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Brelia's Challenger K'Sante

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Nasus Build Guide by

Brelia's Nasus - The Doge of Death [800+ Games as Nasus]

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3 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author brelia

Nasus Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (3) More Nasus Guides

Choose Champion Build:

Against Heavy AD
Against Balanced Damage
Against Heavy AP

Spells:

Flash

Teleport

Items

Starting Items

Early Core (Ahead or Even)

Early Core (Behind)

Core (Complete CDR Items + Boots)

Offensive Choices

Defensive Choices

Example Full Build #1 (Team needs damage)

Example Full Build #2 (Team needs more tankiness)

Ability Order

Nasus Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Teemo

Extreme

Teemo is Satan incarnate. He will blind you when you try to stack, harass you under tower, and even when you have hundreds of stacks he'll blind, slow, blind again, run away and laugh. Try to avoid this matchup if possible (you can laneswap with mid if they have an enemy Yasuo, Zed or other melee champion). If you do get put in this matchup, sit under tower and try to stack away from his Q / auto attack range. Ask for jungler ganks, since killing a Teemo with a good gank is easy. Your W counters his W, so every gank with a competent jungler should be a kill or summoners burnt.

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Introduction

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my guide. I am Brelia (my IGN on EUW is brelia01), a Platinum ranked Nasus main with hundreds of games as Nasus, and have read many guides on him. I hope to teach you something about Nasus, even if you're way above me in rank.

Nasus is a late game monster who's actually quite hard to shut down. With his amazing base lifesteal and almost full defensive runes and masteries, there are very few champions who can bully you for long.

In this guide you will find everything you'll need to know about Nasus from a Platinum player's perspective, covering from item build to tips and tricks. If you can be bothered, read all of the guide and leave a comment, I would happily read it and improve based on all constructive criticism. It'll only take 5 minutes and I would massively appreciate it as I have put a LOT of effort into making it.

Pros and Cons

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Pros and Cons

Pros
Should we respect the cane?

👍Strong duelist
👍Good damage
👍Extremely tanky
👍Best slow in the game
👍Extremely hard to counter
👍Amazing passive, scaling lifesteal
👍AoE armor and magic resist reducing basic ability
👍Melts squishies and towers as if they're nothing.
👍Very good against late game team comps
👍His bite is worse than his bark

Nasus is a very strong late game champ. Even though he is one of the tankiest champions in the game late game with his items and his ult, he also deals the most damage of any tank whilst still having good utility from his armor shred and his insanely strong slow. He is also hard to shut down as when he hits 6 his ult being off cooldown will deter people from trying to kill you, basically making you unkillable.

Cons
Why the cane is balanced

👎Very weak early game
👎Easily kiteable
👎Reliant on getting farm in the early and mid game
👎Can be denied easily
👎No hard crowd control
👎No gap closer
👎Doesn't know who let the dogs out. Woof. Woof. Woof.

Nasus does definitely have his weaknesses though, the first one that comes to mind is his lack of mobility. Nasus does not possess any gap closer, and because of this the only thing you can really do safely in team fights is to protect your carry. The lack of a gap closer makes it easy for a support to make you useless. He also has a horrible early game and until he gets some items struggles to stay alive in lane without jungle ganks.

Masteries

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Masteries

Offense

for the increased CDR and in turn increased stacks.

It was tempting to put points in and , but after doing multiple tests I'd rather have those 2 points in the Utility Tree.

Defence

and for alot of reduced damage early game

since we are going to be building many items which will give Armor and Magic Resist.

to survive for before having to recall

is great since the enemy will almost always be perma slowed from our

synergises well with which we usually build and

and allows us to get to the enemy carries through tons of crowd control (e.g. and )

and helps our sustain throughout the game massively

boosts our armor and magic resist a nice amount when in team fights.

