Greaves vs Nasus vs Nunu in Support?

ADC Yuumi··1 votes·1,332 views

Hi, as you can already tell I'm quite an interesting player. I'm an off-meta support main building courage to do Ranked.

I usually play Jinx support, but she has quite a high banrate; let alone some ADCs would like to play her themselves.

I've been speculating Nasus on support and my experiences... say I might need tons of skill to master him in support. My friend has recommended Greaves as a tanky engager support. And Nunu, who I've played support before has great laning phase but a bad late game phase.

I'm hoping 9 out of 10 of these comments aren't just toxic people, and most of them are instructive criticism. I'm also looking at Zoe, Ahri and Swain but they have major flaws with cooldowns, mana costs and sustainability at low gold respectively.

9 Comments

MLDzXnRRR1 votes

I've played Nasus support in ranked in gold and platinum years ago. Go AP, try to harrass with E, if there is a gank, use W. Don't pick him into hard engage + lots of CC teams like Alistar/Nautilus/Rakan/Leona etc. Graves is bad support. Also, try: Ekko, Illaoi, Heimer, Galio, Jarvan, Kogmaw (AP), Teemo (only vs Lucian, Vayne, Kaisa, Kalista or Xayah), Syndra, Pantheon and Jax - these 2 require coordination when to go in and work the best with something like Draven or Yasuo as adc. Veigar and Ziggs are my favourite supports to play. Swain can work, because you can go tanky with just 1 or 2 damage items and do alot in teamfights. Ahri is not very good, because your damage falls off without many items and you will push too much the wave, if you try to spam abilities.

ADC Yuumi1 votes

Thanks for the tips.

Crispy0Snake1 votes

So when you have off meta picks, it's a good idea to make sure that they can function as a support. The first priority is making sure you complete your support item quest. This is so that you can ward and get objective control out there.

So with your champion of choice (I'm only going to give a viable theorycraft for Graves in this post), you need to figure out "Can I trade in lane". For most common supports, the answer is yes, and they take item 3098 or item 4302 to help them in trades. Those that cannot trade in lane without being chunked (Pyke/Thresh), they take item 3096.

Most off-meta supports cannot trade and are much better off going for the Nomads Medallion route. Graves support would have to take Nomads because he'll get forced away from cannons and your adc won't let you get minions because they'll assume you're trolling. Frostfang would be a bad idea because he has no AP ratios and won't benefit from the mana regen line of items. To play graves supp in lane just do what every other nomads support does and sit around in lane doing nothing until the jungler comes. When the jungler comes use smokescreen before your jg comes into vision and all in.

Summoner spell: It's probably a good idea to take ignite because your damage will probably be too underwhelming otherwise.

Items: So first Nomads and then I'd say build black cleaver and cdr boots.

Runes: Resolve primary for: Guardian, Demolish, Conditioning/Bone Plating and Unflinching. Sorcery Secondary for: Transcendence, Gathering Storm

2 Adaptive damage and 1 Armour/MR

The idea being to survive lane picking up coins until your damage is relevant, then just protec your adc with your shotgun. You should be able to shred their armour with black cleaver and gain armour with true grit. Building Defence-CDR-Damage is a good idea as you take Transcendence, meaning you get free damage from CDR and your CD's are also v low, meaning stacking true grit is easier.

ADC Yuumi1 votes

This actually helped me a lot, and I just wanted to say that. Thank you.

ROYALR3IGN1 votes

Theres a difference between borderline trolling and going "off meta" where you draw that line is different for everyone for what's acceptable and what's not but if you're going to pick an ADC to support another ADC you're going to have a bad time (with Ashe and MF being very situational picks to counter specific situations). They have the exact same weaknesses, and you'll be the more useless one of the two because at least the one you're "supporting" is getting some gold from cs.

