Having trouble beating Nasus? As a long time Nasus main, let me help you.

Hello there Gameplay and Balance, I am a long time GDer and long time Nasus main. I've been playing Nasus since I started back in season 2 and I haven't stopped maining him. He's by far my most played champion. Currently I'm platinum 1 because I haven't grinded much but I was diamond last season and with my long term experience with playing him and playing him at high levels, I truly believe I can help you out.

It's pretty odd for someone to make a guide designed for specifically beating the champion you main, huh? It is. But I've seen a lot of complaining about Nasus in general on all fronts from here, GD, reddit (yuck) and other league sources. Naturally this is a bit bias and I get that, but I think Nasus is pretty darned balanced at the moment. However, he's a unique champion with a much older design and I believe there's a lot of misinformation that's spread around about him and I'm here to hopefully clear some of that up and more.

Note: I've broken these into sections because I realize not everyone wants to read this entire thing and perhaps they're only looking for certain information that pertains to their interests.

The Nasus basics

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So let's talk about Nasus. Let's talk about his basic strengths, weaknesses, build pathes etc. In order to do it though, let's just go over his Kit on a basic level.

#Soul Eater

With his passive, Nasus starts the game with 10% Lifesteal that scales up during the game (10%/15%/20% at levels 1/7/13)

#Siphoning Strike Q

His bread and butter spell and the spell in almost every scenario he will be maxing first. We all know about this, it's an on-hit AA reset that scales infinitely with last hitting minions, jungle mobs, baron/dragon and champions. He gains +3 damage for normal minions, wards and small jungle mob monsters and +6 for killing large minions (cannons and supers), large jungle mobs, baron/dragon and champions.

Note: he does not gain damage for last hitting structures.

#Wither - W

The spell that most people consider his most frustrating ability to play against. It's a targeted 5 second soft CC that slows MS up to 95% over the course of 5 seconds and halves attack speed at 47.5% over that course. Initially it's a fairly long CD ability until he gets CDR. This is one of the few last Anti carry spells left in the game. If Nasus ever gets reworked, I expect this is the ability that will completely change and go away.

#Spirit Fire - E

This is a pretty versatile spell. But it's mana costs are fucking restricting. It cost 75 mana at level 1 alone and at leve 5, 115 - that's more than most champion's ults. This isn't a spell he can spam usually, even late game it runs him oom doing so. It's an incredibly strong ability with aoe Magic damage and flat armor shred. In some bad match-ups, it's not uncommon for Nasus to max this first and shove constantly (and if he does, his early wave shoving is amongst the best). But still, a powerful spell but and very draining on his mana pool.

#Fury of the Sands R

This combined with wither is what makes him the best melee duelist in the game. This spell gives him a huge chunk of health upon casting. It does aoe Magic damage over time, %max HP at that (3/4/5% iirc and capped at 240 per second). It also takes this damage dealt and converts it into bonus attack damage (capped at 300 iirc). Even when behind, not many champions can square off with him from 100-0 with this ability. It's basically a better version of Renektons Dominus. Keep in mind, which often is forgotten, while Fury of the Sands is active, Nasus gains 50 Auto Attack range (175 Max melee range) that also applies on Siphoning Strike. This is pretty damn big and people forget this.

So we've gotten that out of the way, so let's begin. You have to first understand Nasus and we've started with explaining his kit. Nasus is an immobile melee sustained DPS fighter with huge burst on his Q with enough farm + Trinity. He excels at dueling, the best melee duelist in the game and one of the best overall duelists in the game. He's a tower taking, split pushing monster if he gets ahead. If he gets behind, he basically only commits to laning and pushing and often times he won't push much for fear of staying further behind.

