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Suggestions for a Nasus Update

Feeding EUW·6/26/2017, 8:34:06 PM·7 votes·1,124 views

Hello there,
My name is SmackNStack, an EUW OTP for the good old Dog Nasus.
Even though I enjoy playing him greatly, I think there are some QoL changes that would make the dog feel more like a champ of 2017 and not like one from 2009.
Furthermore there are some changes to his kit which I will cover after the QoL changes, since they would alter the champion greatly and not just improve the playstyle.
I have to credit the /r/nasusmains subreddit since a lot of ideas are coming from them. __

Quality of Life changes:

  1. Change his E flat armor shred to % pen for anyone that is inside that Zone. So instead of 20/25/30/35/40 change it to 20%/25%/30%/35%/40%.
    One of Nasus' main weaknesses is his lacking teamfight, come lategame you are just a bunch of stats against the fullbuild adcs, they will just melt you in seconds while their frontline keeps your lifestealing to a minimum. This heavily reduces the threat of the "lategame monster" called Nasus. If you were to change his flat pen into % pen you would at least make him able to 1v1 a tank without having to spend his entire manapool and wasting 1 minute of valuable gametime.

__ 2. Reduce the time it takes for him to play animations.
With all the recent champions his kit feels really clunky to use. Every skill you use locks you in place, whether its the W (that even if the cast animation started will be aborted if the target runs into a brush), the E or the Ult. The Q is fine on some skins (Worldbreaker) but horrible on others (Infernal). Especially since Infernal is his legendary skin you should maybe think about redoing the Q animation for it, I have cancelled way more autos with Infernal than I have with Worldbreaker.
So as a solution I'd say cut down the cast animation of his skills by roughly 50% to make him more fluent to play and give him a more responsive playstyle. Or if that would be to broken maybe make it so that you can move during the Ult+W+E animation.

I think thats pretty much it for the QoL changes, I will now start listing what I would change to his kit to give a better place in the meta.

__

Current Passive: "Soul Eater", gain 10/15/20% lifesteal based on level.

This passive is straight up boring and non inuitive, you can really see that the champ is quite old just by looking at it. Now we dont need an overloaded passive for Nasus but I think if we just give him a bit more bite to his bark he can be in a pretty decent spot.

New Passive: "Soul Devourer" gain 15/20/25% lifesteal based on his Level. Also gain 0.1% (or 0.05% depening on how strong of a lategame monster you want) Armorpenetration per soul devoured with siphoning strike, capping at 100% (if you want to make it cap earlier, thats a possibility as well)

This would fix the issue of Nasus lategame that is currently lacking, 0.1% per stack would result in 100% armor penetration at 1000 stacks, 0.05% would require 2000 stacks, both would be fine in my opinion since getting more than 500-600 stacks is very unrealistic for Nasus.

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Current Q: "Siphoning Strike" ACTIVE: Nasus's next basic attack within 10 seconds has 150 range and deals bonus physical damage. If Siphoning Strike kills its target, Nasus permanently gains 3 stacks (doubled to 6 if the victim is a champion, large minion, or large monster).

We can all agree that this is the skill that makes Nasus Nasus. Without it he would be nothing and without him this skill would be nothing. There are some skills like it in league but this one is his.
I dont think this skill needs to much change, but I would go for making it so that his Q always gains the 175 range that his ultimate currently gives, just so stacking is not as punishing as it currently is (especially considering how strong some champions are in the early game and late game. Yasuo, Riven, Jax and Fiora come to mind.... strong compared to Nasus). So the new Q would be:

New Q: "Siphoning Strike" ACTIVE: Nasus's next basic attack within 10 seconds has 175 range and deals bonus physical damage. If Siphoning Strike kills its target, Nasus permanently gains 3 stacks (doubled to 6 if the victim is a champion, large minion, or large monster).

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Current W: "Wither" ACTIVE: Nasus ages the target enemy champion, slowing them by 35%, increasing over 5 seconds, and crippling their attack speed by half the amount for the duration.

Again I think this skill is in a decent spot, combined with the one of the QoL changes mentioned earlier, this doesn't need much work. What I would add to it though is that the withered target leaves behind a trail which will speed Nasus up to around 20% extra movespeed towards the target. But only him not his team (great synergy with Iron Potion though).

New W: "Wither" ACTIVE: Nasus ages the target enemy champion, slowing them by 35%, increasing over 5 seconds, and crippling their attack speed by half the amount for the duration. This skill also leaves behind a trail which speeds Nasus up to 20% of his MS while moving towards his target.

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Current E: "Spirit Fire" ACTIVE: Nasus unleashes a spirit flame at the target location, dealing magic damage to enemies in the area. The flame then remains for 5 seconds, dealing magic damage each second to all enemies within and reducing their armor while they remain.

