Introduction
Hiho Mobafire community
people entirely stopped playing nasus, so i decided to refresh my guide and tell you how an 1800 player who used to main nasus (yeah it's quite a while ago, but i still pick him up every once in a while) and has a pretty high win% in ranked on him; i think it's between 60-70%
apart from playing a lot of league I also post alot on mobafire and work on my site strawhatbro.net
Why play Nasus?
Nasus is a great champ overall, because he can push, defend, deal damage and tank a lot, all with the same build. If u like farming and then coming into the game just to blow everyones mind, then i think Nasus is your champ :P
Pros / Cons
Pros:
-Very Tanky
-Alot of damage if farmed
-Nice slow
-VERY GOOD ULT
-easy farming and pushing
Cons:
-easy to kite
-slow a lot weaker if opponents have any tenacity (luckily they changed that ages ago <3)
-very Ghost dependant
-Requires a lot of farm and usually doesnt shine too bright till lategame
Runes
For runes i use my jungling runes (MS quints, AD reds, armor yellows and mres/lvl blues).^ These runes give you what you need and support you in your strongest features. The blues and reds are quite selfexplanatory and i chose the Quints simply because there are no other quints that synergize with Nasus better than MS. I have been using Flat Health quints, but those just dont seem to benefit Nasus at all in the long run.
Talking about Yellows, most people would prefer to take MPregen/lvl, but since i pick up that Philostone i usually am fine with mana and like some Armor to be able to tank some more creep damage early (for tanking the lane aka freezing explained here defending your tower 1v2 and stuff)
Masteries
for masteries i go 9-0-21 because i like the utility to start regrowth +2 or boots +4 on startingitems check out this post
otherwise start 0-21-9 / 9-21-0 Just depends on the playstyle.
i switch inbetween masteries whenever i feel like it^^
Gold Items
HEy guys
After you read through alot fo my guide you have probably seen that im a huge fan of gold items^^
they give you gold for free with good stats as an addition :P
If you buy gold items, just turn your playstyle down a notch, mainly because you arent as strong in clean fights as if you had baught other items without GP5. IF you manage to chill in your lane though, you will be greatly rewarded by a lot of gold and easy farming through philo regen. (If you are laning against a heavy burster, get an early HoG or two to survive that burst and be able to lifesteal/regen your way up to high health again)
Farming
With Nasus you should prioritize your farm untill you have the most important parts of your build. Try to drag out the games as long as possible, since you are so friggin omg wtf strong lategame^^ Just Q a creep, then Q a creep, rinse and repeat^^ thats all you r doing. As a guideline i could give you 100 extra damage for every 10 minutes into the game (thats not all that good, but should be possible in most games) but of course farming depends on the game. If u can force a great dragonfight by not being top, then by all means do so, because global gold>creep gold^^. Im just mentioning this, because i see a lot of Nasus players sit top lane with absolutely no map awareness or any intention to help their team in a tight spot.
if u are alone at top lane and know you will be for a while, then either go down to help your team get objectives, or keep the enemy team from getting objectives, or PUSH AS HARD AS YOU CAN.
IMPORTANT: LASTHIT WITH Q if u dont manage, you wont get any dmg on it!!!!!!!!!!
That is, because your Q will devastate towers really quick.
You saw me picking
for my items and that is, because it gives you decent armor, builds into
and most importantly gives you CDR, which makes farming with your Q just so much easyer^^
Skill Sequence
I level up R>Q>W>E not because of the extra dmg on your q, but because of the cooldown reduction on it. But if i am on a 1v2 lane, where the CDR on Q wont do much for me, i get E first to be able to keep my tower alive. The rest is pretty obvious to me (but ofc if you ahve any questions, please ask them)
Wards
yeah wards. BUY THEM
is so OP it can save you from ganks, set you up for ganks, provide for easy dragons, barons etc and steals. If u happen to be on bottom/midlane: ward dragon. If you are on top lane, keep the opponents jungle entrance to your lane warded if you plan on pushing.
WARDS WIN GAMES true story :P
if you wanna invade their jungle, ward it
if they gank a lot, ward the river
if they are playing super aggerssive and are warding , counterward i.e. buying
or
.
Dont ever forget about wards!!!
Baron
NEVER FORGET ABOUT BARON!!!! that buff is so friggin strong and the global gold ROCKZZZ especially as you are a master of killing baron fast with your ult
after lvl 11 you are a Baron killing machine and you should abuse this.
Buy a
and a couple of
to get the vision you need and do it fast with your team or bait it. (please dont do that if its to risky)
Baron is always a topic and you should know, when to go for it and when not to do it. Just keep in mind to ALWAYS HAVE BARON WARDED!!!!!!
Summary
All in all, Nasus is a totally underestimated powerhouse if played right and can carry games by himself. All you need to do is farm whenever possible, Q this, Q that, Q everything just to get your damage up without losing important objectives like dragon,Baron etc out of sight.
If you have any questions or suggestions on how to improve this guide, please go ahead and tell me :P
If you got any questions about general lol theory, check out my site strawhatbro.net
Greetings and thanks for reading,
strawhatbro aka sam