I like Singed. He's Tanky, he annoys the enemy team, he slows, and he's so dedicated to his art that it has all but destroyed his body. Singed is an odd tank because aside from slows, he has little crowd control. He has no stuns or silences and Fling is his only form of disruption. Aside from being able to easily beef up, he doesn't seem like much of a tank which is why I refer to him as the Odd Tank. Luckily for Singed, there are plenty of items and cool tricks that allow him to be more annoying than the enemy originally thought.

I apologize in advance if YouTube decided to make you watch a commercial first
Play Video Play Video

Empowered Bulwark Singed's Passive - Gives Singed 1 health for every 4 mana he has. This ability is why we build Singed with more mana as opposed to straight health items.

Poison Trail Singed's "Q" - Singed leaves a trail of poison behind him that lasts for 3.25 seconds. Enemies that touch the cloud are poisoned for 3 seconds. This is the reason you DON'T CHASE SINGED! This is a toggled ability and will last until you deactivate it. It costs 13 mana per second at all levels and goes on a short cooldown when deactivated.

Mega Adhesive Singed's "W" - Singed throws a vial or adhesive at target location slowing all enemies that pass through it by 35/45/55/65/75% as long as they are in the adhesive plus an addition 1 second after they leave the area. This is one of Singed's more annoying abilities if used properly. It can be used for escape purposes (for yourself or an ally), keep an enemy in range for a kill, prevent ganks, or separate tanks from their carries in team fights. This ability is often underused and underrated by new Singed players.

Fling Singed's "E" - Singed flings an enemy unit of his head dealing magic damage. Great for initiating a single target but be cautious as you don't want to toss a Galio or Amumu into your team.

Insanity Potion Singed's Ultimate or "R" - Singed drinks a mix of chemicals to increase his combat stats for 25 seconds. Stats increased are Health/Mana Regen, Movement Speed, Armor/Magic Resist, Ability Power, and Crowd Control Reduction (does stack with Tenacity).
Play Video

For Runes, I tend to build Singed like a caster of sorts with Greater Mark of Magic Penetration and Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power focusing for defensive Seals Greater Seal of Vitality or Greater Seal of Armor. Lastly I aim for Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed. I like quick champs and I cannot stress enough how importantly mobility is for Singed.

At the beginning of Season 2 I was a rather big fan of going down the Defensive tree, especially Initiator because 350 move speed without boots is nothing to sneeze at. However I've recently become a huge fan of the Utility tree since the addition, or reintroduction, of Strength of Spirit . While you lose out on some movement speed while above 70% health, you get increased health regen as you will be stacking mana and if there's one thing Singed loves more than movement speed, it's mana. While the Defensive tree gives you some survivability and encourages you to be in the fray a little bit more, Utility gives you more sustain (both health and mana). Really it boils down to personal preference but I recommend the Utility build.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only real "mandatory" Summoner ability is Ghost. I usually run either Exhaust (preferred) or Cleanse as my second ability. Heal and Ignite are both decent abilities as well. Further down the list I place Flash as Singed usually doesn't need this ability to initiate and he has decent escapes without it. There is really no reason to take any other ability unless you're trolling.

I always, always suggest starting with Fling as it is much more likely to secure First Blood for you or your lane partner than any other ability however I usually max it last. At level 2 you should grab Poison Trail and work on maxing that by level 9. Depending on how aggressive the enemy lane is, you may want to pick up Mega Adhesive at level 3. If you're not having issues with how aggressive the enemy is playing, grab Poison Trail and push. If you're playing aggressively, you should always try to zone out your enemy and push your minions to the turret and harass the enemy when they attempt to clean up. Your goal early game is to deny farm.

I usually end up maxing Mega Adhesive by level 13 to help my team. As a tank your focus should be on securing kills for your team and saving your teammates from precarious situations and Mega Adhesive is much better at this aspect than Fling.

You should be grabbing Insanity Potion at levels 6, 11, and 16. Insanity Potion is extremely underrated and should be used to help chase/escape the enemy or to give you some sustain in a lane as the cooldown is extremely short.

