Nexus Obelisk

The red Nexus Obelisk on Summoner's Rift.

The blue Nexus Obelisk on Summoner's Rift.

The Nexus Obelisk (colloquially called the Fountain Laser) is a type of turret in League of Legends that possesses among the highest damage outputs in the game and presides over a team's spawn platform, mainly for the purpose of preventing spawn-camping by an opposing team (or the act of slaughtering enemies immediately as they re-enter the game).

They are untargetable and are not destructible in any way whatsoever, although they may be pinged.

Gameplay

On Summoner's Rift, Proving Grounds, Twisted Treeline, and Howling Abyss, the Nexus Obelisk sits in the very corner of the map, behind the spawn point itself. On the Crystal Scar, there are three Nexus Obelisks on each team: two located at the base entrances, and one near the shop.

In all of its iterations, the Nexus Obelisk attacks using a single-target laser that deals 1000 damage per tick at two ticks per second (or 2000 damage per second). This damage is Pure damage, meaning that not only it ignores all forms of resistances as true damage does, but also bypasses death immunity and invulnerability effects, which means that it is usually impossible for any champion to stay within its range for long.

Untargetability is respected by the laser however. It will always drop aggro.

The Nexus Obelisk is one of two sources of pure damage, other than the self-inflicted pure damage from Glory in Death. Notably, in versions prior to patch V1.0.0.108, the Nexus Obelisk did deal true damage, effectively allowing some champions to "safely" dive into the enemy spawn.

The Nexus Obelisk does not prioritize champions over minions, even if those champions are in combat with opposing champions. It also ignores monsters.

Effects ignored

• Aatrox's World Ender
• Bard's Tempered Fate (On the Obelisk itself)
• Fiora's Riposte
• Kayle's Intervention
• Kindred's Lamb's Respite
• Taric's Cosmic Radiance
• Tryndamere's Undying Rage
• Xin Zhao's Crescent Guard
• Zilean's Chronoshift
• Guardian Angel (Does not trigger if wearer is last-hit by the laser)
• Ohmwrecker
• Shields

The Obelisk will not acknowledge any of these effects should a champion within range possess them and will behave as if they did not have them. Guardian Angel is not put on cooldown when ignored.

Effects respected

• Anivia's Rebirth
• Bard's Tempered Fate (Stasis on both allied and enemy units)
• Ekko's Chronobreak
• Elise's Rappel
• Evelynn's Last Caress
• Fizz's Playful
• Kalista's Fate's Call
• Kled's Skaarl the Cowardly Lizard (Dismounting and remounting work as usual)
• Lissandra's Frozen Tomb (Self-cast)
• Maokai's Twisted Advance
• Master Yi's Alpha Strike
• Rek'Sai's Void Rush
• Shaco's Hallucinate
• Vladimir's Sanguine Pool
• Xayah's Featherstorm
• Zac's Cell Division
• Zhonya's Hourglass

While Glory in Death's, Zac's Cell Division and Anivia's Rebirth's will still trigger as normal if they are taken down by the laser, their resulting form can be targeted again. Sion goes untargetable shortly and Zac spawns new units to be targeted while he goes untargetable, which means aggro can be traded away for them, while Anivia will imminently keep the aggro on her through the instant transition to Eggnivia.

Strategy

Because of its remote location, incorporating the Obelisk into any large strategy is usually impossible. Nonetheless, it can see significant use at times when a team is on the brink of defeat and conducting a last stand at their Nexus. Champions with crowd control that is able to reposition enemies (particularly displacement effects such as with Blitzcrank's Rocket Grab) can be used to force them into range of the Obelisk, usually resulting in a quick kill.

Baiting enemies into the Obelisk's range can also achieve the same result. As many players are aware of this trick, this is usually more effective with enemy minions than champions, although their priority system and low aggro range can make this difficult to pull off with large groups.

Diving an enemy Fountain is a seemingly nonsensical endeavour, however players will sometimes still want to do so, for example to finish their prestigeous Pentakill. For this case, it's important to remember that the Nexus Obelisk will target the first targetable unit of the enemy team that enters its range, and will only switch to a new target whenever either the current target leaves the range, dies or becomes untargetable otherwise. It cannot target multiple people simultaneously. This means that while whoever tanks the laser may go down to it, if executed correctly you can specifically keep certain players alive for longer than others.

Since champions are not prioritized over minions, one champion-specific strategy to dive the Fountain more easily is to use Ryze's Realm Warp's to teleport a number of allied minions into the fountain, so that allied champions can freely enter for a short while without getting targeted.

Trivia

• Despite not using a visible model since the Summoner's Rift update, a Nexus Obelisk that is considered destroyed will use the turret ruins model from the red (Magus) faction, facing southwest.
  • On the original Summoner's Rift, all turrets including the Nexus Obelisks used the same model for when they were considered destroyed, no matter the faction.

Media

• Pictures

• Summoner's Rift Blue Nexus Obelisk
• Summoner's Rift Update Nexus Obelisk Concept
• Summoner's Rift Update Blue Nexus Obelisk Concept 1
• Summoner's Rift Update Blue Nexus Obelisk Concept 2
• Summoner's Rift Update Red Nexus Obelisk Concept 1
• Summoner's Rift Update Red Nexus Obelisk Concept 2
• Summoner's Rift Update Nexus Obelisk Models

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Map Features