Deep in the Rift: Solo Queue Nasus

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Pre-Match preparation

These are probably the best overall masteries for Nasus. You need the point in Summoner's Wrath to close the gap better with Ghost. Nasus doesn't necessarily need Butcher to last-hit minions effectively due to the damage of his Siphoning Strike. Sorcery in the offensive tree is a much better 3-point investment than attack speed since most of your damage will derive from Siphoning Strike, which you want to use more often. The final offensive point goes into Weapon's Expertise after maxing out Deadliness for attack damage. It is a handy point since you may not be able to fit Last Whisper in your build.

In the defensive tree, you take everything that reduces crowd control and reduces damage, ignoring points in regen, minion damage, and damage reflect. This is because this is the most point-efficient bulid and also grants you the largest advantage in lane. However, as each point after the initial point in Hardiness and Resistance offers diminishing returns per point, you're welcome to place them in other areas if you wish.

I'd recommend Good Hands (because let's be honest, focusing a strategy around never dying is somewhat unrealistic) and the one-point wonder Defender, which is possibly the most cost efficient ability in the tree. If you end up teleporting down to a dragon fight and it happens to be a 4v4, you'll be receiving 4 MR and 4 armor, or 5 MR and 5 armor if your top lane follows. That may not seem like much, but the stats would require six points invested fully into Resistance and Hardiness for the same efficiency. Quite the bargain if you ask me.

0/21/9 Nasus could be a viable choice too as it has some valuable choices such as mana and movespeed, but it's mostly unecessary due to the build you'll be using, which offers movespeed and mana itself. It's understandable why SirhcEz would opt to go for points in the offensive tree as opposed to the utility tree.

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3x Greater Quintessence of Lifesteal

9x Greater Mark of Armor Penetration

9x Greater Seal of Armor

9x Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction

Again, these are the runes that SirhcEz uses, and they are mostly optimal. With your passive and Quints, you get an astounding 26% lifesteal without ever building a lifesteal item at max level. Since lifesteal procs on your Siphoning Strike, this is huge. In terms of trading and being able to duel AD carries late game, there's not much of a better choice.

SirhcEz uses armor penetration runes because you don't need attack damage to last hit and it allows your Q's to hit much harder. If I had to suggest any alternative, it would be double penetration runes. Even if you won't be investing points heavily into your Spirit Fire, you don't really lose much armor penetration and it'll help the damage of your ultimate at the same time.

Armor seals are a no brainer for pretty much any top laner. Armor seals are flat out best in slot and there's not really any substitutes that can fill seals as well as armor does. Armor is always useful, including when you're playing against AP champions due to reducing auto attack and minion damage. This is a must have.

CDR Glyphs are interchangeable here. On one hand, it's very strong in the sense that you can cap your CDR with two core items combined with the CDR gained from your offensive masteries. On the other hand, you do lose potential magic resist here when Nasus already suffers against AP tops. If the tradeoff is worth it to you, you can go with sirhcEz's rune setup, otherwise exchange it to flat MR runes.

Summoners -

- Mandatory and better than flash, especially if you're planning to future-proof your Nasus play. In Season 4, Ghost will have an initial burst of speed that will rival the instant mobility offered by Flash. For now, it's simply the best option since you don't have any gap closers and excel at persistently attacking.

- Also arguably mandatory. These are the two summoners SirhcEz uses regardless of the situation and for good reason. Exhaust and Ignite will not offer enough kill potential to make up for the enhanced map control and backdoor potential you'd have with teleport. Teleport stays relevant at all stages of the game and can win the game for you entirely.

Counters -

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With the exception of a few, it's important to note that Nasus does not fair well against most AP top laners that can bully him early. If you're under too much pressure to acquire Siphoning Strike stacks, then you'll be very weak for a very long time. This doesn't mean you can't pick Nasus, however, as his stalling potential is still strong. It just means the higher you climb, the more you can be punished for the small disadvantages in lane.

