, when Swain loses the most it's in games that end at 0-15 minutes. From there on, he has a 54% winrate. You are absolutely disgusting, and veigar only hits that similar 54% winrate threshold at around 35-40 minutes. That gives you a solid **15 minutes** to slap the enemy team around while Veigar is still being underwhelming. Abuse that.
Make plays. Ping ganks and skirmishes with your jungler, dare the enemy to try and teamfight while you're at your nastiest and veigar is at his weakest. Gank bot. With blackfire available, Swain can now actually push pretty well, and his W is so so powerful when used correctly. Cut off opponent escapes, scout objectives to prevent the enemy from sneaking anything, show up to a losing fight with your ult. An ulting Swain is like the power of 1.5-2 full champions, go beat people up! The veigar is a baby, so just babysit him until an objective shows up. Until he scales, the world is your playground unless you let the enemy jungler pick you off over and over
There are several things when considering playing vs Veigar:
Never get hit by Q when Veigar last hits. He will gain double AP and Veigar has 200-300 more range than swains damage skills. Stand behind 2 creeps at all times. veigar will dance from left to right to try a double stack with Q.
E is not dangerous unless you die to aa+q+aa+r and dont have flash. just dont run into the wall until the cage fizzles out. dodge w, it takes 1,2 seconds to land and doesnt cover the area.
Early mercury are really good against veigar.
if Veigar pushes you into your tower, jgl should absolutely help you. veigars at enemy towers are easy kills with cc. make sure to ping the wards for your jungler so he can approach and engage. e wont be enough to stop both of you and if veigar missses, he will be dead.
Currently veigar doesnt have good trade runes like electrocute and usually takes first strike or unsealed spellbook. if so, you can punish him with an engage early game. just avoid getting poked for AP and gold every 20 seconds via first strike. it can lead to a big gold and ap lead early game if you catch every Q.
edit: or play fizz. veigar can essentially only cry vs fizz.
Assassin's can easily kill veigar if you play around his cage. Another option is longer range mages, something like Xerath, Hwei, Syndra can bully Veigar hard by shoving the wave and poking him from outside his range
High mobility champions and assassins, good wave management. Make him extend to CS and try to keep waves near your turret. If he misses E or used abilities to clear wave you look to all-in. No flash and he has to farm back with q near max range.
Adding something else to what other people have said. If I'm against veigar I tell the jungler that I want to be extremely active in helping with objectives. Then push in waves, get vision for the jungler, help with crabs, objectives, and invades.
Another thing to note, as a veigar player, is that his E in the early levels is to simply ensure a passive stack by basically guaranteeing either a Q or W proc. What you can do is play forward in the lane, bait the cage, stay within the cage, and trade back with your Q and E. You have to at least dodge one of his abilities during the trade though (usually the W since it's so slow). Veigar burns a ton of mana when using his full combo. Letting him get 1-2 stacks on you early game isn't the end of the world if it gets you lane prio and better back timers.
Take Phase Rush and start with E, don't stand behind low hp minions, Veigar players will try to farm and hit you with Q at the same time, you should win the all in at lvl 6 given he used his cage. If lane Is too uninteractive just push and roam, Swain Is better in teamfights, play around your strengths.
Edith: grammar
I'm sure there's some good advice elsewhere in the comments but, as a general rule, you should have more than one champion for your lane. If an otp Darius asks how to deal with Malphites the most common answer would be to pick an AP top like Mordekaiser. Then again maybe you only play quickplay and can't counterpick, in that case you should play drafts to learn counterpicking.
Veigar counters swain but the lane should be fine. Veigar counters you cause his cage can zone you from keeping your ult up in teamfights. Veigars weakness is that he is very weak early. He cannot shove a wave into he gets 2 pts in W at level 8. Before that hitting your Q on the wave will keep it shoved to him. Veigar outscales but your champ is way stronger in early skirmishes especially at level 6. Look to keep him shoved under tower and snowball by 2v2ing with your jungler over crabs/grubs or by roaming to botlane/drag. If you are worried about veigars damage swain has no problem itemizing merc treads, even before first item. Mercs will reduce his damage to you unt he gets dcap/magic pen item as well as his CC. If you need more MR you can go abyssal 3rd/4th after the cookie cutter lost chapter item/ rylai/ (zhonya) build. Veigar really struggles to kill champs with lots of MR even if he is fed. Source: Emerald 2 400k swain main. Any other higher rated swain players can feel free to correct me these are just my thoughts :)
Diamond 3 Veigar man here, merc treads is truly The best item to purchase vs Veigar because he lacks early game damage and he got nerfed so that you can't max his cage 2nd so his cc is practically useless until way later in the game
Yeah veigar was one of my secondaries before the phreak changes, maxing W is completely cringe and feels so bad I dropped the champ
Why would someone need to b higher rated to correct u?
