User blog:Narbulg/Nautilus: Running around or taking a stand

If you're lazy and you don't feel like reading: I tried Nautilus solo-top and I liked it. I've got some insights into it and I might try adding stuff as I practise it more and more. Also, I really like Peter Crowley.

Sup mah homies gees. Sorry guys, but this is gonna be really, really long. I got picked into a group of guys who said they were gonna troll ( 3 of these b*****ds) and so I thought I might do some trolling myself. I had toplane so I picked random and got Nautilus.

I've been playing Nautilus for a while and I have the basics on his abilities down. Passive = You will hit like a truck every 12 seconds which can help you last hit effectively and you can get 1 more basic attack in, Q = 1 basic attack and flashy escape mechanism, W = All your basic attacks are Ravenous Hydra's with minitrucks that will keep driving around for a few seconds and you get a free shield that would take half the American army to break, E = now they are slowed, more basic attacks, R = I'm Leona.

Nautilus is a very, very slow jungler, and there is a reason for that: His damage on champions is ridiculous at early stages. So he has a slow, but very safe jungle clear and has ridiculously good ganking capabilty. His damage falls off drastically lategame, and so he transitions into a full tank due to his average offensive scalings and his incredibly high defensive capabilities lategame. He has an above average teamfight initiate, but is extremely good at peeling in the middle of fights, snaring everyone with Auto's and hooking anyone who tries to get away. Unforetunately, during these fights, he isn't doing alot of damage, and has to rely on his team to hurt stuffs. If his shield is allowed to persist though, he will outdamage everyone in terms of AoE damage, as he is doing AoE every auto attack. This is his lategame not matter where you go.

In the troll game, I was paired against a Darius. By now, most people know that no one beats Darius in early all-ins due to his bleed passive constanly stacking and high burst with minimal offensive items. This also means that he has decent trading potential as well, especially against squishy opponents. Naut's not very squishy, and his shield will block most of the burst Darius tries to throw at him. I started the game with D-shield and blue pot (mana probs are huge if you don't use your abilities properly). Nothing happened till about lvl 4-5, when Darius used is pull. He regretted that almost immediately. On terms of damage, we would have been dead even, but a 250 health shield was too much, and he had to pull out. So I pulled him back in. Without my shield, I got pooped on as most of my damage and defensive and offensive strength was on a 15 seconds cd.

Meanwhile the 'trolls' who took botlane and jg had about 13 kills between them, and jg Lee sin decided to stop camping bot and help top. This is where I think Nautilus is a truly Viable top laner. Darius (I think, because he was running b4 Lee gotten up to that bush every top laner wards) warded the push, so I made a desperate hook which connected, so I got the snare on, and the lvl 6 knock-up. Lee sin ward jumps, double q and goes ham. Darius dies in the the ham bit. The CC lockdown on Nautilus is awesome, and provides your jungler with the CC they need to gank even if they don't have any. After dat, Darius stayed about 20 miles away from me, coming in to get the occassional last hit. He stopped doing that when I started noticing him walking forward

Before you go, "Hey, lee sin was fed, ofc it was easy gank", Lee sin was 2 for 2 and was only lvl 5, so he's not really 'that' fed.

My build path for most of the games below were rushing an early catalyst the protector, building RoA if I'm gonna be stuck in lane for a long time and need extra mana or Tri-force for tonnes of damage and more roaming power. If the team is low on CC, i'll buy Ionian boots, if not, it's the Tenacity boots. Nauts job is to CC ppl during fights, and if he's stunned himself, he might be able to peel off that assassin that just dived your back line. Frozen heart is a must because it provides a massive boost to cdr and helps diving ad heavy teams easier as your shield will last a little bit longer. If both teams are heavy on Ap, an Abyssal scepter is a must. Frozen heart is a luxury item, but is extremely good against enemy teams with few escape options, and can allow Naut to stick to any target and provides Naut with a sizable boost to his shield. If your team has trouble making or breaking teamfights, you can be a really nice guy, and by Talisman of ascension to help your team run away or follow on your own initiation, not to mention it gives noticable regen boosts and cdr. Naut is a tank, and you must build defensive items accordingly.

I tried more games as Naut top, and they went like this.

Naut vs Warwick

Warwick sustains himself top, enabling him to have a whole lotta lane staying power. Warwick has below average early game trading power and average early game all-ins and monstrous lategame, but he's nearly impossible to get out of lane because of his sustain. I hit lvl four, hooked him, 3 W-empowered AA's got him down to half health before he could  break my shield. Warwick sustains himself back up to full hp, and I can't stop him from regen-ing back together again. Even lane. Really boring. Ran out of mana too.

