How to make Nasus a better juggernaught

Sasogwa··3 votes·585 views

Introduction : as the juggernaught rework came, juggernaughts were identified to be melee champions that get kited extremely easily and bring poor utility to a teamfight, mostly damage and being a guy you don't want to get close to, else he will easily kill you. However, before the rework they weren't in a good spot because they were outshined by tanks. Indeed, even if they do more damage, the damage difference is irrelevant when you take in account the fact most of the damage is dealt by the backline and tanks are simply better at protecting it or CCing the enemy backline. What came with this rework is a change of base stats, scalings and itemization mostly based on AD-HP items that had poor synergy on tanks but great synergy on juggernaughts, like item 3071 which allows to deal efficiently with armor stacking and crush a guy that's built tank. What's weird with Nasus is though his identity is one of a juggernaught (guy that gets kited but is pretty beefy when comes melee fights) he doesn't have the same scalings of a juggernaught at all. He scales very poorly with AD and health, and greatly with CDR, spellblade items and resistances. He doesn't benefit at all from juggernaught items. That makes him in a weird spot because once his Q is stacked he has strong power against squishies but just can't use it as he gets kited, meanwhile when fighting opposing frontline, which is basically what he should do as a juggernaught, he doesn't have anything else than his ult. Granted, the ult is quite decent, but overall, a bit of MR and it doesn't do that much damage, also the damage/second is capped. He doesn't have something like %armor cleaving (quick reminder that %armor pen/cleave is good against tanks, while flat armor pen is good against squishies therefore Nasus E is way better against squishies than it is against tanks) or sustain based on a tanky stat he buys (think Darius Q/ Illaoi tentacles healing in %missing health) or, idk, % health true damage (Garen, Fiora).

That said, we can see that Nasus scalings are slightly overdated. He's good against squishies but can't reach them, he's not really good as fighting tanky dudes when it's the only guys he should be fighting. That makes him quite a weird pick as he can be stronger in low elos where he can easily reach the backline as people are just bad at peeling/kiting/denying Nasus stacks earlygame, and kinda trash at high elo (mid-high diamond + )

What I suggest is really simple; making him a better lifesteal tank by allowing him to ignore his opponent's armor while lifestealing. But the values are adjusted for it to be balanced

New passive : Nasus gains 10/15/20% Lifesteal. The lifesteal from passive is halved against champions (!) but it ignores armor and damage reduction (applies before accounting resistances). Additional lifesteal from items/masteries works normally (does not ignore armor).

Overall, the power level of Nasus is exactly the same in earlygame (you'll just hit minions, and it might even be a slight nerf since lifesteal is divided by 2 against champions even if it ignores armor).

It's not really a huge buff in lategame actually. 10% true lifesteal is good for fighting tanks but he still dies easily to focus in teamfights, it's hardly a difference against squishies (actually close to a nerf, but at that stage of the game lifesteal is somewhat irrelevant compared to carries damage). I just think it would help him in his identity to be more of a lifesteal juggernaught that goes frontline and just fights the opposing frontline. Not being forced into a must-flank or splitpush to be relevant.

4 Comments

TheDogIsOut1 votes

Did expect more than just a passive change, but yeah why not? Or we could just make him have synergy with juggernaught itemization by making his E and/or R physical damage instead of magical so it procs black cleaver. If we're effectively looking at just slightly changing him to feel more like a juggernaught and not actually buffing him, since his winrate is fine.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

The only thing nasus needs is his Q stacks up to a cap of about 200-400 and every "x" stacks gives additional effects.

That and have his W apply on his E stacking the longer someone stays in it and give him a new skill and if the new skill fixes some stuff they can even give a new passive.

nami tf1 votes

Maybe make his lifesteal proportionate to the number enemies around him, up to, say, 50% for four enemies. Like an Irelia passive.

Sasogwa1 votes

I like some of the suggestions here, except the stacks capped (Nasus infinite scaling is really his identity we can't remove that without killing the fun). Though I don't think BC would be a good purchase anyway if he dealt physical damage (gives really bad stats for laning as nasus) ; and the lifesteal suggestion based on the number of opponents, well it's actually a quite nice idea but I'm sure some people would just see the high lifesteal percentage and say it's broken :( just like a bunch of ppl saw nasus in the title and since they don't like the champ instantly downvoted.

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