Nasus has long been regarded as the quintessential “late-game scaling” champion in League of Legends, as this champion becomes stronger over time with a large amount of stacks from Q – Siphoning Strike. However, with changes in the game’s meta, Nasus has become extremely weak in the Top Lane as he is easily bullied during the laning phase.
Recently, a number of Challenger players and even professional players in the Western region have unexpectedly brought Nasus back into the meta. Not in the Top Lane, but as a Support with a highly annoying playstyle. Furthermore, this dog deity has the ability to support the AD Carry quite effectively. So what is the secret to the success of Support Nasus? Let’s find out.
One of the major advantages of Nasus in the Support position is his E – Spirit Fire, which has the ability to reduce armor in a wide area and affects both minions and champions. This ability will help the teammate’s AD Carry farm and deal damage to enemy champions very effectively in the early game. Remember that the skills of AD Carries usually have medium to long-range damage, so Nasus just needs to hit this ability (without directly attacking) for it to have a significant effect.
Next is the ability to slow down the movement speed and attack speed of the opposing AD Carry from W – Wither, which is another excellent tool for 2v2 skirmishes. Even when your Bot Lane is being ganked, simply casting Wither on the enemy jungler gives your AD Carry a great chance to survive. Moreover, as the game progresses into the late game, this ability becomes increasingly powerful, ensuring that even without farm (due to playing Support), Nasus still has a significant impact.
In terms of playstyle, Support Nasus will not stack Q – Siphoning Strike as usual but will focus on maximizing points in the two abilities Wither and Spirit Fire. In fact, you can even skip leveling Q entirely without any issues. Your job is to land the two abilities Wither and Spirit Fire accurately to help the AD Carry deal damage; additionally, with the ultimate providing quite a bit of health, Nasus also has good survivability even without many items.
Regarding runes, the Arcane Comet is the most suitable keystone for Support Nasus. You will deal quite a bit of extra damage when using E with this rune. In the secondary tree, you should take Manaflow Band, Absolute Focus, and Scorch to ensure Nasus has enough mana, cooldown reduction, and damage.
For itemization, Support Nasus will start with Ice Spike to poke the opponent’s health with E – Spirit Fire. The first major item you should aim for is Frozen Heart (before that, Ionian Boots of Lucidity). In addition to slowing down attack speed, this item provides Nasus with a lot of cooldown reduction stats and helps him cast W and E more frequently. After that, you can aim for Frostfire Gauntlet if the match goes long, or Thornmail to control the enemy team’s damage dealer.