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Greetings fellow Summoners! My name is Squareman from Eu-West, I've been playing League of Legends for almost 2 years now and I decided to finally write my first guide on Mobafire about one of my favorite champions Nasus, The Curator of The Sands. I made this guide for people that want to play Nasus as a Solo Top Champion and want a better understanding on what Items, Masteries and runes to pick in the progress and how to be a benefit to your team early, mid and late game. My guide is only focused on playing solo top and nothing else. So please keep that in mind when you are reading this! This guide is ment and has been tested for Normal PvP games. Keep in mind that this guide will not make you the best Nasus player ever, but it will probably help you get a better understanding when you play him! Be sure to read the whole guide for all the benefits!

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Pros + Strong/Tanky Solo Top + His "w" is a scaling Exhaust + His Q Siphoning Strike Stacks damage + Can eat HP bars away with his 'Q' + Can become hard to kill + Passive Lifesteal

Cons - Needs his farm, No farm = No damage - Weak early game - Can be mana hungry at the start - Can easily be countered - Can easily be shut down at the start - Can easily be kited around

• greater mark of armor penetration: // EXPLANATION.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: These are the best seals in the game. As a solo top/tanky champion this is a standard Seal you will always use. When you are up against a AD enemy he is going to get a hard time killing you.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: // EXPLANATION.
  
• Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: // EXPLANATION.
  

Why use Teleport?

Early laning: Nasus is a Champion who really depends on his tower in early game, to grant him last hits with Q and "safe" farm, for the sake of his strongest part of the game: the late game. LOSING TOWER EARLY GAME IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. If you lose your tower, you'll still be forced to stay top and farm, leaving your opposite Top free to roam and give your team mates some trouble. Also, Nasus usually gets some nasty enemy ganks top, cause he MUST be stopped. Teleport should help you get faster to lane if died to a gank or if you had to recall buy/recover, allowing you to lose few gold/exp/Q farm.

Mid: Considering the bot lane brushes and dragon should be always warded by your team, your teleport can eventually help for ganks/counterganks/dragon fights. Surely, you can always gank mid/enemy jungle as well, but the dragon/bot lane usually gives the best ganks chances, considering Nasus' Wither should make the enemy AD carry really soft and easer to kill. If you're having troubles Top, you should always keep an eye for these ganks bot. A good gank, with the help of your team could grant you (with the best luck) up to 3 kills (enemy AD, support and jungler) 1 dragon and eventually the enemy bot tower. Giving you the gold worth the loss of your Top lane phase and tower.

Late: Becomes even greater for split push, surprise ganks/counter engaging/steal baron and dragon. Grants you even the chance to backdoor (or to stop a backdoorer) in desperate situation.

You can take Warmog's if you want/need more health. Ohmwrecker is a good item if you want to backdoor. Zeke's Herald is handy for more lifesteal

As Nasus, your goal isn't to kill your lane opponent over and over in the first 10 minutes and snowball out of control to carry the game. What you want to do is passively farm Siphoning Strike for half an hour, then snowball out of control and carry the game. If your jungler has high damage/cc, maybe you can pick up a kill on a gank, and that's great, but your main focus should be farming and staying alive.

Farming

Resetting your auto-attack timer with Q to get two quick hits in is very useful. It can help put out the extra damage to last hit a minion that was otherwise too high, and it helps a lot with sustain with your passive lifesteal. It can also help you last hit two minions in quick succession if they're both about to die.

This should be obvious, but against tough lanes you have to weigh the costs of moving up for a last hit. If your opponent is in a perfect position to land a combo and take off half your health if you approach the caster minions, just leave it. That one minion isn't worth being zoned for 30 seconds because you could die in one more combo.

Lane Control

Because a farmed Nasus is so unstoppable late game, expect the enemy jungler to always be on the lookout for ganking opportunities. If you're ever not in range of your tower, make sure to have wards up to avoid getting ganked.

While farming under your tower is great later on when your Q cooldown is low, it really isn't beneficial early in lane. You'll likely lose more farm to the tower than you would from being harassed if the lane was pushed further out. In addition, if your opponent shoves the lane fast enough, your tower will push it back very hard. This will force the lane well past the river, possibly to the other tower, putting you in a very vulnerable position. You will have no way to farm and your opponent can freely harass and deny you gold and experience with little fear of ganks.

Basically, you want to keep the minion waves just out of reach of your tower. This leaves you to farm in relative safety and the lane will not rapidly shift out of your control. Previously this was accomplished by simply tanking minion hits until your next wave showed up, but the change in masteries makes them hit too hard early on. Now, if your opponent is rapidly clearing your minion wave to shove the lane, simply auto-attack their minions right back (if it's safe to do so). Obviously don't push harder than your opponent, but if you thin the wave while you still have minions attacking, the ones that are left to push will be much more manageable. With your high starting armor and passive lifesteal, you should still be able to tank a few minions and keep them off your tower, just not the whole wave like before.

This is one of your counters and you are in for a hard time laning from this point on if the Akali is any good. From level 1 on she can harass you nonstop and keep you away from your precious farm, the healing from your lifesteal will not even come close to the amount of damage she will be doing on you with her and . A good Akali player will poke you out of the lane and away from last hitting any minions, even if you try to rush a Spirit Visage or other armor she will still damage you greatly because her damage will become greater over time. Not only her early game is incredibly powerful so is her lategame. A good Akali will win the lane against Nasus without breaking a sweat. Remember, using on akali if you are running away from her past level 6 will probably be useless, seeing if she has 2 or 3 stacks on her ultimate she'll most definitely will catch up to you and finish you off.

Cho'Gath is one of the easiest Solo tops you can play against as Nasus. Over time your lifesteal will out heal his damage and eventually after enough Q farming you'll even out damage him. Just farm those minions away and dodge his Rupture when he uses it. Remember when you're low on health and if you know Cho'Gath is going to try to use his ultimate on you to trigger your ultimate in time!

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