Essence Reaver on Nassus?
Essence Reaver on Nassus? Is it a good idea? Gives you ad, lifesteal, cdr, and mana regen on every basic attack. On paper it sounds as a good match for Nassus. Any of you guys tried it? Do you think its good?
12 Comments
On paper it's nice, but in reality it's too expensive a purchase when Nasus doesn't really need damage stats. Your Q stacks provide more than enough damage, all you need is tank. A tear + Frozen Heart is cheaper and gives much more useful stats if you want mana, but really you don't need the tear anyway.
Technically, it's not a terrible item for him. In reality, however, you will have some problems if you tried to build this. Getting mana back would be helpful mostly only during the laning phase, but if you rush this as a first item, you will have all kinds of problems surviving.
The established strategy, which i use most of the time i play Nassus, is to rush 
as a first item against AD opponents or lower-damage tanks (or substitute that with 
against AP laners, but you'll still want to get FH eventually). Rushing Frozen Heart gives you mana, CDR, tons of armor, and the passive makes you a lot harder to kite. The usual second item is 
, which gives you additional mana plus a big damage boost on your Q from the sheen, damage, health, and sticking power from the phage, and nice extra stats from the zeal. Honestly, Triforce should be the only damage item Nassus needs, unless you build a 
as a troll-ish last item just to help you take turrets faster.
Basically, building that item when it would be helpful will make your already risky laning phase very dangerous, and by the time you build it as a late game item you will probably be capped out with CDR, already have lots of mana, and won't need the extra AD.
That item would probably be a lot more useful on AD casters, or AD champions who are very reliant on their abilities, like 
, 
, 
, or 
(though most would probably just build Hydra or BoRK on him instead)
It isn't a good Nasus item because at any point in the game it is always inferior to another item.
In lane, you want resistances. Specifically, you want a Frozen Heart. It solves your mana problems, gives you lots of CDR, and makes you tanky (which is very valuable because the lifesteal and flat health on his ultimate Nasus already has increases the effective value of resistances). You will win fights if you're tanky enough where they can't immediately kill you. You then want a Spirit Visage and a Trinity Force.
Once you have those items, you're past the point where Essence Reaver provides you with anything useful. You should already be at 40% CDR with a proper rune page, so you don't need the CDR, and the mana regen will be useless that late in the game when you have two other items that give mana. If you really want to go the lifesteal route, get a BT. It will always be more useful for a lategame slot on Nasus than ER will.
I main Nasus. I go 
> 
as my first two items unless someone is kicking my ass with magic damage, in which case I might rush the 
or even the whole . Then I finish my or build my damage item, depending on how the game's going. The damage item is usually , but it could also be 
. LW multiplies the damage I've been stacking on my Q, but usually I'm more interested in the other things Tri-force brings. After that, full tank, full stop.
The problem with essence reaver is that farming Q doesn't drain enough mana to justify it, the lifesteal doesn't add enough to the passive lifesteal to justify it, the CDR cap can be reached better with Runes+Masteries+FrozenHeart+SpiritVisage, and given all this, the damage isn't worth replacing one of the better damage items.
Build the one damage item you need to duel anyone, and then full tank. Essence Reaver probably isn't that item.
Just keep some.
So this is a pretty old thread, but I'll reply anyway since I've tried building Essence Reaver on him. It's great for sustain if you're ahead but you won't want to finish it as a first item. Get 
first to help sustain then get / and finish the build later. Late game when you've farmed your Q enough you'll probably want to switch it for either another defensive item or / 
for more damage, or for even more massive life steal.