[2.3] In-Depth Nasus Guide

Nasus is considered a pretty underwhelming or mediocre champion in Wild Rift. He does not provide much utility for his team, his early game is bad and if Nasus falls behind he is just an oversized punching ball for the enemy team. He is kited easily and does not have a lot of favored matchups. Game knowledge usually beats him, which makes it hard to play in higher elos and if he does not get to farm he might as well guard the shopkeeper. 

So from reading all that you might think it's best to stay away from this Champion and never pick him, right? Wrong! Nasus is an incredibly fun and easy to pick up champion that can put an entire team of four shopkeeper-guardians on his back if given the right conditions and if played smart.

Nasus scales incredibly well and if you get to farm, you will be this unkillable raidboss, that your wet dreams are made of. If Nasus is ahead he becomes incredibly tanky and can soak up critical abilities in teamfights easily, making it a breeze for your team to clean up and win the fight. A fed Nasus is also nearly impossible to sidelane against even in 1v2 situations and can just split-push his team to Victory.

Nasus is a champion that revolves around laning smart and hitting like a truck with the beginning of mid-game. The mechanic that allows him to accomplish that lies within his first ability Siphoning Strike . Whenever Nasus kills a target with it he gains stacks. He deals 25/50/75/100 + <AMOUNT OF STACKS> physical damage with it and it stacks infinitely. Therefore managing waves with Nasus is of uttermost importance. Your playstyle will revolve around farming up in the most efficient way, while trying to get useful leads for your team or help in teamfights. Nasus hits like a truck once you have generated over 200 stacks and will absolutely demolish any squishies if he gets to hit them. 

The amount of stacks you get per kill can be either either 4 for normal minions, normal monsters (small krugs, chickens, small wolves), or 8 for champions, cannon minions, large monsters (dragon, baron, krug, large wolf, gromp, raptor), cannon minions and superminions. If possible try to execute your opponents with Siphoning Strike for the juicy stacks.

Nasus is pretty tanky and builds almost only defensive items which helps him to sustain a lot in teamfights. His passive Soul Eater also gives him lifesteal which grants a great source of sustain. His 2nd ability Wither absolutely demolishes attack-speed based champion and is your tool if you feel like running down champions and also your tool to disengage from tricky situations. The slow that this ability applies lets you get out of most situations where an enemy champion is trying to chase you down. If used offensively together with Glorious Enchant or Flash if necessary, it lets you close almost any gap.

Spirit Fire , Nasus 3rd ability deals AoE magic damage, and damage over time and grants 15%/20%/25%/30% armor reduction. You will be rarely using this ability to deal actual damage, there can be situations however where you max Spirit Fire first. For example against poke heavy champions like Vayne , Teemo or Kennen . In most other cases you want the armor reduction that you get from the ability. It lets you deal a good amount of damage when dealing with tanks.

If Fury Of The Sands existed in real-life, it would most definitely be classified as illegal doping substance. It makes you incredibly tanky as you gain HP, armor and magic resist. You also deal AoE magic damage to unit around you and it decreases the cooldown of your Siphoning Strike by 50%. The biggest part of Nasus ' ultimate however is: it makes you bigger.

Before we can dive into the perks of playing Nasus we have to take a look at different concepts. One of the most important ones is Lane Priority. Lane Priority is an important but often overlooked concept, especially in lower elos. Lane Priority simply means having the control over the lane and being able to push the lane into the opponents tower. By doing so, the opponent laner has to farm the minions while the champion with lane priority is free to roam, ward and help their jungler.

Here is an hypothetical example. Nasus on the blue side, his lane opponent Kennen is on the red side. The respective junglers are fighting for the Rift Scuttler on top side. Kennen has Lane Priority in this scenario. Nasus is being pushed under his tower and Kennen can rotate to help his jungler Graves first making it a 2v1. If Nasus was to follow Kennen on the rotation, he would lose a ton of farm and EXP, and he would still take longer to path to where the fight is taking place.

Lane Priority simply dictates which plays you can, and which you cannot make at the current time given the state of the game. This concept is in general really important, but it is even more important for Nasus because there are some things to consider when playing him.

Nasus has almost no winning matchups in the early game. That means that most of the time you will not have Lane Priority over the baron side of the map. You will not be able to help your jungler contesting objectives on this side of the map and you have to play around that in a smart way in order to not put your team and yourself at a disadvantage.