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Nasus - mid game God, late game front liner

So let's talk about the legendary late game Nasus. I'm going to say this and it may shock you: late game Nasus is overrated. In fact, for 5v5s, it's really not that great. I'd say it's about average. Nasus is by far at his best mid game with farm and I know this sounds startling but I'll explain. If you manage to get between 275-400 bonus damage on your Q by 20 minutes with a completed tank item and the workings of a second one, you are a god at this point. Why? Well for starters, as a solo laner you are highest level in the game which gives you better overall stats since you're natural scaling is ahead of the curve. Nobody has any sort of %pen item yet (unless ungodly fed) so you're hard as shit to kill. Supports, tank junglers and mids don't have the levels to spam their CC just yet and they likely don't have the CDR to reach it. Squishy champions natural armor is shit at this point and you've got a 2-3 second physical damage nuke that's popping for somewhere around 600-700 damage every time you use it and it's hard as shit to peel you. This is also when your ults %burn and Es Magic damage and flat armor shread are at their strongest as well.

When you talk about shutting down Nasus, it's impossible to shut anyone down. If the game goes on long enough, any champion will get back into it. For Nasus, this is what you want to avoid allowing to happen. You want to keep him in the area of 150-200 bonus damage on his Q by 20 minutes and down in levels as best as possible. If you do this, you've got a very good chance of winning the game. And depending on who you are, which I will touch on in a bit, you might want to roam and snowball other lanes to end the game quicker while Nasus is behind and trying to catch up. This way, you're forcing Nasus to pick between farming and scaling up and getting back into it or roam, putting him further behind, to prevent his team from losng the game as his enemy laner is ahead and making things happen on the map.

For some champions though, you simply can't deal with Nasus. A trynd, Irelia or Shen are going to need a lot of ganks to have any shot of dealing with Nasus. His kit is just naturally strong against their kits. But a champion like Singed, Cho'Gath or even Trundle, who can't really stop him from farming if he plays it right aren't super concerned if he farms up. This is because these champions can invalidate him in teamfights at pretty much every stage of the game with their durability, dusruption or just raw stat stealing. And they get tanky enough or have enough wave clear that Nasus can't just AFK split push vs them and murder towers. So even if you aren't somebody who can't shit on Nasus from the start, understand that there are options. As Irelia or Shen, do your best to contest his CS but understand you can't stop him really. But as Irelia, you're pretty darn good mid game too. As Shen, it's a little harder because you need to peel for your carries non stop and after a certain point, your damage to Nasus is laughable and your wave clear isn't good so he can just ignore you and melt towers in front of you.

Overall, there's a lot of misconceptions about Nasus. He is a god like duelist late game but he's immobile and easy as hell to disrupt once supports have levels and items to constantly keep him immobilized. At that point, he's just a front line damage soaker, which frankly, there are much better champions for this role than Nasus. There's also the misconception that he has virtually no mana costs which is false. Yes his Q only costs 20 mana but either is 80 at all ranks, Spirit fire is 75/85/95/105/115 and his ult, like most ults, is 100. This is also with the worst starting mana pool in the game and one of the worst base mana regens. So this is what prevents him from forcing trades early, he would go oom very quickly if you forced him to use his other spells (which isn't easy to do either and he simply might not).

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Match-ups

So we've kind of touched on his strengths and weaknesses and even on some of his match-ups. I'm going to spend this section on some common counterpicks and such and explain their match-ups. This won't be super in depth, just enough to give you a general understanding. And I'm not going to go over every match-up because that would take too long and several of these I haven't played in ages due to champion changes and so on, so I wouldn't even have the Insight in the first place.

- this is just his hardest lane counter. Plain and simple. Rushing armor doesn't help, you can't build Magic resist, most big ticket flat health items don't give CDR which delays him further. Basically every time you go to farm, you take a true damage nuke from him. And post 6, he's immune to wither and does a fuck ton of damage you can't deal with. You can't deal with him until you're sitting on at least 4 items, which is going to be hard as fuck to acquire against him. He's also a scary good roamer because undertow gives him insane sticking power so he assists ganks and dives very well.

Olaf is what I'd consider an all-or-nothing pick. You either shit on Nasus and decide on whether it's better to keep laning and pushing and denying him or roaming and snowballing the game or lose if you get behind. This is the best pick to go this route in my opinion.

