One magical change to put Nautilus back where he belongs [mini rework suggestion]

GelsominoKiller·10/15/2017, 8:45:33 PM·3 votes·397 views

Hi everybody! We all know Nautilus needs some help right now, especially in the jungle. I used to play him there even when he wasn't optimal: he ended up being worse and worse season after season, until i reluctantly had to abandon him. He also suffers from a lack of uniqueness in what he brings in a teamfight, in a way that he's usually viable only as a "supertank" whenever tanks are strong.

With the rework i propose, i want to fix those two aspects.

PASSIVE: unchanged.

Q: unchanged.

W [reworked]: On activation, Nautilus gains a long lasting shield and a strong, decaying movement speed bonus towards enemy champions. While the shield is up, Nautilus:

  1. ignores unit collisions
  2. gains a moderate amount of tenacity and slow resist (10-15%)
  3. can recast W to sweep all units in front of him, displacing them to Nautilus' side (left or right, the player can choose the direction), and dealing magic damage. The sweep is extremely fast and has very limited cooldown (think 0.3 - 0.5s). This effect consumes the passive autoattack indicator, so it can't occur often on the same target, and it can't be chained on a root.

**Why this change: **

  • the short cooldown W boosts his clears, the movement speed haste makes Nautilus ganks fearsome. This should solidify his viability in the jungle.
  • since those strong effects last as long as the shield is up, the enemy team is incentivated to quickly focus Nautilus. This draws attention on the tank, so its good for the Naut, but also allows for counterplay, because he loses a lot when the shield is broken.
  • reworked W creates an intresting niche for Nautilus: he's the tank that you pick when you want to go through a beefy frontline. Activate W, run at the enemy, quickly knock aside that pesky sejuani, immediately after knock aside that braum because your sweep has a 0.3s CD, remove the annoying minions in the way and now that the aim is free, land that hook on the backline. In my opinion this would open up a lot of gameplay space, and be extremely fun and satisfying for the Nautilus player.

E: unchanged.

R: unchanged, mostly. Maybe some damage nerf, since it would combo well with W: ult the backline, knocks aside the frontline while it is knocked up on Riptide's way through, and land a clean hook on the ulted target.

That is all. I hope that this change is small enough to be feasible with a limited amount of work, while being at the same time extremely impactful on Nautilus gameplay.

2 Comments

Kerrigan 4 Prez10/15/2017, 9:35:44 PM1 votes

Issue is friend, what you're suggesting with the W doesn't fit the theme very well. Nautilus is the Titan of the Depths, when you think titan you don't imagine them ~~~~going fast~~~~ ignoring movement collision. Perhaps a better idea would be to make him unstoppable, similar to Ornn. Not immune to cc but turning hard cc on him into a slow(think Finn from Vainglory).

Edit: fixed a mistake