If you're not crazy, I suggest you leave now. Nothing personal, but if you're one of those tower-hugging mid carries who won't leave safety for anything more than the occasional sniped creep hit, you won't last long as Singed (or you'll last a very long time but in all the wrong ways).

Singed takes a very special kind of crazy to play effectively. It requires running through minions, champions, and towers like you just don't give a damn--and you don't, because you're a rogue chemist with a 'thing' for people choking to death on your poison cloud. This guide will help you to take your crazy to the next reckless level. Your motto for Singed, now and forever, is, quite simply, "You mad?" Take it however you want to, because it's accurate in every sense.

Pros:
-Great for properly crazy and aggressive players
-A somewhat 'different' way of playing Singed
-Great initiation
-Great disruption
-Great AoE/zone control/etc.

Cons:
-Not a tank
-Requires a team who can take advantage of your disruption/initiation
-Less purely survivable than tankier builds
-Requires great farm (hey, it's Singed! He's the master of farm!)

As noted above, I prefer Magic Penetration Marks, Mp5/Level seals, and CDR/level Glyphs. There are no 'great' Mark choices for Singed and Magic Pen does well enough in helping with your main sources of damage (Fling/Poison trail). The Mp5/Level seals, in combination with what will be your outrageous mana pool, means that by midgame mana will no longer be an issue. The Glyphs are the most preferential--I just 'happen' to have CDR/level slapped into those slots, but they could be replaced with literally anything.

Now let me say this very clearly. You will get triple MS Quints. Say it every morning when you wake up. Mush it out when you're eating your morning bagel. Fall asleep chanting it at night. Movement speed is the bread and butter of Singed.

I go with a 9/0/21 build, though obviously there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to build our favorite Chemist. The magic penetration allows you to be much more painful throughout the game without need to itemize it (unless your opponents stack more MR than Galio on a field day), and I've always preferred Utility to Defense tree for Singed because it gives him...well..Utility. Let's be honest: you're not exactly Captain Tank. You bring disruption and team-supportive insanity to the fight, and the Move Speed (bread and butter, chant it, chant it), self-sustainability, and so forth that the Utility tree grants is too much for me personally to ignore.

For summoner spells I run Tele/Ghost. Ghost is, in my opinion, an absolute essential on Singed. I have chased down a powerballing Rammus with ghost/Insanity Potion, and I have outrun entire teams while they wept painful DoT tears in my poison trail. Tele gives you scary map presence (as if your insane move speed wasn't enough), and is great for a solo-lane Singed.

There are a billion different item builds, preferences, and possibilities out there, and what I have down should not be taken as gospel. However, since this build is meant to be highly damaging and aggressive, I would say that the core items of this build are:

1. Rod of Ages - always and forever. This should be the first major build item you finish without fail.

2. Deathcap OR Zhonya's. There is almost no situation in which you will want to prefer Hourglass over Deathcap, but stranger things have happened. Once you pick up your Deathcap you will literally watch your AP leap from 100-ish to 300-something. Show up in a lane with it on and all of a sudden your opponents will wonder where the hell this pain-fest came from.

3. Lich Bane. A brilliant item on Singed, especially when we're talking about an aggressive build. It gives AP, Mana (and therefore health), and precious, precious Movement Speed. The best part of it, of course, is its passive, which I'll detail more on later.

4. Merc Treads. With the change to Singed's ult to give him CC reduction, popping your R while you have Merc Treads will allow you to sprint through the enemy team like you don't even know what a stun is.

The rest of your aggressive-Singed build is, of course, 'to taste.' I strongly recommend a Sunfire Cape because it gives you even more painful damage to anyone unfortunate enough to (chase/be chased by/be near) you, and gives armor where your build will otherwise probably be lacking it.

-A Force of Nature is always a nice item against AP-heavy or AP-nuke-oriented teams. In combination with a BV and your Lich Bane, mages will have very little to touch you with. Did I mention PRECIOUS MOVE SPEED?

-I would NOT--let me repeat, NOT--recommend a Rylai's. While it's standard on many Singed builds, the idea with this build is less about slowing the enemy and more about hurting them. You WANT them to chase you; you don't care because you're faster. Rylai's takes up a slot that could be used for either another strong AP item or a great defensive item like a FoN.

If you run with 9/0/21 and grab boots at level 1, you'll be boasting a 398 Move Speed and will scare the living piss out of almost anyone you lane against.

Now, I know I said Singed is crazy, but a level 1 Singed can afford some mild therapy. You're not crazy-invincible early on and it's easy to forget. Your main goal is to calculate the appropriate moment to slow, or fling your opponents so that your lane partner can get some hits on them. Killing them might be asking for too much--as usual, the early game is about feeling out your opponents and farming up. And when it comes to farming, you're the king, baby.

Learn to Q. Love to Q. Run singing through minion waves. Pop out of the bushes and run behind your opponents, forcing them to either move forward towards harm or back through your poisony goodness. Q is the minion-farmer, the chaser-punisher, the juke-denier. Oh, I'm sorry. You juked back the same direction in those bushes? Congratulations on running right back into my poison trail. I'm serious. I've had opponents kill themselves that way.

Start getting crazier and crazier as time goes on. Push your Catalyst as early as possible because it's truly invaluable. After you finish your Merc Treads you should be looking to finish your Rod of Ages--I prefer to get my Blasting Wand first and use the extra AP to really farm up for a while (hanging on to that Catalyst is just so great), or you can rush-finish the RoA if you really prefer.

After that, the build starts being up to you. I push for a NLR/Deathcap ASAP and grab Sheen early on in preparation for Lich Bane. All in all, Deathcap/Lich Bane are at the top of your list for finishing up, but play it by ear.

Now, your role in a fight is that of initiation and disruption. You're out in front, poison trailing the minions that approach and keeping the enemy wary. I like to throw down my slow throughout the game even when I'm not actually initiating, because the cooldown's fairly low and it keeps the enemy on their toes. Then, when it's time for a fight, you throw down your W--OMGGHOSTOMGRCHARGEFLINGPUNCHWIN.

Here, I'll slow that one down a bit. Your initiation will almost always involve suddenly popping Ghost and Insanity Potion, lunging at an enemy and flinging them behind you with your E. Now, provided that you've picked a good target (a squishy carry or similar), your E is going to rip a chunk off of their health pool. Now punch. This is where Lich Bane and that respectable AP number comes in. Fling and punch. You've just done 600 damage with Fling and 300-ish with an immediate autoattack. It's a shockingly sudden and painful initiator and will hand almost any squishy character to your team on a silver platter.

Once you've initiated comes the hard part. Now your job is to sprint through the enemy team, spewing poison behind you like you just don't care (pro tip: you don't). If you're used to playing Singed, this is basically the same old stuff. Throw down your W. Fling some stupid SoB who thinks he's getting away. Rinse. Repeat. Poison. Remember to punch something every time you W or E for a cute little 'boom' of extra damage. The rest is just plain formulaic.

-If you're chasing down an enemy, you should always be in front. You have the highest move speed and the best tools for chasing down and slowing the enemy, and the fling to hand them over to your team.

-If you're running from the enemy, you should always be in back. Always be lagging a little bit behind, being just tantalizing enough to make them want to chase, and just poison-traily enough to punish them for doing so. There's nothing wrong with micromanaging your Q.

In short, you'll have a crazy group-damaging initiator sprinting around the enemy team and not giving a damn about anything they're doing. Played right, Singed can be one of the most frustrating characters to play against for his crazy hit-and-run, burst-in-burst-out, off-the-wall-insanity tactics.

Singed is a shock trooper. As in, "I'm shocked that crazy bastard just survived that."