- there is room for Nasus to play around this but this is generally a painful fucking lane to deal with. DARIUS' out edge Q chunks and his good under tower harass. His E gives him the ability to pull you out of tower range and drop an AA + W + Q on you that is big damage up front and strong DOTs with three stacks of his passive. Darius does all forms of damage so itemizing against him is hard as fuck as well. And he can generally go one damage item + tank and still constantly shit on you. Like I said, there is room for Nasus to play around this (not eating outer edge Qs, trading shortly and precisely in minion waves and abusing your sustain over his lack of sustain) but it generally means you can't make one mistake. And Darius punishes mistakes harder than almost every champion I'm the game. But Darius does scream camp me, so ward galore.

Like Olaf, this is an all-or-nothing pick. If you don't deny him hardcore, your point of picking darius just went out the window.

- I don't think I need to explain this. It's just a painful fucking lane that nasus can't do anything in without constant jungle pressure. And if she gets ahead, it's over. She can't kite you for eternity and she shits on your teamfight.

This is less of an all-or-nothing because of how fucking well Cass scales. But you have to be good at her.

- There's just not much you can do without taking constant point and click ranged harass. And he gets incredibly tanky himself. Even with heavy MR runes, Nasus is going to constantly be chugging pots in order to hope to outsustain this. And Swain can poke the every loving shit out of Nasus under tower as well with relative safety.

Like Cass, less of an all or nothing but Swain doesn't do much when behind either and doesn't have a means of catching up quickly since his farming and wave clear is very limited, even with ult.

(Built as AD) - this is a skill match up more or less but if Fizz plays it well, it's an incredibly hard lane for Nasus. Fizz does heavy mixed damage and %dmg at that so itemizing against him is hard. Fizz is also incredibly slippery and hard to stick damage on as Nasus. Nasus needs to play this well and it's going to take a long time for him to be able to deal with the power of Fizzs burst (even as AD with his ult, he has burst) and sustained DPS

Let's be honest, it doesnt matter who he's playing against, Fizz is all or nothing.

- fuck this champion

These were some common hard counter or very difficult lanes to deal with for Nasus. I realize not everyone plays these champions and you may play others. Here's a list of champions that can do well no matter what, even if Nasus free farms.

- becomes tanky very fast. Bruiser AP cho can put out a lot of damage on Nasus that he can't mitigate and his disruption stops Nasus from doing anything in fights. And his wave clear stops Nasus from ever split pushing.

- Nasus will get farmed in this lane. So will Singed. And Singed can proxy Nasus' wave forever so Nasus can't splitpush vs this without face tanking towers, which you're taking 45-50 minutes in before this becomes a thing. Singed with Rylais also destroys Nasus' teamfight as Nasus can't move.

- it's a somewhat difficult lane for Nasus but should still farm in. Trundle really isn't in danger of dying to Nasus until very late and by then it'd take too long to be worth pursuing and with Trundles ult and Q, Nasus can't just ignore him. And because of his ult, Nasus durability in teamfights is right out the window.

These are just some common picks. I didn't mention Rumble or Vlad because I don't consider them Nasus counters. They're annoying early but then Nasus gets spirit visage + Mercs and they simply can't be near him anymore. They can get ahead early and teamfight mid game when he's down but I consider both very hard to lane with and play in general. But there are still more champions that annoy him to hell and back like Teemo (AD) and solo top Vayne but those are so easy to camp it's not worth mentioning.

I hope I was able to help you guys out. I know he seems frustrating to play against and maybe at times he is, I admit my bias doesn't allow me to see this. But I think with this information, you can play against him with less anxiety. Remember, don't stress about his Q farm too much. It's just a number. You should stress on where it's at during certain points and whether or not you can hold his split push or peel him easily. If you can, it is nothing more than a number because it doesn't matter what he does. If you can't, it will require some thinking and sometimes, in games, you just lose at champ select because of bad comps. It's just part of the game.

So thanks for reading. I didn't give a tl;dr because I broke this up in sections and I realize it's a long fucking read. Again, I hope it can help. Feel free to ask questions, I can't promise I'll get to them right away but I will do my best to answer them at someone. Good luck friends.