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I'm really starting to question if Nasus actually has a weak early anymore.

TheChaoticSwede·4/30/2016, 12:42:38 PM·50 votes·5,404 views

I don't feel like going too in-depth on the champion himself but it's obvious that high-scaling champions like Nasus need to have an early game otherwise they're just too overbearing and easy to win with.

However I just got out of a game against a Pantheon and despite him literally spamming moves on me constantly throughout the entire first 10 minutes of the game he still had to back more than me because I had such a big sustain and after I bought Frozen Heart the whole game for him was basically a ticking time bomb. He literally couldn't damage me anymore let alone stop me from stacking.

By the time he was able to get help from his jungler I had already gotten shen and was able to take him before dying anyway. By the time the 20 minute mark was hit I was pushing their inhib turret with 310 stacks and Frozen Gauntlet. Worst part about the whole thing was that my team before that point was actually losing. But suddenly within a matter of a minute I forced the entire enemy team to dedicate at least 2-3 member permanently to me lest they'll lose the entire top part of the map to me.

Within 5 minutes I was able to shove through their inhib and by that time my team was grouped up bot and was at their inhib there. The enemy team surrendered at that point because there was little to nothing they could do. Mind you this team surrendered at 25 minutes with more kill than my team.

I feel like I just committed a crime really. That game didn't feel fair at all.

111 Comments

Sasogwa4/30/2016, 1:26:08 PM28 votes

Common missconception is that since he has infinite scaling, Nasus is a great lategame champion. False. Nasus has an average/weakish early game, but survivable. Conditionally good/great midgame if he managed to farm well/freefarm. Good lategame duelling (still gets shat on by Yi) ; terrible lategame teamfighting. That's why he splitpushes all the time, he can only do that.

Nasus lategame is so ridiculously overrated it's sad. In a game with 3 items, Nasus with 400 stacks is IMMENSELY BETTER than Nasus with 900 stacks in a 6 items scenario. I'm not joking.

PS : Pantheon is the best Nasus counter there is, coming from a D3 Nasus main. You should win lane everytime, there's something you did wrong with how you managed the lane and you'll need more experience. Don't hesitate to put some autoattacks in your trades as well, know that he can't trade at all. Go in bush to cancel minion aggro. Actually woops you were the one playing Nasus, well he sucked. Also I suppose that if you're winning lane so hard but only have 310 stacks at 20' this isn't very high elo

AttackOnTeemos4/30/2016, 12:50:05 PM9 votes

Personally I feel like he should be able to lose some stacks on death.

Bears Dont Care4/30/2016, 4:25:26 PM4 votes

The trick is allowing Nasus to place himself in the middle of the lane or over extend. The worst thing you can do is be overly aggressive and push him under his tower, because then he will just farm from beneath it. Allowing him to go into the middle of the lane or over extend allows you to get him ganked and thena llow you to dive and repeatedly kill him.

The trick to beating Nasus isn't aggression, its by being passive and making him over extend. Freeze the lane by your tower.

Irelia Bot4/30/2016, 2:36:09 PM4 votes

His biggest issue is that for scaling really well into late game he is easily able to disregard poke early to mid game expecially fro mother melee.

He use to be gated by mana costs on Q in how fast he could farm it up when it scaled in cost based on ability rank 20/25/30/35/40 mana per use. You would still max it first since it reduced the cooldown time by a second for each rank.

He also did not have IBG giving even more mana then frozean heart and 20% CDR back then as well so it is a case of things all lining up for his benifit.

The best things to do to hit nasus would likely be making his Q cost 30 mana at all ranks, increase the mana cost on Wither to 100 from 80. If that is not enough perhaps reduce his passive 10/15/20% life steal to 4/7/10% Omni-Vamp (basically saying he heals from all damage AoE is reduced to a third of this healing. Same healing concept as gunblade.)

ViashinoWizard4/30/2016, 8:59:16 PM4 votes

{quoted} However I just got out of a game against a Pantheon and despite him literally spamming moves on me constantly throughout the entire first 10

Ah, see, there's the problem: your opponent didn't play the match up correctly. Pantheon shouldn't be mindlessly spamming his abilities on Nasus, he should be zoning him away from farm and freezing the wave so it doesn't push to his tower. Your goal against Nasus in lane isn't so much to try and kill him (though that helps) but to starve him of stacks.

DarkRitual4/30/2016, 5:26:19 PM3 votes

How to keep Nasus down early: 1: Gank 2: Gank again 3: Mid roams topduring gank. Turret Dive. 4: Continue above steps in any order.

