When to build frozen heart on Nasus?

spombjop·Jun 13, 2016·2 votes·2,355 views

I usualy build iceborn but i realised that against champs with high burst like wukong is MAYBE better to build frozen heart and get tri force instead of iceborn

26 Comments

Critmaster GarenJun 14, 20162 votes

i dont have any issue with wukong whatsoever on nasus usually. on any champion actually. iceborn is fine. all you have to do is rush some health and ninja tabo against him, and then go into gauntlet.

you get frozen heart when you have strong auto attack focused carries on the enemy team. jax, irelia, etc. in addition to your run of the mill marksman who auto attacks a lot.

basically not against lucian, corki or graves.

if you have twitch on bot and irelia on top, you go frozen heart. if youre up against, say malphite and lucian, you go gauntlet.

spombjopJun 14, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=x3FOfsne,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-06-14T00:02:11.921+0000)

i dont have any issue with wukong whatsoever on nasus usually. on any champion actually. iceborn is fine. all you have to do is rush some health and ninja tabo against him, and then go into gauntlet.

you get frozen heart when you have strong auto attack focused carries on the enemy team. jax, irelia, etc. in addition to your run of the mill marksman who auto attacks a lot.

basically not against lucian, corki or graves.

if you have twitch on bot and irelia on top, you go frozen heart. if youre up against, say malphite and lucian, you go gauntlet.

so against jax - forzen heart, thornmail, tri force and randuins (randuins is currently better than plate)

MaxDarkwillJun 14, 20161 votes

Just my opinion but I prefer not building iceborn at all as nasus since you don'T get stack for the aoe kill

Critmaster GarenJun 14, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Unj0 Gratis,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=x3FOfsne,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-06-14T00:05:44.461+0000)

Just my opinion but I prefer not building iceborn at all as nasus since you don'T get stack for the aoe kill

it helps you pushing and sticking. and its cheaper than triforce. against many matchups, iceborn is a great item on him.

MaxDarkwillJun 14, 20161 votes

I dunno if I wanna be sticky I'd go frozen mallet lol

spombjopJun 14, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Unj0 Gratis,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=x3FOfsne,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2016-06-14T00:10:11.589+0000)

I dunno if I wanna be sticky I'd go frozen mallet lol

it's useless on nasus, if u wanna buy AD item with hp go for sterak

DarfallerJun 14, 20162 votes

Um, nasus main here, at no point do i ever want to actually push the lane and if i really need to/want to, i got e for that

Critmaster GarenJun 14, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Um, nasus main here, at no point do i ever want to actually push the lane and if i really need to/want to, i got e for that

um, yes. at some point nasus wants to push to take turrets. youre a nasus main in bronze, so i dont find it suprising that objectives are secondary to you.

ibg helps him split pushing and taking turrets.

DarfallerJun 14, 20161 votes

Ok, here we go. Ibg is a good item, gives you mana, cdr, armor, decent slow passive, aoe dmg, and has the sheen proc, BUT you lose stacks with ibg and your damage output is lower than if you had triforce, also, you dont need the slow from ibg becuz you have a 95% SLOW ON YOUR W AT MAX RANK and even at rank 1 its still really strong. Ibg will push the lane and cause you to lose stacks. You may play nasus as an ultra tank with dmg I play nasus as a hypercarry which is super tanky. Also if your going for towers and objectives, triforce, if your gonna team fight a lot ibg (this little piece of advice was from my friend in CHALLENGER). :)

Critmaster GarenJun 14, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Ok, here we go. Ibg is a good item, gives you mana, cdr, armor, decent slow passive, aoe dmg, and has the sheen proc, BUT you lose stacks with ibg and your damage output is lower than if you had triforce, also, you dont need the slow from ibg becuz you have a 95% SLOW ON YOUR W AT MAX RANK and even at rank 1 its still really strong. Ibg will push the lane and cause you to lose stacks. You may play nasus as an ultra tank with dmg I play nasus as a hypercarry which is super tanky. Also if your going for towers and objectives, triforce, if your gonna team fight a lot ibg (this little piece of advice was from my friend in CHALLENGER). :)

why does your "friend in challenger" not know, that nasus has incredibly shitty waveclear with his e alone and takes forever to push a larger minion wave on a triforce? splitpushing with ibg on nasus vs splitpushing on triforce is incredibly hard.

at some point in the game, stacks become secondary and your goal is to split push a lane hard and cut through a turret like a hot knife through butter, before the enemy gets much time to react.

there are situations where triforce/frozen heart is more useful than iceborn gauntlet. but nasus not wanting to push at all and sit in lane and focus on every single stack at 30 minutes as a general statement is just false.

iceborn gauntlet also has the advantage that it gives you a large power spike much sooner than building for triforce would.

