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Nasus Q Stacks

crap name·2/22/2015, 1:33:23 PM·3 votes·1,835 views

Okay, so before i go into this post, I'll be the first to admit I'm not good at this game. Therefore, if I'm missing something important, please tell me.

So I played a game as Wukong against Nasus, and things didn't end well. We surrendered the game because they had a fed Kalista, but that isn't the point. The point is that I saw it was a Nasus, so i zoned im under the turret, denying him as much CS as I could. Eventaully, the jungler ganked, and i was forced to recall. After that, I teleported to bot lane to help my adc and supp against aforementioned fed kalista. I went back to top lane after killiing the kalista and the morganna support she had when i fought Nasus again. I did my AA>Q>E>R, all while the Nasus was under my turret. He simply ulted and Q'ed me, and i died. He wasn't on full health, in fact he was about half health. Later, it took Master Yi, me and our Quinn to kill him, and even then, he did significant damage to master yi and me, almost killing Yi.

There should atleast be a way for Nasus to lose his stacks, for example, maybe losing half of them upon death like a Mejais or a Sword of the Occult. The fact that he can keep all his stacks even if he gets killed means that even if you do manage to shut him down, he'll just respawn and do a shit-ton of damage again.

Again, if I'm missing something important, please let me know.

7 Comments

Serenity Now2/22/2015, 1:44:33 PM5 votes

That's just how Nasus works. He is designed to be a late game terror.

You denied him early, so the rest of his game was going to be about farming hard rather than team fighting. Instead of sending 3v1 to kill him, it would have been more productive to go 5v4 in other lanes and push objectives. That pressure would have effectively denied him farm again if he tried to respond.

ValyrianBlade2/22/2015, 2:02:59 PM5 votes

Pushing Nasus under tower denies him some farm, but not as much as you may think.

First, his q is easy to stack under tower. So the only farm you'll make him miss is due to the cooldown on his Q not coming up fast enough when the tower is helping to take down minions. More importantly though, Nasus has innate lifesteal and thus has no problems tanking the minion wave. Nasus LOVES it when you push his lane. It means he can freeze it just outside of tower and farm safely (no chance of a gank). If you're going to take the strategy of pushing him under tower, you need to be sure you can get him all the way there. As wukong, a melee opponent, I sort of doubt you'd be able to stop him freezing the lane just outside of tower range.

The more common ways to counter nasus are: 1: If you have some sort of counter-mechanic: teemo's blind or garen's silence for example, to prevent him stacking 2: Don't push the wave, and instead only last hit and harass Nasus otherwise. Nasus is an easy gank if he isn't near his tower. If you only last hit, the wave won't push and he'll have to stay from tower meaning you can get an early gank, thereby having an early gold lane, then shut him down hard solo from that point onwards. Harass him with your abilities otherwise to make sure he's pretty low when your jungler comes to gank (or he'll just recall repeatedly and miss stacks that way).

I'm not sure what time in to the game it was, but I'd imagine it must have been pretty late if Nasus could tower dive you from full health when he was half health. Something seems wrong there unless he had a serious item lead. Most Nasus' rush frozen heart against AD for the CDR, and that wouldn't even help his tower dive as it gives no health (and towers have huge armor pen). Once you get to late game, yes a Nasus who has built full tank and has good stacks will wreck you. The only way to beat that is kiting and/or hard cc. Teams like Ahri mid and Morgana support can freeze him long enough for the adc to take him down. ADCs such as Vayne can kite him efficiently. Unfortunately, Nasus is one of those tanks you can't simply ignore. So you need to deny stacks as much as possible.

