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Give me one reason why I should ever play Nasus

HateDaddy··23 votes·2,336 views

When Darius and Illaoi exist, and to a lesser extent, Olaf. Nasus' early game is complete garbage for this mythical "infinite scaling" that rarely meets the potential everyone builds it up to be. 90% of the time, Nasus ends up just being a front liner that absorbs damage and died without ever hitting a priority target. Darius and Illaoi have tons of aoe, better ways to sustain in fights (sustain that isn't reduced by armor) and most importantly, better early games.

Make no mistake, I think Illaoi is overtuned and Darius is fine and I'm not even asking for Nasus buffs because I realize how terrifying that is. But honestly, his niche has been completely stripped away from him and done better in other champions. I'd honestly just rather see his infinite scaling Q get reworked and capped so he can have better tools for teamfighting while being infinitely less frustrating to lane against with front loaded, binary sustain.

The risks of picking him currently don't outweigh the rewards of picking him and with all the new subclasses of bruisers, the juggernaut is something that Nasus can say he was the OG. If there was ever an original, immobile, slow moving beefy heathen God of death if he gets into range of you, it was Nasus. But he has no ways of sticking to anyone outside of 1v1, it's not even punishable to kite him because you use such little resources to do it whereas it requires more coordinated, skillful kiting to deal with other juggernauts.

His kit is just outdated, bland and frankly he's a shell of his former self in this new game of league of legends where ranged champions have just as much mobility and hard CC as melee champions. I've been playing Nasus for a long time, well over 1k games since season 2 and I can honestly say this is the worst he's ever felt to play. Even in s2 when he was considered a troll pick, if you got farmed, you legit damn near 1v5'd. Now at best you're a cheesey split pusher.

I don't want Nasus buffs, that's a bad idea. I want him to be changed to have more meaningful gameplay and to feel more like the goe Anubis, the slow moving jackal of death that consumes your soul. As of right now, he feels like an injured lab on an episode of bionic Vet needing major surgery somewhere in England.

59 Comments

oh that zed6 votes

I really just play nasus when I want a relaxing game of staying top for over 20 minutes just farming minions with q.

HateDaddy3 votes

[{quoted}](name=oh that zed,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=idAt8bZL,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-07-04T05:06:14.801+0000)

I really just play nasus when I want a relaxing game of staying top for over 20 minutes just farming minions with q.

You could get the same satisfaction out of playing minesweeper

1011001110001 votes

But Minesweeper requires more thought.

Godhri1 votes

Wrong! I always just clicked randomly in minesweeper and it was like... exciting.

Yuri By Mail1 votes

I just play Gangplank and hold top for 30 minutes.

Just think. Ranged Nasus Q's, is what you're doing with GP lategame, and trading the tankyness to get it.

D3m37r11 votes

Lol who still plays minesweeper?

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

It's only the best game in the world

Akali is SO HOT4 votes

what about opening them gates tho

Only Play Darius1 votes

So many other champs that can splitpush well without being an outright liability for half of the game. Most of them are better at teamfights too if they can't make the split work.

FastAsHeck2 votes

your avatar LOL

Swiftstrike44 votes

Nasus if perfectly fine as a champion probably all the way through platinum Elo. After that, Nasus is all about decision-making rather than teamfighting. Nasus does hit his power spike in the mid-game more so than the late game. But I do think if you play a more splitpush style than a teamfight game he is preferable over other champs.

I like Nasus a lot because he outscales most other champions. Nasus is ALWAYS relevant in longer games. Even if he gets shutdown the stacks add up over time.

How I see it, he is one of the few top laners that can die early and lane and still kill his lane opponent at a later point. I think that has a lot of value in this game. I also think he has a lot of value if opponents are going to use their CC on him. That provides opportunities for his teammates to deal their damage in teamfights.

I will say Darius does offer a lot over Nasus, while still remaining a threat. But Darius is a terrible splitpusher in comparison.

Photos of Ghosts3 votes

You get to be a doge.

Baron of Bread3 votes

Nasus can kill a tower much faster than Illoai or Darius. If split pushing is your cup of tea, Nasus is the juggernaut for you.

Only Play Darius2 votes

I'm with you. Nasus is still my favorite champion but right now I rarely find myself picking him when Darius is available, as he does just about everything Nasus does but has a good early game, hard CC, and teamfight potential. This season had been especially brutal for Nasus, increased importance on early game makes it feel like 4v5, warding changes gutted his splitpush, and ADC/Mage updates are sending so many ranged champs toplane that he can hardly stack anymore.

I really, really don't want him to have his Q capped as what makes him so satisfying is whacking people for massive damage you spent time farming for, but Nasus needs something, anything. The meta keeps moving in a direction that he cannot keep pace with and he is quickly approaching garbage status.

