The Problem with Nasus

Dragonface··6 votes·1,710 views

The problem with Nasus currently is that you need to essentially babysit your laner if he's against a Nasus and he doesn't counter him, as if not, Nasus will pretty much always get enough farm to be a HUGE late game problem.

After the last match I've had, and about the 30th match in the past week with a Nasus top in it, it seems his solo normal win rate is ridiculously high. I generally will jungle or mid, and almost everytime, even if he is camped by jungler, he comes back. For the most part, mind you, these Nasus' win their lane, or lose it then just sit top and farm the whole match until 30 mins in. I'd have to say less than 5 of those matches my team has won.

My previous match I played Panth, my first few kills were Nasus, putting the Jax extremely far ahead. I left the lane for a while figuring whatever issue Nasus could cause is now irrelevant. So I gank other lanes, and go 7/2. This entire time, Nasus has been kiting Jax and farming. Jax killed him once, then about 10 minutes later we start a team fight, and we focus the Azir. Nasus withers Jax and I assume it's no big deal as he couldn't have done much in less than 20 minutes while the Jax was ahead. Nasus Qs my Jax and almost shreds half his health. We learn from that and start building BotRKs or Armor Pen, and focus Nasus.

Next team fight breaks out and I have 20% Armor Pen, Jax has a BotRK, and Malz planned on saving his ult to shut him down. Fight begins, we all jump on Nasus, and we get him to HALF HEALTH by the time his team kills us all. JUST HALF. That's it. So our choices were this, ignore Nasus and have him kill us all (Had max CDR and a ton of stacks) or focus the Nasus and get killed by his team. I finished the game 7/8. That means I literally didn't kill anyone after my final ganks.

TL;DR can we PLEASE implement something into the game that will make it so building tanky Nasus and getting camped will punish you. Like making stacks fall off if you die, or making it so CDR doesn't benefit Q, or SOMETHING, hell, if you wanna make it so he generates more stacks per kill, but loses some on death, I'd be okay with that, because as of right now, Nasus needs to be CONSTANTLY babysat and controlled in order for him to be irrelevant mid to late game. If he isn't, he becomes this massive beefy champ with a massive slow and a 1k damaging ability he can use every 3ish seconds. It feels really diminishing to gameplay to have to have EVERYONE build tenacity just for one single champ on the map. The point of building tanky is you're supposed to tank damage and have some type of utility and not do a lot of damage but Nasus has all 3 things, tankiness, damage, and utility.

I don't believe it should be a percentage of stacks lost, but an increasing flat amount, start off low, and build up every 4 levels or something like that.

18 Comments

lnterloper2 votes

Unless Nasus builds ridiculous amounts of MR your Malzahar should have been able to 100-0 him with a full combo + ignite. Malz and Nasus are my two mains so i've learned how to play with/against both. Usually the only MR on Nasus is Spirit Visage + Merc Treads, build a Liandries + quick Void Staff and you should still be able to shred Nasus. In a team fight you need to peel for Malz and let him focus Nasus while the rest of you take care of his other team mates, afterwords Malz either shoulda killed him or gotten his health low enough that he wouldn't want to jump into the fight anymore allowing you to either get away or go in for the last kill. But even before then while the two teams are waiting for the first person to jump in you should be kiting the entire team, especially Malz with his Q as is does a significant chunk of damage and has a 3 second silence, afterwords its just picking up the scraps.

Dragonface1 votes

Problem was do you honestly expect their team to let Nasus get an entire ult from Malz without killing/stunning him?

Meep Man2 votes

Make his Q have an increased cool down when it doesn't kill a target (by about 2 seconds or so). Also make the bonus damage from Q only apply 66% of the damage (2 bonus per last hit) vs turrets. Boom. Also, give Nasus some compensation buffs somehow since Nasus is overall in a balanced spot right now.