Umbra Z4/30/2016, 1:14:37 PM3 votes

Nasus dosent even have a weak early game at like the 5 minute mark if youve been stacking decently not well decently you can basically win a fight in your lane and if nasus gets a lead in the EARLY game its like over for top a single fuck up destroys top and then within a few minutes hes pushing your nexus tower and does half a turrets health with a single q.

Only Play Darius4/30/2016, 6:17:58 PM3 votes

A good Nasus can make it extremely hard to kill him early game without jungler help, but Nasus cannot outright win lane unless his opponent is braindead. Pantheon does not counter Nasus the way Darius or Teemo does, he counters him in a way similar to Shen, uses his ult to roam and snowball the game while Nasus is stacking since Nasus cannot interrupt Panth ulti, he cannot sit in lane with Nasus or else he falls off and loses. Your Pantheon did not play his champion right.

Had a ranked game where I was playing Garen and just like your Panth failed horribly at denying him stacks. But it didn't matter, I was twice as tanky as he was and just sat in the frontline while my KogMaw melted him to nothing. Two teamfights and the game was over, and I can think of few champs that are as garbage in 5v5 as Nasus is.

Franky Nasus is utter shit right now, he's my main and favorite champion but I hardly play him anymore as splitpushing is too risky now and he simply gets melted in teamfights much faster than he used to. No longer any reason to pick him over Darius, who does the exact same thing Nasus does but isn't a liability early game, isn't afraid to teamfight/roam, and can actually stop teleports and channels (roams screw Nasus harder than anything else). I have the occasional good Nasus game like yours but, as a 300k Nasus player, my advice is don't waste your time learning him, not right now at least.

A Bad Nasus4/30/2016, 6:44:21 PM3 votes

Meh, it always amazes me when people say that he's strong. If anything he is only as strong as his opponent allows him to be. There are several champions that do his job better Darius Gangplank Irelia are a few, and without sacrificing so much early game. His playrate has been dropping as well as his winrate. I don't see Nasus played in na diamond on lolnexus anymore. Yeah he definitely needs a nerf kappa.

Drunk Rummate4/30/2016, 10:19:13 PM3 votes

nasus' "weak early game" is listed as a weakness not because of his lane phase, but because of his low impact on the rest of the map. he wants to sit and farm so he cant really afford to respond to a highly mobile champion that ganks a lot.

Tobias Brackner5/1/2016, 12:51:36 AM3 votes

If you were fine v Pantheon the Pantheon fucked up.

arghilost4/30/2016, 1:06:58 PM2 votes

Doesn't really matter, he's always been stronger in lower elo due to games being wayyy slower.

Try playing nasus in diamond and see how much fun you have lol

Nanuk Pihoqahiak4/30/2016, 1:32:49 PM2 votes

One of the biggest buffs he received at the start of this season was Grasp and the change to Sheen giving CDR. Sheen is actually rushable now and makes it so he's able to duel a lot of toplaners at 50-100 stacks since he gets a lot of free power between Sheen bonus, his ult and Wither.

As it stood before he wouldn't see any powerspikes until he amassed a good amount of CDR. Now all he needs is Sheen / Kindle / Glacial and he's at 30 percent, potentially 40 with runes. If you go the rune route, you could just forego the Glacial.

M0b1us4/30/2016, 6:16:40 PM2 votes

If you suck then yes, Nasus doesn't have a weak early game. If you are semi-competent at the game and understand how to punish people, then Nasus has arguably the weakest early game.

Also, the last time Nasus was directly buffed was about a month after SKARNER was released. Ever since then Nasus has only received nerfs or bug fixes. In S1 and S2, Nasus was considered to be one of the WORST champions along the likes of Poppy and Eve. This was because back then the top lane play style was much more focused on pure lane dominance. Then people started crying when they tried to beat Nasus in a sustain war...

Dark Nephthys5/1/2016, 7:32:40 AM2 votes

Personally I hate Nasus with a passion and consider him to be the one champion in the game I want to be removed. I'm generally a really passive laner (outside of a select few champions like Top lane LeeSin Shyvana, and Mid lane Anivia Lulu) so I hate when a champion forces me to have to play aggressive and even babysit and stay top for a large portion of the game to ensure he doesn't get insane...

The Q stacking is annoying, but to me it's not what pisses me off about the champion...Well...but for the fact that he can 1-2 shot turrets and inhibs with it which I find really stupid. They've been removing every champions ability to Q turrets already and the only 2 I can think of right now is Nasus Shyvana. If they remove Shyvana's before Nasus, I'll probably just quit the game because of how stupid that is. Even if they don't remove him from being able to, at least reduce it's damage or something, or hell buff turrets so no one can insantly take a turret so quick in a game by themself with only 1-2 minion waves.