Again this skill is in a decent spot and if the changes to it are too big, they will affect his flex roles (Ap support/AP mid Nasus). So instead of changing the Magic Damage part of his physical Damage to give him synergie with Black Cleaver (if you can't give him passive ArmPen), I'd say cut down on the current flat damage harshly (55 / 95 / 135 / 175 / 215) to (30 / 55 / 100 / 120 / 150), (11 / 19 / 27 / 35 / 43) to (5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25) but up the AP ratio on it, so that AP Nasus still does what it does right now but at the same time it reduces the lanebullyness of E max Nasus in Top without any Ap items.
Also Change the Manacosts from 70 / 85 / 100 / 115 / 130 to 70 / 85 / 100. His Manahunger is crazy with this skill and reducing the costs while at the same time nerfing its damage for Ad/Tank nasus is a decent tradeoff.
And again if you don't want to give him % ArmPen on his passive change the Flat ArmPen to % Pen. If you added the % Pen on his passive just remove the flatpen from this ability.

New E: "Spirit Fire" ACTIVE: Nasus unleashes a spirit flame at the target location, dealing magic damage to enemies in the area (30 / 55 / 100 / 120 / 150). The flame then remains for 5 seconds, dealing magic damage each second (5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25) to all enemies within (and reducing their armor (20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%) while they remain).

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Current R: "Fury of the Sands" ACTIVE: Nasus empowers himself for 15 seconds, gaining bonus health, armor and magic resistance, increased size, and 175 range on his basic attacks for the duration. While Nasus is empowered, he deals magic damage to all enemies around him each second, capped at 240, and gains bonus armor and magic resistance each second.

His Ult is one of his biggest issues in my oppinion. Right now there is so much power channeled into his that a Nasus without ult might as well not teamfight. Of course that is the point of the ultimate, the move that makes your champion feel incredible powerfull and without it there is a big part lacking of your champ. Naturally he should not lose this big button that in the midgame right now makes the enemy say "oh snap" when you flash upon them and lay havoc at their face.
The issue is once it wears off you just get melted in seconds and even with it focus fire still brings you down like nothing.
Combined with that, if you dont have flash you just get kited or cced until it's over.
So, my solution: make him more useful while his R is on cooldown. I would suggest moving the flat Armor and MR gain to a passive. Instead of gaining 15 / 35 / 55 when he ults he would gain them every time he levels the skill up.
He still would gain MR and Armor based on the time spent in his ult same with the flat HP gain when he ults. This would give him more use outside of his ult, as well as not making him too overbearing to deal with.
Considering that he increases in size and is pretty much unable to dodge any skillshot without flash I think a decent thing would be to give him 5% tenacity just so that the charms, snares, stuns and slows are not to bad on him, because you know controlling your champion every once in a while is quite fun.
Furthermore, since his increased range is already on his normal Q his Q in ult should get a range increase to 200 from 175. And ofcourse either reduce the casttime/increase the castspeed or make it so that you are able to move while activating it.

New R: "Fury of the Sands" ACTIVE: Nasus empowers himself for 15 seconds, gaining bonus health, 5% Tenacity, increased size, and 200 range on his Siphoning Strike and 175 range on basic attacks for the duration. While Nasus is empowered, he deals magic damage to all enemies around him each second, capped at 240, and gains bonus armor and magic resistance each second. PASSIVE: Nasus gains 15/35/55 Armor and Magic resist every time he levels this ability up.

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I think this concludes the changes I would apply to Nasus to put him a better spot without making him overpowered as his counterplay is still the same. Now the dog just gets a bit more of a chance to fight back once lategame hits.
Thanks everyone for reading this and special thanks to Nibblet for proofreading and /r/nasusmains for ideas.

Have a great day, Abriuol aka SmackNStack

18 Comments

Darkdemon6536/26/2017, 9:33:38 PM3 votes

All you did was give him straight buffs. That's ridiculous.

Gibberwatt6/26/2017, 9:36:49 PM1 votes

I like most everything, except for the new armor pen on his passive, and the tenacity on his ult. What if he stacked tenacity, up to 100%, and his ult gave a bit of armor pen, if any. Because I know that when I play nasus, the actual act of slapping the enemy isn't my issue - its me getting to them so i can slap them with my god stick. I just think built in tenacity would make nasus happy.

Denims Wrath6666/26/2017, 11:27:57 PM1 votes

I made a suggestion that woulda made nasus basically meta without doing all that shit... i think renekton and nasus ult should do a small knock back if you're like basically on top of them. it would be gender fair since shy, and lulu get to and all 4 of them basically have the same ult (change size). it would allow people to chose more than 2 different keystones ( storm raiders or grasp are the only decent ones on him). thats the only thing nasus actually needs.