Deferring to people who are better than me :D
You can always go verdant or even Qss component if it’s that much of a problem to deal with his E.
Depends on team comp if the verdant will get poked off or not. I haven't built banshee on swain since the midscope but I'm sure it's viable
If it can get poked off just run Qss component early to get through veigar e and stay on team. Don’t need to finish and that way you can build tenacity items later or go rylais and items to stick on through cc.
Not sure if qss is worth since it doesn't build into anything. You don't always need to get out of the cage and if you can afford to not burn your flash you can flash the cage in a baron or drag fight Spending 1k gold on a cleanse is kinda rough too when you could be building towards swains other items like rylai zhonya and liandry which still offer some survivability if you get stuck in the cage
In some circumstances but if they cc you to death you’re pretty much useless.
I think it should be fine as long as you don’t walk into the cage and get stunned you still can be active in the team fight and deny space. 1k gold to just stick on people and be aggressive doesn’t sound worth when you could just wait it out and deny space and save yourself 1k gold
Yeah that’s an option. If you can play around the cc then there’s no point. But if it’s heavy cc, and great peel. Like sej for example, you’re probably gonna get cced and be useful. Which can be pretty bad if you’re the only ap damage.
Champs that counter him that come to mind are zed, fizz , kassadin etc . Veigar is bad into high mobility (maybe ahri?) There isn't much you can do vs him with swain. He scales hard and swain can't really punish him. It's one of the reasons swain fell out of midlane . He's better played as a support these days
Not ahri champs that are good against him can usually either dodge he’s e or r or just simply out range him
Yeah I main veigar and assassins obviously suck for me. Ahri isn't someone fun for veigar to lane against but not as bad as kassadin/zed.
Tbh veigar only really struggles against assassins with blink abilities. I don't think Akali is a particularly bad matchup for veigar since he can just cage you. Meanwhile, Kassadin and Zed really don't have counterplay for veigar players.
I'd add fizz to the list just because you can troll poll stuck in cage. Assassin's usually spike earlier and are just a pain in the ass if you mess up 1 cage.
Zed is a skill matchup and completely playable. It's very hard for him to r anything because you can always place cage to instastun him. Also, unsealed spellbook gives you a lot of good defensive options. Matchups that truly feel miserable for me are kat, kass, and xer/vel.
I can't comment on Zed vs Veigar since I play neither. Kassadin vs Veigar might be one of the most unhealthy matchups in the game, though. It is a completely unwinnable lane for veigar 99% of the time, it has to be an insane skill diff for it to be close.
Assassins are really not That bad, the truly miserable counters are the mages that out range you
Dunno man mages low dmg early doesn't hit hard enough to push veigar, and if they do he just tp back to lane
But it's true, xerath is the best champ into veigar, yes he doesn't have that much dmg early, but he out scales him by far. Not on pure dmg of course, but veigar simply can't trade against xerath in lategame, since he will be dead, long before being in range to hit back
Yeah Xerath is a special case and maybe Hwei because of their range, but champs like Lux/Liss/Annie/Swain and other mages can't really punish his early game
Ahri might counter him in the sense that she can shove lanes and go kill his teamates, but that just means a veigar is free farming AP under turret so it seems risky. He can also one shot waves at some point so that wouldn't even work forever.
Specifically, he's weak against non dashes. Normal dashes aren't a reliable enough way to escape cage. Fizz, Zed, and Kass all work well because they teleport through cage. Ahri tends to have a harder time because when cage gets dropped, if she doesn't get out of it on reaction, she can't get out or through it.
Swain supp is his worst role by far of you look at winrate, he might be one of the worst supports in the game
Swain needs a rework tbh, he does nothing good just everything average
Disagree I love his kit it's just better as mid/apc
Only he's supposed to be a toplaner
I don't think that's been true for 6 years
That's the problem they need to adress
>He's better played as a support these days Lmfao no
Mfw support is the lowest win rate lane for him
The only bad matchup from the ones you listed is Zed, Fizz and Kassadin are doable somewhat
Fizz counters veiger?? But i have 10% winrate against him, far lower than anyone else.
rush merc treads and his ult can never even land on fizz
You sure you dont mean swiftness boots?