IS3E531E3F9643912 votes

to force your opponent to stay in top lane forever and possibly dc out of boredom in trying to deal with nasus

Swaid2 votes

I agree; Nasus should be given more meaningful play styles, same with Dr. Mundo.

Sammystorm2 votes

You clearly don't play in low elo.

MunchCrunchLunch1 votes

hes bad in games that don't go to late game. but nasus is anyway bad late game. you might think he is. but hes not. hes good around mid game if he manages to get 500+ stacks at 20-25 minutes. late game base stats enough for squishies to not get one shot and he will just get cced to hell and deleted because you can't be tanky enough in the current game

nasus is one of the safest picks however since u go full tank instantly and you do decent damage for someone that tanky. hes a safe pick in general you can almost never die as him because all your job is is to cs and stack q

Champion Skin1 votes

If you want a safe pick why wouldn't you rather pick a utility champion instead of Nasus? (and there are lots of other champions who build tank and still have pretty good damage) Since they will always be useful with their CC/utility

Vicarious1171 votes

He's a scaling tanky top laner.... you really should never just pick him, you will be countered because that's what your opponents HAVE to do or they lose.

Keep him in your back pocket until something like a Malph or Maokai get picked for your opponents top lane first, then take Nasus and stack like you've never stacked before!!!

But yes, you will probably get camped, cause again that is what your opponents HAVE to do in order to play against Nasus. It's the risk you take for that godly Q you can get to and single handedly win games. You just have to pick him at the right times and in the right match-ups, as it is with most other champs, it's part of champ select ya know.

Champion Skin1 votes

But yes, you will probably get camped, cause again that is what your opponents HAVE to do in order to play against Nasus.

You don't have to camp Nasus though if you don't you have to deal with his powerful mid game and his split pushing In the late game though if the game drags on the ADC if protected and have QSS or the support have Crucible then they should be able to kill Nasus at a pretty decent speed (after all not like Nasus have good tank steroids except his life steal + Q which doesn't do anything if he is being kited)

Vicarious1171 votes

Nasus isn't most dangerous when in teamfights and chasing down squishy ADCs, that's not his strength and good Nasus players know this.

If you don't get camped and you stack well the enemy team will need more then one person to hold you off of a tower, and if they do that then they'll have less people to hold off the rest of your team or be down a person in a teamfight. If they don't then you get towers, "D Gatez" as many people say, it's what he's best at, not teamfighting.

Champion Skin1 votes

Well if Nasus isn't going to the teamfight you could always bring the teamfight to him

Though yes Nasus is amazing 1v1 and split pushing late game as that is what he does (though he is somewhat lacking in escape options if the enemy team ganks/collapse on him)

Vicarious1171 votes

He has those weaknesses on purpose and for good reason, if he could escape every time people came to stop him you couldn't do anything to stop his already ridiculous split push lol

SaltyKracka1 votes

As I've said before, the recent itemization and mastery changes have hurt him fairly severely.

That said, I don't think he really succeeds at having a late game fantasy that's worth just how bad his early game is, and having him be shit in teamfights really doesn't help any either.

...Honestly, they could probably do with giving him 355 base MS, or at least a 25-50 range buff on his auto range.

Champion Skin1 votes

Nasus isn't even at his best in the late game... Nasus is usually at his strongest in the mid game This is because that is usually when his durability is at it's highest compared with enemy damage and he also usually has enough stacks

And in the late game damage just scales harder which means Nasus will die faster and the enemy has maxed out their utility so they should have enough to kite Nasus (and if Nasus is being kited he is basically a tank just with worse CC/utility) And in the late game ADC's usually eventually get QSS

manbearswine1 votes

Give me one reason why I should ever play X when Y and Z exist

Pretty sure this can be said for the majority of champions.

KONO RUBICK DA1 votes

excellent counter to attack speed champs like vayne or irelia

oh wait, it doesn't matter anymore.

Sasogwa1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Rubick x Sona,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=idAt8bZL,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2016-07-04T10:17:45.471+0000)

excellent counter to attack speed champs like vayne or irelia

oh wait, it doesn't matter anymore.

Well his attack speed slow used to be good, but it's not anymore, they butchered the range and it went from a 65% average attack speed slow (!) to a 32.5% average attack speed slow (meh), in a meta where both crucible and Mercurial scimitar exist.

Spoofghoul1 votes

But the thing is there is alot you can do with build summoners runes and masteries now though

i mean i dont really like most nasus players because for the first 30 minutes the game feels and plays like a 4v5 as a nasus player you have to be willing to sacrifice stacking to help your team when needed, he does have very potent teamfighting tools.

His E reduces armor and his slow guts attackspeed champions, which can be used on their adc or to peel for yours.