Dragonface2 votes

I still believe he needs to have stacks fall off though. It's 100x easier to stack his Q up and a lot more rewarding than stacking up Mejai's, as Mejai's now is a high risk, mid reward item, due to the stack fall off increase. I can get around 700-1k stacks by 40-45 minutes, at that point, if you do NOT focus me, I WILL kill at least 2 people by myself, no help from others. And the problem with focusing him is he's the tank. You're essentially forced to focus a tank. If Nasus grabs Merc Treads and gets the mastery to reduce CC, he pretty much can snap out of any CC very quickly and continue DPSing your team.

PrinceArchie1 votes

Yea a nasus dying should lose like 1/4 of his stacks

ZER09992 votes

Can fix with a single implementation that should have been done so long ago: Siphoning Strike DOES NOT apply lifesteal. This way nasus has to do something other than just q cs all day ignoring all harass from enemies.

Dragonface2 votes

I think it's fair and unfair. What they could do instead is rework his passive so that it recovers a flat amount upon minion kill and doubles when using it on champions. Right now, playing Nasus consists of farming minions, ignoring enemy champions, and punishing them for coming in on you with a Q once you've got some stacks on it.

Boulderox1 votes

LOVE IT, sick of being able to take him early but have to give up mid and late because he q's through the lane with ease. There is no drawback to his stacking. Don't say its that he has to kill the minion, its just csing with a skill. No skill required other than csing.

Dragonface2 votes

I wouldn't say he takes no skill. You have to know when to go in to avoid getting stunlocked, but the problem is, if you let him CS enough, he rubberbands very hard.

Boulderox1 votes

{quoted}

I wouldn't say he takes no skill. You have to know when to go in to avoid getting stunlocked, but the problem is, if you let him CS enough, he rubberbands very hard.

thats what i mean, i can take him early so the jungler doesn't gank me so its a farm race, then he gets plenty of stacks and then rolls the game cus he can't be beaten. I was referring to early game too. And later in mid to late others are much more dangerous then using all your spells on a tank with a Q nuke.

TeemoJenkins1 votes

His stacks don't take a penalty if he dies (I've never played him)?

Dragonface1 votes

They do not. The MASSIVE problem I see with him is you NEED to have a champ that counters him, because if he counters you, he'll free farm, and if it's a lane that goes even, he'll just farm. The problem with him is if you build tanky to start, without a TON of ganks he'll just outfarm your top and shred you late game.

PrinceArchie1 votes

My solution to teams facing a Nasus, Stop forcing the game to scale into the late game . This may be my biggest gripe about players in solo queue I dont care what elo you are I've seen it and played through a lot of unnecessary extended games because either team simply will not close out. It's not really rocket science as much as it is team coordination. Get objectives, take advantage of your lead (which on average is like 2.5k+ gold by the mid game from my games at least) and group up to take control of the map to win. On average I have like 1 in 15 games where a team isnt thinking about being skirmish heroes.

We don't need everyone on OUR team to be ahead of their counter parts, nor do we need one guy 1v5ing the other team as much as he wants until the other team scales. Ugh I digress though but OP this is the biggest reason why Nasus is a problem. I read your post and I could relate 100% as an avid top laner myself. Tards on my team want me to be Best Top NA or something and magically make Nasus a non factor all game. Thing is, you can't stop a Nasus from getting farm at all by yourself and be with your team at the same time.

If your team see's a Nasus on the other team they need to know the game needs to end before 30 minutes or they're screwed because he will 1v5 that team past that. Everyone should know this by now, its not a secret, it happens often theres no way around it. Mechanics wont save you from it, it will happen unless the Nasus is really really really bad. Nasus on the other team means end the game before 30, if you don't the team lost the game and they have no one to blame but themselves, not the top laner themselves. Ok rant over.

Dragonface1 votes

What happens if we're playing even for a while and can't finish it before late game?

