A Proposal to the Anti-Nasus (A change in his stacking)
I see threads daily from people who complain about the strength a Nasus gains by simply ignoring lane opponents, farming, and splitpushing until reaching teamfight status. There is credence to this: it's frustrating to kill the enemy Nasus, watch him miss out on 2-3 waves, and see it result in drop in the bucket damage reduction when he ends up with 500-700 stacks at 30 minutes anyway.
(Edit: Here's a numerical description of his problem:
Nasus can go top lane and splitpush until he dies without caring. If he gains 100 stacks on his Q, then at max rank he gains ~1,200 gold value (assuming 2 AA's for each Q and 360g per 10 AD), while the kill will only net 300g for the killer without assists. It's more gold efficient for Nasus when he splitpushes and dies than it is for whoever kills him unless he gets less than 30 stacks.)
The problem with adding something like stack loss to Nasus is that it means you need to compensate elsewhere, since his entire theme revolves around him getting stacks. Here's my proposal:
Let his stacks only become permanent when he travels to fountain, and he loses half of his current bank on death. This is almost identical to the mechanism that is already used on Draven.
-
Let's say Nasus has managed to farm 200 stacks in lane without going to base. These are his "volatile" stacks. Nasus goes b, and now has 200 permanent stacks.
-
Nasus returns to lane and farms 200 more active stacks. He now has 400 total stacks, 200 of which are permanent, and 200 which are volatile. Nasus gets ganked and dies. He loses half of his volatile stacks, so his total is now 200 + 0.5(200) = 300 permanent stacks.
This allows Nasus to farm as normal, but he actually has to make decisions regarding whether or not to stay in lane, ignore his opponent, watch for ganks, etc. Death is a penalty beyond just time not farming. It also means that when Nasus splitpushes, he is no longer granted the double bonuses of both guaranteed Q farm, and the gold generation from absorbing creep waves. Stopping Nasus' split push also now has benefits beyond just saving a tower.
By removing some of the strength from his Q, Nasus would have to be compensated elsewhere. Buffing Wither would be the end of the forums, and buffing Spirit Fire would only help marginally. Instead the focus should be on his ult.
Increase the %damage-to-AD conversion on his ult from 6.375% to somewhere around 8-9%, and still cap it at 300. It allows for Nasus to ramp up more quickly in fights to offset the loss of stacks during lane. This has the following effects:
-
If Nasus has lost no stacks, he will see a slight buff from current status in his AD before reaching the damage cap from his ult, then it will be the same as it is now.
-
If Nasus has lost stacks during lane, it will be dampened by allowing him to gain AD more rapidly during his ult.
These changes would mean that Nasus needs to be more careful with his decision making, and it penalizes those that just mindlessly splitpush until they die, then go back to splitpushing. It also puts more emphasis on using his ult when forced to 1v1 after being denied, or saving it for a teamfight.