Thing you can build or grab to be alot less kitable summoner 6 is pretty good should keep you going the entire teamfight and it also got a low cooldown.

item 3800 just think about how disgusting its passive is in lane everytime you q heal for 20 everytime you take damage you get mana back, get catalyst upgrade when needed. The active is real potent to engage on targets with its 75% movespeed boost for 4 seconds and you can slow for alot aswell.

Then there is the stormraiders mastery which imho is very underused, for example i use it on sion, helps me trade early with a combo i can deal damage soak with shield stun pop shield proc stormraiders get out dealing 35% hp damage and taking none its disgusting and it works wonders for his passive. On a farmed nasus hitting someone with your abilities and 2 x Q will proc it making you temporarily immune to kite.

And there is more,

item 3116 is also extremely potent on nasus, with your ult dealing aoe damage and your E bveing a gigantic aoe field you can slow them from a distance get close then permaslow with ult on. It even boosts your damage quite abit on on E and R

item 3069 another great option currently, boost not only yourself but your entire team dont let yourselfes be kited.

item 3152 For if you feel exceptionally cheesy, use with stormraiders get in have the active deal damage land your e and a Q and get the speedboost.

I think most nasus players focus too much on getting beefy and growing a boner for trinity force. And while i wont argue that many tank items are great on nasus and triforce is godlike.

His biggest problem is getting kited to death, sustain that he has, beefyness he also get some from his ult. Damage, getting that for free too, well you have to farm for it but you dont have to build it.

And you sometimes simply can't pick him, its best when you already have hardengage on your team like an alistar support and a sejuani jungle for example. or even a lissandra mid or ashe adc, sivir also works great.

I see many nasus just simply grabbing triforce SV then whatever tank item comes next and then more tank items. While its probably better to grab anti kite tools.

summoner 6 summoner 12 item 3111 item 3078 item 3069 item 3800 item 3026item 3742 for example in that order will make you incredibly hard to kite at all stages of the game

then consider grabbing stormraiders surge to boot, you will be a very fast doge when needed. I think most nasus simply stick too much to certain builds and such

this is jsut theory crafting though but i think since being kited is by far his 1st 2th and 3th biggest weakness somethign liek this should probably work better then the regular builds i often see.

TL;DR Fix being kited to death and you will be fine, also dont be that douchebag who simply afk farms for 10 hours

TheOvermind1 votes

You pretty much expresses my honest opinion about him 100%. I agree with you on every point except the fact that he is useful at split pushing. Albeit only vs auto attack heavy tops. Anyone who stacks armor and has sustain built into his kit beats him because nasus doesn't do enough damage to life steal from it to beat them. Other than that Ye he sucks at teamfights all he does is tank and wither the adc. He is indeed outdated and feels bland compared to him former self where people where actually afraid of a stacked nasus to death. I have created a small nasus update that will solve most if not all his current problems and make him an attractive champion to play for his own uniqueness. Basically stronger early game, standardised heal from q, more tankiness but needs more offensive items to do damage because I lowered his q stack scaling and gave him a fairer w and more Aoe in teamfights. I will upload it in the following days make sure you check it out.

Pikmints1 votes

Uncapped bonus value from farming, noteworthy utility with his AoE armor shred and f*ck-the-adc-W, no pressure to win lane or trade, your opponent can't buy Zz'rot unless they want to make you all powerful. His kit is absolutely outdated as he's got what feels like the largest amount of hard counters in the game's current state, has a fairly binary fighting style, and promotes as much cowardice as old Soraka who was changed to promote interacting with her opponents.

Mandang01 votes

wither.jpg

HateDaddy1 votes

I'm just going to say it

Nobody here is going to know more about nasus' strengths and weaknesses here than me. So while I appreciate the feedback, some of the stuff here is just flat out wrong and there's no point in me responding to something when in all probability, we will agree to disagree.

I have thousands of games on him and he just sucks. QSS is easy to buy, mikaels is in every game, almost every AP is buying rylais, he only works well with two keystones and one is cheese as shit because it's so win-more.

Every single one of Nasus' spells is actually overpowered as shit in terms of its individual ability but when combined together on a kit like Nasus, it doesn't come together aside from split pushing. But there will always be better split pushers than Nasus. There's no reason for me to pick Nasus over Jax and tryndamere. And other weaker split pushers in terms of tower taking are so oppressive in lane that they just snowball and kill you non stop like riven, pantheon, etc.

Nasus doesn't excel at anything and it's all because of his Q having infinite scaling and honestly, it's not even that big of a deal. You can get to 1k stacks and still easily lose because you'd have spent so much time farming your base is probably gone and can't split and all the stacks in the world don't make you less kitable. He just sucks, plain and simple. I don't care what winrates, play rates, champion masteries etc. I have enough experience and knowledge of the champion that all of that is irrelevant. There's no reason to pick him and when you do pick him, he feels awful.

