Can Nasus Q Crit?

Nasus is one of those all-or-nothing champions. Either he totally takes over the game, or feeds and AFK after the first 10 minutes. Regardless, it is rare for Nasus players to not make a difference, especially later into the game 20 minutes and onwards. His main (sometimes, only) source of damage comes from his Q. The Q damage can stack meaning he can do 1,000 damage per Q if he is allowed to stack. But if you factor in critical strikes, that number goes off the charts.

Nasus Q can crit like any other auto attack ability. The difference is his stack damage is not factored into this calculation. Only your base attack damage plus attack damage from runes and items are affected by critical strike chance. Although the overall damage from his Q will increase, it will not increase in proportion to his stacks.

I’m sure many of you were holding your breath for a minute. Worry not, you won’t be seeing any 3,000 damage critical strikes from Nasus anytime soon. But if you are a Nasus main, or just a curious League player, read ahead to understand how critical strikes work with Nasus’ Q.

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Base AD/ Additional AD vs Stack AD

If you’re one of those scaling Nasus mains, this should be general knowledge for you. But for everyone else, Nasus’ Q utilizes two different sources of attack damage.

One source is his base and additional attack damage that comes from his leveling up, items, and runes. The other source is his stacks. Stacking is simple. For every stack, you receive 1 bonus AD for your Q.

Abilities, items, or any type of effects that enhance or amplify attack damage usually only take the base plus additional attack damage into consideration, not the AD gained from stacks.

How Critical Strikes Impact Nasus Q

Critical strikes do affect the base and additional attack damage that Nasus has. The stacking AD, however, is excluded.

This means that if a Nasus has 50 base attack damage and receives 50 attack damage from items plus runes, a total of 100 attack damage will be factored into the critical strike calculation.

The critical strike value will exclude any attack damage gained from stacks.

From the above example, if the critical strike doubles the damage and Nasus has a total of 300 stacks, his Q will deal 500 damage instead of the regular 400 if it would not have crit.

Building Critical Strike Chance- Is It Worth It?

Now you have an idea about how critical strikes factor in Nasus’ total attack damage, you are probably wondering if building items like Infinity Edge and Bloodthirster are worth it. Especially with Bloodthirster’s insane lifesteal, it can synchronize quite well with Nasus’ kit.

But the answer is no. Building these attack damage and critical strike items is not worth it on a champion like Nasus. This is because Nasus is not meant to 1v9 the entire team while someone else takes the damage. He needs to go in and tank as much damage as he can while getting a kill or two.

If you are building critical strike items, you are losing out on a lot of defensive stat items, leaving you pretty vulnerable. The better choice for all you Nasus mains out there is to build defensive items that also heal or negate damage such as Spirit’s Visage or Thornmail.

Not only will these items keep you alive, but they also assist in chunking down the enemies’ health bar low enough for you to one-shot them.

Nasus Q Crit- Significant Or Not?

Overall, in my opinion, the critical strike on Nasus Q is not very significant. It does not stand out at all if that is what you were hoping for (considering the insane AD his Q has). Rather it can be underperforming at times, especially if you have not been stacking properly.

So if you want it to play to your advantage, you need to make sure you are ignoring the rest of the match to farm those stacks from your waves. A single death could put you behind permanently in a game, as Nasus.

Patch History- Did They Change It?

If you search about this online, you might find some threads that offer a different set of opinions. They say that Nasus Q does critically hit inclusive of his stack attack damage. Neither statement is wrong, simply outdated.

There was a bug long ago that allowed Nasus’ Q to critically hit for his entire AD ratio. This made one-shotting anyone, including tanks, exceptionally effortless. Soon after though, they removed this feature and patched it up to fix this glitch.

Most of those threads are over 8 years old which is why they have a different view of the game. An important reminder to always check the date of the thread and its comments before relying on it as true information.

Parting Thoughts

Nasus Q might be able to critically strike but it is not really worth paying much attention to. As Nasus does not primarily build attack damage, the critical hit will not be significant and should be treated as a critical hit from any other bruiser such as Garen or Sett. If you are still curious, definitely go ahead and try it out in a normal game to satisfy your curiosity.

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