Proposed Singed Update
I’ve played quite a bit of Singed in the past and have about 52,000 experience points on him. While this in no way makes me a Singed expert, or even a Singed main, I did learn enough about his identity and strengths/weaknesses. As much as some Singed mains might hate to admit, his gameplay is extremely gimmicky, and doesn’t even entirely connect with his identity. He currently isn’t harming game health with his role, but he certainly isn’t contributing. Most champs have one or two simple rules to have basic counterplay. With Jax, it’s “don’t think you can duel him right after he finishes clearing a minion wave,” and with khazix it’s “Don’t stray far from your allies or your tower.” Singed’s is famous- “don’t chase the Singed.” The simplest and most effective rule to ever follow. He mostly functions as bait, really obvious bait that gets enemies lost in the jungle at 30% health on a good day or completely ignored on a bad day. Today I’ve been thinking about how he can be updated to keep his core identity while giving him more dynamic gameplay. I'll start with my thoughts on him, but the changes are further in.
Identity Let me start by listing the qualities of Singed that if changed, would gut his identity: Poison Trail, focus on running circles around enemies rather than autoing Speed AP damage Catching / engaging capabilities Innate tankiness Fling and laugh, it’s iconic Most everything else can go. Now let me get into his kit.
Current Kit, taken from lolwiki Passive: Empowered Bulwark – Singed gains bonus health equal to 25% of his maximum mana. BORING. It is useful, but so boring, and I don’t see how a flashy shield manifests itself as 10% of his health bar due to itemization. He does need a lot of mana, but this is a noob trap, where people value mana so much that they actually buy too much. It also really pressures you to start ROA, or Archangel’s Staff, since they both have a charge time. This is the current source for his innate tankiness, this and his ult. To scrap this, I have to move that somewhere else.
Q: Poison Trail - Singed leaves a trail of poison behind him that lasts for 3.25 seconds. Enemies caught in the path are poisoned for 2 seconds and dealt magic damage each 0.25 seconds for the duration. Continual exposure renews the poison. The numbers: 5.5 / 8.5 / 11.5 / 14.5 / 17.5 (+ 7.5% AP) damage per .25 seconds It’s the most important thing about Singed, with his unique style of zoning, to stray far from its current state would be blasphemy of the worst kind. It does a lot of damage if you don’t pay attention, but it can be seriously reduced by magic resist or kiting while in lane, and squishies really feel it mid-late game while tanks just shrug it off, unless you build Liandry’s, preferably with rylai’s, and void staff.
W: Mega Adhesive - Singed covers the target area in a potent adhesive for 5 seconds, slowing all enemies in the area and persisting 1 second after. SLOW: 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 / 75% I mean, it’s there, and I guess he makes good glue according to his lore. It’s good for catching people, but so is his ult, and ghost, and whatever items you may be building, and if you build rylai’s, using this on already poisoned enemies has diminishing returns. Not very good peel, but it enhances fling’s peel. This is just not the most effective spell in its own right, and with a kit as simple as Singed’s- that’s bad.
E: Fling - Singed flings the target enemy over his shoulder, dealing them magic damage that is capped against minions and monsters. If the target lands onto his Mega Adhesive, they are temporarily rooted. MAGIC DAMAGE: 50 / 65 / 80 / 95 / 110 (+ 6 / 6.5 / 7 / 7.5 / 8% of target's maximum health) (+ 75% AP) ROOT DURATION: 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 Good design, great fun. If they won’t walk into your poison, you put them in your poison. Also great peel for 1 frontline tank every 10 sec, provided you fling them AWAY from your carries. It’s also nice for securing kills and cs if you’re desperate.
R: Insanity Potion - Singed drinks a potent brew of chemicals, granting himself ability power, bonus armor, magic resistance, movement speed, health regeneration and mana regeneration for 25 seconds. Now who doesn’t love stats? The enemy team will cringe in terror from the additional 35 / 50 / 80 points in various places on the top left of their screen. Very important for catching enemies or getting away, but sometimes you just want to get in range to harass, not burn a 100 cd ult and go all in.
Now that you’ve skipped over the last section, we can get into my vision for the champion. He is one champ that you don’t really want to push to his tower, since he is amazing at following up on ganks, breaking sieges, or just flinging you into turret aggro, and I don’t want to change that. He is a very utility based frontliner, if that utility comes from items and fling peels, and believe that death is the best cc. That needs a bit of an update. I suggest a more dynamic damage system for him. In reality, poison gas doesn’t just kill you, it makes you sick, and the more injured you are, the more susceptible you are. This will be in his new passive.