Utility

helps us to recall and get to lane one second faster, we only really take it so that we can reach

gives us a really nice amount of Mana Regen, further improving our sustain in lane

gives 10% more health regenerated for each potion, really helping our early game sustain

Runes

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Runes

Runes for when against an AD Top laner:

Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction: Alongside the masteries, we get 10% CDR at level one from these. This massively helps with stacking our Siphoning Strike
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: Since we are against an AD top laner, we do not need early game magic resist. They probably have some AP on their team so we use these to lower their damage late game
Greater Seal of Armor: These will massively reduce the enemy physical damage early game, allowing us to stay in lane for much longer without recalling nearly as much.
Greater Mark of Armor: Another nice boost to our early game armor.
Greater Quintessence of Armor: You can never have enough early game armor.

Your rune page for going against an AD top laner should like like this:
.

Runes when against a top laner who deals true / hybrid / magic damage:

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: These will help you to stay in lane without recalling as much early game, by reducing their damage dealt to you.
Greater Seal of Armor: Every champion has an auto attack, meaning that these runes will help against every champion in the game, they're great for helping you to survive early.
Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration: I have tried Greater Mark of Attack Damage but these are superior in my opinion. They help your late game damage much more than Greater Mark of Attack Damage and boost your early game damage from your Spirit Fire.
Greater Quintessence of Cooldown Reduction: Gives 10% cdr at level one when combined with masteries, giving the perfect amount of Cooldown Reduction without overcapping late game.
Greater Quintessence of Hybrid Penetration: I take these for the same reason I take Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration.

Your rune page for going against an AP top laner should like this:
.

Summoner Spells

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Summoner Spells

The 'best' options:

This Summoner Spell is by far the best Summoner Spell in League of Legends, especially on Nasus. Nasus has no built in gap closer, so this little spell can get you to their carries and actually win teamfights alone.

Teleport allows us to backdoor, split push, get to lane quicker after recalling and have map pressure. After Flash, this is the most useful Summoner Spell on Nasus. Very helpful when their Nexus is open and your team needs you to teleport to a ward and finish the game.

Other viable options:

Nasus has a very limited pool of viable Summoner Spells. Ghost can be used instead of Flash which helps when chasing people, but with Ghost it is much harder to outplay your opponent. I would not recommend using Ghost instead of Flash unless you are inexperienced with Flash or have not unlocked it yet.

Do NOT take other Summoner Spells unless you aren't playing seriously. They do not work on Nasus, and unless you are trolling they are never more useful than , or .

Champion Abilities

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Champion Abilities

-> -> ->
.

.

For Nasus, you'll want to level your R whenever you can, then your Q. Maxing your W / E third is situational, max your E against a heavy pusher in lane and max W against someone who you can easily kill or someone who auto attacks a lot.
.

Level up whenever possible:

This ultimate ability is amazing, you should max this first every game without a doubt. It's too good to give up, this ultimate is the biggest reason you're even decent in teamfights.

This is Nasus' signature ability, what he's known for. Level this up first and max it second to get the most damage you can late game.

Then:

Max Wither third when against an auto attack based champion (, , )
or you're not getting lane bullied. This will lower their all in potential by a lot and help you to escape / run away from them much easier.

Max this third when you're against a lane bully or a fast lane pusher, this is so that you can E the wave and although you won't get many Stacks you'll atleast get most of the minion kills which are still a very nice thing to have.

Items

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Items

Armour Choices

Health Choices

Damage Choices

Magic Resist Choices

Black Cleaver Vs Trinity Force

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Black Cleaver Vs Trinity Force

Building Black Cleaver instead of Trinity Force provides:

+Dealing physical damage to an enemy champion reduces their armor by 5% for 6 seconds. This effect stacks up to 6 times.
+10 Attack Damage
+20 Cooldown Reduction
+150 Health
-30 Ability Power
-30% Attack Speed
-10% Critical Chance
-200 Mana
-8% Movement Speed
-Spellblade: After using an ability, your next basic attack deals 200% base AD bonus physical damage (1.5 second cooldown).

