I have been mulling over different champs and still havent bought runes. I have 10.8k IP and dunno what I should do. Been playing Nasus and enjoying him when I get farmed up nicely, but if I get a bad start its just game over. I am a casual player so I am kinda paranoid about buying runes since it takes forever to save back up. According to the nasus guide the runes seem kind of specific to him. Also have been looking for other characters that would fit my play style..In the action doing dmg with some survivability. Was considering Sion,Poppy and maybe even Vlad. Will I see a significant boost with runes using nasus?

Runes have the biggest effect on early game-play and you'll certainly notice the difference with a full rune book within the laning phase. As the game goes on you will notice your runes less and less.

Just look around the forums (especially the Rune FAQ) and buy a general attack/tank page which will work all right with Nasus, as well as a lot of other champions you might be considering getting.

Most of Nasus' damage comes from Fury of the Sands (ultimate) and Spirit Fire, both being magic damage. If you want to see your game improve the most from buying runes, I suggest at least buying Magic Penetration Marks and Flat Health Quintessences. By investing in these runes you'll see your damage output improve and your durability will be improved.


If you're noticing your mana problems from spamming Spirit Fire on waves of creeps, you should think about investing in Mana Regen/lvl seals, or Armor/lvl if you use jungling champions often anyway. There are lots of good choices of glyphs for Nasus, including Flat Cooldown, Mana Regen/lvl, and Magic Resist.
If you don't really care about all of that, some champions you might enjoy are Udyr, Rammus, Gragas, Jax, Mordekaiser, Olaf, Poppy, Singed, Sion, Vladimir, or Xin Zhao.

Hope this helps and remember to have fun!

Playing as Sion is always fun for me. he is a hard to kill tank with good attack damage if you can master last hitting. i have yet to play him as a full damage but i normally add in a few damage items with a tank build. also depending on what summoner level you are you may want to wait to buy runes until you reach level 20 so you can buy the level 3 runes as they are the most beneficial. i had a few level 1 and level 2 runes and did not notice much of a difference but i can slightly notice my level 3 runes. my other big piece of advice is that if you think you want to buy someone than you should consider waiting to try them when they are free so that your not wasting your hard earned IP on a hero you wont play

GL
Syl

Having a bad start is a limitation to any character. If your opponent does a good job keeping you away from minion kills in your lane, and worse if you get killed a few times before level 8, you're just going to be behind the game. This is true for everyone.

I haven't played Nasus, but I've played both Sion and Vlad since I like the survivable champs myself. Sion is pretty solid, I got kind of bored with him, but that's maybe just me. He definitely gets tons of survivability by the late game, and if you add some AP has a devastatingly powerful ranged stun. Vlad is great, he's more harassment early game, doing hit and run, I think it's less likely that he'd have trouble in the laning phase since he's ranged, at the end of the game he's pretty incredible and fun to play.

As for runes, I've been getting them as I go along, you definitely notice them in the first 8 levels before your gear is any good, when you have innate health regen and crit chance and such. the level 1 ones are only like 30-60 ip each and give a pretty noticeable difference.

I'd also play around with Amumu too since he's free right now. He's pretty fun with his Ranged snare, AoE snare and AoE damage.