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Can Nasus Jungle Work?

VinnyTheG·9/10/2019, 11:41:58 AM·1 votes·2,305 views

As a new member of the Gold 4 family i see more and more uncommon and off meta builds everywhere i go. One of my favorite mains, Nasus, got a buff a few patches back that greatly increased the amount of stacks he earned from Large Monsters and Cannon Cart minions, so naturally i decided to try and take this puppy (pun intended) for a spin in Jungle to really make use of that new buff since all of his camps contain a large monster or more.

Lately i have been spending a lot of time trying different rune pages, items, and even summoner spells just trying to make this work for our laners. As far as i can tell playing Nasus jungle almost entirely relies on your ability to stack, and while early game you may be able to get few to no ganks, late game Jungle Nasus is an absolute beast boasting an average of 700-800 stacks by 20 min. However, these stacks are useless if your laners feed themselves to the void and back and then blame you for their deaths. I feel like part of your responsibility as a laner is to ward and ensure that you don't get ganked.

In short, the biggest issue with this build is it's lack of mobility and ability to pressure lanes or objectives early game at all, more often then not leading to a feeding lane or complete loss of any drakes spawned pre-20min. Do you guys have any ideas for runes or different tactics that could make this build work? Or is it a lost cause? [sg-janna]

5 Comments

DuskDaUmbreon9/10/2019, 2:15:51 PM3 votes

Yes, it's possible. Run Predator and it helps a lot with ganks.

However, you're basically the weakest jungler in the game and can be invaded by practically anyone. Your lose condition is the enemy jungler having a brain and not knowing what an invade is.

PhearBunny9/10/2019, 11:57:08 AM2 votes

yes u can play jungle Nasus. Its just a late game jungler choice, which isnt preferred in the meta. But its playable.

Polaris I9/10/2019, 1:29:28 PM2 votes

Yes, in low elo anything goes and if you go phase rush you scale a little better than regular nasus and because you stack so fast it’s easy to gank especially top

heroikc9/10/2019, 8:10:39 PM1 votes

Not recommended given this meta is early pressure, late assassin, and not farming.

Smyrage9/11/2019, 6:45:47 AM1 votes

While I don't believe that junglers should only gank, however Nasus jungle is basically like AFK farming until you can steamroll the match, which might work against a more passive junglers, who usually don't gank that much (like until lv6), but I can say that even if the enemy has a really aggressive and opressive jungler, who can snowball the lanes, then not ganking will pretty much lose the game for you (and others). I'm not saying that it's unviable, but if you want to climb, then I advise you not to stick to that strategy.

Nasus' kit just doesn't work at all in jungle. His early 1v1 is quite weak, that means he can't really invade the enemy jungler and put pressure on him. His kit lacks everything which would allow him to pull off a reliable gank. He is kind of slow and his ganks work only if the enemy is overextended. His clear is ok, but that's really the only reason you you can pick him in jungle. Overall there are just better off-meta junglers than him. Pantheon is kinda good in that role, if you want to play off-meta junglers.