This is for all people who care to use Nasus.
Nasus uses 3 abilities, (Remember Nasus is more of lane, not much of jungle)
Siphoning Strike
Wither
Fury of the Sands
(There is also Spit fire but it is not used till the end.)
(Tip: When starting buy Iron Sword)
When you start out the match level Siphoning Strike to Level 1, then proceed to kill minions! (If you are in PVP then just try not to PVP till your level 3 or 4)
Okay after reaching level 2 level up Wither for most of you who do not know, Wither slows your enemy and also reduces their attack speed. Wither and Siphoning Strike are your moves that you need to level up for the rest of the game. (Make sure to level up your ult when possible) Next after killing a ton of minions you should be level 4! Buy a Vampire Scepter
Now your on the role, feel free to try to PVP now but just watch your health.
Many of your might be wondering, doesn't he have lifesteal already? (Yes Yes he does)
But that does not mean it cannot be increased. Level 4 only gives 14% lifesteal, your adding 10% more! <3
Now lets skip on to about level 8 (Unless you were fed by enemy)
Buy Blidgewater Cutglass and a Dagger
Go fight more minions till about 9 (Unless Fed)
Buy Ruined King Blade
Congrats you are now set with Ruined King Blade!
Next after you obtain some gold, Get the Pickaxe.
Go back and level on more minions and get more gold! You will need about 1400, get the Last Whisper (Or you could get Spirit of the Elder Lizard first)
Now go back and level on more minions and collect more gold, now its time to buff your char completly. Buy Tiamat (Dunno If I spelled right) and go fight more minions! After getting about 900 gold more, buy the Hydra. Now go level up to about 16 and collect more gold, go back and buy Spirit of Elder Lizard (Or Last Whisper) Now your super strong and do sick damage with Siphon <3 Enjoy the build
~Konny~
(Nasus is free for this week in the champ rot, so I decided to do a build on him)

Bit of advice for you. This setup might work for low level games, but don't expect it to work against better opponents. Nasus is a melee with no gap closers, a good team will lock you down and kill you before you ever get close enough to benefit from all that lifesteal. Since you already get plenty of damage and lifesteal, try building tanky items like Frozen Heart and Randuins Omen. If you want a little more damage, you could also try out Frozen Gauntlet or Trinity Force.

Although I don't play Nasus , but from what I have seen, pure damage build does not work well for him for the most of time.

First of all, you don't have any escape skill except summoner spells.

Secondly, you don't have reliable gap closer skill.

Third, I believe Nasus attack speed is below average.

Fourth, Nasus Q has relatively short cd and low mana usage. With good position of E, Q should give you all the damage you need to inflect in team fight.

(Does Q proc life steal or spell vamp? I don't know.)

As the result, life steal doesn't help you much if you got focused in team fight. I think the only damage item you ever need is Trinity. You can build Maw of Malmortius if you want. All the good Nasus I have played with/against are using full tank/tanky bruiser build.

this is how you play nasus

1) farm q.
2) build triforce (gauntlet works as well). q procs the passive so you will be doing 500+ to minions with this item alone.
3) build him super tanky.
4) keep farming q

for summoners get ghost/flash and exhaust.

q is all you need for damage since it will hit for hundreds of damage with just a tri force and some decent farming.

he needs to be super tanky because he is in the middle of all the action being melee, he has no gap closers, and can be kited.

I've actually been building nasus with about 200-300 ap. You can get there with triforce+rylai's+liandry's and runes. Follow that with some tank stats or ad. It helps get that free 200+ ad when you ult, and also makes him harass like a boss with spirit fire. He makes a fairly effective mage.

Try swapping out trinity force for lichbane if you want to go the mage route. It adds a significant chunk of damage to your Q (somewhere around 70% of your AP I think), gives you much needed MS, and lets your replace one of those other AP items with something more tanky.

I actually don't like full mage. The point is just to have enough AP to cap out the damage on Nasus' ult which is 240 damage per second and 240 bonus AD. When the ult is up, trinity force is much more effective than lichbane. Sure, without the ult lichbane is better, but the teamfight presence of trinity force is superior with that build. I also like other stats of TF because they are so beneficial on Nasus. Lichbane is kind of a waste because full AP Nasus best ability is his ult and it has a damage cap that's lower than where lichbane start to be useful.

BorK is a bad item to rush, period, because it isn't a good return on investment before teams start piling on HP.

Trinity Force isn't either. It isn't a bad item and it should definitely figure into your build every game with nasus, but typically you want different items early game that grant you sustain.

I play Nasus pretty weirdly since I'm good at keeping him out of a fight till level six and about 50 q dmg.

I typically run 4/14/12 (utility down to the gold per)(offence for cdr)(rest for tanky masteries) with flat ad reds, armor yellows, mr per level blues, and either gold per/movespeed/flat ad quints.

I generally grab either grab 2 wards 9 health pots/longsword 2 pots/rejuve bead faerie charm then pots for my starting items.

If I need to leash I tank the buff for my jungler then go top and farm Q

I level q then w then q then e for an early advantage on my q cooldown and base damage. Normally I last hit the wave until I am last hitting under tower. Normally I farm to about 100-150 q damage (or get zoned out of lane) until I back.

First back I normally grab philostone and sheen if I can.

Then you should be able to one hit the caster creeps and continue farming Q.

Max Q first then W. I max Q because I'm Nasus and you ALWAYS max Q unless you're trolling with ap nasus. Then I max W because it's your chase and it slows their attack speed.

My final build is normally: Merc Treads, Triforce, (elise's miracle passive), Spirit Visage, Warmogs, Manamune, and Bloodthirster.

My more tanky build is: Merc Treads, Triforce, (elise's miracle passive), Spirit Visage, Warmogs, Runic Bulwark, and Frozen Heart.

My full tank build: Mercs, Iceborn, (elise's miracle passive), Visage, Warmogs, Runic, and Randuin's.

Hello, I'm fairly new to LoL so pardon me if this is an obvious question but how does wither not qualify as a gap closer? If they can't run away and you are heading towards them that gap is going to close pretty fast.

Secondly, I understand that AP Nasus is the most ridiculously preposterous notion ever thought of in all of Runeterra, but I don't understand why. What makes Nasus so poor with AP?