Nasus; A Gameplay Update
Right now Nasus is a low elo stomper while as you rise the ranks he is completely useless since higher level players know how to apply pressure on the map, to kite, and to actually focus fire and kill the tanks. So Nasus is in a really weird spot being super overpowered in low-skill play and very underwhelming in high-skill play; this means Nasus cannot get nerfed since he is not played at higher brackets due to his current kit and playstyle while he cannot get buffed because he is already too strong for low tier brackets and casual players.
Okay so Nasus I will say is this infinite scaling, dog-tank; something I want to remove or at least toned down by a lot is the "AFK farm" playstyle. This should, in theory, make the dog less stressful for his opponent while making him viable in higher skill brackets. I do want to add some 'complexities' to Nasus, while making him still very easy to play, I think making him less simplistic will make him more interesting and more things you can do with him and of course this will increase his mastery ceiling by a lot (right now it is insanely low; even the midget smurfs will bump their heads it is so low), while trying to keep his skill floor the same.
Soul Eater (Passive): All executes will permanently grant +1 Soul Eater stack which empowers his basic attacks and abilities; +3 Soul Eater stacks for executes and assists of large minions and monsters, epic monsters, structures, and champions. If Nasus scores a direct execute to his main target from Siphoning Strike the Soul Eater stack value will double of what it normally would have been.
Basic attacks heal for (+20%Soul Eater stacks) health on-hit, doubles if the basic attack is empowered by Siphoning Strike (half of the value for struck enemies by the splash damage).
Siphoning Strike (Q): Cooldown: 4 seconds; Cost: 25 Mana; AoE Range: 350 units Nasus empowers his next basic attack to deal 10/25/40/55/70(+100%AD)(+50%Soul Eater stacks) as physical damage to his target and half this damage to nearby enemies. Nasus ignores 10/15/20/25/30% of his target's armor with Siphoning Strike and applies a debuff for 3 seconds to all struck enemies that causes ally champions, excluding Nasus, to ignore 10/15/20/25/30% of the debuff targets' armor. Siphoning Strike deals 50% increased damage against towers.
Additionally directly striking a champion with Siphoning Strike currently affected by Wither will stun the target for 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds.
Wither (W): Cooldown: 18/16.5/15/13.5/12 seconds; Cost: 80 Mana; Range: 1200 units Nasus creates a shockwave of earthen magic in the target direction to age all struck enemy champions which slows them between 1/5/10/15/20% to 99%, depending on how far away the champions were from the source, for 1(+0.01 second per 1 Soul Eater stack) seconds. Struck champions also have their attack speed slowed by half the movement slow.
Spirit Fire (E): Cooldown: 10 seconds; Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 Mana; Range: 600 units; AoE: 450 units Nasus unleashes a spirit of flame upon the target location for 5 seconds to deal 60/90/120/150/180(+60%AP) magic damage plus 10/20/30/40/50(+12%AP) magic damage per second. Enemies within the flames grant Nasus 10/20/30/40/50% bonus movement speed when moving towards them.
Additionally, minions and monsters take 15%(+25% per 100 Soul Eater stacks) increased magic damage from Spirit Fire.
Fury of the Sands (R): Cooldown: 120 seconds; Cost: 100 Mana; AoE: 175 units Nasus empowers himself with a sandstorm for 15 seconds, instantaneously gaining 300/450/600 bonus health, while also enlarging his size and increasing his range to his abilities by (+50%Soul Eater stacks) and basic attacks by (+25%Soul Eater stacks) based on Soul Eater stacks. While Nasus is empowered, enemies within 175-units of Nasus receive 3/4/5%(+1% per 100AP) magic damage each second (capped at 240 damage per second); and Nasus gains bonus attack damage (capped at 300 bonus attack damage) equal to 6.375% of the damage dealt by Fury of the Sands.
Nasus I think is coolest as a pusher, both towers and waveclear, and not about a tank one-shotting people; which albeit may be fun for the user, this is not a fun play style for others on the receiving end. So I made Nasus more about waveclear, objective control, and teamplay and a farmer tank that scales insanely well into the late game and less about someone who AFK last hits with Q and completely ignores his team, this is boring with no interesting gameplay to it.
I made it for Nasus can consistently receive a large amount of stacks every game at all brackets of play with getting stacks just by executes by any means, and made the stacking system utility focus rather than damage focus so Nasus will function a lot better as a tank that will become very scary with long duration AoE Withers and with the reduced Wither duration I did grant Nasus some offensive movement speed with Spirit Fire rather than armor shred so now Nasus can actually get in the fights and cause havoc on the enemy team. Siphoning Strike has 50% splash damage, which does not effect the increase stack bonus, but this is to force Nasus into waveclearing if he chooses to accelerate his game and become a late game monster sooner rather than slow pushing and freezing minion waves so Q spamming becomes a real conscious choice now to what Nasus currently wants to do, power up faster or freeze the wave.
The Wither change, an instant point-and-click 5 seconds stun is not very interesting or offers very good gameplay against it (it offers none). So by turning the spell into a skill shot that travels can do a few things, like offer better gameplay to it and allows the spell to receive power to it like make it AoE. Wither will now always be the same strength through the whole duration, but now the strength of the slow and attack slow is based on how far away one was when they got struck by Wither (a little bit of a Nidalee spear mechanic) so sniping targets with a max range Wither can be a MASSIVE 99% slow for 5 seconds in the late game with 400 Soul Eater stacks, while mid range around 50% slow, and point blank the slow basically does not exist it is so weak, but can allow for a 1 second stun from Siphoning Strike; so having the slow duration scale on Soul Eater stacks allows the spell to be strong late game and not be snowballing games in the early game on top of turning it into a skill shot allows players to try to dodge the spell rather than trying to stay over 600 units away from Nasus to avoid a 5 seconds point and click stun.
