Boring Passive rework #3: Singed
TL;DR: Instead of getting mana for health, he should go faster the more damaged he is. This fits his player fantasy of getting away at low health better.
INTRODUCTION
One of the reasons I like Lol's champions so much is their interesting and unique passives. They allow kit differentiation, enjoyment and playstyle diferrence with a minimum of knowledge burden and mechanical ability. Without passive's the diverese playstyles of katarina, ryze and karthus would not be possible, and they would just feel like reskins of talon, swain and cassiopeia respectively.
Nevertheless, there are many champions who have extremely bland and uninteresting passives. These passives are usually stats passive that give power but are never considered in the champions gameplay (except when buy items).
Riot dislikes invisible power such as aura's and free stats for this reason; anything that takes up a part of the champion's power budget but does not feel impactful is probably a waste. I believe thus Riot would agree with me that making more discernable power from your passive is better; this is evidenced by their most recent reworks. Ryze, Gangplank, and Fiora all got their passives changed from always-on stat increases (CDR, DOT, and Hp5) to discrete power moments (Cast all the spells, True damage + ms, True damage + heal).
As riot mentioned in Draven's passive rework, some champions have a base kit which is probably too strong to put power into their passive. Thus all these passive reworks will have the goal to be power neutral; instead just requiring more presence of mind to utilize. Furthermore, the passives should build on the achetype that current theme and gameplay suggests. They should also use a minimum of new art, coding and animation assets to lower the Load on Riot.
GOALS
To recap, Singed's Passive is Mana Shield: Singed gains health equal to 25% of his max mana.
This passive is part of the yawnable stat conversion passives, and thus has the following problems:
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No earlygame impact. Passives should feel impactful earlygame since the are the only skill people are garunteed to have at level 1 (Syndra is a big offender here). Since singed's base health is low, this passive does nothing until you back, even if you do opt into building mana.
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Build restriction. Singed is pushed into building mana items due to his passive; if the game requires him to build defensively he will be worse off than another bruiser or tank (since for balance reasons his base health is reduced to compensate)
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No impact on enemy gameplay. Rammus and Galio's stats conversion cements their anti-physical/anti-magic niche, and akali's passive forces enemies to burst her instead of poke her down. Singed's mana or health is what it is and doesn't change enemy behaviour.
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Often irrelevant or a trap. There are no mana regen items for tanks; as well riot does not balance tanky mana items with singed in mind. Either tanky mana items are good enough for AP bruisers with mana problems to buy, or they are not. In past patches ROA, righteous glory, frozen heart etc. were so bad maokai & co would not buy them, and neither would singed. Now ROA and righteous glory are good so maokai& co buy them, and singed buys them too, whether or not he had this passive. Thus singed will buy mana items because they are good items; his passive doesnt make mana items worthwile when other AP bruisers would not buy them.
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No impact on own gameplay. You have this health no matter what you do; hence it doesnt change what you do.
Riot had a similar situation in the fiddlesticks mini-rework. Previously dread was just a flat damage increase that didn't affect either players decisions. Now dread signifcantly affects both players. Some decisions it now promotes include: A fiddlesticks now should seriously consider running around in ult instead of instantly zhonyas, he should stand in a bush before ganking instead of just rushing in, enemies should consider saving cc for after his drain instead of during it if they feel like they will win the fight.
I believe I can provide a similarly fitting and fun passive rework while keeping minimal mindspace. My objectives for the passive is that:
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It should strengthen Singed's niche;
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have thematic, lore and gameplay resonance;
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be simple to understand;
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easy for Riot to implement;
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Easy to balance;
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be fun;
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Have impact on singed's and enemy gameplay
#Proposal
My proposal for Singed's new passive is Madman's Strength: Singed gains 1 ms per 1% missing health
The idea for this passive is that the reason people main singed is for the feeling you get as the enemy team blows 3 ults and an ignite on you, yet you escape with a sliver of health as the 5 enemies chasing you die to poison. Similar to Olaf, singed loves fighting at low health; he just wants people to chase him wheras Olaf wants people to manfight him. Thus a copy of Olaf's passive makes a lot of sense: As signed if you are not bursted down you should be able to escape and Olaf should be able to outfight you if you dont burst him down.
