Nasus could do with a mini-rework

since riot's giving a lot of much-needed love to juggernauts lately, and Nasus isn't doing so hot right now, I think it would be a good time to talk about him and his place in league. I think Nasus is plagued by a couple of issues that could be solved in a relatively small-scope update, to make him less of a strain to balance

• Late game fantasy

this is the original selling point of Nasus, that you can farm up and then become a late game monster. this is probably central to what i find his other flaws to be; his inability to fight tanks (which is supposed to be a staple of carry-type juggernauts, or carries in general), and his sort of 'noob trap' design with Q

• Can't deal with tanks

this is the easiest to address. Nasus just does not work well against tanks or in tank metas, because he just doesn't have the means to put a dent in them after they have 2 armor items or more. this also worsens his ability to sustain off of them, which will be compounded if/when that new GW tank item comes out. so my suggestions are thus;

• change his passive to heal for a flat value, based on his Q damage (either a flat value that scales up with stacks, or a direct % of his Q damage) and

• change his E into % reduction. (if too powerful, change his E to % penetration so that only he can benefit from it)

the first change, I think is ultimately beneficial because it gives him target agnostic sustain, which is common for newer juggernaut designs (Darius, Illaoi, Yorick and Udyr all have this). his sustain with a becomes worse, so it's a hit to his early draintanking and by extension, his early game, but I think with the right tuning he would be allowed to have much stronger lifestealing capabilities in the mid-late game.

the second change should be obvious enough; Nasus needs some tank-busting power. for a champion who is both meant to be a carry and is an immobile melee, not being able to hurt tanks makes it difficult to want to anything except split push, and Nasus is one of the most binary splitpushers in the game. So, I think some power should be levied into making him more able to teamfight, by letting him work through the front line a little more quickly.

• Q is a noob trap

this is more of a player-by-player thing. nasus Q gives the promise of infinite scaling, and thus an immensely powerful late game when given the time to stack it, but because of the nature of nasus in his current state many higher ELO players simply go for maxing E and putting off his stacking entirely, in favor of early-mid game strength, because Q max doesn't yield enough reward in coordinated play. i think my changes listed above address that somewhat; if he's given a late game that actually matters, I think he'll naturally gravitate back into Q max builds.

• R sucks

this isn't really as important but I still want to complain about it. it has a really funky cast time at the start of it, which makes it difficult to R in clutch situations since you might die before actually getting your bonus health, even though you KNOW you pressed R. in addition to that, the time when your ult makes you the tankiest is right before it expires and leaves you with nothing. this actually makes it worse to kite Nasus, too, because when he reaches you, he'll be tankier than when his ult started. if nothing else i think it should be changed to just one flat value through the whole ult, or a scaling % of his bonus armor/MR, instead of the 'ramping up' flat values.

let me know what you think