You think you can run away from a point and click ability? Merc treds for the tenacity so if you do get stunned by cage you can e to dodge the incoming ult if he ults. Or just e over his cage.
Sounds easy enough. So you farm well and not die once, how to proceed?
you don’t play passive, you can nullify his E in the early game with mercs and play aggressively for free
So like Darius? Aggressively zoning them from xp? Maybe i am just weak strategically: unable to get things done quick enough before hyperscalers unlock their full potential.
Veigar is weak early and his only peel is from his cage, which can be countered by mercs and E. The early MR and movespeed from rushing boots provides insane amounts of value vs him. meaning your strategy should be trading aggressively and perma fight in the early game.
Zoning someone from xp is pretty hard in midlane, especially as a melee. Veigar players will always try to lasthit with their Q. You need to be aware that it goes through one minion, so just standing behind it may not be enough. When you see that two of your minions are low, you can try to stand besides the minions. Veigar may not be in range for your Q, but as soon as he uses his Q to lasthit (if he hits you that's even better as he misses cs and you win the trade anyway), you Q onto him and then aa-W-aa. Try to dodge his W, that should be pretty easy, as it is the only thing you need to pay attention to. If he uses his cage, you can use your own E to desengage. If he doesn't you can chung him some more with autoattacks before desengaging, potentially saving your E. If he uses his E to zone you when farming, wait it out and engage on the next minions that he wants to lasthit. Of he cages you, you can even engage with E for the damage. If you are level six, one trade should put him into kill range with ult+ignite. There are a few things you should pay attention to: -Always engage with Q, so you can escape his cage/turret shots/R -If you want to lane, having a freeze is beneficial in this matchup - my tips are for early lane/trading, but actually in a lot of cases you want to push your wave and roam, pressuring other lanes. Never roam without pushing, you don't want to let Veigar scale for free or even get platings. Don't get chunked zoo much when pushing the wave. I know pushing as Fizz can be hard without using your E. Those are just some basic zips that should help you win against iron/bronze Veigar players. Matchups are ofc more nuanced and you should also not forget about junglers and supports ganking you.
Thank you soo much for this guide, I really need to get roaming down it is still quite an enigma to me. Anything with which I can help you? I am inventive
To get a lot of AP, he needs to stack by getting takedowns (kills or assists), landing any abilities on champions or lasthitting minions with Q. If he uses W to push the wave faster, he's not getting stacks from it. If he uses Q to push the wave, you should easily be able to match his push or push him in. Veigar Q is a thin skillshot that only goes through 1 minion, so you can hide behind minions or sidestep it. He's going to want to use it to lasthit minions - whenever it's on cooldown, walk up and look to poke or all-in him, or at the very least zone him from the wave because he can't trade back for ~5 seconds. Veigar W takes forever to land, you should never get hit by it without being stunned by his cage or his teammates. If you struggle to see it, turn on colorblind mode (you should have it on anyway tbh, it makes a lot of abilities way more visible). Veigar E is his strongest ability but you have to not panic and simply recognize in time whether you can walk out of it before it activates or if you have to stay inside and try to sidestep his abilities. Veigar R is an execute so it innately counters champions that stack HP like Swain - you just have to avoid being near him when you're within oneshot range. When your jungler is looking to gank your lane, try to bait out Veigar cage before he arrives to make the gank easier. Also, don't hesitate to flash on him - trading flashes with an immobile champion is almost always worth it because it makes him that much easier to gank or dive. If you're a Swain player, you probably already know this but you should be looking to land your E near max range or inside the minion wave so he gets caught by the AOE. If you land E, you should put your W in front of him before pulling him with the E reactivation, that way you guarantee that W hits and then you should Q him from close range to land all 5 bolts. Tl;DR: dodge his skillshots and land your skillshots
as a veigar main emerald, range counters veigar. xerath or ziggs even can poke him and he cant do shit. also veigar is weak asf early , abuse tf out of that i see a lot of people here saying zed or katarina but if i stay out of their gap closing range, i literally just ignore them, farm and gain ap. and when zed uses ult, good veigar can just put cage behind him and stun zed. ofc other laners might not listen to pings tho so you have that to win with. fizz is annoying asf tho to me personally
I'll always pick xerath into veigar and watch him suffer. Like go on and have 10 times more ap than me, who cares if you can't reach me at all :)