Gameplay

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Gameplay

.
Early Game
Nasus' early game lacks much interaction at all. Try to avoid getting bullied in lane and focus on stacking, you're not an early game champion so play as if the enemy laner is around one whole rank above you in skill, (if you're Bronze 5, play as if they're Silver 5 for example. This will help you to get used to being useless early game). Start with buying some defensive items and potions, come to lane and take the harass whilst stacking up your .
.

Middle Game

This is where you become relatively useful. At this stage in the game save your to roam across the map unless you have at least two waves pushing against your tower. You should at this point have at least one defensive item completed and on your way to your next one. Once you have Sheen, you can start fighting the enemy laner unless they are ahead. The Laning phase is about to end however if your team is winning / even, you should stay in your lane and split push to get as many stacks as possible. If your team is losing, group up and try to get your team back in the game.
.
Late Game
It's your time to shine. You have survived the slow early game and passed through the mid game, with enough stacks you should be able to just finish off the game. At this stage in the game, you have two options:

Split Pushing

Contrary to Middle Game, if your team is still losing you should split push, this is because if they're winning in team fights then you should stop team fighting and instead attract some of their team to the lane you're pushing. Your team losing doesn't affect your strength late game, and no champion in the game can compare to Nasus late game, meaning that they'll send atleast two people to stop you. This gives your team time to take objectives / team fight and win. Just try not to die without killing atleast one of the enemy.

Team Fighting

Again contrary to Middle Game, if your team won / are even you should now team fight and try to end off the game. Nasus can be a huge force in team fights because of all of his AoE damage, utility and tankiness. Try not to do team fights when you can't make anything out of it, if you teamfight in your base and the Baron and Dragon aren't alive, you cannot make anything out of the ace you'll get, the only objective left are towers but you're in your base, too far away to take them.

Guideline for Stacks

A general guide for stacks that Nasus should have is if you get the minute in the game and multiply it by 20, although before 20 minutes this is very hard (around 150 stacks by 10 minutes is still good) For example, at 20 minutes try to aim for 400 stacks. If you're against a lane bully, (, , a VERY offensive ) you can instead multiply the minute by 15 since stacking when bullied is extremely hard.

Tips and Tricks

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Tips and Tricks

Nasus' Q, Siphoning Strike is an auto attack reset, if you auto attack then use your Q straight after your auto attack animation will reset.
Nasus' Siphoning Strike also affects towers, giving him insane pushing power late game.
Siphoning Strike is blocked by spell shields and does not hit when Nasus is blinded, yet it ignores Jax's E, Counter Strike.
Nasus can stack his Siphoning Strike off of other champion's units, for example Heimerdinger's H-28G Evolution Turret and Yorick's ghouls. He can also stack it from objectives like Baron, Dragon and structures like towers and even the nexus.
Nasus' Spirit Fire gives vision towards the center of it's radius, allowing you to check unwarded bushes without using your face.

Summary

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Summary

Me talking about writing this guide (skip the spoiler if you just want to learn about Nasus)

Spoiler: Click to view

So, in this guide I covered:

Pros and Cons
Masteries
Runes
Summoner Spells
Champion Abilities
Items
Gameplay
Tips and Tricks

We learnt that Nasus has a weak early game, but this is because he is a late game carry.

To Do

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>Build for 'Against Heavy AP'
>Champion Matchups
>Help people (including myself) to get Diamond
>Receive feedback and improve the guide based upon given feedback

Am I Still Updating this Guide?

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Yes, but not regularly

The last time I updated this guide was: 08/05/2015, DD/MM/YY
What did I do in this last update?: Trinity Force vs Black Cleaver start.

After the addition of the new Black Cleaver, I had to write a section about whether we should take the Trinity Force or the Black Cleaver. It reminded me how fun making a guide is, but the spark I had originally when I started has died out. I will continue to update frequently but definitely not regularly. As always, PLEASE comment and vote your opinions, both negative and positive reviews really help!