Please give Nasus some love

Prondor·Aug 26, 2016·5 votes·749 views

I have been playing Nasus FOREVER... I must say, I tired of hearing "Nasus U suck",when I get a good player or a tuff counter, I have a huge battle to gain any place in the game. unless i get a weak top laner, but who doesnt do well with a weak laner. Can League give some love so Nasus can be more involved in the game, I am finding its harder to Build my Q, If i get tuff laner I am pretty much useless since i end up Qing forever to catch up, and I have no gold. then and my team is now suffering as well. As a video update and skin pretty much Nasus hasn't been touched in 5 years. except the 3v3 map. Please bring Nasus back into the fight.

9 Comments

AnCaAug 26, 20162 votes

Nasus is a champion that do not want to teamfight, do not want to leave lane, want to farm for as long as possible, split push take all the towers in a lane. This sort of play style was better in previous seasons. In season 6, the pace of the game got faster, and the game result revolve around mid game teamfight alot more. It is not that people forgot about Nasus, it is his play style don't fit the meta as much.

SasogwaAug 26, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Nasus is a champion that do not want to teamfight, do not want to leave lane, want to farm for as long as possible, split push take all the towers in a lane. This sort of play style was better in previous seasons. In season 6, the pace of the game got faster, and the game result revolve around mid game teamfight alot more. It is not that people forgot about Nasus, it is his play style don't fit the meta as much.

Well back in season 2 Nasus was actually a great teamfighter. The damage and mobility creep wasn't there yet so he was actually tanky and dealt a lot of damage while providing a lot of utility with Frozen Heart at 20% as reduction (it's 15 now), Shurelia's and a MUCH MUCH BETTER attack speed slow. Yet he had high manacosts and terrible laning. Season 3 had its set of buffs making him metagame, but then they completely butchered wither indirectly killing his teamfight potential as an anti-ad carry.

AnCaAug 27, 20161 votes

Back in season 2 everything was different. We moved on to season 6. We just have to cope with the change. TBH his W was very unfair and there is 0 counter play the opp adc can do. It was so strong that even going jungle nasus and not stacking Q was worth taking Nasus in the game.

SasogwaAug 27, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Back in season 2 everything was different. We moved on to season 6. We just have to cope with the change. TBH his W was very unfair and there is 0 counter play the opp adc can do. It was so strong that even going jungle nasus and not stacking Q was worth taking Nasus in the game.

Well true but at the same time QSS is easier to build because it's now upgradable into a decent item. Cleanse still exists. Michael's crucible exists and it didn't before. It has low counterplay but at the same time it's his identity to weaken the autoattacker and he has to chose one target in particular. I think they should buff it a bit, NOT to the old values (35 to 95 % max rank) but something slightly more ok (25 to 70 % ?) knowing right now it's 17.5 to 47.5% - average of 30% which is weak-ish.

In any case, Nasus needs something to be relevant in the teamfights-lategame field. Because he's high risk low reward, is both countered easily in lane and also in teamfights. His kit values are also not adapted right now. By that I mean the kind of scaling he has. He's supposed to be a juggernaught because of his innate low mobility. Yet he has lifesteal which is sorta worthless against tanky champions in teamfights, unlike healing (think vladimir which doesn't depend on his opponent's resistances to heal). He has flat armor shred which is best against squishy targets and not that noticeable against high armor opponents (aka the ones he should face in teamfights). His ult is %health damage, but magical and has no synergy in scaling with the rest of his kit.

Meanwhile, think Darius. True juggernaught, great scaling with typical juggernaught items, based on health and AD ; ever since his bleed is physical has insane synergy with black cleaver, which is a godlike item to fight frontlines when you can proc it fast.

I can kind of relate this to hearthstone ; Nasus is like an old card that kind of used to fit a spot, but over the years very good counters have been added and other cards that fill his niche better have been released even if they're slightly different on the effects.

PS : Nasus wasn't taken jungle in S2 , he was only after his big buffs in S3 (manacosts, cooldowns, QOL in general) cause in S2 he was actually considered garbage (well terrible in lane, but actually very good lategame which was great)

AnCaAug 28, 20161 votes

I really meant S2 to now, I don't excatly remember when was Nasus jungle played specifically in that period and I don't really want to check, so I will just take your word for it.

I wouldn't say Darius is the true juggernaught, but he is the most well designed juggernaught for balancing. What I meant by this is his numbers in the kit is easier to balance.

If I would compare Nasus to another top laner, I would actually compare him with GP, which is also the holistic reason I do not think Riot will do any major buff to Nasus. So S6 Riot has made a clear attempt to make the average game length shorter. At the same time, they have rework and buffed a hypercarry with stacking mechanic and it turned out very poorly, and that is GP. They gave him tools to smooth out the reach to his hypercarry late game, which stems the overall balance problem of GP. Nasus, basically just like GP is a late game hypercarry, it was never that ultimate strengh he had late game was not enough, it was always the getting there part. Sometimes he get to that state so late it did not matter anymore.

So in order for Riot to buff Nasus meaningfully, rather than just throw in a random buff to remind ppl about this champion (sort of like how they did with Jinx this patch to remind ppl Jinx is still pretty good eventhough no one plays her too much) they would have to smooth out that curve. No matter if its buffing W or buffing Q stacking mechanic, it has to smooth out that power curve. Granted for GP it wasn't just the power curve balance being the only balancing issue. But after messing up with GP, I highly doubt Riot are looking to buff another hypercarry with stacking type mechanic. At the very least not until worlds is over, and they have more time during pre-season 7.

I really did not want to type another long explaination, so I skimmed out alot of my thought in the previous post. My bad :l

oSEXYPLATYPUSoAug 26, 20161 votes

or you could say throw the dog a bone?

Zane ZephyrAug 26, 20161 votes

The thing is, if nasus receives any kind of meaningful buff, his wither will absolutely HAVE to be nerfed. The spell itself is one of the strongest non-damaging spells in the game in my opinion and there's no way you can leave it unchecked if he gets buffed.

karruckAug 26, 20161 votes

Nasus my fun time jungle pick. easy stacks and as tanky as you want him to be.

Swiftstrike4Aug 27, 20161 votes

He is harder to play, but it is due to several indirect nerfs. You probably simply need to improve a bit as Nasus as well since he is a champion that at the moment can't afford to make a lot of mistakes in lane.

Nerfs to movement speed items, the strength of adc items, nerfs to some items that he commonly built, the mastery changes (for the most part didn't help him), and the pacing of the game have all hurt him.

The amount of CC in the game is pretty high with recent champs having CC heavier kits. Rylais buff are really hurting him when he groups and lowering his ability to escape.

If they provided a bit of buff to his base stats I think it will help him get closer to 50% again. He was around there at the start of the season but has fallen as the season has gone on.

Learning him requires patience and understanding when he power spikes. After you get mechanically good with him, you then need to get good at making decisions. Mistakes in decisionmaking as Nasus (when to splitpush when to group when to rotate etc) are really really important if you want to win with him.

That being said. If you learn how to farm with him under pressure, not die in lane, and get good at making decisions then you should start winning more games. I almost exclusively play Nasus and I can still win games in higher Elo, but my decision-making got a lot better. I do think Nasus is harder to play than last season.

Edit: I looked at your builds. They aren't that good. He has a very precise build for matchups. He only builds one damage item and its either item 3025 or item 3078 and then full tank.