The only real issue I have with Nasus is the sustain. I just feel the built in free item 3072's lifesteal as a passive is a bit much. I also find it funny that the amount he gets is the same amount as Morgana's spellvamp which is much much weaker than Lifesteal, especially on a champion like Morgana who only has 1 skill that gets the full effect of spell vamp (every other ability is aoe/dot so it's reduced).

And don't just say "Counter Nasus then" because that's not always an option...What if you picked your top lane first? What if you were playing blind pick? And denying him isn't always easy to...You could constantly push the wave into his tower and try to force the turret to kill the minions while slowly chipping it down...But wait, he loves farming under turret, and tower diving him is stupid with his strong wither so that is a bad idea.

You could try to last hit and freeze the lane and not push it into tower, then he is easily going to stack Q and take control of the wave and push into your tower which would be bad for you, so that idea doesn't work. You could try to harass him as much as you can, and duel him and get him low but unless you have range, or a lot of burst he can just life steal all his hp back up after just 2-3 Q's and then re-fight you. Even if you are winning your lane, unless you are winning by a lot...he will come back with 1 item and become start winning the fights easily.

The Deckowner4/30/2016, 12:52:40 PM2 votes

imagine it was a garen or riven tho

pantheon has very weak sustains, that is why he cant shut down nasus.

USG Failsawce5/1/2016, 1:17:23 PM2 votes

Chances are the Pantheon had no idea what he was doing. Both in playing Pantheon, and dealing with Nasus... as Pantheon. And judging from his build alone, I would say that's an entirely correct assumption.

He should rush either Youmuu's or Cleaver and then Mortal Reminder, a different kind of boots, and maxed his E for trading/poking since it's ESSENTIAL now for sustaining vs high sustain matchups. But instead he likely maxed his Q and just spammed it, drained all his mana, and was clearly building a Hydra - the single WORST item to build vs a Nasus.

The Hydra alone speaks volumes about what kind of player he is, and his build screams "I haven't played since S3/S4". I'd be willing to bet he didn't use Thunderlords, or the right Masteries/Runes either, based on that. And so very many more things that he could have done wrong.

Pantheon actually has better capability to shut down Nasus than most champs in this game. Not only to deny him farming/stacking with his W and zone him out with damage, but to push him out of lane entirely and/or kill him. He can outsustain Nasus, but only if he does it right. I've never not completely dominated a Nasus with Pantheon.

TL;DR - Yes Nasus does have a 'decent' early game. But that Pantheon was clearly bad, and you should consider it the player not the matchup, in this case.

The Bíg Ticket4/30/2016, 2:28:48 PM2 votes

He doesn't have a weak early game....it is actually pretty safe with his passive, W and grasp. That being said champs like Darius, Garen and Pantheon too (no idea what your panth was doing) definitely still destroy him.

ilt4/30/2016, 3:08:37 PM2 votes

It doesn't even matter if you shut him down early game. He just sits top at laser turret and have team stall till 40 minutes.

youngjake935/2/2016, 11:00:54 AM1 votes

I've played this matchup a ton. Pantheon loses the lane if he doesn't trade with autos+drop minion aggro with bushes+zone Nasus from the creeps. Pantheon will run out of mana if he stands behind the creeps casually chucking spears because Nasus will just sustain up. But if you play super aggressively, Nasus will have to give up A TON of farm. Also after level 6, Pantheon should only be in that lane to waveclear under tower. Take double kills bot lane all day or the easiest kill of your life mid and just let Nasus farm. With your ult you can snowball your team faster than anything Nasus can accomplish 1v0.

The big problem though is trading with autos pushes the lane when you draw creep aggro and trading in front of the minions at melee range makes you lose a lot of health and be in a dangerous area for ganks. You have no escape and Nasus has Wither. If your jungler does not understand the concept of counter ganking(very likely in soloqueue), you're kind of boned. Likewise, if the enemy bot+mid lane just freeze to preserve laning phase for Nasus and avoid your ganks, you're stuck laning vs Nasus. In that case you have to build black cleaver and hope you killed him or are up 30 farm by the level 6 mark. This is the matchup that's probably most decided by what the Mids, Bots and Jgs do, but most of the time neither team realizes that and will flame you if you mention it.

DesolationKaizer4/30/2016, 7:59:21 PM1 votes

The irony is that Nasus' early game isn't as terrible as people might think, while has lategame isn't as godly as people might think either. He's a monster midgame though.