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Recommended Items
Runes: Resolve - Inspiration
+10% Attack Speed
+6 Armor
+10% Tenacity/Slow Resist
Spells:
Challenging Smite
Flash
Items
Threats & Synergies
Trundle
Overall bad match up, Wins 1v1 every stage of the game. Can steal your large amount of tank stats with his ult, making it difficult for your entire team to deal with. CAN CANCEL Q GET AWAY WITH PILLAR. Overall worst matchup, good ban.
Twisted Fate
Easy Ganks when he is pushed up, with point and click CC, with great setup CC. both have a level 6 powerspike the encourages them to gank together. Great vision control on objectives with ult which Nautilus desperately needs.
Twisted Fate
Easy Ganks when he is pushed up, with point and click CC, with great setup CC. both have a level 6 powerspike the encourages them to gank together. Great vision control on objectives with ult which Nautilus desperately needs.
Champion Build Guide
Luckily, Nautilus got a buff in patch 11.11, and for jungle! originally, it was going to make his Riptide do 200% more damage to monsters! Sadly, while on PBE testing, it was nerfed to 150% due to fears that Nautilus might be too powerful of a jungler, mostly in professional play, but we can work with the extra 150% damage to monsters on Riptide.
You might be asking to yourself how Nautilus would be good in jungle in the first place, and heres why:
Pros:
Amazing CC.
Auto-Attack reset on Titan's Wrath
Titan's Wrath Shield and AOE autos give sustain/survivability and even better AOE camp clear.
Huge level 6 powerspike with a almost unavoidable point and click ganks with Depth Charge
Can take Scuttle extremely easily (looking at you Karthus)
Amazing Level 3 gank potential with Dredge Line, Staggering Blow, Titan's Wrath AA reset, and Riptide slow.
Great scaling.
Players HEAVILY UNDERESTMATE your DPS and Burst damage.
Cons:
-
Weak to Level 1 invades since
Susceptible to counter-jungling & verticle jungling.
Weak 1V1 without items or lead.
Bad base objective control without prio.
Heavily item dependent
Very mana hungry without Blue buff or Tear of the Goddess/ Fimbulwinter (both being core items anyway.)
Bad AP scalings on abilities.
With all of that listed, Nautilus has many stregths and a fair amount of weaknesses, especially in the jungle, but most of these weaknesses are due to his slow first clear and inability to fight (especially when Titan's Wrath is on cooldown), but if your willing to look past the specific shortcomings of Naut jungle, i think you'd find a great, viable, and relaible, Tank jungler carry.
As Nautilus is naturally put onto the Resolve rune tree, from taking Aftershock the next minor rune you should always go is Shield Bash as it naturally synergizes well with Nautilus's empowered auto attacks from Titan's Wrath that apply a magic damage DOT, Shield Bash will also increase the effectiveness of Nautilus's shield, as well as the shield from Fimbulwinter or even Gargoyle Stoneplate, making it the obvious choice out of three since Demolish although useful, isnt in line with the Jungle playstyle since laners dont really want you "stealing" there plates and/or tower gold, and doesent synergize as well as Shield Bash or even Font of Life. Font of Life being Naut's runner up option to Shield Bash, but Shield Bash Still being the obvious best choice.
Second path in the Resolve rune tree is a obvious choice, Conditioning is the only one out of these that makes sense. With Second Wind only getting proc'd off of champion damage and mostly used for lane sustain, and Bone Plating used for safety from burst, also only being proc'd off champions. So as the Jungler you wont be fighting champions to the point where youd need Bone Plating or Second Wind, and the extra tankiness from Conditioning helps tremendously.
Lastly on the Resolve rune tree (I know your probably tired of the bright green word coloring for the runes) I prefer Revitalize as my final rune for the resolve the majority of the time out of the three. Unflinching is also a great choice, equally as good or even better the Revitalize in the right circumstance, its just Revitalize's extra shield and heal value just combo nicely with naut's Titan's Wrath and one of his core items of Fimbulwinter, along with the extra healing from the rune only adds on Smite and Triumph, keeping your clear extremely healthy and giving you great multi-kill potential. Overgrowth even though good in theory with how Naut jungle wants to play, the rune doesent stack that well in the jungle, and a lot of the time you'd be better off with Revitalize or Unflinching.