Naut vs Garen

Garen's tricky. He is an extremely aggressive laner with an extremely passive... well passive. Garens fails to do very well as Nautilus is quite a defensive character, and Naut doesn't need his abilities to do damage. I activate W before he can silence, and I trade against him with ease at lvl 1. We hit lvl 2 and he does the same thing. I slow him before he can land the Q and it wears off. He still wants to go, so it's my passive Auto, then my W and then he spins. His spin does less damage then his AA, and he flashes away when he drops to 2/5 health. Katarina mid got a kill, so enemy Master Yi switches lanes with Garen. So umm. this happens...

Naut vs Master Yi

Master Yi is lvl 2, and he decides to attack me when I'm lvl 3. Master Yi fights me at his creep wave (Which was clever of him, stupid of me). I activate W blah blah... my shield breaks and he outrades me like a boss. When he realises he's outrading me, he ignites me... on 3/4 of my health, so I decide to walk away. He starts meditaing and I hook him, snare him and activate W and start wrecking him. He runs away and asks to lane swap with Garen again. Katarina is also beating Garen. The game ends when the enemy start tring to fight Draven. He was wrecking botlane, and he got so fed that Buzz Lightyear would've had a hard time trying to get beyond him. Draven carries and we win. I think his scores was 26/3 before 30 mins. He got full build before he hit lvl 18. He probably got a quadra or something too.

Nautilus vs Pantheon

Until you get armour, Pantheon will always beat Nautilus, becuase he has the burst to break the shield and his damage is non-stop, and has the crit damage execute. at around lvl 5, I trade with him after buying a lil' armour and absolutely destroyed him. During the time before I got camped by Amummu, my Master Yi ganked. Pantheon got snared, Master Yi alpha strikes, Pantheon flashes, then get hooked by me and falls under the barrage of Master Yi AA's. Another display of my CC helping my jungler gank. Unforetunately, enemy Amummu jg camps my lane by staying in the top bush and not the River bush and kills me 3 times, feeding Pantheon and causing Pantheon to carry ridiculously hard later in the game. I die a lil inside trying to understand how Amummu managed to get top without me noticing. I make this statement. Nautilus is extremly prone to ganks, as his only escape will attach itself to the first enemy unit it collides with, and Amummu just walked in front of me. I f***ed that game up so bad for my team.

Naut vs Riven

Riven has alot of damage. In fact, she still has one of the highest burst damages in the game, and for part, it's Aoe too, even after her 'nerfs'. Riven was extremely annoying to play against, as she'd just hop around everywhere after I'd snared her. I push the wave as quickly as possible in order to get her to use her triple Q. Once it's down, she's extremely vunrable, and she has to run from fights. There was alot to say about this match-up. I got caught by that most pernicious evil, the gank, and died. Luckily, Jax was in the area, and managed to stop them from taking the tower, scaring low health Riven and Elise away. Because the lane was so uneventful, Riven wasn't hyperfed, and didn't the stomping she's infamous for. However, I made it my one task to make sure she stayed away from my squishies, and I found  it really easy to do so. Riven's burst comes from moving around, so a single basic attack from me gave my team the chance they needed to burst her down every fight.

To conclude this massive obelisk of text... I can't really say much about it. I'll probably come back to a post about Nautilus later, especially when I find someone who can really dominate him in top-lane or when I've got a better grasp on how to use Nautilus top against other champs as I've only had about 6-7 games with him top. My friends don't really like me when I have success with non-meta champs because they want me to use people they have a better understanding of. Plus, ever get annoyed when every game when there is a freaking Leona in bot? Which reminds me, there are a lot of Leona tops in OCE too that seem to be showing there heads. Guys, if you wanna test stuff out, come to OCE. Like, half of us are high at around 2 am, so we don't even care what champs you pick, just as long as you play.

However, there is this dude called Peter Crowley. He's on youtube, and he makes really, really good music when it comes to the epic-orchestral genre. Some of the music fits so well with some of the champions in League. And, I must admit, I love metal, my favourite band is Blind Guardian and they make power-metal so Peter's Symphonic metal style in some of his songs are my clear favourites. If you have some time, and are leneint with your music style, check him out. He's got music for playing Skyrim too :D