DorkunedAuras1 votes

Nobody here is going to know more about nasus' strengths and weaknesses here than me.

All respect thrown out of the window

HateDaddy1 votes

{quoted}

All respect thrown out of the window

thats fine, im just being honest. I don't think you understand, I've been playing this champion forever now. half of the things being said here are so wrong but there's no point.

I made this thread to express frustration and hope a rioter would chime in and say "oh yeah! we do have nasus on our radar!" I don't really have much else to say.

Komatose1 votes

I carried a game as Nasus last night. But then again, I was against a Taliyah top. I just let her push into my tower, farmed away, and even though in the early game she was ahead, I was able to go 3-0 against her by 15 minutes or so. She couldn't even touch me when I ulted.

I love Nasus. I think he's fine in Bronze-Gold Elo.

Ryzing2Diamond1 votes

I remember when Ryze was the counter to Illaoi... Good times, too bad she can now two-shot someone not going full-tank no matter how behind she is.

ScissorsNstuff1 votes

W and E

Abyssphere1 votes

Your threads on Nasus are so repetitive. No matter rain or shine or 53% win rate or 48% win rate you talk about how every other juggernaut destroys Nasus and Nasus is incapable of doing anything well. It's so... whatever.

Why keep posting? Just stop playing him until you think he's viable and get over it. Riot isn't going to change Nasus because you think he sucks, especially when you're identifying stuff such as "limit Q stacks" as required changes. That's never going to happen.

HateDaddy1 votes

{quoted}

Your threads on Nasus are so repetitive. No matter rain or shine or 53% win rate or 48% win rate you talk about how every other juggernaut destroys Nasus and Nasus is incapable of doing anything well. It's so... whatever.

Why keep posting? Just stop playing him until you think he's viable and get over it. Riot isn't going to change Nasus because you think he sucks, especially when you're identifying stuff such as "limit Q stacks" as required changes. That's never going to happen.

So Nasus players aren't allowed to be dissatisfied with his current status but cass players are? Syndra players are? Any fucking Mage player because that's what this board QQs about non stop? "oh no HateDaddy thats different lol haha."

Jeddy0171 votes

You know, you don't have to read his Nasus threads. You could ignore them & move on if you find them repetitive. It's not like you're subscribed to the guy or anything.

L0ve Is Blue1 votes

targeted ADC eliminator (W)

Jeddy0171 votes

One reason to play Nasus is to bring out your inner furry. Oh wait, there are other champs who can do that job too, nevermind.

On a more serious note: I'll be honest, after reading his updated lore, I wouldn't mind Nasus being change to be a bit more like his character in lore.

ZeeWolfZ1 votes

If you hate yourself and enjoy anal play, then susaN is for you.

Wild Geese1 votes

Why do Nasus rush item 3110 ??

No other champ rushes this item. This isn't a good item to rush. There's something weird about Nasus that this is his best option, that's for sure.

Wolfess1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Wild Geese,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=idAt8bZL,comment-id=0020,timestamp=2016-07-05T08:58:29.679+0000)

Why do Nasus rush item 3110 ??

No other champ rushes this item. This isn't a good item to rush. There's something weird about Nasus that this is his best option, that's for sure.

because: 1: nasus needs mana to use Q 2: nasus needs cdr to spam Q 3: tons of armor for sustain while he heals while spamming Q

Sasogwa1 votes

{quoted}

because: 1: nasus needs mana to use Q 2: nasus needs cdr to spam Q 3: tons of armor for sustain while he heals while spamming Q

Nasus synergizes well with resistances (due to being passive and lifesteal-based) and CDR

Edit : woops intended to answer to the original guy you replied to, my bad

Vicarious1171 votes

There are a few tank top laners who do rush that item though..... basically anyone who typically rushes IBG first or second, when they're losing lane badly enough to AD then grabbing FH instead is better for them, and Nasus is among that group who rush IBG more often then FH anyway.

MoarCowbell981 votes

nasus will never be the go to pick as long as he has infinite scaling and more importantly the broken wither.

i think his Q being infinite scaling is fine. like whatever. you have a tanky juggernaut with no mobility who scales well into the mid and early late game (his late late late game is actually not so good as that is when adcs shine and just kite him into oblivion).

his wither makes him hard to balance though. it is an INCREASING slow and it lasts SO LONG that its just a broken spell. I think nasus could use a rework while keeping his Q intact and maybe giving him something else to make him unique or relevant in team fights.

a single target wither is not going to help him in team fights. and his ult AOE doesn't mean anything if he is just being kited around. I dont think he needs mobiltiy but he could use somethign.

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