###Strenthening Singed's Niche.
Singed's micro niche is a kiting tank, whereas his macro niche is a annoying wave pusher that is very hard to kill. This passive helps both these niches since obviously ms helps him kite other champions and if the people trying to kill him don't time their burst correctly he should have an easier time escaping. His previous passive is more conductive to a braindead unkillable ball of AOE damage; that niche is already quite full with volibear, garen, mundo, tankdyr and shyvanna and it is good to push him away from that. Finally, this passive boosts his survivability while not increasing his initiation; there are already many intiation tanks but singeds w, e and rylais q are uniquely suited to disengage/kite.
###Thematic resonance.
Singed is a mustache-twirling evil scientist straight out of a Bond movie. He commits horrible atrocities all around runterra with no regard for human life, yet always gets away with his trademark evil laugh. Similar to a saturday morning villain, he is easy to beat but always gets away.
###Gameplay resonance.
Singeds entire kit is about baiting people into thinking they can kill you and then getting away with a sliver of health. Hence a passive which gives you a massive speed boost at low health but is weak when at full health makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, the aoe of his q directly scales with movement speed and the goo snare combo usually requires a large ms difference to land.
###Simplicity
You get lower, you go faster. Easy.
###Easy to implement
This passive is very similar to soraka or olaf's passive, minimal coding is required. A speedup partcile like on sivir's passive might be good, but that is very easy. Switching the icon with R or making a new icon might be required since a big shield doesnt make any sense.
###Be fun.
The highlight of every singed main's (including myself) day is escaping the whole enemy team at low health. Just out noodle-slapping another tank to death is not fun; if singed players enjoyed that they would be playing mundo or garen instead. Thus it makes sense to make a passsive that promotes the former and get rid of a passive that promotes the latter.
###Impact singed's gameplay
Now singed has a bunch of interesting decisions; should he try to intiate with ghost and then use passive to get away when low? Or should he wait for another player to initiate and halfway through the fight pop ghost for an even faster trip to their backline? If your jungler is ganking soon should you take a bad trade to make sure they can't escape? In an all-in should you pop ult early for the extra resistances for their first rotation or should you pop it mid fight so that you can keep your passive up for longer?
Secondly this opens up singeds itemization; now singed can build items that fits the situation without feeling like they are wasting part of their kit.
###Impact opponents gameplay
Opponents now have interesting reactions to this passive, insted of just having more health to burn through. His low movement speed when he is at full health makes him vulnerable to poke. Furthermore, his slipperyness at low health incentivises holding your burst and cc till he is low instead of using them immediately as you usually do. However if your cooldowns are short enough to allow getting an extra rotation off you should probably not hold your spells.
###Easy to balance.
As a simple low ms increase this is very easy to buff or nerf if it is found to be UP/OP without destroying its identity. The fact that it is per missing health prevents abuse by health stacking, and since it is flat ms it only stacks additively with the other permanent movement speed items (DMP, swifties) and singed's r. It will stack additively with other % bonuses, but since he won't build zeal and %ms is always temporary (raptor cloak, RG, ghost) it should not be too abusable. If it is found to feel unimpactful it could grant slow resist at below 40% hp; if it feels to impactful at high health % it could only activate below 40% hp like soraka passive.
From a numbers point of view, this passive is hardly op. Since 1% AS is worth more than 1 ms (compare dagger to boots1) this passive is hardly op when compared to olaf (2000 gold value of ms at 1hp compared to 2500 gold value of as at 1hp). As far as power budget it is not that much stronger that DMP passive (situational movement speed which averages out to about 50 ms extra). Compared to his previous passive which gives ___ Health for ___ Mana. This is important since the large majority of singed's power budget is in his q and r; his passive should not be too strong such that those things are required to be nerfed. This change would also allow his horrible health per level and mana costs (singed's w is by far the worst mana efficient skill in the game; it starts at 100 mana and gets 10% slow (no cooldown, snare or damage improvements) for 10 more mana with level. Although he is already slower than some ranged champions (graves, im looking at you), he may have to have his base ms slightly nerfed by 5 or 10 ms so he is not faster till sub 80% health.
TL;DR: Instead of getting mana for health, he should go faster the more damaged he is. This fits his player fantasy of getting away at low health better.