EndlessSorcerer2/22/2015, 6:35:41 PM3 votes

I took a look at the match history and there are a couple things I'd like to recommend:

Your CS the game was very low. It's not worth trying to push and deny the enemy CS under tower if you are missing CS to do so. When you died to him around 14 minutes, you only had a Phage and Zeal components compared to his completed Frozen Heart, so he had a pretty significant item advantage over you.
I would not recommend pushing the minion wave against Nasus in general, since he is safest under tower and can easily farm. Heck, when I play Nasus I usually try and trick my opponent into pushing the wave at level 1 by letting them autoattack me for free once or letting minions get hit by their AoE damage.
Against champions you know are going to stack armor, I'd recommend trying to max Q instead of E as Wukong. This allows you to harass more effectively without pushing the wave and negate a lot of their defense.
Trinity Force can be a good item on Wukong, but I wouldn't recommend it in this situation. I would recommend getting either Black Cleaver (for armor reduction) or Revenous Hydra (for lifesteal) instead to better help you handle Nasus.
Nasus doesn't build armor pen and the armor reduction on his E works best on squishy targets. I'd highly recommend building some armor, since it can reduce his damage significantly. If nothing else, Ninja Tabi would be a good choice because it blocks 10% of autoattack damage (which includes Siphoning Strike).
Start the match with sustain. A lot of players will start with a Doran's Blade, but that doesn't leave them much sustain to deal with damage they take while fighting Nasus (and minions). Cloth5, Flask4, and LongSword3 are probably your best starting choices since you can sustain through incidental damage.

In general, Nasus has an easier time handling squishy champions than more durable ones. They might be able to harass him more early, but after he gets about 200 stacks and Sheen he should be strong enough to kill them because they have no defenses and are probably near his tower (so he had room to chase with Wither).

I my experience, I find more durable champions to be more effective against Nasus because they take far less damage from him. If you are looking for champions to play against Nasus, I would recommend trying: Trundle Swain DrMundo Darius Lissandra Udyr Renekton

Other champions who can be annoying to face when played well as a Nasus: Akali Heimerdinger Vayne Teemo Ryze Cassiopeia

Oh, and one final suggestion: don't be afraid to swap lanes with your allies.

Sometimes your ally is more effective at bullying champions like Nasus while you can survive or win against their opposing laner.
Sometimes your champion can farm effectively in a 1v2 while your opponent can't, in which case you can have your ADC and support lane against them instead.

Alderon WolfBane2/22/2015, 2:10:37 PM2 votes

IMO a tank like him should not have a passive like that it's just plain BS they need to give him a new one

McAllister2/22/2015, 7:03:17 PM1 votes

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted. As a Nasus main, I think your point is legitimate. I don't agree that he should be able to lose stacks (biased, I know), but here are some things to keep in mind.

League has a few champions with specific counterplay that will slaughter you if you don't counter them. You must stop Kat from spinning. You must not cluster near bushes that might have Fiddlesticks in them. You must not blow all your damage on ulting Tryn/Poppy/Kayle'd/Zilean'd people. You must actually root Master Yi. Nasus is one of these champions.
There are two forms of counterplay against Nasus. The first is denying him CS. ADCs have nothing on Nasus: he scales with farm harder than anyone. You deny him CS primarily by killing him, usually within the first 10 minutes. Build every offensive item in your build plan before defense and take care not to push the lane an inch more then necessary. He's a terrible champion early, punish him for it.
The other is based on midgame. Midgame, some people like to teamfight or roam, but not Nasus. He wants to keep farming. Punish him for that. Win 5v4s and take objectives while he's building castles in his sandbox. Yes, that's a poor analogy, because someday his sand castle will turn into a giant mech and crush you, but that's just how it goes.
Nasus becoming hugely strong is inevitable. My guess is that the team with Nasus on it wins the majority of 50+ minute games, unless the other team's ADC is a real hypercarry. Don't let it get that late. I've seen a lot of teams that get their enemies on the ropes and fail to finish it out. Don't be those guys. Leverage strength to take inhibs, and leverage supers to take Nexus towers. Baron and dragon only help so much with this.
If the worst comes to pass and he has 500+ stacks, CC still works, and good luck.

But yeah, locking in Nasus is saying "I don't care how bad you beat me early, I will be strong if the game goes on long enough." If he could lose Q stacks, locking in Nasus would be saying "I really want to snowball, but I do it without mobility, hard CC, or any way to ignore CC or damage, so I'm bad."