Nasus Needs a Rework

coreym11··3 votes·917 views

Judging on the topic of this post I expect negative feedback, downvotes, and overall toxcicity whethever it's people telling me to "Git gud" or straight out telling me I suck but at least hear me out on this post. I REALLY think Nasus needs a rework and here is why.

From my experience people say Nasus destroys in low elo because there is not much team communication and people don't know how to properly prevent him from farming. The enemy nasus destroys top lane and eventually destroys the rest of the game. Where in high elos people say Nasus is not a good pick because people know how to counter him and prevent him from getting his stacks and call him a useless pick because of this. Whether you think Nasus is completely overpowered or he is extremely weak still shows signs of poor balance due to the fact he destroys people who generally aren't skilled at the game "Even the Nasus player himself" or everyone knows how to play the game very well "Nasus is considered garbage."

In lane Nasus has hardcore sustain early on with his life steal passive allowing him to stay in lane along with a bunch of potions that refill at the shop. Nasus also comes packed with a gigantic aoe which does that over time damage and is an armor shred which allows his constantly stacking Q to do immense damage. Not to mention the slow that practically turns into a stun and has a ridiculously short cooldown where even if you manage to use a Qss its only a matter of a few seconds where he can do it again. Not only can he do immense damage he is extremely tanky with damage and short alomost non existent cooldowns this whole combination makes the enemy fighting Nasus pretty much useless. People give things to counter nasus but here is the thing.

When people say "The jungler needs to camp the enemy Nasus's lane" This is already putting the team that is facing him at an disadvantage. Solely having Nasus in the game means that your jungler is not available going by this logic to anyone else because they are top lang trying to stop a nasus that will in time anyway catch up in time or still become a monster overtime and just delaying the inevitable. Mean while the enemy jungler is helping bot, mid and taking dragons because the other top and mid are both preoccupied in delaying Nasus's power. Not preventing it. This cause the team fighting Nasus to already be at an disadvantage because the lack of a jungler. The jungler that is camping against the Nasus just delays what he will later become anyway.

If you just treat the lane with the enemy Nasus like every other lane and help everyone equally Nasus will start to get out of control just because you didn't spend ALL of your gank time on Nasus. He requires too much attention to keep hm under control for a little while.

Last thing i've heard people say is that ALL of the team has to gang up on Nasus to kill him. Of course this works to get him killed but let's think about this for a second. If the whole team is going top lane to prevent Nasus from pushing a lane to take a tower where does that leave the rest of Nasus's team? They have free time to do whatever they want whether its taking drag or taking multiple other towers. It's like having Nasus on the enemy team adds 5 new members.

Either way even if Nasus is doing the wrecking, or he's not and is instead drawing attention from the rest of his team he is still assisting his team. Just because of this fact Nasus needs a rework so he can be played in lower elos without having as much of a devastating impact as well as being reworked so people will play him in higher elos.

TL;DR: Nasus needs a rework because destroys low elo's and is considered to be useless in higher elos. Even though Nasus is picked whether he his is destroying the enemy team, or is focusing attention for his team so they can smash becuase of the raw focus needed to deal with him. He still benefits his team whether he gets fed or he was prevented from it. Aswell as simply he's not that engaging to play it's just farming simulator. To make him balance and more fun with counter play he needs a rework.

5 Comments

Quepha2 votes

He destroys in low elos

https://counterplay.xyz/champion/nasus/top looks like he actually holds pretty steady all the way up

Swiftstrike42 votes

There is a TL;DR at the end. But probably read the points bulleted as well.

Once a month I see another one of these threads. Mostly, they come from a silver or bronze player that doesn't fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of Nasus. I am a Gold III Nasus main.

Nasus does need very minor balancing, but not a complete rework. By minor balancing I only mean slight buffs (his win rate has been dropping considerably) and I think he needs "better scaling health" or "higher starting health." His base health and scaling health is very low compared to other juggernauts, such as Garen and Darius. His very first items, typically do not have health either. Nasus' kit requires mana and CDR, he also needs to build tanky. This makes most of his first and early buys being either item 3110 or item 3025, both of which have no health. Health is suppose to be important, if not a requirement, for juggernauts. But it isn't until the mid game that he builds any at all.

He also is easily kited by moderate CC comps. So if the Nasus did really well in the early game and stacked well, he should be rewarded. But with SO many champions having some type of CC Nasus often cannot gap close to land any damage even if he runs in the resolve tree with the tenacity mastery, buys item 3111, and has the item 2138.

I think he should have a passive on his Siphoning Strike that grants him increased tenacity for every 100 to 150 stacks. Not a large amount, but enough to somewhat threatening when a 700 stacked Nasus approaches your team.

Have you thought WHY Nasus does better in lower Elo? It is because lower Elo player often engage Nasus and fight directly into his strengths. Higher Elo players, know Nasus' weaknesses and try to exploit them in fights, making him overall less effective.

So what is Nasus's strengths? And what are his weaknesses?

  • Good at sustaining in lane - through his defensive build and his passive

  • Good at dueling most other champions

  • Good at split-pushing

  • Good in skirmishes (2v2 or 3v3 scenarios)

  • Good at maintaining map pressure mid-late game

  • Good at coming back (he is forgiving)

  • Bad at team-fighting

  • Bad without farm

  • Bad if there is high early pressure and plays poorly into specific match-up

  • Bad against high crowd-control comps

  • Bad if opposing team is designed for an "early game". Basically they want to end the game to be determined at the 20-25 minute mark.

This list largely touches on the central strengths and weaknesses. Lower Elo players, often engage with Nasus fighting into his strengths, but higher Elo players engage Nasus according to his weaknesses.

