SSO Looper Top lane Singed

Jang Looper Hyeong-seok

Top Laner for Samsung Galaxy Ozone

Intro

Not much is known about Looper before the season 3 world championship. He came in as a sub for SSO Homme who had been under performing in the spring split of the OGN tournament. Although Ozone didn't perform too well in the world championship, Looper certainly turned some heads. He is a monster on Singed, let him farm and he will take your team apart on his own. The few games that Ozone one were due to Looper's Singed getting big through farming. 

Cheat Sheet

The Desk

Looper's Singed is extremely strong, his build path makes Singed a monster tank. He typically starts out with doran's ring and 2 health pots or he will start out with doran's shield when he is in a 2v1 situation. Early game he has absolutely zero interest in killing his lane opponent. One thing he will consistently do is to push the wave at level 1, while this does leave you vulnerably it allows you to hit level 2 before your opponent. Looper does something very interesting, he will push the lane very hard for the first couple waves. When the wave hits the enemy tower he will back very early and buy what he can. After this he will immediately use teleport and continue pushing. However since he went back he would have bought a ward and now he is able to farm safely. During the early game your teleport is actually not that great for ganking lanes. This is because once you teleport your going to lose all the farm top lane and you won't gain anything in the other lanes in terms of objectives as your team most likely won't have enough damage to take dragon or towers early on. You should only get your W when you hit lvl 7 as it isn't worth the investment early in game due to the mana costs. Also if your running teleport it is very unlikely that you will kill someone before lvl 7, its better to have more points in Q so that you can farm easier. Once you hit lvl 7-8 you should start farming behind the tower, not only does this pressure the top lane but also forces the enemy jungler to react to your pushing. As you will most likely occupy both the top laner and jungler your team is free to push objectives. After you get your spirit visage you are basically a pushing monster, with your ult on it is very hard for the enemy team to kill you. This build isn't a damage focused build, the prupose of this is to be annoying Singed who won't die but will kill the entire team.

Applying to Solo Queue

After applying this to solo Q I found that you can bully people out of lane very easily. Due to your doran's ring you actually have quite a lot of damage pre 6. However don't go looking for kills, let the top laner attack you then fling him into your minions so he takes damage from them as well as you. Really this build shines after you get spirit visage, I found myself able to tank almost anything. The comeback potential is also huge, even if you have a terrible early game using this build allows you to become an immense tank and come back. For example in one of my games I was against a top lane Vladimir, which is a very hard match up for singed. I miss played a lot and had a lot of pressure from the enemy jungler. I was 1/5/0 in lane after the first few minutes. However I just kept farming and waiting to use my teleport to help my team. I ended the game 7/7/13 which is not bad considering my less than stellar start. The reason I was able to come back was due to me using teleport to help my team and yes their Vlad was 5/1/0 but there is a problem with that. The last 0, he had no assists, there is no point in getting ahead in lane if you don't share that advantage with the rest of your team. If you ever get ahead in lane, don't just keeping killing the 0/3 Singed, you should go roam and help your other lanes. It would even be better if you went and stole some of the enemies wraith camps instead of just sitting in lane.

Final Thoughts

The pressure you can apply with Singed in top lane is immense, you basically force the enemy jungler and sometimes even midlaner to come top. This is also why I like running teleport, if they do come top and you escape you can then go to base heal up and teleport to your team to take objectives. As a Singed player you have to have an objective focused mindset and let your team know that they should take objectives.