A year ago the first champ a bought was Nasus and who can say they don't love becoming the big dog in lane? He's seen a little more play in season 3 and I'm not saying Nasus is bad, but when I see him all I can think is a resounding 'MEH'. There are a lot of great tops and Nasus is just missing a little something that I blame on his E.

Spirit fire is an AoE that scales off of ap and obviously it can't be too good otherwise he'd burn away a whole team. The utility is literally all I see in it, a little armor debuff makes for heavier Qs but that leaves Nasus with siphoning strike and his ult for useful damage.

I propose he keep the armor debuff but switch it to a single target so the damage/scaling can be better. I'm not one for creativity, but maybe a name like Curators Presence? Fits the debuff and I guess works into the just average damage. Tops are tanky, cc, 1v1, and carry killers, with the extra damage and focus skill set I feel he can still keep his late game role with massive health and a farmed up q and have a reliable amount of damage against ranged tops early and mid game so he has a chance to farm against any opponent.

I'm sure there's other posts about his E I didn't feel like hunting them down, feel free to suggest more on my idea or your own replacement!

I would agree

Glad to hear I'm not alone

so, it would be like a targeted ability that just shoots at range, maybe 500-600?

I'm horrible with range units, um comparable to wither's range basically

I find the e rather useful when I'm going ap bruiser Nasus. It deals most of its damage up front and makes my next q strike stronger if I plan to use it.

I like his E how it is, if you're getting zoned to badly for last-hits you can at least spirit-fire the wave down. If it was single target, I think it would be way to easy to shutdown nasus by merely playing a champion that can zone him. Nasus isn't supposed to be good in the early-game.

his E is fine as it is, if you changed it to single target people would just harrass you out of lane since you wouldnt even be able to fall back on farming with E

Rank 1 of Spirit Fire does 110 damage to everything that stands in it. This increases by 80 for every additional rank. Damage is not the problem with Spirit Fire.

It is true that enemy champions won't generally stand in it for the full duration, but the same is also true of similar abilities like Tormented Soil, Miasma, etc. Unlike those abilities, Spirit Fire will do at least half it's damage (55+40/rank, a little low base but actually still competitive growth with other AoEs 66+48 though with the extra tick), instead of the 1-2 fifths of damage that Tormented Soil might get (50+30/rank for 2 hits but also has MR shred), or the 2-3 ninths that Miasma might get (but Miasma kicks butt, with 75+30/rank at 3 hits).

It does of course lack range compared to those abilities, but also covers a larger area, and has equal or better AP ratios. Generally, the main reason that people don't max E first is because of the importance of farming with Q, not because Spirit Fire itself is in any way bad.


That all said, the fact it doesn't jell with his laning makes it feel out of place... but I don't think making it a single-target nuke would make it any better for that. Probably the only way to make his E attractive to people would be to allow it to generate (a reduced amount of) damage for Siphoning Strike, say 1-2 per kill.

The problem with that is that it might be too much of a buff to his early game considering his late game potential, even with the loss of 2-4 Q damage per kill.

Or change what it does. Have that AP ratio = % Armor/Magic Resist Shred rather then damage.