In lower Elo, players will often fight Nasus 1v1 in lane. This strategy eventually does not work. He is a time-bomb duelist. Once Nasus has about 200 stacks and sheen he can out duel most top laners, but most lower level players do not respect this power spike and it typically takes 2 to 3 deaths in a row for them to understand they cannot win.

Once Nasus lands his first kill, it means it is very likely the opposing top-laner will not kill Nasus again without help. And if they have died 2 or 3 times they will definitely not be able to kill Nasus on their own. This will lead them to ask for a gank or one other person to come to help and kill him.

This can be problematic, because at this point Nasus has his power spike. He probably has a lot of stacks AND has defensive tank items. And a low Elo team may be running a more high damage comp and will be less coordinated in their use of skills in a skirmish or team fight. So they will send 2 players to try to kill Nasus. Nasus will probably kill both of them, due to a poor engage, overestimation of their damage, low crowd control kits, and underestimating the damage Nasus brings.

At this point Nasus is incredibly strong and he will maintain his spike as long as he continues to stack. The enemy team must now account for wherever Nasus is on the map and will have to send 3 people often to deal with him. Meanwhile Nasus' team (if they are smart) will take objectives easily while the team focuses on him.

Eventually the team with Nasus gets far enough ahead to make a strong push and the lack of coordination in lower-elo regarding team fights make Nasus almost unstoppable.

The low elo player most focuses on "babysitting" Nasus in early laning trying to deny stacks. But what they don't understand is that most of the time, a seasoned Nasus, will not die in lane AND will still get stacks regardless of the efforts of the opposing top laner.

The opposing top laner will probably not even out farm the Nasus, since they will focus too much on poking. Even if they kill Nasus early, they typically will not respect him in the later game and still try to 1v1 him. Against most champions, this works. Typically if you gain a lead against a laner, they do not have the ability to 1v1 afterwards. But with Nasus and others, they can at a later point out duel the opponent they lost lane to, given time.

In higher Elo this changes. Gold+ players understand not to fight Nasus on his terms. They also understand that a good Nasus player (and if they are Gold or higher they probably are good) can effectively keep up in farm despite harassment. They will likely pick a comp with high CC understanding that Nasus will likely be a problem at a later point. They may also create a comp that is geared towards the early game, team-fighting, and wave clear. This will make it harder for the Nasus to have time to farm, harder for him to split-push, and MAKE him have to group and team fight.

Now, this doesn't always ideally work, but once a higher Elo player dies to Nasus, they will not continue to try to duel him without help, or without CC. Teams will coordinate their CC kit to make sure that Nasus has a hard time moving around in any teamfight or skirmish. At that point it is up to the Nasus' teammates to land their damage and skills, while Nasus tanks all the CC (and likely dies).

Higher Elo players simply do a better job at exploiting a champion's weaknesses and Nasus' weaknesses are very obvious and easy to for which to account. Execution is where they may fail and still lose the game, but they do not 1 by 1 try to fight Nasus almost ever.

Now, I think Nasus is still viable in higher Elo, but the Nasus player has to be really good AND his team has to play AROUND Nasus' strengths and weaknesses. Which often means, avoid grouping, let Nasus split push, and having another tank on the team.

I would say that Nasus is pretty viable all the way into Platinum, where he becomes a bit of a second-rate top laner. There are players that are very high rank with Nasus (Sirhcez and Carnarius), but they play the champion A LOT and they also often play with other high Elo teammates that adjust their play to having a Nasus on their team.

Nasus' play is very static: farm, don't die early, and split-push.

It doesn't matter how many stacks a Nasus player has, if he can't gap close he is a walking sponge and very useless.

TL;DR: Nasus is relatively balanced and needs some minor buffs (health and some type of tenacity). He has a specific playstyle that has a tendency to do better in lower Elo. Players in lower Elo are less coordinate and have a lower understanding of the game, making it so that they frequently play into Nasus' strengths. In higher Elo, players are fully aware of his weaknesses and are often able to exploit them in-game.

karruck1 votes

just for fun I have brought in Nasus as a jungler like once or twice......Q farm was wayyy tooo easy

EndlessSorcerer1 votes

Nasus used to be one of the strongest junglers in the game.

Honestly, I've started playing him in the jungle again for a few games and they've gone pretty well; he stacks safely (and quickly) and Wither is a great ganking tool.

Ravenous Howls1 votes

Another QQ thread about Nasus when there are far more champs that have fantastic early game damage and still scale into the late game exceptionally well. Nasus has probably one of the most abused early games ever. He has no damage scaling without farm and is so easy to poke and harass early that without his life steal he would never be able to lane, jungle or be played period. It is his only means of staying relevant in health to get to a point where he is decent.

Swift already summed it up for you so I am not going to reiterate his points because all of mine are similar except I think Nasus excels better at team fighting than split pushing but that's just my opinion. But here are some things he didn't talk about.

  1. Most of the tank items or damage items that juggernauts went for have been nerfed or been tailored towards ADC use. Like TF or BC for examples.

  2. But almost all the items that were core for Nasus have now been nerfed due to the abuse of other champions. IBG got hit with 50% sheen proc dmg reduction. IBG and TF lost their AP feature for more CDR but honestly that little extra AP was great for Nasus' E and R. FH lost some of it's armor. Spirit Visage lost 10% CDR and 15 MR which is huge against burst mages.

  3. Rylai's and Frozen Mallet are so over abused by every mage or medium to long ranged character that they can essentially stop any melee from ever reaching them. Wither doesn't help either because the worst abusers have a dash or MS steroid so they can get out of range while still applying their own AA slow from those items.

Maybe you should complain about legit broken champs such as Fizz, Yasuo, all the reworked ADC's who now get tons of free damage and damage items that make them unstoppable, tank Ekko or ridiculous one shot squish champs like Rengar who can 100-0 you from stealth with almost no reaction time.

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