What you seem to misunderstand is you think I'm purposely drawing games out. I've ended games as the fed ADC in 25 minutes because I don't want them to have the chance to rubberband back and facefuck our team.

And the last thing I read was you saying end it before 30 mins. You're essentially saying it's okay for someone to have such an impossible-to-beat late game as long as his early to mid game is average. If that's the case, let's bring back Vlad on release, when his early game sucked, but about 25 mins in, his Q was on a 3 second cooldown, healed about twice as much as it did now, dealt significantly more damage, his pool was on a lower CD, and his ult dealt more damage. Because since his early game is weak, all you have to do is end it before about 25 mins and you should be good

Only read the first few lines before I decided you aren't worth the time because you seem to be neglecting the fact that you can't just say "WE'RE AHEAD! WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, SINCE WE HAVE 3K MORE GOLD THAN THEM, WE CAN JUST PUSH TO WIN WITHOUT ANY SORT OF RESISTANCE."

PrinceArchie1 votes

Im disappointed you didn't feel the need to continue reading, I didn't mean to put you off so much. I'm not blaming you but I am rather sympathizing with you on the power of a mid-late game Nasus. Would I like to see some tweaks so that his power is more incremental and has the opportunity to be tapered or shaved off with effective counter play (I.E him losing some stacks if he gets killed)? I very much would. But nontheless such changes arent happening overnight, they may not even take place in the next few months, im merely giving my opinion to remedy the issue NOW because thats more important, to me at least. Nasus can be stopped, crisis can be averted but he needs to be given proper attention to as well as respect. He needs to be shut down early game as much as possible, if your jungler and top laner can bully him as many times as possible its best to do that to further delay his power spike. However you must RESPECT the power of Nasus split push and farm. As you said many will stay in a single lane, neglecting to team fight unless they are fairly strong That gives you two options:

**A. Dedicate a good split pusher/Duelist to stay in lane with Nasus and mitigate his farm, while rampiing up your own late game until you feel comfortable enough to win **

**B. End the game before he can reach that point. **

Im sorry if you think that picks and bans do not affect games with certain champions, especially when playing with or against a Nasus. It's a reality you cannot avoid, offended by my tone or not you will continue to see this trend until Nasus is tweaked, if ever and outside of nasus games with other champs that scale heavily with farm who could easily split just as much (Fiora , Jax , Riven , Tryndamere ). Always respect the potential power of your opponents, dragging a game out longer always means one thing, everyone gets stronger . It's very hard as a group to deny the enemy team any growth in an extended game, much less as a makeshift team of first time teammates in solo queue.

The longer games go on the higher the chances you risk losing, some comps worse than others depending on how your champions scale, This is general knowledge that shouldn't frustrate you it's basic rules of the game. You need to take advantage, and of course there will always be resistance unless the enemy team surrenders at 20 or something. At the end of the day its about how hard, how smart, and how willing you are to get that win. If you don't wanna work for it 9/10 you're not going to get it. Stopping a Nasus isn't complicated, it just takes some coordination which is very hard to come by in solo queue. :/

bunies1 votes

frankly they just need to nerf the living shit out of wither that skill is broken as all hell

gummiers1 votes

lose about 90% of my normals vs nasus. so sick of this op and toxic champ. if im forced to play ad that game, it makes the game extremly unfun and pointless late game. cant out run him, cant attack him, and just get 3 shot.

Solaris Ventara1 votes

I know i'll probably get a down vote or two for this, but a solution would be to reduce the effect of Wither by at least 20% when maxed. As for his Q and stacks, a solution to that would be to make it so it ONLY stacks off kills on champions, as right now it stacks off kills on minions, monsters, and champions alike. the q change would of course mean that he'd have to get better scaling on his stacks, or gain more stacks on a champion kill, but it would at least balance out the game a bit more as there would actualy be a way to STOP him from building up. also a change to his e's field would be nice, at least reduced damage on the burning effect when in it would help some against AP build nasus.

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