Honestly please don't do this in solo que. If you wanna try this in flex que as a 5 man thats fine but don't do this in any other iteration of ranked. There's a reason there is a set number of champions that go where they go, and where they are viable. You are handicapping your team by picking stuff like this cause these champs are not equipped to reliably fulfill their role needed for the team outside of very specific skill sets. I'll explain why below,

Graves is a carry. That means hes gold reliant. He's one of those champs that are okay if fed, garbage if behind. He requires you to get close to deal damage, but will get blown up if focused. So he relies on being able to blow up his target, but he can't do that if he doesn't get items which require a lot of gold. Your friend recommending Graves as a tanky - engager? He doesn't have an engage?? If he uses his only dash to go in he'll get nuked immediately unless he has DD and PD (two items you'll never reach in lane phase unless the enemy team is inting). Outside of being a wardbot, Grave's really can't do much as a support. He can't peel, engage, doesn't provide any form of sustain, you're basically gonna be a large minion in lane for the enemy to farm. Not to mention tilting your team off the face of the earth. You're making the game a 5 v 4 by being useless at best, and a 6 v 4 if you end up feeding the enemy bot lane without providing utility for your own team to make up for it.

Jinx is also a carry, which read above is gold reliant too, something you will never be able to play at her full potential on par with everyone else in the game, unless you're stealing CS, or getting enough kills to make up the gold differential. At the very least, Jinx has some utility but even so its not reliable, and really telegraphed. She also suffers from being useless without gold, see above with Graves.

As funny as this might sound, Nasus and Nunu are what you can consider "off meta". They aren't traditionally picked as support but they have the tools to make for a decent one if played well.

Nasus has arguably the best slow in the game, point and click, with a cripple (Attack speed reduction) being applied to an ADC is devastating for their damage output. His E has relatively high base damage, and armor shred making you and your ADC hit a lot harder. He can zone, and engage and not have to worry because hes a tank and can front line for your ADC. I feel like the only reason he isn't picked as a support is because he cannot stack (unless you take relic shield) , is weak to double poke and doesn't have a hard engage.

Nunu, has a telegraphed engage that is easier to dodge than most support engages (think Leona, Ali, Thresh, Blitz etc.) but has an attack speed steroid, multiple slows and stuns and a fair amount of sustain with his Q, and he exerts a fair bit of jg pressure later into the game.

Point being these last two picks can "support" as they can fulfill the original role to a reasonable degree with their kits. They will require more work to be good but they have the right tools. ADC's generally don't.

Edited for spelling and grammar.

ADC Yuumi1 votes

[slayer-jinx-unamused]

TheMonkeyKiing1 votes

I don't understand what you are saying in the op.

You say you need time to master playing nasus support? Why would you need berserker greaves as nasus support? I don't think you need much skill as nasus support because the most powerful took nasus has as a support is his wither. That ability is almost like exhause 2.0 with no skillshot required. Anytime a fight happens just press w on the adc and you should have done most your job, After that you just drop an e to lower armor, walk up and auto q to help the fight as nasus support. If you are ap then just wither and drop e for some sick burn and then back off but stay close in case you need to help. Berserker greaves does not make you tankier so your friend is wrong in saying greaves for tanky engager support

ADC Yuumi1 votes

Well I meant separately... I meant Graves Graves.

TheMonkeyKiing1 votes

I don't get what you are trying to ask or the main point of your op is.... but like i said before, as nasus support its not that hard at all. His biggest impact is his wither which takes no skill to use because you just point and click for a powerful slow and attack speed decrease.

Graves would be a terrible support if you wanted to look from a competitive viewpoint because utility wise he just has 1 smokescreen blind slow which sounds good but is not that amazing compared to something like say leona's multiple stuns and snares, alistar's knock up and pulverize, pike's hook. Also his only soft cc ability is on a really long cooldown so once it is used you will have no way to peel for your adc afterwards. You can build damage but unless you are ahead, you won't have enough damage as a support since you will have less gold from not farming. Also, if you build support or tanky, then your damage won't be too powerful and you will not have any cc to use after you use your smokescreen. But if you want to play him because he is fun then yeah graves would probably be fun even if he would be a terrible support from a competitive view.

I don't play nunu because im personally pretty bad with him. I'll do decent but I won't be amazing with nunu, although I've seen some really good nunu players so maybe you will have better luck

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