Additionally, A Conqueror Rune page with Resolve secondary can also work, Nautilus can utilize all of the Precision Rune page, Triumph being the best 1st rune slot, Legend: Alacrity or Legend: Tenacity both being good options for Nautilus, with Legend: Alacrity your initial clear is much faster, you get more use out of your empowered auto attacks from Titan's Wrath too. Legend: Tenacity being great for just a larger tenacity in general, not even just for teams with a lot of CC, and the gold value is massive on the tenacity the rune gives you, being a rare stat and always good on Tanks/Bruisers such as Nautilus. Third slot of the Precision tree has two options, Coup de Grace or Last Stand, both fitting with Naut's playstyle. Coup de Grace helping finish fleeing opponents off, which your DOT damage from Titan's Wrath Auto Attacks, Riptide waves, and perhaps a second rotation of your Staggering Blow Auto Attack or even a Depth Charge catching a low health target can help in, all mostly being to help you proc Triumph. Last Stand on the other hand being the opposite, giving extra damage while you are on low health, also paring well with what you will be doing a lot as Nautilus. Last Stand being better the more the enemy commits to a fight and also Last Stand's value increases the more of the same damage type the enemy team is, As you can stack that resistance type, making you be on lower health in team fights longer, giving massive value to Last Stand. Both of these options for the final slot of the Precision tree are great, adapt them based on the conditions of the game in champ select I described.
The most effecient secondary rune page for Nautilus overall is the Inspiration tree. With the four runes that are viable on the Inspiration tree are Magical Footwear, Perfect Timing, Future's Market, and Cosmic Insight.
Magical Footwear help Nautilus's slow movement speed up later, but makes it so you cant buy boots before then, but the extra gold you save from the free gold and the extra movement speed make up for it in my opinion.
Perfect Timing being a very specific rune, when you know you'll need to buy Zhonya's Hourglass, need a early Stopwatch without spending the gold on it, and when when you'd want to rush tier 2 boots, but if all of these requirements are met, Perfect Timing is a good rune.
Future's Market is great for accellerating your scaling and making sure you always have a good buy or back when returning to fountain, Which is invaluable on Nautilus who needs items desperately to fight. Overall, Future's Market is a great rune for Nautilus and pares greatly with the other runes in the Inspiration tree.
Cosmic Insight is the last rune for the Inspiration tree we'll be discussing, mainly because were saving the best for last since you'll be going Cosmic Insight almost every game you go Inspiration secondary due to how good the rune is in general let alone on Nautilus! This rune lowers your Summoner spell cooldowns and item haste, putting both your Flash and Smite on a lower cooldown. Making Nautilus's clear RIDICULOUSLY healthy (for a off-meta jungler), and opening up loads more Flash plays on Nautilus. Cosmic Insight also allows you to stack Tear of the Goddess faster and im assuming lowers Fimbulwinter's shield cooldown since item haste works on all passive and active item's cooldowns (let me know if im wrong in the comments), giving Nautilus more shields as well! So with all that said, always go Cosmic Insight when using the Inspiration tree.
Next we'll go over Percision tree, which we talked about when discussing Conqueror as a possible keystone, which is why I'll recap quickly.
Triumph- always go this when taking Precision, good synergy with Naut's playstyle, Revitalize, and Last Stand/ Coup de Grace.
Legend: Alacrity / Legend: Tenacity- The extra attack speed from Legend: Alacrity gives faster clear speeds and better DPS due to helping you get off more Titan's Wrath empowered auto attacks, Legend: Tenacity is a overall great pick for tanks and champs like Naut who will be taking a lot of CC, I also explained which situations to take Coup de Grace and/or Last Stand in and what there good for in the Conqueror runepage in the Primary Runes Chapter, but TL;DR, Coup de Grace for more Triumph procs and Last Stand against team comps with majority AD or AP teams 4/5 one type or even 5/5 one type ideally.
Lastly, for Resolve primary rune pages at least, Domination secondary, with high value runes and snowballing, burst, and control.
Cheap Shot- always adds more initial burst to your combo since you'll basically always be procing it since it goes of damage to CC'd targets, which as Nautilus, you have a lot of.
Zombie Ward / Ghost Poro- If your coming from the forbidden support Nautilus and want soem extra vision, both of these are great and underrated options, Switch between the two depending on how much you think the enemy team is at vision control and sweeping. Ghost Poro when you think they'll not be so good at it, and Zombie Ward when you think they'll be pretty good since you'll be sweeping more wards and killing them fastly with your Titan's Wrath auto attack reset and Zombie Ward also helps with objective control along with Ghost Poro, another reason to take them.
