Nasus Build Guide by Deluth

I mean no offense, but buying double Vamp Scepter on Nasus, who I'd class entirely as an offtank (a champion who only buys one damage item, the rest tank ones), is more of a waste of money than Chalice of Harmony.

Additionally, you're not even taking into consideration Vladimir's other abilities and the fact that he has a pool to escape and towerdive. Yes, Nasus is incredibly beefy, but ESPECIALLY with your rune set up (CELERITY? o.o) you are going to get PWNED against an AP champion top lane. Even if your "Against AP" set up, you rush Negatron, but get no regen. What? A good AP top lane isn't going to LET you go in to Q. You are a mana champion and you will run out of mana, especially against an AP champion.

Again, I mean no offense, but you have clearly never faced a decent opponent top lane. You have won less than 350 wins total and you don't even have Vampirism Quints. How can you write a guide about spec'ing double Vamp Scepter + Vamp Quints when you don't even have them?

Jhoijhoi, if you're going to pull out the credentials card then I'm afraid I will have to defend myself. You are not as superior to me as you may believe. As you can see here, your normals elo is 1561. Mine, on the other hand, is 1500. These statistics are not estimates, they are taken directly from Riot's game logs after every game someone with the lolmatches client is present. Yes, you play solo queue ranked while I do not, but you have only 1 Nasus game in ranked, so you can't really say that you have more ranked Nasus experience than I do, or that you play with opponents much better than mine. I have mained nearly exclusively Nasus for over 400 games now, even if I have not played as many games as you, I likely have as much if not more Nasus experience than you. I too mean this with no offense, just wanted to point this out.

Now that that's out of the way, I will readdress all of your points.
-I thought we were talking about non-lane pushing abilities. If we factor in Vlad's lane pushing abilities, which is mostly his Tides of Blood (unless he uses ult and pool to harass you), then yes, he can overcome your sustain. However, he will push the lane to your tower eventually, where he can still harass, but not whenever his cooldowns are up unless he wants to be ganked and killed. Often at this point you can Q more minions than he can Q you, which will allow you to heal up. Then the lane pushes back and the cycle repeats.

-I'm not saying that you can facetank all of a mage's damage and expect to outsustain all of it. I am saying that if you play smart to avoid damage, then mages will not bring enough damage to kill you. Keep in mind that mages often need to farm with their spells too, they will not completely ignore cs and just harass you.

-Vampiric Scepter costs around the same as Chalice, but addresses Nasus' weak laning directly by increasing health sustain. Chalice, meanwhile, addresses only a secondary issue, his mana sustain. You die if you run out of health, but not if you run out of mana. Plus, I repeat, if you play like you only have one spell early game, you will not run out of mana that fast. You also have Teleport, which I would use to return to lane in tougher matchups, survival>map presence.

-Vlad can dive with Sanguine Pool and Tides of Blood, you can escape with Fury of the Sands. Fury of the Sands heal will outscale Vlad's W+R burst for all of laning phase, so as long as you aren't under a Q+E combo worth of health, then your chance of death isn't that high.

-I still believe in my statement that if you aren't going to farm Q as Nasus, then you shouldn't be playing him. Q is what makes Nasus unique, and gives him a late game along with his W. However, his W doesn't scale and would be just as effective on support as on top lane. If you aren't going to utilize Nasus' affinity for farming, then I suggest playing Jungle Nasus or support Nasus.

-In addition, I fail to see how farming with Spirit Fire will help you in lane.

• It pushes lane to the point where you will be zoned easily.
• With a non-scaling cooldown of 12 seconds, you will only be able to last hit minions once every 12 seconds, I hope you don't plan on farming once every 12 seconds.
• It is pretty difficult to last-hit with a low level spirit fire since it has only 55 base damage at level 1 and a delayed cast time.
• If you spam Spirit Fire you will generally still be going negative on mana even with chalice, which I explained in the previous post. At 0 mana, chalice and base regen will grant you 17*2=34 mp5. It will still take between 10-20 seconds to regen enough mana for Spirit Fire, depending on the level. And this is at the max possible mana regen, if you have any mana at all, the times would be longer.
• With Spirit Fire's 650 range against Vlad's Transfusion's 600, unless you play flawlessly you will still be harassed, and you have no way to sustain it back up. Even if the minions somehow reach your tower despite SF pushing, your base lifesteal and unfarmed Q will not give you enough time to heal back up before the lane is pushed out again.

