Counter Guide

How to Beat Nasus

Matchup Guide · Patch 26.22 · 3 Counter Picks

Nasus is the only champion who beats you by being ignored for twenty minutes, and Wither [W] makes sure you can't do anything about it once the twenty minutes are up.

There's no ability in the game quite like Wither [W]. It doesn't damage you or displace you. It removes your ability to participate for several seconds while a very large dog hits you with an axe. Pair that with a Q that grows without a cap and you get a champion who's genuinely miserable to face late, which is why he's a common ban even when he isn't the scariest name on our solo queue tier list. The answer lives in the first fifteen minutes.

Patches 26.21-26.22 Matchup Data

Who Beats Nasus: Top and Mid Counters

Best Picks Into Nasus Top

Sion1,812 games · 26.2154.7%
Garen1,774 games54.2%
Urgot1,322 games · 26.2153.6%
Aatrox933 games53.5%
Illaoi655 games53.4%

Picks Nasus Top Beats

Vladimir577 games · 26.2141.9%
Vayne861 games · 26.2142.9%
Gragas898 games · 26.2144.6%
Jayce763 games45.1%

Every Top matchup for Nasus →

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Nasus. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.21-26.22, Silver and above, 54,554 Nasus games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed. A row marked 26.21 is last patch's number for that matchup, kept until Patch 26.22 has as many games of it.

Best Picks Into Nasus Mid

Lux409 games55.7%
Ahri705 games53.9%
Lissandra402 games52.0%
Yone1,091 games50.8%
LeBlanc436 games50.7%

Picks Nasus Mid Beats

Zed1,370 games44.2%
Yasuo1,645 games44.3%
Syndra618 games44.5%
Xerath470 games45.3%

Every Mid matchup for Nasus →

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Nasus. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.21-26.22, Silver and above, 20,232 Nasus games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Matchup Snapshot Nasus, the Curator of the Sands

Where You Meet HimTop Lane

Damage TypeMostly physical

Why He Is FrustratingWither [W] turns you off completely

MobilityNone

Biggest ThreatWither [W]

Hardest CounterSion

What a Counter Needs

Range or poke that denies last hits, because every stack Nasus has comes from one
A silence, a cleanse, or enough tenacity that Wither [W] stops being a death sentence
The discipline to keep punishing a lane you've already won

Nasus Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Siphoning Strike [Q] has no cap and drops to a 3.5 second cooldown at rank 5, so every last hit he takes is permanent damage he keeps forever.
Wither [W] slows move speed and attack speed at once and worsens over its duration (for most carries, simply a death sentence on a 15 second cooldown).
Fury of the Sands [R] makes him bigger in every direction at once: health, attack range, armor and magic resist, and it shortens his stacking cooldown on top of all that.
He never has to buy sustain. The lifesteal is free from level 1, so the gold you spent staying healthy is gold he spent on the thing that kills you.
He farms safely through the exact stretch where he's losing. Spirit Fire [E] clears from range and shreds armor while it does it.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He's slow with no dash and no escape. Every gank works on him and every ranged champion gets to bully him for free.
Everything before level 6 is bad for him. He has no kill pressure and no way to stop you from taking his wave or his plates.
Wither [W] is one target. It's devastating on whoever gets it and completely absent for everyone else in the fight.
Stacks come from last hits. Shoving the wave into his tower denies them, and denied stacks never come back.
His damage is one basic attack. A blind, a disarm, or anything else that removes a single auto attack removes his entire turn.

Countering Nasus

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Nasus comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Deny the stacks before you chase the kill. Shoving the wave under his tower costs him permanent damage. Killing him costs him 30 seconds.
Bring a silence or a cleanse for Wither [W]. It's the one tool that lets him convert a stacked Q into a dead carry, and removing it removes the threat.
Punish him before level 6. He has no answer at all in that stretch, and the plates you take are the reason the late game never arrives.
Fight him away from a wall. He has no gap closer, so an open field is a Nasus walking slowly toward a team that's already moved.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Nasus Matchup

Keep shoving even when the lane feels won (and a bit boring). Every wave he doesn't get to last hit is permanent, and it's the only thing in this matchup that actually compounds in your favor.

Buy Plated Steelcaps and stack tenacity early rather than late. Wither [W]'s duration is the problem and both of those cut into it directly.

Never fight him inside Spirit Fire [E]. The armor shred stacks while you stand in it, and stepping out is free.

Take the objectives during the window where his ultimate is down. Fury of the Sands [R] is 120 seconds at rank 1 and he's a slow melee champion without it.

Best Nasus Counters

Garen takes Wither [W] away with a silence. Illaoi and Aatrox both punish the early levels, which is where Nasus games get lost, and they do it from very different places.

Garen Silences the Wither

Decisive Strike [Q] removes all slows on Garen and silences on the next attack (a two-for-one answer to Wither [W] specifically). He shrugs off the move speed component and then prevents the recast, which takes away what makes Nasus scary in a duel.

Judgment [E] out-damages a single Siphoning Strike [Q] over the same window, Courage [W] gives him tenacity and damage reduction on demand, and Perseverance [Passive] regenerates the poke back between waves. Demacian Justice [R] then executes, which is the one thing a health-stacking juggernaut has no answer to.

Illaoi Denies Every Stack

Nasus has to walk up to minions to stack Siphoning Strike [Q], and Illaoi's Tentacles are waiting by the walls. Tentacle Smash [Q] reaches a long way (it's a skillshot from well outside his range), so every last hit costs him health, and every Tentacle that hits a champion heals her.

Test of Spirit [E] decides the trade. Pull his spirit out and hit it, and a share of the damage echoes back to Nasus. If he walks away from it he becomes a Vessel that spawns more Tentacles. Wither [W] slows her attack speed, which turns out to matter very little when most of what hurts him comes out of the walls.

Aatrox Wins the Early Trades

Nasus is weakest before his stacks add up, and Aatrox hits hardest in exactly that stretch. The Darkin Blade [Q] swings three times and does its best damage on the outer edge of each swing, which is outside the range Nasus fights at.

Wither [W] is meant to win the duel by slowing attack speed. Aatrox barely attacks. Umbral Dash [E] heals him off the damage he deals to champions, and Infernal Chains [W] drags Nasus back to where the blade hits hardest (if he doesn't get out of the circle in time).

Next step

Itemizing Against Nasus

Nasus deals almost all of his damage with a single physical basic attack, and he heals off every one of them:

Frozen Heart is the best item in the matchup by a distance, since it cuts both the attack speed and the damage of a champion whose output is one attack at a time. Plated Steelcaps is the early version. Bramble Vest applies grievous wounds to Soul Eater [Passive]'s free lifesteal, and Randuin's Omen slows him during the chase that Wither [W] was supposed to guarantee.