I was only able to play one more game with Nasus, mostly because I don’t think it’s fair to the champ of the week to play him/her when it will hurt the team comp in a serious way. When my teammates pick three physical champions, two of which are already melee, Nasus probably isn’t the right choice. When I did pick Nasus, though, I was able to have another very solid game with him.

My impressions remain mostly unchanged – Nasus is really missing that key gap-closing skill. Wither is close, but not enough in a lot of cases. He also gets good move speed once he has a Trinity, but as has been mentioned, that requires a nice farm if you’re planning to have any defensive stats.

If I could change on thing about Nasus, it would be to lower the cooldown on Wither. Though it retains a flat mana rate and 15 second cooldown, I really think it needs a little buff. Wither gets hard-countered by Mercury Treads. Without it, Nasus is just a big dog, waiting to be kited. I don’t think this would tip him over the edge into OP status, just make him a bit more competitive with characters like Renekton (9 second CD stun at rank 5), Jarvan (12 second Standard CD), and Rumble (10 second CD stacking slow).

Stay tuned for next week’s champ of the week.

I’ve caught a few Nasus games so far this week, and in each I’ve been reminded of one of Nasus’ great downfalls – he requires a competent team to truly excel. That’s true for a lot of characters, but for Nasus it seems even more so. With no gap-closing skill, he relies heavily on Wither and the crowd control of his teammates (or foolishness of his opponents) to dish out damage.

Don’t get me wrong, Wither is a great skill. If a carry makes the mistake of buying Berserker’s Greaves that slow feels almost like a stun. Unfortunately, though, it is countered by Mercury Treads, especially if the target also has a dash of some kind. When I consider Nasus up against many of the other tanky DPS characters – Jarvan, Rumble, Renekton, Xin Zhao – I can’t help but think he’s missing a little something. Each of those characters have great damage, a stun or slow, a dash or speed modifier, and some sort of heal or shield. Nasus is notably missing the dash/speed modifier, which makes him heavily reliant on Ghost against mobile teams.

To be fair, Nasus is utterly devastating against non-mobile teams. I flat out carried a game earlier in the week by crushing a Heimerdinger in the solo lane. My score wasn’t fantastic at the end of the game, but that’s mostly because I was so dangerous that the other team had no choice but to burn me down. Otherwise, I was 3-4 shotting the squishies.

Nasus also has excellent pushing power. I’m sure we’ve all seen a Nasus walk up to a tower and seemingly hit it for half its health with a single Siphon Strike. The creep clearing power of Spirit Fire, especially when coupled with a Sunfire Cape, gives Nasus the ability to move up a lane quickly and start smashing down towers.

I’m pretty sure I already know what my one Nasus change would be, but I’m going to keep playing him through Sunday to see if it holds true.