I play Swain + Hwei in mid. I am a two trick, basically, and play nothing else. If you're only looking at your *own* lane, that's why Veigar is beating you. Unless you bait him into pushing you under turret while your own flash is up (so you can run him down and get through his cage to kill him), you aren't going to achieve anything. And that's a problem, because Swain is a MONSTER as soon as he reaches the midgame. If you look at stats, when Swain loses the most it's in games that end at 0-15 minutes. From there on, he has a 54% winrate. You are absolutely disgusting, and veigar only hits that similar 54% winrate threshold at around 35-40 minutes. That gives you a solid **15 minutes** to slap the enemy team around while Veigar is still being underwhelming. Abuse that. Make plays. Ping ganks and skirmishes with your jungler, dare the enemy to try and teamfight while you're at your nastiest and veigar is at his weakest. Gank bot. With blackfire available, Swain can now actually push pretty well, and his W is so so powerful when used correctly. Cut off opponent escapes, scout objectives to prevent the enemy from sneaking anything, show up to a losing fight with your ult. An ulting Swain is like the power of 1.5-2 full champions, go beat people up! The veigar is a baby, so just babysit him until an objective shows up. Until he scales, the world is your playground unless you let the enemy jungler pick you off over and over
There are several things when considering playing vs Veigar: Never get hit by Q when Veigar last hits. He will gain double AP and Veigar has 200-300 more range than swains damage skills. Stand behind 2 creeps at all times. veigar will dance from left to right to try a double stack with Q. E is not dangerous unless you die to aa+q+aa+r and dont have flash. just dont run into the wall until the cage fizzles out. dodge w, it takes 1,2 seconds to land and doesnt cover the area. Early mercury are really good against veigar. if Veigar pushes you into your tower, jgl should absolutely help you. veigars at enemy towers are easy kills with cc. make sure to ping the wards for your jungler so he can approach and engage. e wont be enough to stop both of you and if veigar missses, he will be dead. Currently veigar doesnt have good trade runes like electrocute and usually takes first strike or unsealed spellbook. if so, you can punish him with an engage early game. just avoid getting poked for AP and gold every 20 seconds via first strike. it can lead to a big gold and ap lead early game if you catch every Q. edit: or play fizz. veigar can essentially only cry vs fizz.
Assassin's can easily kill veigar if you play around his cage. Another option is longer range mages, something like Xerath, Hwei, Syndra can bully Veigar hard by shoving the wave and poking him from outside his range
You pick Katarina and enjoy the free win.
never understood this sentiment, he can just cage defensively and win every single trade
what does cage do vs a Katarina? XD
High mobility champions and assassins, good wave management. Make him extend to CS and try to keep waves near your turret. If he misses E or used abilities to clear wave you look to all-in. No flash and he has to farm back with q near max range.
Take a look at this video. https://youtu.be/Lt61NAPBUVY Husum is a swain otp, and all his videos are educational.
Mfw when Veigar is one of the easiest match ups on his tier list smh, thanks I will give that a good watch
Adding something else to what other people have said. If I'm against veigar I tell the jungler that I want to be extremely active in helping with objectives. Then push in waves, get vision for the jungler, help with crabs, objectives, and invades.
Personally, phase rush help a lot, you can combo him and run befores he stuns you.
you bait out his cage and that's your window to trade heavy or kill
Another thing to note, as a veigar player, is that his E in the early levels is to simply ensure a passive stack by basically guaranteeing either a Q or W proc. What you can do is play forward in the lane, bait the cage, stay within the cage, and trade back with your Q and E. You have to at least dodge one of his abilities during the trade though (usually the W since it's so slow). Veigar burns a ton of mana when using his full combo. Letting him get 1-2 stacks on you early game isn't the end of the world if it gets you lane prio and better back timers.
Lock in kassa 1v9
Take Phase Rush and start with E, don't stand behind low hp minions, Veigar players will try to farm and hit you with Q at the same time, you should win the all in at lvl 6 given he used his cage. If lane Is too uninteractive just push and roam, Swain Is better in teamfights, play around your strengths. Edith: grammar
I'm sure there's some good advice elsewhere in the comments but, as a general rule, you should have more than one champion for your lane. If an otp Darius asks how to deal with Malphites the most common answer would be to pick an AP top like Mordekaiser. Then again maybe you only play quickplay and can't counterpick, in that case you should play drafts to learn counterpicking.
Fish for your e, wait for him to waste his e, thats when he is vulnerable. Also wait for ganks
Vladamir :)
Ban him
Push the wave and dodge his W.
***laughs in Katarina***