Nasus Build Guide by Deluth

Hi!

First of all, this is a great guide. I really appreciate the fact that you actually use argumentation and comparision between different items and possibilities. Also, the tips againts diferent matches are great. Even when I dont agree with the difficulty of some of them (akali, for example), I guess I might be wrong, as well as other players consider nasus trash because they only encounter the "rush trinity force" nasus.

Still, I can't really understand why you absolutely need to avoid using Shurelia's. For me it was an awful item until I tried it, and now I can't live without it. I agree that in hard lanes you cant get phylo early, and I dont, but after I get the armor I feel confortable with (might be GS or FH), this is always my second item. usually I go GS and Kindlegem, and with that you have 25-30% CDR (add masteries) at very low level. I don't get the idea of getting it throught runes/lvl, since you need it as early as possible, not at lvl 18. Not listing the advantages of shurelia, since I'm sure you know them all. I'd just like you to explain more why you don't appreciate them and prefer a ton of life (warmog), which I find that "only" gives you durability, that I hardly ever need at 14+ lvl whith so much armor, lifesteal, and the life reg and flat life from shurelia.

Again, amazing guide. I hope to talk to you from time to time, since I also play nasus a lot.

Good guide overall +1
Though I think you should grab a level of E at lvl 4, and consider boots earlier in the vs ad build, also I don't really think you need a vamp scepter because of your passive.
Good job though :)

Thank you Tinystar for the sig!

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@OTGBionicArm

I feel like that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you are correct, a properly built Nasus is a lot stronger than people give him credit for.

@choubeka

Thanks for the support :)

@TheManicMan

Thanks for the compliment. And yes, the most difficult (and important) thing to do on Nasus is to survive and farm during the early game. Afterwards its just W-E-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q :P. Good luck playing Nasus ;).

@Asbeel
This will take a bit more explaining to do than the other comments and I'm busy today, so I'm going to have to put this off till tomorrow :P. Sorry.

@LiLStormcloak
Thanks for the advice. The late boots are because I feel that Nasus' mobility is so low that often having boots doesn't make as much of a difference as being able to withstand more damage, since most top laners won't care about your boots and can harass regardless with range/gap closers/speed boosts. Until you get the core armor and sustain, pouring precious gold into mobility is a waste imo, and you should always have wards to defend against ganks.

As for the point in E at 4, I feel like the rareness that you would want to use E doesn't warrant putting a point in this skill, for reasons I think I've already explained in the comments/guide multiple times. For scepter, play Nasus vs. riven or renekton without scepters, then talk :P. Honestly though, Nasus' passive often just isn't enough, and scepters provide that little bonus needed for Nasus to survive in many matchups.

@Asbeel
Ah, the shurelyas argument. I was wondering how long it would take before a Hyfe-style Nasus player showed up ^^. Well, guess I better explain myself :P.

Before I used this build, I was once also a Hyfe-style Nasus player, so I understand your concerns. When I first heard of "vampiric scepter stacking" on the lol forums several months ago, I thought to myself "lol troll build, moving on", for the same reasons many other people have already said in the comments. When I tried it however, I was surprised at how well it worked. Here are some main reasons why I don't like Shurelyas despite how much it seems to synergize with Nasus-

I will break down Shurelyas into the different stats it gives:


+30 health regeneration
-Not much to say here. Health regen is essentially a worthless stat on someone who already has sustain, besides very early game.

+15 mana regeneration
-Another early game stat. However, this is actually useful early game. I don't really have anything to replace this in my build, but I feel like if you get this after glacial shroud, then laning should already be nearing its end, and glacial shroud helps solve a lot of your mana problems anyway. If you use W and E very sparingly, you can survive without this mana regen. After laning, Mana regen becomes pretty worthless on non-mages, and with Sheen+ Frozen Heart, your mana pool should never be a problem.

+15% cooldown reduction
-One of the main redeeming factors of Shurelya's late game, I assume you already know why CDR is so useful on Nasus. In theory, this should allow Nasus to farm Q faster. In practice, if you dump 2.2k gold on this item in lane, you often won't have the sustain needed to farm Q against harder matchups. By late game, the runes and masteries will kick in, and you will have comparable CDR to a shurelyas Nasus, and that is when many of the game-deciding teamfights happen anyway.

Unique: Nearby champions gain 40% movement speed for 3 seconds
-This has a three main uses:
>Initiating: You are Nasus, you shouldn't be initiating
>Closing Distance in a teamfight: A single slow or hard cc will render the speed boost nearly useless because of its short duration. I feel like it is too unreliable in this aspect.

which leaves the third option, disengaging. Your support and possibly jungler should already be carrying Shurelya's anyway, so you don't really need this speed boost if you can only use it to 1/3 effectiveness.

+330 Health
A small amount of health which I think is helpful, but not enough. In lane, flat health is often not worth building on Nasus, since once it is gone, it is essentially gone permanently and doesn't help with your sustain anymore, unlike armor/MR which will always make your sustain more valuable by increasing the value of each point of health.

In teamfights, you want to optimize your tankyness by following this chart:
Edit: Image too big, here's a link :P

With FH+Mercs+FH+GA, the average of your resistances is around 220 (yes, this isn't exact, but it's a close estimation, and being exact is complicated >.>), so you want near 4k health (it's off the charts, but just visualize the line).

