If you think Nasus, you think of the top-lane menace. One where you hope your jungle camps your lane, and you win the game early so that he has no time to scale up to the late-game beast he is. But what do you do when he is a farming jungler?
RIot have, indirectly, been buffing Nasus jungle since his first, actual, buff that allowed him to acquire 12 stacks to his q from large minions and, most importantly, monsters. With this first buff, Nasus can, theoretically, get 100 stacks per one clear of his jungle.
However, Nasus is still not designed to be a jungler in League of Legends, and with the meta at the time being one of ganking, and not farming, junglers, his juggling career was short-lived. However, this all changes with the smite changes, as well as predator making a comeback.
Where, before, some did 450 damage with each level giving it 10-20 additional, damage, the new smite damage scaling, as well as the jungle items that encourage junglers to use smite as often as possible, allow Nasus to have a faster and healthier clear. The predator rune, even with its nerfs, takes care of Nasus' mobility problems, and, alongside his wither, makes his ganks very easy to set up and execute.
But the largest buff to Nasus jungle has come in this preseason. The buff that works in favor of all late-game scaling champions, which are the objective bounties.
Riot Games
Riot is obviously trying to slow down the meta in which games are over in mid-game, and Nasus in the jungle role is in a prime spot to make use of this. As a jungler with less ganking potential compared to, Shaco or Talon, Nasus can make up for it with claiming bounties on towers and neutral objectives, all the while stacking up safely in the jungle with no laner to harass him off his cs.
Whether Nasus jungle is a good or a bad thing for the game remains to be seen, but it can't be worse than Goredrinker building assassin junglers, can it?