Vampiric Scepters and Q farm will still give you a shot at reaching late game Nasus and survival. Spirit Fire spam will not.

-Celerity Glyphs are to get CDR as close to the cap as possible. This is to stay in line with the current accepted Nasus build theory, which is to max CDR for more Q farm and permawither. If CDR glyphs can save you the 800 gold from philo stone in a present-day CDR maxing build, I consider it well worth it, and the 800 gold can go towards stats that will be more helpful.

-I admit that I don't have lifesteal quints as of yet, you got me there :P. But, you don't have to be a master chef to know when food tastes good. Lifesteal Quints are pretty standard on Nasus today, and I have no problem with them, so why would I not recommend them?

I appreciate any criticism, but stuff like "you play with bad players and have less games than me" is uncalled for. Yes, I know you did not directly say this, but it's implied from your post. I apologize if this isn't what you meant. My guide is a new way to play Nasus that is not the norm, this is what makes it different and special, but will also bring the most disagreement. In all major build changes, an open mind was needed to accept these changes. This is no different, I have tried my best to explain my build with detailed reasons and solid math/numbers and will continue to do so, but in the end it is all futile if you don't approach this build with an open mind.

You have decent points, but I didn't read the entire thing because it was too long :P

I don't recall seeing jhoi saying she was more superior or had more experience. I would never expect her to say that in the first place, not sure if I believe it.

Good guide overall. 2 things I differ on (Mostly opinion and playstyle though)
- I do think you are underestimating wukong SOOOO much. I counterpick Nasus's in ranked, ranked 5s, and normal draft pick with wukong and I find it is a really easy lane for Wu. You will burst WAYYYYYYY more than a Nasus can sustain (ive fought one with a very similar setup to yours) and you are overall much more useful endgame.
- I think you are waiting to long to get boots in your build, If any jungler saw you without them they would take the easy gank for sure.(In the vs AD section)

These are just my 2 cents as a top lane main xD. Good guide overall nice work and effort into it, everyone plays differently maybe this setup does counter the 2 points I stated cant know as I said its an opinion :P.

@Keondre: Perhaps, that message was the meaning I found when reading between the lines, but I could very well be wrong. Again, I do apologize if I'm putting words in jhoijhoi's mouth, but if you look at the post I can't see any other reason she would include my wins # and "never faced a decent opponent".

@Berzerk: Thank you for the upvote, and you bring up two good points.
-Wukong can abuse Nasus a bit early, but with cloth 5 sustain, and since Wukong has no hard cc, it's very difficult to have much killing potential in the lane. It's also relatively difficult for Wukong to harass a Nasus farming under tower, since the tower can see invisible units ( Decoy). I don't feel like writing another long response after I wrote the above, but if you want me to calculate more I can later.
-I don't get boots very early, but I do get wards early to keep the lane perma-warded in case of ganks. As Nasus, I feel like you are dead anyway in most ganks since you have no escapes and top lane is a pretty long way to walk, with or without boots. I feel like this case is one where the best cure is prevention. Also, often you will be pushed into farming under tower, so if you get ganked it's a towerdive, and pure defense will allow you to survive that better than trying to run.

I appreciate the constructive criticism

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with regards to my normal game elo being 1560 and yours 1500. I never said my elo was superior, I said that you don't have the quints you are suggesting, and that you don't have the games necessary to make the statment that you know everything about Nasus. As for having more experience - you're telling me to run Vamp Quints and 2x Vamp Scepter because you claim you've done it before. But clearly you haven't, seeing as you don't have Vamp Quints.

As for your first point, no. His Q is on short cooldown than Nasus' and it doesn't cost mana like Nasus' does. You are always going to be on the "bad" side of that lane match up.

Second point, again, no. You can't just "play smart to avoid damage" AND try to farm Q. No Rumble is going to allow Nasus to freefarm top lane. Anything you do - YOU only ever spec Q, even against an AP champ - will attract minion aggro, so he's free to just own you with Flamespitter.

Vamp Scepter is 450, Chalice is 900. So no, they don't cost the same. Chalice has MR, which is the first reason to buy it over Vamp Scepter, and then the mana regen IS useful because you will be using SF in order to keep up with their harass.

