Growing The Meta, A Weekly Conversation on bring more champs into the Meta

A fun and pleasant place to share what would make our more neglected champions more fun to play, even if they stay in the absolute dumpster, remember summoners its only ELO. Remember to tune in next Week for our next Neglected Champion.

Today's Neglected Champion is the monster himself, Singed. The Mad Chemist So, for those who aren't fans of MagirkarpUsedFly, you may not know rule two of league of Legends: "Don't Chase SInged" which is pretty good advice, however singed does suffer form some major problems when being chased. Those unfamiliar with singed, I shall suggest you look up his kit for full details, but his playstyle is basically farm hard, and trap people in lanes or else you lose all your towers. An absolute scaling monster, Singed is notorious for going 0/15/0 and winning the game purely off of map pressure and causing other people to waste their life chasing him instead of defending, ganking, and farming all the while he gains gold from ridiculous CS. In late game Singed is a monster tank, disrupting team fights and diving backlines in the absence of a high CC front line. Singed is a powerful champ who can easily run away with a game by strong dodge mechanics and superior macro gaming but is severely team dependent. On the occasions that Singed does become the unkillable monster with 200 CS at 20 minutes (I know right?) the game becomes miserably unplayable for the enemy team who must face the choice of losing their base or letting Singed get even stronger while they get gold starved. In essence, Singed is a champion who can run away with a game in the presence of less map aware enemies and makes the game miserable and tilting for the enemy team. It is very much so Psychological warfare with Singed.

So now that we have a basic grasp of his playstyle, lets talk why Singed isn't Meta. Simply put, its because Singed isn't playing League of Legends. Almost every other champion plays the same siege based strategy game we all know and love from our favorite developers a Rito Games, but Singed does not. Singed plays a endless game of whack-a-mole that never quite goes away. Much like a bad rash. He falls into a very small sliver of champions that rely solely on scaling and the team, and honestly wouldn't play this game any differently if there were enemy champs or not. He produces map pressure, lots of it, by drawing attention from every lanes as well as forcing people to endlessly clear minions waves instead of roaming. He basically locks down the game. Its a drastically different game mentality focusing on a much larger idea of the game

But if Singed has such a powerful play style why don't people play him more?

Its simply because the one counter to Singed is to kill him quickly. Champions that can effectively run Singed down and prevent his GG Singed escapes. With the popularity of highly mobile junglers like  and early damage assassin junglers like . However the most punishing thing to Singed players was the shakeup of the jungle Meta at the beginning of season 7. Oddly enough, the alterations of leashing and buff timers have made it an entirely viable part of jungling to come and chase singed early, disrupting his proxy without drastically punishing junglers who do not rapidly clear their small camps. Because its always worth it to ghost as Singed at the early proxy, this usually isn’t a problem but with low armor values and health pools, singed can very easily be run down by weak slows and small mobility advantages which can significantly upset the entire style of Singed gameplay. Truly there is no counterplay to proxy Singed other than to prevent him from farming. However the entire minigame of Singed falls away in the presence of small slows that allow for early cheese.

So, let’s talk about what would make Singed Meta. Well easy enough, Singed is almost Meta worthy and it is only the early cheesing which frees up lanes to out rotate allies who fall behind. Singed passive is pretty much what blocks him. It is incredibly rare that anyone builds mana on Singed, between RoA and biscuits, it's nearly impossible to have any real mana issues, due to the absurd regen and low cooldown of his ultimate. As well as this, it gives a fairly significant jump in damage for Singed and superior sustain. Tear, is a valid build path but only in extremely circumstantial games and even when tear is a viable option, Liandrys and Rylais often make a better combo as well as because it allows Singed to kill all the low damage tanks he is zoning instead of just having a wet noodle battle with them. Singed Passive is nearly useless, if it was a two way street, it would work usefully, in the same reciprocal way that Ryze passive links AP and Mana, Singed could benefit from linking Health and Mana. However, this still doesn’t fix Singed’s single biggest game play flaw, the early chase. Even in games where singed doesn't build RoA, such a full tank peel based games, Singed can still effectively clear with Thornmail and Sufire without taking any damage or pending mana. In fact, Thornamil, Sunfire, Warmogs, Deadmans, Spirit Visage, Mercs on singed, is probably one of the most effective true tanks.

The solution is simple, change it to a slow resistance scaling with percentage missing health it would go something like this:

**Passive: Hot Pursuit- ** For every 5% of missing health, Singed gains 1% Slow Resist as well as shortening the duration of all immobilizing Hard CC effects by the same amount. Total Slow Resistance and CC reduction can not exceed 30%

WIth this Singed could make it through the early game and move it to the Macro game every SInged aspires to play on and truly make it about the skill of the players not just cheesy champions early.

Of course, even with this Singed will still have his counters as appropriate. They will often include, Nasus, Jayce, Chamille, Vayne, Gangplank, Malzahar, and Warwick in no particular order. The strong scaling of Vayne and Nasus competes with Singed, Malzahar and Warwick have the lockdown to trap Singed, and Chamille and Jayce will have the range and mobility to effectively kill Singed without being punished heavily in lane. Chamille and Jayce are just generally the counters to Proxy, and appropriately so that everything has a counterplay. But at present, Riot could easily expand the pool of Meta champs with such a simple tweak that would make singed more fun without making him much more powerful.