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I think champions like Nasus offer great utility to the game itself

HateDaddy··7 votes·3,868 views

I realize Nasus is a bit of a problem in lower elos right now while not really being looked at as anything special in higher elo/pro play. But I want to make this point because I feel like it’s important. It’s season 9, the game has been out for 10 years and it has evolved considerably since then. As such, I think this makes what I’m about to say all the more important. Let me begin:

Nasus is great for the game. Not because his gameplay is interesting or dynamic. I find it fascinating but that’s because I’m a Nasus player and that style of play (win by attrition) is appealing to me. I realize others find him boring and mundane, specifically laning against him. And I concede: that’s totally understandable. Though I’d counter that many champions play like Nasus: weak early and look to survive and scale. That’s neither here nor there because that’s not why I think Nasus is great for the game.

Nasus is great for the game because he’s especially friendly for new players. Playing him demands that you respect and adhere to the very basic fundamentals of the game. To not do so would be misusing his kit and punishes you greatly. Mastering Nasus at low level play shows that you understand incredibly important things that translate to all levels of play: farming, wave manipulation, understanding power spikes, understanding the use of map pressure, understanding champion limitations and knowing when it’s time to abandon the idea of carrying and sacrificing for the team. Nasus teaches these things while being incredibly easy to use. Sure, he’s not flashy and much of the success he has in low elo does not translate to higher elo but the very basic fundamentals do translate.

I used to think champions like Nunu and Warwick pre-rework offered this same utility to the game (Warwick does to some extent still). And I really hope Riot doesn’t abandon the simplicity of Nasus’ kit for that reason. I realize low elo players find him frustrating but I honestly scoff at that notion. There will always be champions that pubstomp low elo and while it shouldn’t be ignored, Riot shouldn’t cave to meet their demands either because ultimately game health is most important and reducing the quality of the game to mend the tears of bad players is problematic.

That’s especially true when you have so many champions that really aren’t all that difficult to play and can violate basic fundamentals of the game and still be incredibly successful in low elo (Riven is a perfect example of this). Yet, these players then climb to higher elos without ever having needed to learn the basics of the game and eventually plateau and they can’t understand their problems. This isn’t knocking those champions because you need to master game basics before you can climb to high elo. This is merely pointing out that champions like Nasus serve as great bridges for that point and not everything needs to be high dollar LCS Flashy Plays City. The game was much better when this was mutually understood because Morello himself had said on several occasions that they value simple champions for this reason. I hope that’s a mentality that still exists.

5 Comments

Moody P4 votes

I'm more interested in how Nasus exists as a direct and intended counter with Wither. This IMO is something so necessary and yet is missing so much from League; letting champs just be counters to things in ways that isn't just "you can't deal with my mobility/skillshot spam"

It is the ONLY way to let a roster of 140+ champions and growing actually have true diversity and not just shuffling each other out of the meta on Riots whim

thefourtysn2 votes

I agree.

HateDaddy5 votes

{quoted}

I agree.

There’s things I didn’t even go into great depth about either. Like one thing nasus has taught me that has translated well to every champion I play is understanding ranged vs melee match-ups. Nasus can’t instantly jump on enemies so you have to understand when trades are and are not favorable in ranged match-ups. When you think about it, nasus is offers so much good to this game. Simple champions like Nasus, Garen, etc. don’t get enough credit for this.

Doge20202 votes

I agree with him being helpful to new players. When I first started playing top I learned all about wave management and that stuff by playing nasus and by watching videos to help me learn how to play nasus.

Quepha2 votes

I somewhat disagree. First, I think if you admit that he should be seen as a learning champion for lower tier players then I think you need to also admit that he's probably a little OP if his winrate is positive in Plat+ like it is now. I think Nasus being a little OP right now is obscuring some of the ways he creates bad habits in players.

  • Tying his scaling to CS'ing with his big damage ability (at least when maxing Q) means that he is constantly spending his most valuable cooldown on CS and leaving himself open to a poor trade. This is somewhat mitigated by the newer increased stack value on champion kills but I would prefer to instead see him gain stacks from any Q on an enemy champion (like Veigar) or any takedown on a champion he has Q'd recently even if the kill was due to a regular auto, his E, or even another champion. This would encourage better awareness of enemy champions and what they're capable of. The fact that frivolous Q usage works right now probably indicates that Nasus's baseline lifesteal values are too high.
  • His infinite scaling fantasy makes players think he should be stacking all game i.e. start split pushing and never join the team under any circumstances, and the way his damage starts to fall off when he starts grouping (everyone will start buying ninja tabi's and armor but Nasus will be gaining few, if any, stacks to keep his damage up to snuff) furthers this idea. The decision to group or split should instead come down to what the match calls for rather than the fact that your champion literally stops scaling if you aren't having alone time with a lane.
  • He secretly doesn't scale as well as people think he does. The nature of his kit means it sometimes doesn't matter how many stacks he has, and the way armor, ninja tabi's, and lifesteal work, once players start buying them he needs exponentially more stacks to kill a target in the same number of Q's. This defensive spike for targets also happens around the same time it becomes harder for Nasus to keep stacking without seeing his team get shoved into base in a 4v5. Nasus generally powerspikes at 2 items (triforce + a defensive item that caps his cdr) and needs to start getting a big enough advantage to win the game before he falls off while players read his kit and incorrectly believe that stalling the game is always a good thing for Nasus.
  • His lack of mobility means his split pushing game lacks nuance and decision making. He can't really flee a collapse, he can't quickly flank, and sometimes his kite-ability means he gets hard-countered in duels. Players don't really learn any valuable decision-making when their only option is to push and pray.
  • He has poor built-in waveclear and is discouraged from building more on his items or else he'll lose stacks to accidents, so he only really has one pushing speed. He creates pressure at a very regular, manage-able rate for the enemy team and doesn't have the ability to try and slow things down or speed them up to match the tempo of his team.

Ultimately I think Nasus is good for teaching basic values to players like "cs'ing is good," "your default position on the map should be in your lane," and "you win the game by pushing," but fails to teach the actual game systems that justify these values because Nasus teaches these things through his own specific arbitrary mechanics that make players blindly commit to them even if they don't apply (or wouldn't apply if you were playing any other champion).

I think Tryndamere and Jax are better at teaching split pushing because they are good at split pushing in traditional ways that give them options at all stages of the game. They can harass the enemy in lane when the need arises and they are punished for bad trades because they can't simply lifesteal through any damage they take, they can use their dashes to escape from collapses and bad match-ups so players learn to judge the danger of situations, they can build items that increase their pushing power or they can build for pure dueling so players learn when to adapt builds, while they are powerful in the lategame they don't delude players into thinking time is always on their side, and they can flank and help in teamfights (Jax more than Trynd) if the need arises without feeling like they're losing power even if they win the fight.

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