All of the Hunter runes are viable on Nautilus, Treasure Hunter for the extra gold for faster item powerspikes. Ingenious Hunter for the massive Item haster cooldown, which we discussed in the Inspiration tree: Cosmic Insight about why item haste is great on Nautilus. Relentless Hunter for the movement speed alone gives Nautilus so much more map pressure everywhere when used correctly and just helps Nautilus rotate faster. Lastly Ultimate Hunter simply for spamming your point and click ult as much as possible for easy ganks and picks later in the game, helping secure objectives, which is why Ultimate Hunter is the most popular out of the group, and even though I use it frequently, I still like Relentless Hunter equally, but objectively, Ultimate Hunter is the best out of the group since it also allows you to go Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads instead of Ionian Boots of Lucidity boots for the extra resistences if needed.
Lastly, The secondary tree for the Conqueror rune page, which will be Resolve secondary of course.
As we've discussed during the Primary Runes chapter, on why we go those runes, I'll simply tell you I go Conditioning the majority of the time, along with Revitalize due to its synergy with Triumph and now along with Conqueror itself as well, Conditioning also helps with staying alive longer when your using Last Stand as the tank stats make your HP points more valuable, allowing you being lower health longer, in turn making Last Stand more valuable. I sometimes go Shield Bash, but it isnt as effecient as the other Conditioning or Revitalize when pared with the Precision primary page.
I know Iceborn Gauntlet is a fan favorite, but the slow isnt that useful on Nautilus, similarly to blue smite, he just simply doesent need the extra slow, along with how you proc the slow on Iceborn Gauntlet being that you auto attack the target, which your Staggering Blow will already be rooting them and the slow just becomes completely inefficient during the CC duration of his passive auto. But hey, Being really big is really fun when you get full build. Its just that Nautilus's Staggering Blow and the slow on first auto counteract each other especially at later levels when the root on Staggering Blow gets longer, taking up the entire duration of the slow area almost, but at least the slow area is still there for everyone else nearby, and for a little bit after the root, a viable option, just sadly the worst out of the three tank mythics.
Turbo Chemtank is the runner up to Sunfire Aegis for Naut's mythic of choice. The ability haste mythic passive helps nautilus with spamming his Riptide and Titan's Wrath in fights for AOE damage, the empowered auto attack that slows and deals huge magic damage in a area is great, mostly for the magic damage, (is also really satisfying to Titan's Wrath with fully empowered auto on raptors camp) and if you decided to go no Flash Nautilus jungle, the active speed up can really help with the pressure and threat of engage you'd be missing.
Frozen Heart also slows the enemies's auto attack speed in it's radius, along with the rock solid passive reducing damage, all of that meaning it gives you more time for your Titan's Wrath to be active, giving your more damage overall, while also being specifically good against Yasuo and Yone, overall great item in general and amazing on Nautilus!
Abyssal Mask for all purposes is like the MR version of Frozen Heart, only Directly increasing your damage with its MR shred passive, allowing your Riptide to do more damage, along with all your other abilities except your Staggering Blow, along with increasing your Sunfire Aegis damage since it also does magic damage! Abyssal Mask is also a great general item to build, not even just for heavy AP teams or when theres a fed AP champion on the enemy team, is still a lot better to build Abyssal Mask when there enemy AP threats. Since theres always a AD threat or two most games so you can always build Frozen Heart along with it giving you more stats due to Fimbulwinter.
Some other tips concerning items:
Make sure to always get Bramble Vest early when needed for its extra damage and anti-heal, around your 2nd back or at the same time as your first back with Bami's Cinder and Tear of the Goddess.
Dead Man's Plate is a great 6th item when you want to sell boots since its empowered auto attack pairs well with your AD passive auto on Staggering Blow, along with its movement speed at 100 stacks making up for not having boots.
Even though Fimbulwinter is absolutely CORE item on Nautilus jungle,you dont need to complete it second, mostly due to the Tear of the Goddess stacking but also go Abyssal Mask, Frozen Heart, or Thornmail second item depending on the game state and enemy team composition, then complete your Fimbulwinter after.
Both your core item of Fimbulwinter and Gargoyle Stoneplate work well with Revitalize due to them giving shields, even Sterak's Gage can work with the shields (even though its passive is hard to apply to Nautilus) and if you really want double up on the shield and heal value Revitalize gives, and prefer it over Abyssal Mask or just need more MR Spirit Visage is a great item too.
Ability Power Items
Zhonya's Hourglass and Demonic Embrace are the only really viable AP items on Nautilus (even though ive done theorycrafting on Nashor's Tooth Nautilus in my head) Zhonya's Hourglass's active is just so valuable, and the armor and ability haste it gives are also useful even though Naut's AP ratios are low. Demonic Embrace gives such a great boost to your damage and DOT, that I once considered it core, but the item can wait until 4th or 5th item usually due to the value of the other items I've listed, is still a staple late game item, and if your looking for extra damage early, Demonic Embrace 2nd item is amazing.
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