Hi there!
I was fellow Nasus OTP not so long ago (prev season) and i ran into certain thoughts. I will share them below but before that i’d like to provide some value to my opinion with screenshots. Important mention: i was only playing Nasus exclusively that season i reached Masters. I was also climbing from gold 4 to Masters. I believe i have a good idea of Nasus as a champ in current meta both in low and “high” elo.
So here i am about to share few main reasons for why i believe that Nasus with his current kit is a disaster of a champ and requires a full rework.
HIGH ELO (toplane):
- Nasus can’t theoretically contest waves before his powerspikes against 99% of champs.
- Nasus can’t effectively break freeze (going doran’s ring + 3 points into E ruins your midgame, since you will have about 200 stacks by min 20).
- Nasus is extremely easy to dive before lvl 6.
- Nasus is not that good of a splitpusher despite what many ppl believe. Tower dmg is irrelevant when you don’t have any wave clear and can’t shove.
- Nasus can’t have a good recall since you can’t afford to play TP nasus in high elo if you’re expecting yourself to be somewhat useful in late game. You are forced into playing him with Flash/Ghost. Otherwise you will get kited to a degree it becomes unplayable.
- Nasus always gets less gold than enemy toplaner during laning phase (he can’t push, he can’t contest waves, he can’t kill). That basically leads to Nasus getting into situation where enemy toplaner already has his first item while you’re at Lucidity+sheen+gem. Realistically the only window for Nasus to make some action on top would be after getting Lucidity+Sheen but before enemy toplaner gets his first item. That is extremely short window for creating any activity on lane. Another powerspike where Nasus actually becomes playable would be Sunderer. But realistically that would be around min 13-15 in somewhat good scenario.
- Nasus never has early prio and can’t help his jungler on river (except for the case of enemy toplaner being kayle).
There’re also other problems, but lets just stick with those. All of that mentioned above will always lead a high elo Nasus OTP or Nasus main to play him mid instead of top. But playing Nasus mid is also kinda bad to be fair.
HIGH ELO (mid):
- No wave clear.
- Can’t contest anything before his powerspikes.
- Can’t gank effectively till you get Sunderer which would allow you to go for crazy towerdives.
All of mentioned above basically leads to Nasus being a champ which is an essence of boredom in any high elo game. You bore your opponent to death cuz he’s forced to watch you constantly hugging your tower during laning phase. You bore yourself cuz you know that going for any action till you actually get somewhat strong will lead to inting. Your bore your teammates, cuz you’re nonexistent before midgame. This is not fine how boring it is to play Nasus / be in the same game with Nasus. To those who might say “But Nasus W is turning adc off in late game”. This is not how it works in high elo. You will get enemy ADC with cleanse/qss + sup with Mikael by the time you reach late game. Fight will end faster than you actually manage to finally slow enemy adc.
Now, those things alone are good enough reasons to rework Nasus completely. No matter how many times his numbers are gonna get buffed and CDs reduced, main reasons for why Nasus is unplayable in high elo will stay. It’s still the only champion in the game without any hard CC AND without any mobility spell (if i am forgetting some champ correct me). Well, obviously Nasus is gonna become good in high elo if he’s given 5 stacks of Q instead of 3 for basic minion, but that would be completely gamebreaking, so i am not taking into considering absolutely insane buffs.
But the biggest problem is the fact that meanwhile in low elo Nasus is one of the best sololaners if not the best. He’s absolutely stomping since low elo is the place where certain fundamental concepts such as wave management, correct kiting, punishing for farming do not exist. I am not even talking about playing cleanse/qss/mikael’s. Also people in low elo do not know Nasus limits which allows Nasus players to snowball extremely hard on their powerspikes. (By low elo i am taking below diamond).
So we run into a fundamental problem with his kit.
If Nasus gets buffs:
- His kit won’t allow him to become relevant at high elo.
- He’s already op in low elo, it will get even worse.
If Nasus gets nerfs: - From being 2% pickrate and 47% wr in Masters+ he will drop down to about 0% pickrate.
- He will still remain op due to the sole fact he has infinite scaling on his AA basically and you don’t have to hit any spells.
So here comes obvious conclusion: without a big rework Nasus is gonna remain absolutely terrible pick in high elo, and a stomper pick in low elo, it does not matter how his numbers are tossed. Currently Nasus is a ghost of the past which is simply outdated and can’t exist properly in the same universe as newer champs with their overloaded kits (lets say Ksante).
PS: We’ve recently seen Xpetu and his community making a big impact on Shen’s future as a champion. I am obviously glad for Shens, champ was not okay. But to be fair Shen’s never been as boring as Nasus is in high elo. Shen has never been as bad in high elo as Nasus is. And statistics on any lol related website clearly show that. I feel really sad we don’t have as big content creators for Nasus as Xpetu is for shen. And those big LoL youtubers / streamers who do sometimes pick Nasus, are only playing Nasus in low elo for content while being multi-season challengers while also making weird claims like “Nasus is so op, no counterplay” with the same clickbait titles for their videos, just adding fuel to the problem. And those actual Nasus content creators we have escaped from EUW to Turkey/EUNE to get challengers there due to it being impossible task on EUW. There’s also one who’s hardstuck diamond in NA, and that’s about it.
Btw it’s been 10 years since Infernal Nasus was released. This skin is still bugged to this day.
Do you believe Nasus is supposed to be low ELO skewed, high ELO skewed, or somewhere in between? Can you also explain why?
If he’s supposed to be low ELO skewed, he appears to be strong. If he is supposed to be low ELO skewed, he appears to be weak.
Riot does not balance all champions for all brackets of play, and has openly said many times that certain champions will be left as prominent contenders solely in low ELO (Mundo for example), and others (K’sante) will be high ELO skewed.
A lot of your criticism is based on your perception of Nasus in high ELO, and you’ve outlined a lot of his high ELO fail cases. Why is the correct approach boosting his high ELO viability?
I’m not saying one approach is right, and another is wrong, just that I read your post and never found anything explaining the “Why” he should be reshaped to not have the skew in the first place.