Vayne is another rarely picked but very difficult opponent for Nasus to handle in lane. Vayne's weakness is her laning phase in most situations, but here, she'll become a late game monster much faster than you will -- be careful of this matchup. Singed isn't exactly a counter because he can't deny you farm, but you can't do much to stop him from farming, which means that, as a more mobile champion, he'll be able to do a lot more with his farm early and carry other lanes. If you want to keep up, you'll probably have to teleport and lose XP to your tower. Not a favorable matchup despite being a relatively even lane.

Finally, a well played Olaf is a big problem. If you can outsustain him, you're fine -- but a good Olaf will wreck you every time you move up for a CS. Luckily, not many people have gone back to picking Olaf top, so this won't happen all that often. Oh, and one last thing -- Nasus is terrible against a skilled 2v1 lane swap.

Build Paths

Starting build

There's not much reason to start anything else, regardless of match-up. You won't be needing a ward due to playing defensively early and the Doran's Shield is incredibly cost effective. With this setup and your passive lifesteal, you should be able to shrug off most auto attack harass and continue farming. Bar none, the best choice.

First back against AD





transition into:

for winning trades and damage

OR

for more tankiness

First back against AP

transition into:

for additional damage

ELSE

for defense

Depending on situation and how far ahead, finish game with

for damage

AND/OR

for tankiness

Boots of choice should be:

OR

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The idea of following this build path after the initial start is that even if you're forced into a position where you have to build tanky early, you're getting damage because of how strong cooldown reduction is for Nasus' kit. Even without Sheen, you'll be doing plenty of damage if you don't have the luxury of building it early, though this may kill your all-in ability.

With Frozen Heart and Spirit Visage alone, you're looking at 40% CDR, which is the max. Even if you don't upgrade to Frozen Heart and stop at Glacial Shroud, you'll still be max CDR due to your glyphs and offensive masteries following SirhcEz's rune and mastery set-up.

Trinity Force is practically mandatory once you get the defensive essentials out of the way. If you're feeling confident, you can complete it before completing any full defensive items. You then have a choice to transition to more damage, more defense, or a mixture of both. Generally, since you do so much damage with just a Trinity Force, you'll only want to go the offensive choices if very far ahead. You'll pick up Bloodthirster for sustain, Last Whisper for armor penetration, or Infinity Edge if you're insanely far ahead and want to do 2000 damage Siphoning Strike bops.

For defensive items, I've listed them from left to right in order of importance. The first two will allow you to duel AD carries and make them irrelevant if you get too far ahead in fights. I'm not particularly a fan of Sunfire Cape and haven't seen sirchEz use it much over the many games of smurfing I've seen. It's still not a bad item, but it's not preferrable if you aren't rushing it and don't have magic penetration. Guardian Angel is the final choice, which I also wouldn't advise unless you've run out of tank items to build. Once you blow your ult and it's expired, you're not very useful in a fight, so while your revive "invincibility" may help win a fight, there's better choices.

You don't really need any magic resistance items outside of Spirit Visage and possibly Mercury's Treads since your HP will already be a soft counter to AP burst and you already have everything you need on Nasus with Spirit Visage, including CDR, health, and additional healing for your passive.

Skill order & Priority

Q>W>Q>E>Q>R>Q>W>Q>W>R>W>E>W>E>R>E>E

=> => =>

For mana reasons as well as last-hitting ability, you'll want to level Siphoning Strike first. Wither comes second because of the ability to punish over-extending and give kill potential. It's also amazing for ganks. Spirit Fire is too mana intensive in lane to max and you don't want to be pushing anyway. You'll primary be using it for armor reduction, where a flat 20 is provided even at rank 1.

Execution

Early Game, to carry in solo queue, you need to play passive and stack up Siphoning Strike stacks. The playstyle to carry with Nasus early contradicts that of other top lane carry champs, where you want to go for level 2 all-ins and snowball your lane off calculated hyper-aggression. As Nasus is highly susceptible to those, you're better safe than sorry.