DarfallerJun 14, 20161 votes

Have you even seen the dmg 1 e does to a single wave of minions fyi?

Critmaster GarenJun 14, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Have you even seen the dmg 1 e does to a single wave of minions fyi?

not quite enough to clear it. it should be about half to 2/3 of the health of the wave so together with ibg you can clear waves quite fast.

but without it, you throw down your e, and then are left with your q and auto attacks for the next 10 seconds to actually finish the minions.

DarfallerJun 14, 20161 votes

Also, fyi, when im pushing top i actually ignore the tower and go for the farm becuz A) I get mroe stacks = getting farther ahead = making me stronger and able to kill the enmy top; B) If you immediately go for the tower then you gain some map pressure, but you have to go deeper into the enemy territory for stacks, which makes you prone to multi-man ganks

Sneakyy XDJun 14, 20161 votes

The problem with Frozen Heart is that it means you can't guild Frozen Fist without wasting 10% CDR (leaving Nasus with no Sheen, which is extremely powerful in the laning phase, where he struggles a lot). If you're OK with either not having Sheen or wasting 10% CDR, then build it always.

I've tried the Frozen Heart + Mallet route, but not having a Sheen early on, at the very least, feels just so bad, especially with how much focus has been put on the early game this season. And I don't know how impactful it really is losing 10% CDR worth of gold, but I don't like to waste stats. It certainly might be OK wasting, though.

KVbqbFsC8eJun 14, 20161 votes

I get it after Sheen. If you stack well, you don't need IBG/Trinity to kill people until much later on.

spombjopJun 14, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Big Piece,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=x3FOfsne,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2016-06-14T00:26:15.503+0000)

I get it after Sheen. If you stack well, you don't need IBG/Trinity to kill people until much later on.

nasus is about splitpushing not killing people

KVbqbFsC8eJun 14, 20163 votes

You have to be able to kill people when you splitpush as you have no escapes.

BeatzBoyFTWJun 14, 20161 votes

{quoted}

nasus is about splitpushing not killing people

Good luck trying to 1v1 people with your low Q stacks while being interfered during splitpushing.

spombjopJun 14, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Good luck trying to 1v1 people with your low Q stacks while being interfered during splitpushing.

problem is because i never have low stacks

MunchCrunchLunchJun 14, 20161 votes

{quoted}

problem is because i never have low stacks

ok big guy. you don't need our answers then

JafarThePandaJun 14, 20161 votes

Attack speed heavy comps or champs Vayne Azir Jinx MasterYi XinZhao Jax Udyr

DarfallerJun 14, 20161 votes

I always like getting triforce, igb is nice if you are like really ahead, but 90% i get fh and tri

PhantomGGJun 14, 20161 votes

three items on nasus that you almost never build together

item 3078 item 3025 item 3110

all 3 of these can be considered core, but you only build one per game, all though you can build tri force and frozen heart in the same game, just not frozen gaunlet and frozen heart, so here is my lil description on what to first buy and when.

Tri Force-When you are dominating lane, playing against a comp that you feel you can easily snow ball out of controll against. You build this when you fully believe in your ability to take over the game off your Q burst

Frozen Gaunlet- When you feel you are going to be a fusion of team fighting and split pushing. You build this when you feel you really need to stick to your target like glue. When you want the ability to just keep chasing them and they are perma slowed off your Q.

Frozen heart- When you want to be very tanky, and want to slow down the enemy attack speed carries so you can abuse the aura. A team fight item. Plus the CDR is very nice

SaltyKrackaJun 14, 20161 votes

Preferred to build it and Triforce when the enemy team consists mostly of AD damage.

Otherwise, I tend to skip it these days in favor of a 10% CDR start and rushing SV into Triforce against an AP laner.

MunchCrunchLunchJun 14, 20161 votes

you build triforce when ahead otherwise frozen gauntlet. I don't buy FH on him anymore tbh. though against ap lanes you want to rush sv.

Swiftstrike4Jun 14, 20161 votes

A Gold Nasus main here who plays A LOT of Nasus. This post is is just a guide to how I make early purchases as Nasus.

I buy a lot of my items based on need. I consider the match-up, team comp, the enemy comp, and my strategy when buying.

First off, to the past posts about building item 3025 messing up stacks, this does occur, but this should be a minor consideration after 20 minutes. A player should be concerned with either (1) accidentally drawing turret aggro via the ice field nicking an enemy champ or (2) shoving the wave.

If the enemy champion builds item 3068 they will be shoving the wave too, so the 2nd concern is mitigated. If they don't build you must have a good sense the enemy jungler's map presence, because you will be shoving all the time. If you do not have good map awareness then simply doing build IBG or never ever cross the river before 20 minutes. You must be very careful with this item for the first 20 minutes or you must be strong enough to fight a 2v1.

