Nasus state, does he fill the niche he should?

Hi everyone, I'm Sasogwa and I'm here to share my thoughts about Nasus, which has been my main for many years, since I started playing pretty much, in season 2. First off, I'd like to make sure my point is clear. It's not straight up a "buff Nasus pls" thread. I would like you not to just see "nasus" and be like, meh nasus is fine, downvote and move on. I'd like you to see my entire point and if you disagree to tell me what you think so that I could learn more about your point of view. So, Nasus. The infinite scaling champion by excellence. A juggernaught/bruiser that is supposed to be the weak early/lategame god. But let's talk about what he currently is. Nasus' earlygame is pretty average, he can survive against most matchups if they're not too agressive, but with the help of enemy jungler he can get dove rather easily and shut down well in high elo. He needs stacks to be relevant so he can't help his team at all earlygame and stay for long fights in the jungle or else he will fall off harder than any champion. So since he stacks infinitely and he's not supposed to be a good earlygame champion, that part is actually fine. Then the midgame depends on how well he survived. The thing is unlike most champions, Nasus automatically snowballs of nothing happening in the game. Since he is more stack dependant than item reliant, he becomes more powerful off that. If there are a lot of kills in both teams and everyone gets a lot of items, it's actually bad for Nasus. Nasus is happy if lategame doesn't come too soon. That's why a buff to gold generation is an indirect nerf to Nasus, but since it wouldn't be fair to rebalance all gold generation just for the sake of the dog, we won't consider this option. Nasus stacking is linear, and it's easier to farm in laning phase/midgame than lategame teamfights where death timers are too important to afford to ignore the rest of the map and farm. That means his power curve is rather linear, slightly grows less in lategame but the curve never stops. If i were to put that in a graph :

Nasus power ^ l......................................o l.............................o l......................o l...............o l........o l...o l--------------------------------------------------> time

Actually, his power is slightly multiplied by cdr, the fact you can use your Q faster, so the growth is even more important by midgame, and comparatively the curve's even slower by lategame, even if it never ends (!) But at the same time, carry and usual lategame champions have an exponential curve due to the multiple scalings they have (just think of ad carries, ad multiplied by attack speed and crit and armor pen and lifesteal comes as a % scaling as well, everything is multiplicative and the curve is exponential - like). It could start higher than Nasus because Nasus early is kinda trash but would still look like that (below). Their curve would be more like :

Carry/lategame champion power ^ l....................................................o l..................................................o l..............................................o l........................................o l...............................o l...................o l.....o l-------------------------------------------------> time

But it brutally stops at 6 items, while Nasus curve continues. Sorry I had to put points before the o's which represent the curve, because the text editor doesn't show more than one space. I hope you understand the curve and it's not too confuse.

The thing is when we compare this curves, we notice something. Nasus powerspike and where he is strong. It's not lategame, it is midgame. And that is if he didn't fall behind too hard/ was chainkilled. Yes he continues scaling after everyone reaches 6 items, but that is hardly relevant ! How many games have you seen where Nasus kept freefarming and the game was drawn out long after everyone reached 6 items! I bet not much, and those were probably weird games where people didn't play to a very high level. So if you believe Nasus is too strong lategame I think you are mistaken and lack experience with and against him. He's easily dealable with if you are coordinated.

Other things we can notice about Nasus : Nasus identity in teamfights in one of a juggernaught, because of his natural weakness to kiting and high brute force in melee. However, none of his scalings are one of a juggernaught. Usual juggernaughts (think ) scale well with health/damage and have access/synergy to items that are specially designed to make them win in melee against tanky champions, aka the ones they'll be facing in teamfights (think which is a juggernaught's bread and butter). Nasus scales well with CDR, sheen items and resistances in general (synergizing with lifesteal), his scaling with AD is terrible. He scales somewhat well with armorpen due to his Q being physical, but these kind of items are usually too slot-expensive to be relevant. He scales a bit with AP. His E grants flat armorpen which is GREAT against squishy champions but weaker against people that have already a lot of armor. His R however is a true juggernaught spell, stealing %health and changing it into AD, which Nasus doesn't really care that much about but hey, it's something. The % health damage is capped (meanwhile rito pls). Anyway, if we take a look at it, most of his damage is kinda flat and benefits of some flatpen, which screams squishy killer. When we think of other juggernaughts : cleaving armor, missing health ult, %health true damage against villain allowing to melt a tank. cleaving armor as well, his E grants % armor pen, ult is true damage (overall more efficient against ppl with lots of armor). Why does Nasus have a kit that crushes squishy champions yet can't reach them and does not too well against what he's supposed to fight (other juggernaughts and tanks in teamfights)? That's why his identity is a paradox. A juggernaught with the scalings of a bruiser. And that's also partially why he shines in low elo. People don't peel well, Nasus manages to reach the backline and murder carries, something that would never happen in very high/competitive elo. That's also why he sucks in teamfights and has to splitpush all the time. He's designed to fight squishy champions but is stuck due to low mobility to fight frontlines.

So I'm asking those questions now : Can we change him? Should we change him? If yes, how? Can we make Nasus curve more smooth and fill the fantasy everyone wants when playing Nasus aka I'm playing a weak champion that grows stronger and becomes a god by lategame (while ofc being balanced overall). Maybe it would be cool once you've stack to actually be a good asset to your team and not be a splitpushing asshole all game to be the most relevant? :P

If yes, do you have any suggestions? I'd be glad to hear some feedback on what you think he should get.

Lastly, I think it's extremely important that Nasus keeps his infinite scaling even at the expense of his viability because it is core to his identity.

From what I remember from the past, Nasus used to actually be better fitting to his condition back in season 2 where everyone considered him trashtier because he was too weak earlygame. Why's that? He had a lot of manaproblems, but at that time he scaled better than now because of several factors: His W was so much more powerful. It was a 35 to 95 % attack speed slow (averaging 65%) while now it's strictly 2 times lower. Damage was not as high as now. Not as much % health and free pen/true damage everywhere. CC was less obnoxious and less focused against melee champions. CC could have less counterplay but it wasn't basically : I am a support/tank, you are melee so you're stuck here for 3 years because most of my kit has linear power linked to how far you are from me, since you're close I can nearly perma CC you. QSS didn't evolve into anything, crucible didn't exist, so his slow had low counterplay, effectively in teamfights he could pretty much deny the AD carry. While I agree this was really annoying as an ADC player, this was a way to make him strong in teamfights. However I don't think it would be the right way to change Nasus (buffing his ats slow) so let's explore other possibilities as well. Whenever I have the time, I'll also post some suggestions of mine if you are interested. Sorry for the long post, hope I raised some interest :)