Chances are, you won't be able to utilize your first teleport to help out fellow laners. Instead, you'll want to save it for being pushed out of lane, unless you are far more skilled than your lane opponent and are already dominating him pre-6.

At 6, you will receive a massive power spike. This is why you really need to focus on trading whenever you aren't getting stacks. Nasus is one of the only champions with massive kill potential without an offensive summoner.

At any point where an enemy over extends and uses their cooldowns incorrectly, be it to farm or simply miss skillshots, you will generally acquire a kill if you activate your ultimate, pop ghost, wither them, and beat them to death. Your kill is guaranteed against most top laners so long as they are at around 75% health.

Remember that you must absolutely be cautious of jungle ganks; it hurts more than it hurts other champs. While Nasus has excellent stalling potential, you can be made irrelevant if you get camped. Luckily, you're pretty strong in 2v2s, so if you feel you're being camped, don't be afraid to call your jungler to fight with you. Nasus won't do much with no gold or no stacks, so you absolutely cannot be starved if you want to be useful at all.

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Mid game, being smart with your teleport is incredibly important. You should only teleport bottom if you can guarantee a kill or two and snowball the lane as you will generally lose top for this. Alternatively, if you can secure an otherwise risky dragon with your teleport, it's worth it as well.

However, if you simply prefer to stay in lane, Nasus punishes roaming like no other. Any time your lane mate leaves lane, instead of following, you need to push as hard as you can. Once you acquire enough stacks and have a Sheen or, better a Trinity Force, you can melt down the first two towers no problem. As long as you have your Ghost up, you can wither most threats and escape should anyone try to stop your split-pushing antics. You may die if the entire team comes after you, but by that point you've already won due to the immense amount of pressure you've taken off the map. Still, it's best to ward deep and try not to die.

A good rule of thumb is that you should have at least 10 stacks per minute before you acquire cooldown reduction. You should aim to be much higher when you start building CDR and your build establishes itself.

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Late game, if you've done everything correctly, should be all about making the correct decisions, since you should already be incredibly strong. A good way to guage what decision you should be making is by noting how strong your team is and where the minion waves are. Remember, you have teleport, so you have a massive advantage in where you choose to go on the map.

When watching sirhcEz play, he seems to highly favor backdooring in lower Elos and prefers teamfighting when he doesn't have to be so self-sufficient at higher Elos. If your lane is pushing and you think you can end the game while your team fights, you can absolutely melt buildings. But remember, if you don't guage this properly, you can lose the game off of it.

Try to figure out if it's more important and effective for you to take pressure off the map and threaten their inhibitors and nexus, or if you'll win a fight by simply sitting on top of the AD carry and rendering him useless. Then, choose based off that.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

Godlike late-game

Strong mix of tankiness and damage

Very underrated and unexpected level 6 all in

excellent teamfight presence

strong dragon/baron control, can duo baron early



Weaknesses

Susceptible to kiting

many bad lane matchups

prone to getting shut down via camping

no gap closer or wall hops

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Overall, Nasus has a lot more weaknesses than people think. However, you can use that to your advantage in solo queue since people do not know how to abuse him properly, erasing his weaknesses the majority of the time. If Nasus has a rough early game, he can still stall out if his team is competent, but can also be crushed to the point of no return with no comeback opportunities like other champions if he's camped.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, Nasus is an incredibly strong solo queue pick with kill potential that most people won't expect. Even after the alleged nerfs to his passive. If anything, this will just mean he's banned less at higher tier of play and still will be quite the formidable opponent.

Nasus also is one of the few remaining champions that can literally win the game by himself if he's doing well and his team is failing. Below is a video example from SirhcEz in his single-handed domination.



Noteworthy games start at 0:00:00 and 2:30:00.