This means that often you will find yourself in a position, where you cannot contest a drake while your opponent laner can roam to the dragon conveniently. Your team needs to understand how Nasus works and what he wants to do. More on that on the "Split Pushing" section. 

Sacrificing Lane Priority does have its upsides as well. First of all, you get to farm safely which is of uttermost importance for Nasus. Being pushed in, also means that the opponent laner opens himself up to being ganked, although especially in lower elos, baron lane is often abandoned by your jungler in the early game.

Key takeaways: Lane Priority dictates which plays you can make at the current state of the game.  Nasus has Lane Priority very rarely which means you can't contest objectives early on. Use this to your advantage by farming up safely and making the opponent vulnerable to ganks.

Yes, you really want to dive into the meat of the guide and learn how to play Nasus . But we are not quite there yet. We still have to learn a thing or two about wave management. Wave management is the magical tool that gets you from bronze to diamond in the matter of days. Challengers hate this trick!

Wave management simply means that you are able to manipulate the state of the minion wave at your will. This is absolutely necessary, because different types of wave manipulations are useful for different types of plays that you want to make. With Nasus the most important wave management technique that we will discuss is Freezing. You can learn a lot about wave management in general over here at Levi's Wave Management Guide.

Freezing the wave means, that you you keep the wave at a certain spot in the lane. Most of the times you will want to freeze the wave near your tower (but obviously not in tower range). You accomplish this, by keeping the opponents slightly (depending on the minion type) larger than yours. Refer to Levi's guide or this wave management guide by Excoundrel for exact instructions on how to technically set up a freeze.

With Nasus you always want to have the wave frozen near your tower in the early game. Nasus in nothing more than a cannon minion with more HP in the early game. Nasus is bad at trading early as he deals no damage, and gets kited easily. So what you want to do is to freeze the wave near your tower and stack up safely. A frozen wave exposes the enemy laner to ganks and you take advantage of the safety near of tower. If you can try to keep the wave frozen for as long as possible. As Nasus you will not be able to kill someone early, unless they are really bad, but you cannot be killed either when you keep your wave frozen.

In order to break a freeze, the opponent laner either has to crash the minion wave into your tower in order to reset, or call his jungler to break the freeze with him. Given that knowledge it's easier to keep a wave frozen against enemies that are bad at clearing waves such as Vayne .  

We are finally here. Now that you have an overview of the basic game knowledge that is required to play Nasus we are diving straight onto how Nasus can be fully embraced and how each phase of the game pans out until you bonk your team to victory.

Playing Nasus is a marathon, not a sprint. Nasus is one of the absolutely worst early game champions in the game. You cannot leash for your jungler on the blue buff, as you need to prepare the minion wave and you cannot take part in early game skirmishes as Nasus is far too weak in the early game. Most of the times you will also not be able to rotate to the first dragon fight, making it a 4v5 for your team.

  Nasus ' early game is very static and is almost always played the same. In the early game you want to make sure to prepare the minion wave in a way that it later freezes under your tower. A good start would be to force minion aggro on the first enemy wave, and redirect it so, that the enemy minion wave is targeting one of your melee minions. This way your first minion will die faster than the opponents first minion thus helping you pushing the wave to your tower.

Under no circumstances attack the minion wave other than last hitting them with Siphoning Strike . Don't trade with your enemy laner, just focus on last hitting. In lower ranks, your opponent laner barely has an idea what they're doing and they will most of the time attack your minion wave and helping you shoving it under your tower.

If this happens, congratulations, you have just won the game. You can freeze the wave forever under your tower and you are safe stacking up your Siphoning Strike , while the enemy laner cannot harass you and you are safe from ganks. When your lane is frozen, you can start thinning out the wave, which means to attack the opponents minion wave in order to keep the wave balanced out, not breaking your freeze.

Better Baron Laners however will not want to let you set up a freeze. In this case the lane is going to be very tedious to play. The enemy laner will not attack the wave and instead harass you as soon as you approach a minion. It is fine to take some poke in order to last hit. Make sure to not miss cannon minions with your Siphoning Strike as they grant 8 Stacks. Try to farm up as well as you can while not taking too much damage. If it means sacrificing some health in the process this is fine. Make sure to make use of your Honey Fruit if you are falling low and as the wave is crashing under your tower, make sure to farm some Siphoning Strike stacks.

In higher ranks it can be a useful tactic to bait the enemies AoE abilities in order for them to hit your minion wave, such as Decimate . Although you lose health, it will help you to create a freeze.