Because Singed is a tank and only two abilities that benefit from AP ( Poison Trail at 0.3 per AP and Fling at 1.0 per AP), we will refrain from building AP outside of Rylai's Crystal Scepter. As stated in the Abilities section, we will instead focus on stacking Mana/Movement Speed/Resistances.

I tend to start with a Sapphire Crystal and a few health pots. This beefs up your health and gives you more mana to use on Poison Trail. The next items I grab are Boots and upgrade my Sapphire Crystal to either Catalyst the Protector or Glacial Shroud (Catalyst for sustain, Shroud if I need the armor). If I don't think I'm fast enough I rush Boots of Swiftness and Force of Nature before starting on Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Once these items are finished I usually grab Frozen Heart before Banshee's Veil especially against AD heavy teams. I may start Heart of Gold much earlier if I feel I need the health/gold. Lastly, if the game lasts long enough, I build for Randuin's Omen to help in team fights. By this point in time I have more than 250 armor and 150 magic resist which increases the duration of Randuin's active by 2 seconds. While these aren't the only items you can get I prefer these items because they make you annoying enough to target and tanky enough to take almost anything the enemy can dish out.

While Rod of Ages is tempting I cannot stress against it strong enough. While it is a seemingly great items for new Singed players, your Catalyst is better being upgraded to a Banshee's Veil 9 times out of 10.

If you are having an issue with early sustain, you may want to build a Philosopher's Stone which you can upgrade to Shurelya's Battlesong mid-late game instead of Randuin's Omen.

One of the great things about Singed is he is damn good at distracting and pushing. During the laning phase, you can easily out farm and zone your opponents with Poison Trail. While the damage may be weak, a wary enemy knows that you can Fling them into your poison and towards your teammate which can quickly end in your favor. If you can force your enemy to Recall while your minions are at their turret, watch you minimap for your minion waves. When you see your minions about halfway to your turret, it means the enemy minions are the same distance from their turret. At this point you should run past the turret and aggro the minions, taking them out with your poison. This allows your minions to build up on the enemy turret. Be aware of enemies though because you can get ganked if you're too overzealous.

Mobility is the most important aspect of Singed. Without it you can't deal any damage. Because of Poison Trail, you should always be moving to ensure maximum damage. Enemies chasing you? Keep running. They decide to run away? Chase after them, toss your Adhesive then Fling them back into your poison. Always be moving.

If you ever have the need to not only leave but GTFO, a neat trick is to toss Mega Adhesive a short way ahead of you and run across it; when the enemy pursues, juke back behind them and Fling them forcing them to run through the Adhesive again. With Singed's movement speed and the slow, you should be able to get away most of the time unless the enemy has gap closers or you are dangerously low on health. Of course Poison Trail should be on to make the enemy regret chasing you.

One of Singed's biggest weaknesses is Banshee's Veil as he has only one ability with which to pop it, Fling. In team fights, make sure someone on your team can help you pop the spell shield especially on champs with channeled Ults like Nunu & Willump, Katarina, Malzahar, etc.

While everyone wants to live, you should always do your best to keep your carries alive even if it means sacrificing your own life. Then again, between Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Randuin's Omen plus Ghost and Insanity Potion you should be able to get out too. Just make sure never to Fling someone towards your team as they retreat.

So some people have messaged asking for an AP Singed (which was not the primary goal of this guide but as they say, the customer is always right). The stats are a little off on Mobafire but if you do the number crunching yourself, you'll see you have about 677+ AP, around 3551 HP, and 2316 MP, ~94 Armor, and 117 MR. You can certainly dish out damage in this build and take a bit as well however the big loss comes from not being able to protect your team. I won't go into detail about how to play this build currently but suffice it to say, Singed's Poison Trail and Fling are vicious.

I will smooth this section out in the near future and give actual advice for how to play this build as well. I apologize for the hastiness of this section.

1/13/12 - Added brief AP guide at end of original guide