My name is Filipe, know in game as Hectic Frenzy.
I started playing Nocturne back in pre Season 6 and I instantly loved his playstyle and kit and decided to start maining him.
Season 7 I peaked at Plat 2 100 LP and finished the season with over 520 Nocturne games maintaining a 58% win ratio.
Currently this season I have over 110 games played with Nocturne and a 66% win ratio, currently ranked Plat 5.

In this guide, I will be writing in detail what I think is the best way to play Nocturne as well going into detail on the item builds, runes and matches so that you can gain a better understanding of Nocturne.

If you want to see me play Nocturne live I stream on twitch @
https://www.twitch.tv/hecticfrenzy_

Pros

Insane Burst Damage
Good Single Target CC (E)
Has a Spellshield (Allows for counterplay)
Good at 1v1s
Good Ganker, especially after level 6
Good early game, Great Mid Game

Cons

Very Squishy, easy to burst by other assassins
Falls off late game (unless you're very ahead)
Struggles vs Team comps with a lot of CC
Easy to counter (Grouping)

Main Path - Domination

KeyStone - ELECTROCUTE

This is an amazing keystone on burst champions and as a Nocturne you want to do exactly that burst people.

Rune - SUDDEN IMPACT

This is the rune that I ran on my Nocturne build as for me it allows for greater burst when using your ult, you can also run cheap shot if you want more damage early on pre 6.

Rune - EYEBALL COLLECTION

Nocturne abilities scale of AD so why not get more AD? But seriously this is a nice rune as it gives you free damage.

Rune - ULTIMATE HUNTER

This is a new rune introduced in 8.11 but guess what it works great on Nocturne more ult cooldown? Yes, please!

Secondary Path - PRECISION

Rune - PRESENCE OF MIND

Again more ult cooldown? Of course and it synergises very well with Ultimate Hunter and Nocturnes play style, which is Ult get a kill wait for ult again get another kill.

Rune - LEGEND: ALACRITY

The attack speed boost really helps Jungling early, as it allows you to clear camps quicker and gain more sustain as you proc your passive more often.

Well, this is pretty straightforward.

You want to run Smite as your going to be Jungling.

You also run Flash because that summoner spell is OP!

DUSKBRINGER (Q)

Nocturnes I'm going to chase you down skill. Seriously though this skill is amazing it not only does a lot of damage but it also gives you extra AD and movement speed while you stand on the Dusk trail. MAX FIRST!

SHROUD OF DARKNESS (W)

Nocturnes F*** you spell, you got a Jinx rocket coming at you and your low hp no problem just press your W and it blocks the spell. Jokes aside this spell is really broken as you can use the spell shield to block any spell in the game this includes summoner spells too like ignite and if your feeling cheeky you can also block Zeds Ult. MAX LAST!

UNSPEAKABLE HORROR (E)

This spell will tilt your opponents so quickly it's actually sad. But who can blame them point click fear which lasts way too long, I mean 1.25 seconds at Level 1 scaling to 2.5 at max rank pretty OP. MAX SECOND!

PARANOIA (R)

This is Nocturnes ult and why his known as an annoying ***H***, I have made ADCS go from 3/0 early game to ending the game 3/11 all because of this baby. So how do you use this look at an enemy press R on them fly to them and one shot them. LEVEL UP WHEN AVAILABLE

Carry Build (Best Build)


First Item - STALKER'S BLADE - WARRIOR


Always rush jungle item first, this item will give you a nice amount of AD and CDR as well as a free slow to make sure your enemies don't run away from you as well as true damage what else do you want? It also helps with your Jungle clear


Second Item - IONIAN BOOTS OF LUCIDITY


Get this item second, the movement speed will help to present people from kiting you and the CDR helps a lot, as it allows you to use your ult more often.


Third Item - Tiamat


You get this item before your fourth item, for one reason and one reason only. As it allows you to reset your auto attacks, in turn, allowing you to do more burst. Seriously amazing item on Nocturne.


Fourth Item - Duskblade of Draktharr


Duskblade used to be OP, but now after its many nerfs its no longer a rush me first kind of item. It still works very well with Nocturne as it's an item made for assassins, it also provides you with a free sweeper for those of you who don't buy control wards.


Fifth Item - Youmuu's Ghostblade


Ghost Blade is a very good item on Nocturne, it gives you all the right stats and has a killer passive. The passive allows you to chase even the fastest of foes making them feel your mighty burst.


Sixth Item - Guardian Angel


Stops you dying, that's all. Build stopwatch and use it before you complete the GA.


Seventh Item - Ravenous Hydra


Got too much money and you want to make your Tiamat actually give you some useful stats? Just buy this bad boy and you turn into an Area of Effect burst king. Allowing you to 1v5 no problem.... with that said DO NOT TRY TO 1v5.

Stating Jungle Pathing

Red Side

So you always want to start bot lane with most Junglers, Nocturne included the reason for this is that you get a better pull from bot lane than top lane (especially when they don't even bother helping you, yes Teemo I was talking about you). Better pull means you do the buff faster and also take less damage which helps a ton early game. So after this on the red side, you want to quickly do the Razorbeaks camp before the Scuttle Crab spawns, by this point the bot lane Scuttle Crab should be up, which you will be contesting or taking for free (Save smite for Scuttle Crab). Once you finished doing the bot lane Scuttle move quickly to the top lane Scuttle and attempt to get it.

