Welcome!

My name is RaiZu and I have been playing Nasus since he was added in the closed beta of the game.

I am making the following guide because while I do understand why people play him tanky and focus CDR in hopes of a great late game I am not an adept of that way to play Nasus. It's very defensive and I prefer to manage my lane like an ad-bruiser should.

I hope you will stick with me and hear me out :)

Just your basic ad top laner runes. I use my ADC page because the attackspeed has saved me many times in duels :)

21/9/0 with your choice wether you get CDR or attackspeed

Trinity Force is the core item. If I've managed to do well on lane I go for Ravenous Hydra as the second item. If not I start building tanky with a Spirit Visage or Randuin's Omen depending on lane or who the enemy team's biggest damage dealer is.

As in all Nasus guides, freeze your lane, get a stack on Q whenever it's off cooldown and save it for the cannon minions. Should you want to fight, tap your oponent with a Q once to see how much damage you can do and if you feel confident just walk up to him, autoattack+q and follow up with wither and spirit fire. Make sure not to use spirit fire in lane for no reason as it's very mana consuming.

The overall philosophy I have adopted with this build is that of making the most of Nasus's passive.
With a full build including a hydra and a spirit visage you will be able to sustain in a fight very well as long as you can hit something. You won't need a ridiculous ammount of stacks to deal damage and if teamfights don't go well for you there's always the option of split-pushing.

As always you should try to save your slow for the enemy ADC. Once a teamfight starts you want to make sure to ult at the right time, in conditions in where enemies can not just run away from you or ignore you. As you gain damage from the enemies around you when you ult you should try to get in the middle of the fight and drop your spirit fire. The insane damage boost combined with your stacks and the splash damage from hydra will really make you a force to recon with while the lifesteal will sustain you very well if you focus on attacking the squishier targets.

I know this is not a very fancy guide but I just wanted to share with you the way I play Nasus in both Ranked and Normal games while having fun and also being an asset to the team. I hope you will give this a try and that you will have fun doing so :)