A Dog6/27/2017, 4:22:21 PM1 votes

Nasus definitely needs some changes that would allow him to scale past 30 minutes, he's no longer the late game monster he once was. As a matter of fact, his winrate is actually lower than Pantheon's after 40 minutes, which is hilarious. Nasus just can't succeed in a meta where even the squishiest carries have almost 200 armor (Base+Runes+Tabi+GA+windspeakers heals) and DD / PD reduction. Nasus' winrate is one of the lowest out of top lane even though he's very easy champion to play mechanically.

At the VERY LEAST change his E to deal physical damage to actually allow him to build a item 3071

Angormus6/28/2017, 2:17:32 AM1 votes

I think the only thing Nasus really needs is either a movement speed ability (like wither leaving a trail that speeds you up or steals movement speed for you) or a way to passively get around 20% armor penetration like Darius/Garen. Basically every tank top lane has a way to do % of maximum health or has % armor penetration and is able to use it in lane consistently. Sure Nasus's ult does % hp as magic damage over time, but that's never the reason anyone ults anymore, Nasus's R is only used for the HP + resistances and the %hp as magic damage is overlooked every time I ult. When I can't even damage a fiora, or camille, etc. with 1-2 armor items, and I have 600-800+ stacks, something doesn't feel right anymore.

I love the idea of nerfing Spirit Fire's damage and buffing the ap ratio so AP Nasus plays the same, but also making Nasus less able to play as a lane bully and force him to max Q in lane to do the best, not bully everyone out of top lane. The current strategy is to put 3 levels into E and start corrupting potion and just play as a lane bully and force the other top laner out of top.

HenryDaHen6/28/2017, 2:26:38 AM1 votes

i think the problem right now is that grevious wounds is available to adcs and mages. Increasing lifesteal doesnt really fix the problem. Also giving armor pen to nasus based on stacks makes him too feast or famine. I however like the change to his QOL. Having less time for Q and W animation really helps .

i have my own version of my rework. Hope you can have a look at it. https://www.reddit.com/r/nasusmains/comments/6jxqqz/why_nasus_needs_a_reworkpatch_713/

GoldMercy6/26/2017, 9:16:53 PM1 votes

So before I respond to anything, I used yo main Nasus fairly casual. I got 389K mastery points but haven't really played him at all lately. I used to love him to bits and only play him. He is still my most played champion to this day. That being said. I feel really attached to him. Whenever I see someone talk about him, I want to join in. So seeing someone putting in effort like this does make me smile a bit. The reason I stopped playing him is because of something you said: he is cluncky and old game design. He and his playstyle honestly got boring to me. I am sad about the fact I don't enjoy playing him anymore. And since I stopped playing Nasus (or at least not as much as I used to) I played less League overall.

I got some things:

PASSIVE: You can't let them cap the armor pen at 100% right? Maybe I'm just being a retard but doesn't that mean that the enemy has no armor? Needless to say thats broken. But again maybe I miss something. I do think that his old passive is pretty boring. Maybe give him scaling armor and mr with each stack? Every 3 stacks gives him 0.15/0.20 armor and mr? Late game, 600 stacks, thats 90-120 armor (that might be a bit to much tho).

Q: like you said, this makes Nasus. But the increased range seems nice indeed.

W: your change seems like a decent buff. Maybe make the tenacity scaling with leveling the ability? I feel like 20% might be a bit to much early game.

E: I get that people want % armor shred and I'm all for it. But I don't think you can give him armor shred on his passive AND his E. I would choose for the passive over E in this case. If you put the armor shred on the passive it rewards good Nasus stackers. I'm all for that. But I would remove the armor pen on the E all together if you put it on the passive.

R: you want to remove the bonus health? I can't agree with that. I would honestly leave the ult as it is. But that is just me.

Overall I like what you thought off apart from the ult. I like the current ult just to much. I would honestly like them to revert the ult changes. But that's just me. I would like if the changes of the passive I said above and his ult changes reverted.

Lunar Nasus6/30/2017, 4:27:52 PM1 votes

Honestly just needs some % armor pen on his E. I still can't believe patch 7.14 will buff/twist around a few juggernauts and Nasus remains untouched again. I don't know a worse pick than him usually, there's no late game fantasy anymore. It's just a joke really. By the time you get to late game, every ADC has their core build done and everyone has CC up the ass now. Honestly it wouldn't be so bad if Grasp was better because of extra tenacity in that tree, but I can't see a reason to go with anything other then Stormraiders and the cunning tree to make up for the fact you literally cannot reach a single target late game. Armor is a joke, MR is a joke. Doesn't really feel tanky. And you don't scale that well into late game anymore either. What's the point of having 700 stacks if any tank can win against you because of the fact they have CC abilities/armor shred/healing/silences, which is typically what happens. Nasus get bombarded by tank CC abilities allowing the enemy team to just kite/focus you and obliterate you. E drop is largely ignored, it's not really effective except against squishies.. that you most likely will never reach due to CC.

I understand that CC is the juggernauts weakness, but just seeing other juggs be buffed or untouched while Nasus continues to fall just irks me. Even panth has a better win rate late game than Nasus.