How to: Jungle Nasus

Nasus in the Jungle was one of those champions to hit the scene of Season 3 by a storm. He first appeared in the EU LCS being played by Gambit Gaming’s Diamondprox. Ever since, Jungle Nasus has been spread wide across both NA and EU. Here, i’ll explain how to build Jungle Nasus along with what Masteries and Runes to take to Summoners Rift.

Masteries

Here is a basic Jungle tree with 9 points in offence and 21 points in defence. The masteries for Jungle Nasus can vary in the defence tree according to what you prefer to have or who you’re going against. This particular mastery page gives you a lot of sustainability and damage to champions and monsters as well as minimizes the damage you take from both.

The mastery tree gives us a total of:
+10 Gold on every Smite
+138 Health
Increase Health by 4%
+5 Armor
+1 Armor and Magic Resist for each nearby enemy champion
Crowd Control is reduced by 5%
+2% Attack Speed
+8% Armor Penetration
12 Attack Damage
6 True Damage to Minions and Monsters
+4 Bonus Damage to Minions and Monsters
-3% damage taken
-2 Damage taken from monsters
-2 damage from Champions
-3 damage from Champion basic attacks

Runes

The runes I use here are 9 Seals of Armor (+12.69 Armor), 9 Glyphs of Magic Resist (+12.06 Magic Resist), 9 Marks of Attack Damage (+8.55 Attack Damage) and 3 Greater Quintessences of Movement Speed (+4.5% Movement Speed). All these runes benefit to Nasus in one way or another. Magic resist and armor for extra survivability when ganking or in the early game against Jungle camps, the attack damage to give extra pain when killing camps, global objectives or enemies and the Movement speed to get around quicker.

Also, the movement speed really helps Nasus since when he lands his Spirit Fire or Wither, as he’s decreasing the enemies movement speed he can catch up quicker and if having the need to jump a turret allows you to take less damage from it. There are many other Runes you could use on Nasus including Attack speed runes, experience runes and gold runes. But these runes here are what I would personally use and what I think would work best using a Jungle Nasus.

Items

Firstly, going into the items of how to build Nasus you have a wide range in choice of boots that you may buy for him. Specifically, the only boots I recommend to buy on him would be the Mercury Treads or the Ninja Tabi’s. In the Jungle you’re working as a first or secondary tank so having extra magic resist or armor on you depending on how heavy the enemy is on either is important. The Mercury Treads are good along with the magic resist you have the tenacity reduction this allows you to get in and out of teamfights or out of turrets range quickly.

Your job is to lay slows onto them and you get rewarded for it, not the other way around. On the other hand, Ninja Tabi is useful because along with the armor you get the bonus of 10% block on the opponents basic attacks so these two boots are particularly good for Junglers in general.

Next on the list allows Nasus to clear camps quicker, become tankier and more of a threat to the enemy. The Locket of the Solari is the next item on the agenda to complete. Rewarding us with 35 armor, 300 health, 10% cooldown reduction and 10 health regeneration along with a unique active that shields yourself and nearby allies for 5 seconds, absorbing up to 50 (+10 per level) damage and a 60 seconds cooldown. This gives Nasus a lot more sustainability and helps out his allies too.

This item is a nice mid game item for the whole team, by this point your support should have an item similar and both will be a large benefit for the whole team in team fights once put together. The stats the Locket gives is beneficial for Nasus, the 35 armor with the 300 health is the making of Nasus’ transformation into a scary Jungler that could pop out anywhere with a 60% movement speed decrease disallowing the enemy to escape.

The third item to be built is the Season 3 jungling item, the Spirit of the Elder Lizard. This item is like a Supports Philosophers Stone, no Jungler should go without it if the item suits the champion. This item gives 50 Attack Damage, 10 Cooldown Reduction, 14 Health Regeneration and 7 Mana Regeneration. Along with the stats it carries two unique passives: Butcher: Damage dealt to monsters is increased by 25% and Incinerate: Basic attacks and non-periodic spell damage burn the target for 6 - 40 (based on level) true damage for 3 seconds.