Accidentally drawing turret aggro is a big problem, however, unless your lane opponent leaves lane a lot or you are significantly stronger than the enemy IBG should not be purchased. If you and your opponent are relatively "even" (consider CS, kills, deaths and global gold) then I would recommend avoiding the purchase of IBG.

A benefit of item 3025 verse other items is an earlier power spike. IBG is cost effective and gives Nasus an much earlier power spike instead of the longer completion of other items. If you are very ahead against your lane opponent IBG is a very good buy because you will push your lead. Also note that IBG does not grant you health. If you like to build IBG you should run scaling health yellows, quints, and/or run the strength of ages mastery because you will need some early health. You can later build items that grant you health, but early in the game you need some and by build IBG you are opting out of an early health item.

TL;DR: Build IBG when you are really strong relative to your lane opponent for an earlier power spike and/or you laner leaves lane frequently. Do not build the the item if your match-up is even, you are behind, and/OR you want to delay your power spike.

item 3110 is costly as an item and it delays Nasus' power spike, but sometimes delaying your power spike if perfectly fine for an even stronger spike later. IBG is very cost effective since it builds out of item 3057 and item 3024 . Whereas with FH you will probably still build GS, Sheen, then a item 3082 and then complete the FH.

I prefer FH because I think it is overall a better item in lower Elo, and it delays my power spike for a larger one later. I also think it is less of a situational buy than IBG. FH is great when you are behind or your lane is even. It also provides better protection (in terms of armor) and with its passive than IBG in lane. This items is good for a lot of frequent top laners at the moment such as Tryndamere Irelia and Jax . I also think having Sheen, GS, and Warden's mail opens up the opportunity to TP to the bot lane for a kill without taking as much as much damage.

Each item should only be built against an AD laner - MR matchups you go a different route.

One problem that both item 3110 and IBG share is that they both don't offer health. This means your next items should contain health or you should run health in your runes, and or masteries.

However, I frequently find myself in situations where I build based on need. I delay the completion of items because circumstances change frequently in the game. Often my first four items are item 3057 item 3024 / item 3211 , item 3067 , and item 1001 . If you buy based on CDR and need then you are pretty confident that you will not be killed by your laner or two a gank . You are also NOT behind and you will eventually complete all your items for a massive power-spike in the mid game.

TL;DR - Build FH when you are even or behind in lane against AD comps. Also, build FH if you want to focus on stacking and don't mind delaying your power spike.

When to build triforce? Triforce is probably a better item on Nasus since the change, but it is still incredibly expensive. You should never build this item first and you never build item 3078 and item 3025 together. The sheen only activates once. So when do you build triforce?

Typically, you build triforce when you are incredibly ahead AND you know you are the carry this game. That is about it. You will have your sheen built already and it is typically your 3rd or 4th completed item.

Can one build IBG and FH? The answer is yes, but it is conditional. Situations in which you can build both are when most of these conditions are met.

The opposing enemy comp is entirely or mostly AD and auto-attack/attack speed based
They are relatively elusive (hard to catch)
You are not the carry - you must be the tank
You have already built one of the items, several other armor items and need more armor
You already have a lot of health from other items

I use to build both of these items more frequently when AD assassins were running around everywhere, but I was not the carry.

Typically, if you build both there is a large gap between the items. One will be your first or second completed item and the other will be your 6th or 5th completed item. I don't think having both is optimal unless all the above mentioned conditions are met. At the moment if you build FH always build triforce and if you build IBG gauntlet you don't build either FH or Triforce.

To the posts saying Nasus can only split-push, I disagree. Split-pushing at the wrong time can be detrimental to the game. Also, split-pushing after Nasus hit a power spike is not optimal play.

So when do you split-push?

Here are some general rules (though not always applicable) split-push when:

You are strong but your team is behind. Essentially grouping would lead to an ACE and you would be wasting your power-spike
When you built IBG and know you will not likely see 2 or 3 people sent your way
When you have good vision AND your team understands split-pushing. I will say it, a lot of low silver and bronze players do not understand split-pushing. They need to maintain vision of the enemy, but also not get engaged on while you take a tower. High orders for low skill players who always want to group
Against high CC opposing comps - 4 of the five opposing players have hard CC.

When to not split-push:

The game is relatively even, but you are relatively strong When you built FH and by split-pushing the team will send 2 or 3 your way to kill you By grouping you can take objectives Low CC opposing comps

In general, if you and your team are very ahead you can do whatever you think will benefit the team more, but typically split-pushing when the game is even isn't always the best strategy. Also, Nasus sucks as teamfights without a hard initiate, but he is very good when there is one. I tend to look for "skirmishes" 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 opportunities and split-push when I have TP up.

TL:DR: Split-push when team is behind, group when game is even but you are strong. You don't want to waste your mid-game power spike.