Sometimes you simply CANNOT farm Q with Nasus. 3 points extra damage is not worth losing 200 health points per rotation of spells. Any good jungler will gank a Nasus lane - he has no natural escape, only summoner's and Wither, which does nothing to help you against an AP match up.

When you're up against an AP lane opponent, they will push the lane. Spirit Fire will help you keep the lane off your tower.

I have nothing against you, or your build, just your reasoning. I say this because *clearly* you have not been up against a good AP opponent. You may claim you're the best Nasus player, and maybe you are, which is why you can get away with a double Vamp Scepter build. But in my experience, Nasus is a poor solo top choice and he easily, easily loses to AP lanes. If you want your guide to be "correct" consider keeping an open mind to my words. You cannot out sustain a Vlad or Rumble with double Vamp Scepter when they have a Revolver and you have no MR.

Ok, thank you for clarifying that statement, and I'm sorry for interpreting your statement that way. I think that you are also putting words in my mouth now though, I never said that I was the best Nasus player, I specifically stated in my intro that I'm "just an average joe who likes to play Nasus". Someday though, yes, I would like to be the best Nasus player, I know that I have a long way to go though, I am not that deluded ^^.

-Quints are a small part of the whole picture. Quints lifesteal is 6%, even without them you will have 37% lifesteal post-6. By your logic, you are also making assumptions about Scepter Nasus even though you are not using Lifesteal Quints.

-Vladimir's Q and nasus' Q have the same cooldown of 4 seconds. You are at a disadvantage due to mana, yes, but with use of Teleport and mana conservation you can generally overcome this.

-AP opponents do not necessarily have to push against you, if they freeze lane then you are pretty screwed. This ties into the "smart opponent" argument I guess. Even if they push lane to your tower this isn't a bad thing, you are slightly safer under tower at least.

-You changed the subject from Vlad to Rumble. Rumble is, admittedly, a harder lane than Vlad. I can't really disagree with you there. I'm not sure what you're talking about with minion aggro though. You farm minions. That does not draw minion aggro. Only attempting to fight Rumble draws minion aggro, which, I assume you know, is suicidal regardless of build.

-The first item I build is Negatrons, not sure where you got "no MR from". My second item is wards, which is the best option towards solving the jungler gank problem. Is it a complete solution? No. Is a complete solution possible? No, as far as anyone knows as of now.

My final point is not to say that Vladimir or Rumble lanes are easy wins, that wasn't what our discussion was about in the first place. I acknowledge that Rumble and maybe Vlad have advantages in the lane. But the discussion was about chalice. My point is that chalice doesn't help in the lane more than Vampiric Scepters do. Everything that you state about scepter Nasus also applies to chalice Nasus. Chalice Nasus can still get harassed for "200 health per rotation of spells), since Spirit Fire range isn't exceptional, and you have no sustain at range. Chalice Nasus will still use a lot of mana to farm, which evens out his extra mana regen. Chalice Nasus is still easy to gank. Chalice Nasus, like scepter Nasus, will lose cs (from E cooldown and zoning). Chalice Nasus, like Vampiric Scepter Nasus, can be hard countered. However, Vampiric Scepter Nasus will give you a greater (read: greater, not good) fighting chance than chalice or any other current build, since you are not completely helpless in melee range or when E is down, and your EHP is a lot higher.

If your entire point is that I should move APs up on the difficulty list, then I will consider it and do more testing after I get access to LoL back. Thanks for your constructive criticism in that case :)

I don't know if I'm just fighting bads with Nasus or what, but every time I play him (Even my two games with him in ranked where I won), I feel like his health sustain (with a Regrowth Pendant) is so good that I don't seem to take enough damage to stop farming. I see jhoijhoi's point with Rumble though. But the one time I foguth Rumble with Nasus his team had forced him to be "tank Rumble" so he was doing next to nothing with Flamespitter. I was actually standing in his moves because I was shocked that they did nothing to me. o.O

very good build i hope you are first soon

This guide is absolutely fantastic! I created an account just to give you a vote, you deserve it. Putting emphasis on the patient Nasus mentality and how to properly keep yourself safe until the late game makes me feel a lot better about my chances trying him out. Good work!