Proposed Kit New passive: Side Effects – When Singed deals ability damage to enemies, he applies the Side Effects debuff, which slows them by 10%, and an additional 1% per 4% of their missing health, up to a maximum slow of 35%. It also reduces their sight range by 1% per 3% of their missing health, up to a maximum of 33%. This reduces their damage output by 1% for every 10% missing health, up to a maximum of 10% This effect expires 3 seconds after taking damage from w and e, but expires only 1 second after poison damage stops. This way, Singed’s presence is very noticeable, and if you were to break the cardinal rule and chase him, you would sorely regret it. The sight radius reduction is not as strong as nearsighted. You would still be able to see everything in your teammates’ and wards’ vision, but it makes you more prone to being snuck up on, and if you’re at 10% health you want to be extra careful you already warded up. Technically this should just apply to the poison, but let’s just say he is toxic enough that his other abilities apply it too. This severely reduces the need for rylai’s, although it is not entirely useless.
**Slightly changed Q: Poison Trail **– The damage numbers get an overhaul from flat damage (5.5 / 8.5 / 11.5 / 14.5 / 17.5 (+ 7.5% AP) damage per .25 seconds) > to > (2.75 / 4.25 / 5.75 / 7.25 / 8.75 (+ 3.75% AP) + 1% (+1% per 400 AP) max health per .25 seconds) To simplify that, it does half the flat damage, but is more effective against health tanks, with 4% (+ 1% per 100 AP) max health damage per second. Now, just building health does not make champs safe, but magic resistance is still a strong counter. If that’s the case, just build void staff. This reduces the need for liandry’s but still leaves it as a good item. Now carries can worry less about touching poison, although they still die faster than tanks do. If a Singed player wants to do more damage to them, he can buy luden’s, and he can focus them with his other abilities.
New W: Charging Bulwark – Singed is ghosted and gains 50% movement speed and 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% damage reduction in the direction he is moving for 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 seconds. The shield changes directions as he does. Enemies that Singed runs over are stunned for .5 seconds, take damage equal to 150% ad, and enemies can only be affected once. 20 sec static cd Admittedly this sounds like quite a loaded ability, and it is gamechanging, but it leaves him vulnerable once he has used it. This becomes his only innate tankiness, and can either be used as an engage tool or an escape tool, or as a method to move around in teamfights. It has particular emphasis on engage, singe the damage reduction is wasted when he is running away (a nerf to Singed’s baits to balance out his new passive). He is extremely hard to kite for damage with this ability up, but he is affected heavily by cc. One possible combo with fling is for him to run over enemies, poison and stun them, then allow them to pass and press e to fling them back. The cooldown is static because it could be exploited late game with high cdr. I gave it an ad ratio because he seems to be the only champ that’s completely unaffected by ad, and I felt like throwing gunblade a bone since I’m taking away his ult’s sustain.
Slightly Changed E: Fling – max health damage changed to current health damage I won’t give him 2 abilities with % max health damage. This shouldn’t be the biggest change, but makes it more effective in the beginning of fights, making the passive stack up faster.
New R: GAS!! – Singed throws a gas bomb that takes 2 seconds to land (1000 range) and creates a circular cloud of powerful poison that expands to 1000 radius (radius, not diameter) over 1 second. The poison lasts 4 seconds after it has completely expanded, deals the same damage as the q poison(scales with level of q), and applies the full effect of the side effects passive in addition to the normal effect based on missing health. 140 / 130 / 120 second cd This is a powerful teamfighting tool and siege breaker. I thought rather than just make him run faster to apply poison, give him the tools to affect an entire area. To clarify the interaction with the passive, I’ll give an example. If an enemy is caught in this poison and has half health, it is slowed by the normal 22.5% plus the maximum slow of 35%, were he at 1 health, to a total of 57.5%. The other effects are applied the same way. This gives him power against an enemy team with full health, and a near guaranteed kill to low health enemies, with a maximum 70% slow, 66% sight range reduction, and 20% damage reduction. Because this is so strong, it is balanced by taking 3 sec to spread to full size, and then only leaves a short window for his teammates to follow up. After level 6, if Singed sees several enemies attempt to take a tower, he can ult and almost singlehandedly stop the attempt. We can’t allow him to have that kind of control up all the time, so it has a high cooldown.
In review, this new kit would make his play more dynamic, more teamplay-oriented, less focused on forced little interactions between skills, and make his build path a lot more flexible. The numbers are almost definitely off, but hey, it’s an attempt at being balanced without doing intense calculations. Sorry for writing a book, but I wanted to be thorough. Singed mains, Singed haters, and maybe even riot employees, tell me what you think.