(Scuttle is really important in the current meta it gives you a lot of gold as well experience and the early vision is really good for both your team and yourself as it helps you keep track of the enemy jungler and laners)

Since they nerfed jungle experience you will still be level 2 at this point so you have to clear your Blue Buff to get to level 3. Once level 3 you can either gank Mid or Top or farm the rest of your topside jungle. To know which one you should do just look at the ganking vs farming chapter.

Blue Side

It's the same jungle path as red side except after doing your first buff (Blue Buff) you do the Gromp before taking the bot lane Scuttle. Then you proceed to top lane Scuttle and doing Red Buff to get to level 3. Once level 3 you can either gank Mid or Top or farm the rest of your topside jungle. To know which one you should do just look at the ganking vs farming chapter.

General Jungle Pathing

As a jungler you wanna be as effective as possible this means that when your farming your jungle you should normally do a straight line clear, now what I mean is that if your start top side jungle then clear top side jungle camps first before you move towards the bottom side of the map. This means that when the top side jungle camps respawn again you will be able to take them all at once in order without having to wait to allow you to get the maximum gold you can in the least time possible.

Ganking is a very important and effective tactic which most junglers use, and good junglers are able to gank efficiently. Now the problem is that a lot of junglers don't know how to gank efficiently.
What I mean by ganking efficiently is that when you gank a lane you should gain something positive for the time and effort you spent going to the lane; this normally includes getting a kill or an assist, burning summoner spells, counter ganking, saving a tower, getting a tower, applying map pressure.
But if you don't get anything positive from the gank then essentially you just wasted time, in which you could have been farming your jungle for gold and experience.

So now that I have talked about what classifies as an effective gank I will give you an overview of when you should attempt a gank and when you're better off farming.

When to Lane Gank?

First of all, I would just like to mention that these conditions are for lane ganking which means ganking in the lane, not tower diving as for tower diving the conditions are different.

If any of these conditions are true you attempt a LANE gank.

Enemy Laner is pushed (When they're at least 1/4 of the lane away from their tower)
Enemy Laner doesn't have any escapes (Generally when flash is down)(Do not gank champions with a lot of escapes in their kit unless they are extremely pushed or your laner has a lot of CC because they will just escape an example is Le Blanc with her W or Ahri with ult)
Your Laner has a lot of CC (Making it easy for you to gank)

If none of these conditions is true then your better off farming your jungle as your probably just going to waste your time attempting a gank.

When to attempt a Tower Dive gank?

This type of ganking is the one that can essentially lose you the game.
I see a lot of junglers going to a lane attempting a tower dive to only have themselves die to the enemy laner along with their laner. This usually results in the enemy laner snowballing and your teammate getting super tilted so make sure that when you do a tower dive gank you are 100% sure you can get the kill.

These should be TRUE before you even consider a tower dive gank

You have enough damage to kill the enemy laner
Enemy laner doesn't have any escapes
You have enough CC to lock the Enemy Laner
You or your teammate can tank 2/3 tower shots without dying.

Or

If your super fed and can one shot the enemy laner

Nocturnes job in a Team Fight is to kill the highest priority target whether this is the feed Lucian or the annoying Soraka. That's your job go in with your ult and kill them.

But to do this you must make sure that you don't engage first unless you're really ahead and can one shot that target and live or if your target has used their escape spell (example their dash/ult).

The best case scenario is waiting for the team fight to break out and ulting in, when they have used their CC and peal, spells so you can get an easy one shot on your target.

Besides this, you want to get pick on people who are easy kills, especially when they overextend or go to farm a lane solo make sure to punish these players so that your team can have an easier team fight as it will be 4v5 instead of that pesky 5v5.

As a final note, I would just like to say that if you can avoid it you shouldn't die but late game its hard to do that with Nocturne since your very squishy so don't be worried if your KDA isn't great as long as you do your job and kill that priority target your team should win the rest of the team fight even if you die.

When ulting to a target press Q and E before you land on them to get more burst than just using your ult alone it also reduces counter play as you do more damage on impact as well as getting the fear off quicker. Note(Don't use the Q and E when your too far away from the target or else you can miss)

If you can avoid using your ult to gank then do so as your ult works well as a gap closer when they flash away.

If you see a skirmish breaking on the other side of the map, use your ult to scare the other team off or to reduce their vision.

So to sum it all up Nocturne is a fun champion to play, which while is simple to play mechanically require a good amount of game knowledge to know when to go in and when not to go in as well as learning which champions you can kill solo and which you shouldn't even try to.

So I hope that this Guide gave you some insight into how to play Nocturne, I will be updating it regularly and adding more content to it especially graphics and videos to give a better illustration of things which I mention in this guide.

If you have any comments feel free to post them down below or pop by my channel and ask them @ https://www.twitch.tv/hecticfrenzy_

05/07/2018 Updated Main Build to Lethality
15/08/2018 Added new Ganking Chapter & Updated Jungle Path Chapter


Future updates

Videos on Jungling routes and Nocturne Combos
Videos to illustrate team fighting with Nocturne