Shurelya's+TriForce is 2.8k. Warmogs+Triforce is from 3.7k to 4k. With ult accounted, warmogs is a bit of an overshoot, but in general Warmogs will bring you closer to the ideal tankyness, and even if it's an overshoot, it is still better than not getting enough health with Shurelya's.


My build is focused on maximizing early game survival chance. Getting scepters, armor, etc. will do better in practice than a passive gp10 build where you can *technically* get more Q farm, but will just get zoned against most matchups in practice. This creates a conundrum where if you get Shurelya's early, you are too weak in lane, but if you get it late, you waste the gp10 and the regen stats.

I know that my arguments for a couple of the stats were a bit inadequate. This is because those stats are indeed very effective on Nasus, and there's no denying that. However, shurelya's vs. warmogs basically boils down to raw strength vs. utility. I chose the strength. That is just my personal opinion, Shurelya's is still an alternative. I listed it under alternatives, and as I said in the intro, I would not list an alternative if it was any less viable than the main choice.

Most of my arguments assume that the opponent has high harass, which is when Shurelya's lack of sustain becomes a weakness. Against an easier matchup (Cho/Malph/Singed), most of my arguments become invalid, and Shurelya's becomes a decent choice. However, most popular tops are heavy-harass today, so I often find myself forgoing Shurelya's, and even against easier matchups, laning without Shurelya's isn't that much worse.

As to address the champion matchups, admittedly Akali is not very common anymore since the FoTM and I have'nt played against many recently, but I find that usually when I do, her kit is very effective against Nasus. First and foremost, she's manaless, which is one common characteristic of most of Nasus' counters. As a burst caster, she can wear down Nasus' health pool quickly and easily with a point-and-click gap closer. Unlike other assassins, she can do this repeatedly, and also has her own sustain and stealth mechanic (also usable indefinitely) to negate Nasus' return damage.

Nasus wins lanes in three ways: making the enemies' damage ignorable (impossible due to Akali's nature as an assassin and her point-and-click gap closer), wearing down the enemy with Q until they can no longer 1v1 Nasus (countered by Akali's SV and Twilight Shroud/ Shadow Dash jukes to prevent hard engages), and running the opponent out of mana (Akali is manaless). None of these options really work against Akali, which is why I put her under hard. I may reconsider it later though, thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Hi Deluth!

Thank you for your detailed response. I do agree with a lot of your bad points for Shurelia (life reg. is a joke lategame, as an example), also miss some of the ones I love more. I red carefully anyways, and first thing I want you to know is that I'm going to try stacking scepters and see how that goes.
Also, I do think that akali is a pain for you because of the flat MR glyphs you replaced, that might leave you a little vulnerable to agressive AP champs. I could discuss this match up more though, since I have a very concrete strategy for her.

Now, I'm fairly sure you know what I'm going to say, but if you dont mind I'd really appreciate if you can tell me how do you manage this situation. I'd like to state that this is in no way a critic of your reasoning, just discussing details with someone I feel might be a step further than me with my favorite champ.

There is a point in early mid game when, if I did ok, have enough resistances and Q damage to win the lane/ignore match-up. In my case, this is usually when I get a Glacial Shroud and a Kindlegem against an AD lane, or Mercs and Kindlegem against AP (add a phylo if lane was easy, like a chogath, or FH/negatron and couple more lvls if lane was hard). At this point, I often find myself in a position where I can't leave lane and help my team in tfs, so dont want my match to leave either. My resistances and sustain are nice for dueling my lane opponent, but in tf I'd do nothing since I will be blown up if focused by the other type of damage im building tanky right now. Also, my Q is ok (around 250-300) but still not fantastic, and now thay I got a sweet 25-30% CDR I really want to keep farming for another 10 minutes and make it to 450-500 bonus.

My best solution here is to apply a huge pressure to my lane. I wont explain how I do this (not that straight-forward as it looks), lets just say that tanky enemys can be pretty much ignored and the other ones suffer a lot with W + E + (aa+Q) combos.
Eventually, I push my lane enough and jungler or/and mid are forced to came, which is exactly what I want. Now I'm helping my team by relising pressure in bot/drake, and still farming in lane.

So in this scenario I push, damage/destroy opponent tower, go back and get my shurelia, then keep pressuring like hell. I found that shurelia allows me to overextend much more than I'd usually do, and always be ready to flee, stick to an enemy with my ult if decide to go 1v1 or 1v2, join a mid teamfight, and spam Qs and W without worrying about mana. I just find ghost + active of shurelia the absolute key in this phase of the game, and shurelia the item that allows me to make sure everyone reaches lategame.

So, my question is, assuming that at that lvl you have a GS/FH and a couple of scepters, and confortable in lane... ¿how do you handle mid game? I'm assuming that you, like me, want to farm a little bit more and dont want your matchup to leave lane and force 4v5 situations that may end the game before you can truly shine.

Thank you very much for your time, hope you enjoy discussing about the game and nasus same way than I do. And please, excuse my eventual mistakes, since english is not my mother tongue.

Asbeel