The (Over)Power of Midlane Nasus [Gameplay Discussion]

To say that Nasus is strong is one thing, but to say that he's broken is another. As someone who has played Nasus off and on for about three years of playing League, I can say one thing for sure; I'm not the best Nasus in the world. I'm certainly no professional, and I'm just as likely to lose lane as I am to win. However, in my recent endeavors of taking Nasus in a spot he's not exactly built for (midlane), I've seen great amounts of success. Now, usually when you see a Nasus going mid, you'd think the player would build AP, but instead, I chose to build quite randomly.

Started with a Trinity Force because the stats are great and I was getting good farm and got first blood so I had the gold to spend. Then moved to Merc treads because the Teemo mid was pretty annoying, along with their jungle Pantheon hopping on me whenever he had a chance (note that two of my deaths were due to Pantheon's stun). The CC reduction was nice. After that, I got sufficiently fed from some successful (and outnumbered) teamfights, then went back and bought a Dead Man's Plate. That helped me survive to continue farming and occasionally killing a stray enemy.

Now, that build seems like pretty standard Nasus. Note that I was using AD Runes with more MR than Armor, and Armor Pen, as well as Thunderlords Decree for my keystone. Those first three items were pretty normal. Nothing really fancy (though I enjoy the fancy red trail from Dead Man's). Right off of Dead Man's, I built a Lich Bane. While Spellblades don't stack, I wanted the stats from Lich Bane rather than the Passive. The movespeed is always valuable, and the extra AP added an extra kick to Nasus' Spirit Fire. The cooldown reduction from it put me at 25%, which had Fury of the Sands always ready for an engage, and my Siphoning Strike was able to stack almost every minion in a wave, granted my teammates occasionally took some. Wither was also on a short cooldown, which helped me do one of my favorite things; become a looming God of Death as I slowly approached their Jhin who had been abandoned by his team. All I did was walk up, and Siphoned all but twenty of his health in one blow. Then I ignited for fun. Burn, baby, burn.

Continuing on, after my Lich Bane I made an odd decision to build a Rapid Fire Cannon. Now, while this is certainly not the best item I could have chosen, at this point somewhere over 400 stacks and probably 15 kills in, it didn't really matter. I was (nearly) unkillable. The attack speed and critical chance was beyond fun. Had about a 50% chance to crit, plus an extra 18% movespeed not counting Dead Man's. Also not counting boots. So I was fast, beefy, all of my abilities aside from Wither did massive damage. The match ended before I could finish my build, but I had bought a Tiamat, and was undecided of which of the two items I wanted to build from it. I wound up with somewhere around 500 stacks; not a bad haul if you ask me.

Now, all of this nonsense, winding up 20/4/12, started with my First Blood on Teemo. Teemo is supposedly a counter to Nasus, but in this case, no matter what he built, I was snowballing way too hard, and did too much mixed damage for him to build against. Looking at the stats, I actually did slightly more magic damage to champions than I did physical damage. 18.4k to 18.3k.

So, all in all, I'm quite proud of this match. Even though I got counterpicked (their Teemo and Malphite switched lanes when they noticed that Zed was toplane and I was mid), I won the match not based on the amount of skill I had with Nasus or that their team was feeding (sidenote: they weren't), or that there was anything wrong with their team comp. I won that match because even if you get counterpicked with Nasus, the moment you get a kill, the moment you start snowballing, he comes in like the giant Shuriman god he is and bam, your ADC gets one-shot and you can't understand why the Nasus that's farming your entire team has a Lich Bane and a Rapid Fire Cannon.

With other champs, when you snowball, I've noticed that it's very easy to lock them down and kill them if they wind up alone. With Nasus, however, I had no trouble getting away, or killing my way out of a bad situation. He's just very, very strong, and very, very fun. At least to me. He's quite boring to some people who can't stand having to just stack minions endlessly, but find that enjoyable. You don't need kills to be strong with Nasus. You just need to farm your Siphoning Strike until you can make their health go goodbye with one hit.

Let me know the crazy stuff you've done with Nasus! He's always entertaining, and I know there's much better people than me who play him. There was a match a while back where I had the horror of being the squishiest on my team when the enemy Nasus had over 1k stacks on his Siphon, and he was building full tank.

[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]