About Myself

Hey, everyone! This is my first Guide on Mobafire and I have decided to make it on my favourite champion at the moment Nasus. I am a Gold Garen/Nasus Main on the OCE server with a 60% winrate in season 9 and a 71% winrate on Nasus. I think that i specialise in the lane phase and Macro decisions while being poor at split-second decision making and mechanics. Having found Trick2G and Sirchez's "Gates" playstyle during season 8 I have adopted their school of thought in my own games to great success during this season and I hope to share that success with you! As I have about a Gold 2 MMR right now this guide will be mainly for anyone below that level but if you are above that then I'm sure you will get something out of this guide as well.

Why you should play Nasus

Nasus is a champion of extremes. Here are a couple. 1. He has an incredibly weak laning phase but this is countered by is incredibly strong mid-game spike. 2. He has little effectiveness in late game teamfights were the opponents cc him but has the best turret killing kit in the game. Nasus's ability to 1v1 and take turrets is what has drawn me to playing him as I am able to create more pressure than anyone else in League of Legends by myself.

Becoming One with Nasus

To truly be able to play Nasus to his fullest you must understand what Nasus is and what he wants to do. League is a Team game, you must destroy the enemy Nexus as a team to win. Nasus helps his team by 1. Absorbing the attention of 1-3 people at a time allowing your team to CS freely or look for picks and 2. By taking turrets, as at the end of the day there are only 15 structures and you only need 7 of them to win. If you can knock down the first 3 or 4 it means that you are always looking to end the game regardless of game state.
They way that you are able to absorb and create pressure is by stacking your q as much as possible and by creating a EXP lead. You will find when playing Nasus that CS itself doesn't matter to much its just how many of them are stacks that is important. With the Nasus buffs that came through a while ago it generally means you can get 30 extra stacks or so every 10 minutes allowing you to reach the mid-game quicker. Just remember you are Nasus, You Stack, You Pressure, You Win.

Nasus is a champion where it is very important to know the damage output of your opposing top laner in the early game. As levels 1-5 you don't have a way of preventing damage once an enemy is on top of you, you can't go up for a stack when they are going to kill you. In these match-ups as well a lot if the time in lower elo you may see them finish killing your creeps and then they run off to put a ward down or recall while they expect you to be last hitting under tower. What you can do instead is hold up the minions by tanking their shots and sustaining it with your q. Once your minions come to attack the opposing minions move up into the brush to stop them from attacking you and resume the lane. What you will now have is 9-11 of your opponents minions vs your 6 more or less right under your tower. This is known as freezing. This does three main things to help your lane. 1. The kill range for most champs will be lower when you are basically under your tower as they wont be able to chase you down. This means you are more free to go for your stacks especially in melee match-ups. While their kill range is lessened yours is increased as you know have more time to run them down with how far they are from their turret 2. If your opponent doesn't stay in lane the minions will still push to you. Generally if your opponent is out of lane and you are last hitting the wave will push to them but their extra minions will kill your minions quicker than yours can kill them. This means you can endlessly keep then lane in the same position. 3. It makes ganking a lot easier for your jungler as the lane is going to be pushed up forcing them to come up. This makes this strategy even better against gankable champions I've outlined in match-ups.
If you have pushed the lane in you should always try to see if you can get Rift Herald. At the moment Turret Plating is the most important thing in the lane phase so being able to get 2.5 plates for free is over a kills worth of gold. Try to get the herald before 13 minutes so you can use it before turret plating expires. You will also need to somewhat know where there jungler is to make sure he doesn't interrupt you. Generally the lane phase will end once you have Out-scaled them and taken their top turret and got Tri-Force. This will probably be about 13-16 minutes.

While taking the outer turret is child's play for a Nasus, taking the inner and inhibitor turret requires a bit more planning. The most important thing to do is make sure that you team is pushing the waves forward. When you are applying pressure in all three of the lanes at once it makes it a lot harder for the opposing team to create 1v2 or 1v3 situations as turrets will be taken elsewhere. The important thing to realise is that getting your teammates to group and push isn't spamming the farming jungler and being toxic in chat. No one will listen to you if they have to mute you. Instead ping asking for assistance in mid or bot and ask everyone to group for turret. Its a lot more effective and doesn't tilt your team. You have to wait for this pressure though. You can't go in for the turret, find 5 people top and then get mad because your teammates weren't taking objectives. If they don't co-ordinate with you, you co-ordinate with them. When taking a turret make sure to remember to place down your Portal but don't let it tank the turret, it kills it in 1 shot. Instead place it out of the range of the turret but close enough that it will get to the turret quickly. If you are trying to get more than one turret place it between the two objective so that it hits both. Also as a general rule you should be using your Ult to take down a turret quicker. While you may think its a waste the ult lets you take the tower twice as quick allowing you to get out more easily. It also lasts long enough that if you do get collapsed on you will still have it up for the fight. When ult is on don't worry about auto resetting with your q, just auto then q, auto then q. Also remember to stack as much as possible during this phase of the game. If you are wanting for pressure only use q's on the wave. If you are trying to get to a turret quickly though forgo the stacks in favour of e-ing the wave and q-ing the high health minions.

There are three main states of the game you can have late. Their inhibs are down, Your inhibs are down or there is a constant dance around baron. I'll go through each of these states as their own case
1.You are up: This is good in the sense that a team ahead with Nasus can't really lose but its bad because the best strategy is to just group up with your team and force down turrets. One important tactic is to baron baron by splitting bot and going for the turret. When they send 2 or 3 members down get your team to start the baron and with the lead you have and the numbers advantage it should go down no problem.
2.You are down: The main way to try and get back into the game when behind is to become the ninja turret taker you have always wanted to be. Try to create some vision control on one side of the map and slowly push up the wave towards the turret, this can be done through the E and portal. If you see the enemy team hesistate in the mid lane this is when you strike in the side lane, ulting the turret and puting your Zz'Rot Portal between the two turrets and push. Teleport is also important as 1. If you are in the side lane and they engage near your base you can TP into the fight and try to help. 2. If you have just won a fight and you have a side wave pushing you can TP to try and take some turrets before they respawn.
3.If the Game State is even: This is where Nasus is at his best. Generally most of what you do will follow a similar gameplan to what i outlined for the midgame. Its more important now to not die though without getting one back as it could lead to them getting lots of objectives if they have globals. Otherwise its a good idea to constantly be a nuisance in the side lane. Try to get vision on your side as much as possible as to threaten roams to the mid lane for team fights.

I would suggest looking at the replays of Trick2G and Sirchez when they are playing on their main as they will have lots of commentated game-plays at a high level. Watch your own replays on fast-forward if you only have 15 minutes and criticise your game-play to find your weaknesses. Also if you find certain match-ups particularly annoying then try play that champion yourself to get a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses and how to exploit it. If noone else beats it then hey! you've found a new champion to play. Thank you for reading through this guide. I hope it helped and you find success in being the most annoying champion on the rift.