The Ascended are one of the most powerful beings ever to roam the lands of Runeterra and Nasus is there is the peak of power. This champion is one of the most powerful late-game units in the game and is ridiculously broken by the hands of the most patient players. Let’s take a look at some of the best Nasus tips and tricks that will help beginners get a better idea of how to use this champion and increase their winrate.
The Best Nasus Tips and Tricks
Nasus is a juggernaut champion that specializes in scaling for the late game. Once he fulfils his scaling conditions, it can be extremely difficult to take him out, even with multiple members of the team piling on top of him. In this Nasus tips and tricks guide, we’ll be talking mostly about his innate win condition of simply trying to farm the entire game and avoiding any sort of conflict to ensure that he’ll be unstoppable in the later parts of the game.
The top lane is the perfect place to play this champions because of its isolated nature. Many people like playing Nasus as a support but the role doesn’t make full use of his kit despite it being a very effective strategy. Instead, we’ll focus on giving Nasus tips and tricks that emphasize his position as a solo laner that takes advantage of the laning phase to set himself up for success.
Don’t Fight, Just Farm!
The most common of Nasus tips and tricks that you’ll hear all veterans and experts talk about when playing this champion is that you should play to scale. This is the most correct way to play Nasus as he is designed to become a late game juggernaut. The reason being that his Q ability – Siphoning Strike – gains a permanent damage increase every time it is used to kill an enemy unit. The more Nasus uses this ability to kill lane minions, jungle monsters, and champions, the more devastating its output will be.
That’s why Nasus players should focus all their efforts and mana on trying to keep themselves alive in the lane and using as many Q abilities as possible to kill minions. Trying to initiate fights on purpose is a horrible strategy at it will almost certainly force you to recall back to the base and miss the opportunity to stack your Q. If you are not a patient person who can’t hold back on fighting with the enemy laner, this champion is probably not a right fit for you.
Outsustain Your Opponent
Nasus’ biggest advantage is his design on being one of the most difficult champions to kill in the game. His passive gives him bonus lifesteal so he can survive the laning phase fairly well since killing minions will make him relatively healthy despite tanking a few shots from the enemy. Maximize the use of his lifesteal by using abilities on large minions waves to refund a good chunk of your HP immediately. The best way to maximize your passive is to use your abilities on enemy champions without taking trades.
Nasus’ biggest goal is to survive the laning phase without recalling more than once. The only time you should recall is when you reach the 8-minute mark so that you can buy items that will help you farm the waves faster. Try to use AoE abilities and last hitting minions so that you can heal your HP and never feel like you’re being threatened by the enemy champion.
Conserve Your Mana
Make sure to conserve mana by prioritizing using your Q ability to stack minions rather than constantly throwing out W and E abilities to harass the enemy. It may seem tempting to initiate a fight on the enemy when they get too greedy and misposition themselves but keep in mind that Nasus becomes more of a threat when he is able to stack his Q ability. Getting fed via kills in the laning phase is a good method but it won’t guarantee your usefulness in the late game.
We keep repeating it in this Nasus tips and tricks guide but remember that this champion’s goal is to keep himself in the laning phase as long as possible while stacking his Q ability. The best way to do that is using only Q and dropping W only if you’re being chased down or E when you’re extremely low on health. Once you get out of the laning phase, Nasus won’t have as much mana problems so it’s a good idea to avoid unecessary conflicts during the first 10 minutes.
Auto-Attack Resetting
Once you reach the mid game, you can start participating in fights. However, you still need to spend most of your time isolated trying to farm minions or jungle monsters while split-pushing the enemy side lanes. You’ll most likely be faced with your first major threat at this point so make sure that you’re fighting enemies efficiently. One of the skills that players need to learn as soon as possible is auto-attack resetting.
Auto-attack resetting is the act of sneaking in an additional auto-attack, bypassing the attack speed limitation, by inserting an attack modifier immediately after your first auto. In this case, Nasus’ Q ability will serve as the perfect buffer. Try practicing pressing Q as soon as you see your auto-attack animation land a hit on the enemy. This will allow you to get 3 auto-attacks within 1-2 seconds which maximizes your damage output tremendously.
Maximizing Your Ultimate
Nasus ultimate is definitely one of the best champion ultimates in the game. This ability allows him to gain bonus defensive stats, health, and range. The scariest part about this ability is that it cuts down the cooldown of Nasus’ Q ability so he can seemingly spam it and becoming an absolute DPS machine that can’t be taken down by a single champion.
Maximizing your ultimate means trying to land as many Q abilities as possible while outsustaining the opponent. Due to the frequency of Qs being thrown out while your ultimate is active, health shouldn’t be too much of an issue. especially since you have bonus resistances to top it off. If you start the fight with a good chunk of HP, try to fight as much as possible instead of running away.