Learning to farm with... Episode 1

Learning to farm with...

Ok, so the premise behind this is pretty simple. I tell you a champion, you go play them for 5-10 games and focus on farming, and see if you can achieve any better scores by the end than when you started. By doing this you should improve your mechanics of last hitting as well as learning something specific about a role that will be stated here, and hopefully getting a better knowledge of the champion you have to play Today's farming friend is: Nasus.






Nasus is pretty notorious for just farming for most of the early and mid-game, and for good reason! Every time he scores a last hit with his Q, it gains 3 damage, or 6 for cannon minions, large monsters and champions. This quickly adds up, so that a Nasus with 200 farm is doing 600 extra damage on his Q (assuming they're all standard minions, so this is often higher), as well as 110 base damage. This allows Nasus to be built FULL TANK and still perform his role as an anti-carry, making his late game monstrous. Oh, and did I mention, this can work on towers too, with a 4 second cooldown max rank before CDR? A well-farmed late game Nasus can literally take a tower on 1v1 and win, so it's worth making sure you get every last CS with him, to make you as scary as possible.

Why Nasus:

There are a couple of reasons why Nasus is great to learn to CS with. Firstly, people only expect you to farm, so there is no pressure involved. Secondly, he has a VERY weak early game, so there is no point harassing your lane opponent when you can be getting Q stacks. This allows you to tunnel into farming (so long as you don't get killed), and really focus on getting as much CS as possible! It will also give you a very rewarding feeling when you one-shot that AD carry wit the force of all those dead minions! Lastly, get used to farming under the tower because that is how a lot of people think you beat Nasus! However, this is simply not true, get good at farming under the tower and you will get most of the stacks anyway, and be perfectly safe under there as a bonus! However, there are more subtle things to consider. Firstly, it will teach you to itemise against lane opponents properly. You need resists, and CDR in the early game to survive the laning phase. So your options are rushing Spirit's Visage or Glacial Shroud into either Iceborn Gauntlet or Frozen Heart. This should give you plenty of CDR to stack those Q's, and enough resists to survive against your lane opponent. On top of this, Nasus is melee. This means that you have to pick your time to walk up to the minions more carefully, as if you just stand there next to it waiting until the very last second your opponent, if they're smart, will just kill you. Lastly, you need to choose the correct time to join your team so they don't die in a 4v5. Contrary to popular belief, a good Nasus player does not simply farm ALL game if they get the opportunity to snowball a game with a good team fight. Knowing when to fight will become a key skill to learn, and will help you avoid Nasus' main weakness of being kited around the battlefield

What makes this easier:

Well, as the game goes later last hitting does become pretty easy. As your Q stacks get silly, you will one shot minions, especially if you buy Sheen into Trinity Force (which you should). So the later the game goes the easier farming is. Nasus also has in built lifesteal, so his sustain is pretty good just from last hitting, so as long as you conserve your mana (just dont spam wither), you will be immoveable in lane once you have your first major tank item, assuming you're not miles behind.

Summary:

Nasus will give you a great feeling when you farm well enough, and has an interesting enough mechanic on his Q to force you to farm and really shred people late game. Just stay top, play farming simulator, and hope your team doesn't feed too hard so you can carry really hard late game!