This item is perfect for Nasus, giving him that extra needed attack damage and cooldown reduction allowing him to cast his skills more often and lay enough damage when ganking. Also, the health and mana regeneration helps to keep Nasus going strong and granting him more gold as he can stay in the Jungle for longer and clear camps quicker.

The fourth item to build is the Aegis of the Legion, the making of a Runic Bulwark. Your support should have one built by now and both of your shield items together in team fights make your whole team harder to kill. The Aegis of the Legion gains you 20 armor, 250 health, 20 magic resistance and a aura that gives nearby allies 10 armor, 15 magic resist and 10 health regeneration every 5 seconds. Nearby minions gain an additional 50% health regen, armor and magic resist.

Once upgraded to a Runic Bulwark you gain 300 health, 20 armor, 25 magic resist and the aura is upgraded to 10 armor, 30 magic resist and 10 health regeneration every 5 seconds. This item is overall similar to the Locket and works great for you and your allies. This is the only item you built that will give an aura and it’s your last support-type item to build. Putting the armor and health together on both items you’re gaining 75 armor and 700 health. This has now got you past 100 armor overall in Nasus’ stats and the health just by two items offers a lot of ganking potential when going for a gank and still coming out alive.

At this point of the game it should be nearing the end but nonetheless you can build either the Frozen Heart or Randuins Omen; both are considerably good.

Only build Frozen Heart if you’re going against heavy physical damage opponents like Kha’zix or Zed. This item gives 95 armor, 400 mana and 20% cooldown reduction along with a unique passive where nearby enemies suffer a 20% attack speed reduction. This is a late game item and is quite an expensive one so don’t get it if you don’t need it. If you are, this item is perfect with the 95 armor gain and your 20% life steal from your passive you will be hard to shred down. With the 20% attack speed reduction on top, the life steal will probably generate your back as fast as they are attacking you (if they’re not building purely on attack speed) and at this stage of the game the 400 mana isn’t needed but is still beneficial by giving him extra stats and keeping him on the battlefield for longer.

The second item, Randuin’s Omen, if you prefer to have armor and health instead of just one then you should definitely go for this item. It gives you 70 armor and 500 health and has both an active and a passive. The passive is if you are hit by a basic attack, you slow the attackers attack speed by 15% and their movement speed by 10% for 1.5seconds. The active slows the movement speed and attack speed of surrounding units by 35% for 1 second +0.5 seconds for every 100 armor and magic resist.

This item is similar to the Frozen Heart, but if you prefer health instead of mana then this is the better item. The movement speed decrease doesn’t matter too much since Nasus’ Wither already carries a large decrease of it but its still usefull. The attack speed decrease is the same for the Frozen Heart, if you have so much health and armor and you have your passive regenerating your health all the time the Jungler champion will be impossible to shred solo and by the time the enemy has took you down they won’t have skills left for the rest of your team.

The last item to build is 100% dependant on how magical or physical damage the enemy is. The Thornmail and Spirit Visage, both of these items give a large amount of magic resist and armor. The thornmail gives 100 armor and has a unique passive: On being hit you return 30% of the damage, before any reductions such as armor, as magic damage. This is the last item to be built for a reason, 100 armor won’t be needed unless most of the enemies are heavy attack damage and have nearly or completed a full build.

The second item is the Spirit Visage, it rewards you with 200 health, 50 magic resist and 20% cooldown reduction, also increasing your heals, regeneration and drain effects by 20%. At this point of the game, you don’t need any more regeneration than you’ve got, especially being paired with Nasus’ passive, but it being increased by 20% will make you slightly more annoying to shred down.

The Spirit Visage is purely for the health and magic resist here, we don’t need anymore cooldown reduction but if we’re against heavy magic damage casters like Elise in late game we’ll be needing something that will help us stay alive against her. Once you’ve completed one of these two items, or if you have another item of choice you have completed your build for Jungle Nasus!

Thanks for Reading!