I usually start trading when I am around 100 stacks. Especially with access to your Fury Of The Sands you are getting a huge powerspike. This is the time I usually look out to kill the enemy. Especially because you were playing the lane so passively, you often catch your opponent off-guard on an all-in, and your Siphoning Strike now starts to hurt really bad.

Do not use your Spirit Fire unless you are trying to all-in your opponent, or to push the wave before you back. Using your 3rd ability will deplete your mana in the blink of an eye and you will need mana for your other abilities.

If you play the lane right, opponents will not be able to all-in you, as all attempts can be shut down with Wither . Don't use it offensively unless you know you will win an all-in.

At the time, the first dragon fight is about to start, you are probably still too weak to join. Most of the times you are also pushed under your tower, so that the enemy Baron Laner has priority to rotate while Nasus does not. Let your team know in the chat, that you will not rotate to the dragon in such a situation. Most of the players in lower ranks, but even in diamond, are not able to read the state of the game. Letting them know that you will not rotate helps you to prevent messages like: "[Team] YasuoMastery7: NASUS DOG NO HELP". When the opponent laner rotates to the dragon fight it is time to take a tower and to stack up very quickly as you are transitioning into the mid game.  

Mid game is usually the phase where Nasus is the strongest and can take over a game single handedly. You should absolutely look out to farm at least 200 stacks by the 8-minute-mark. The more the better. Once you are at this point in the game and you haven't been feeding up to the point where 20 surrender votes have been cast already you are all set up to bonk. 

If you are fairly ahead consider joining your team when taking objectives. Nasus is insanely tanky, and is therefore very good in front-to-back teamfights. If you can't rely on your carries in teamfights, you should instead look out to run past the enemies frontline and try to Wither a carry and Siphoning Strike them down. If farmed up, Nasus will take almost no damage and it will take only a couple of Siphoning Strike s to kill their carries. After that point the teamfight is won.

Try to take as many objectives off of won teamfights as possible and you are on the best way to win yourself the game.

Split pushing is the holy grail of winning games, even if your team is feeding. Split Pushing simply means applying pressure to an undefended lane, so that the enemy team has to commit more than one player to defend the said lane, giving your team a numbers advantage in taking objectives. Split pushing is most effective when you cannot really win even fights and should be considered when there is an objective up to take.

Champions that are best at split pushing are usually champions who are good duelists, have good escape or can take towers very fast, such as Fiora , Jax , Tryndamere and of course Nasus

To give an example: Both teams are fighting for Baron priority. You are a 300 stacks Nasus and there is no enemy in the game, that would win a 1v1 against you. So instead of joining for the Baron dance, you head to the Dragon Lane to apply pressure there. Since nobody can match you in a 1v1 the enemy team will have to at least commit two people to defend the Dragon Lane, thus making it a 4v3 for your team. Consider taking Teleport Enchant with you, so you can easily join fights if needed.

Nasus is insanely good at split-pushing (if farmed up), as the bonus damage from Siphoning Strike also applies to towers and there is little your opponents can do against a fed Nasus. If you want to consistently win games as a Baron Laner you absolutely need to get a feeling for when and how to split push.

Even if farmed up well, Nasus late game is somewhat mediocre. Carries start to hurt a lot with Morellonomicon and Mortal Reminder and if they can kite Nasus there is very little you can do and your healing on Siphoning Strike is reduced. 

If you are behind, consider split-pushing as Nasus in the late game. However if your carries are reliable, you can just be a beefy frontline for your team as you will still be insanely tanky. In teamfights try to threaten the enemy backline with your Wither .

• A mistake many Nasus players do, is to use Fury Of The Sands while chasing an enemy. Fury Of The Sands has idle frames, which means you will not be able to move for a couple of frames during the duration of the cast. If you all in, either use Fury Of The Sands while the opponent is locked in place, or before you start chasing. Just the cast time of your ultimate can decide between a successful all-in or a failed one.
• Do not spam Spirit Fire . It is an insanely mana hungry ability. Since Nasus ' build path does not contain any mana items anymore, you have to manage your mana well. I tend to use it only in teamfights or when I all-in against tanky opponents, as it shreds armor.
• The best tip to succeed with Nasus I can give you is: Don't be afraid to lose farm early game.  Nasus is probably the worst early game Baron Laner and it is absolutely crucial to not fall behind further than you absolutely have to, otherwise you will have no agency throughout the entire game. Try to survive the early game and do not hesitate to give up minions in order to freeze your wave.