Why Nasus has become a kinda failed anticarry bruiser over the years

Hi I'm Sasogwa I used to be a huge Nasus main and I'd like to talk about the reasons why I regret what Nasus spot used to be and what caused him to be in the spot he is right now.

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Nasus_0.jpg

So let's begin as I started to play, what Nasus used to be back in season 2. That's interesting because he was actually in a bad spot, and yet, in a great spot for Nasus mains. He was widely considered garbage and yet it was just because of his abysmal laning phase and hard mana management. He actually was quite a monster in mid-lategame because of his Q, W and R mostly. Reminder his W used to be a 35 to 95% attack speed slow at max rank, so he was basically the anti-attack speed carry, that was carved in his design. And surprisingly that was quite a huge part of his lategame power budget and also a part of why he was so insanely powerful in duels. (despite that he sat at something like 45% winrate)

Now let's move on to season 3. There Nasus received huge buffs, the buffs that tbh I felt were just wrong. He received cooldown, QOL and easy manacosts making him basically much more viable but really dumbing down his skill floor. The very reason most Nasus players like to play Nasus is to have a challenging time managing his laning phase and the difference between good and bad Nasuses around mana management was basically removed. (back then, philo stone or chalice of harmony were quite common to overcome Nasus mana dependency). But a buff's a buff, I'd take it any day. So Nasus became easier to play, and started to see competitive play... in jungle. Since his early was easier and mana costs better, his W range better and his ult cooldown shorter he basically saw play as an objective-controller anti-carry jungler. (his ult doing %max health magic dmg/sec to dragon or baron and his slow, respectively). He stayed that way quite a while and also saw some play toplane due to Doran's shield being extremely strong at the time and making most toplaners immovable. But then came the huge butchering of his W. AS slow divided by 2 (!) and range reduced. Because adc's need counterplay, you know. So that made him take quite a huge hit to his anticarry identity but he was still overall decently strong. And then over the years he hasn't had much changes but he feels way worse in lategame than what he used to be. (i'll talk about the ult changes after) He doesn't feel like he fits his lategame identity and he doesn't feel like he's fitting the juggernaught spot really well.

What made it so?

1. Overspecialization of kits

Back then, there weren't really people that kit was specialized in murdering tanks. No Fiora %max health true damage, no Darius black cleaver true damage noxian might, no Master Yi true damage, no ... There was . But both were countered by his slow, and at the time had some depth in grabbing it as an adc because it didn't simply build easily into . You had to take an entire slot in your inventory for just if you wanted to hardcounter some champions ( notably). Also not all kits included %health damage ; you kind of had to build damage to have damage (atma's for instance). Now it's less the case.

But also, crowd control was much more target-agnostic. Remember taric old stun, sion old stun, and then what, leona, annie, veigar etc. most of it is single target ranged CC (think that leona has a dash). The CC is less spammable/feeling like you walk in glue because you're perma CCed but easier to use on ranged champions. But we changed that. Because adcs need counterplay, you know. So kits like Braum, Nautilus, Zyra etc. where the CC is kind of a skillshot but easier to land and spammable on melee targets. Basically peel cancer, you'll excuse me for the terminology. CC that is extremely biased and immensely strong against melee champions and very weak against ranged champions, especially with mobility. Because we all love mobility creep of course. It would be a shame if in a LCS big plays montage, a muh skilled champion was simply stunned and die for bad positionning when he's about to do such plays.

2. Itemization

wasn't the same. First it was an attack speed shred item, then a flatpen item, then what it is now aka an antitank juggernaught/Riven,Wukong item. used to be 35% total armor, not 45% bonus armor. Aka more biased against tanks and less powerful to burst squishies. ~~Because adc's need counterplay ~~ was stronger used to have movespeed slow when attacked, which made it better against kite. But that was removed cause adc's need counterplay, you know. (also it was a must buy or trolling Kappa) granted 35% tenacity

• Rest in peace Shurelia, rip 30 MR chalice, rip philostone -

** Why is Nasus not quite a juggernaught? **

If you think about it, his kit is quite an antisquishy in numbers. Lifesteal : great against creeps, against low armor champions, borderline useless against armored targets. Q : flat physical damage, easy to counter with armor W : attack speed slow (butchered but still there), better against attack speed based champions E : magic damage circle, with flat armor shred. 40 free flat armor shred? If that doesn't scream antisquishy; I don't know what does. R: the exception. % max health magic damage/ sec. An excellent juggernaught spell. The problem is nothing else in his kit has synergy with it. So you can't really get it to be great except if you go AP-ish; but what you really wanna do is go sheen item+tank.

When we think about it, Nasus kit is outdated in the way that it is not overspecialized as the other kits. Think most juggernaught reworks, that have mostly physical damage, synergistic kits especially with black cleaver. Meanwhile Nasus kind of has 2 different parts of his kit, the physical Q with the arshred of E; and the magic damage of E and R. Which is kind of why we also see 2 builds : the Q max and the Quasus.

** What can be done and has been done about it? **

Interestingly enough, the quite recent changes to Nasus ultimate were very nice. For information, they changed his scaling attack damage to base+scaling resistances. Which is extremely nice.. but quite heavily countered by .

Now, next patch are changes I'm really really looking forward to. Nerfs to and its upgrades, nerfs to . That's indirectly a great buff to Nasus.

Yet the problem is that he gets kited and he's not quite doing the job of a black cleaver juggernaught, he doesn't have quite the tankbusting abilities. Yet that's somewhat healthy. He could be broken if he did.

So what could be changed?

Well we could rebuff his slow, maybe not to the old values. Maybe include a low damage reduction. But since this spell is quite hated by the community, I guess it wouldn't be an appreciated idea. We could change the nature of his E (and maybe R) to physical damage (for BC synergy : build would look like ). I'm personnally against that, because I hate overspecialized kits (they make the game a bit too stale, and everytime you build the same thing, there's nothing interesting about building and having several options anymore. It kills offmeta builds and I'd find that very sad). We could change the armor shred of his E from flat to percentage. Right now it is 20/25/30/35/40. It could be something like 10/15/20/25/30% or like 10/14/18/22/26%. Something around these values.

Is Nasus that weak?

Not really. Actually, the problem is that he's quite dependant on opponent's mistakes. He is immensely rewarded if he :

1. reaches his opponent's backline not peeled. He then murders the squishies
2. gets free stacks in lane and midgame comes. He then becomes an absolute midgame monster. He is still quite dependant on defensive items, and the best scenario for him is a freefarm in a kill-starved game (nobody's fed and everyone is still working on builds). Kinda sad for a supposedly lategame design to be hoping for a good midgame and try to end asap before he falls off.

Overall, that makes his winrate go strictly lower the higher the elo is. Because Nasus is great in low elo, and weaker in high elo, and he's good at capitalizing against opponent's mistakes. Which is quite annoying if we want to strictly buff him for high elo. He could become overbearing in lower elos, where people don't have quite the coordination and skills to deny an (even bad) Nasus.

The point of my post?

Nothing much really. Explaining Nasus to make people understand why he's in the spot he's in right now. Idk ^^ Suggesting the change of E into % armor shred as well. Maybe hoping to get some Rioters to have a slightly better idea about what Nasus is atm. It's not quite a rant.