Champion Spotlight
Recommended Items
Tips
- Playing As
- Using at a critical moment is well worth it even if you cannot use the dash.
- isn't only an offensive ability. It can be used to close distance out of combat or escape from certain death.
- Use in tandem with dash. Your opponents may panic and waste a critical disable on your spell shield.
- Playing Against
- Stay close to your allies when is cast - there is strength in numbers!
- is broken with range, so try to save your movement abilities for when he casts it.
Tricks
- Ability Usage
- jungle well. Attack speed runes and his synergize well with since its cooldown is decreased with every autoattack landed. allows to
- Using is an effective way to chase or escape an enemy.
- Be sure to hit your target with when you are ganking, as it will allow you to close distance and stay on your target more easily.
- Stealthed champions hit by will leave a trail, allowing you to momentarily observe their movements despite their invisibility.
- can be a good tool when attacking turrets. A well-aimed may not only damage oncoming minions, but also gives you the benefits of a , allowing you to do more damage to the turret. However, this tactic should be used with caution if an enemy champion is nearby, as hitting an enemy champion with will cause the turret's priority to change to you. Also, aiming this skill away from the tower while trying to split push could give you a fast escape route while still giving you the bonus attack damage.
- has great synergy with . You can either use the fear to ensure landing or vice versa.
- Enemy champions closing on you might not see in time. Use this to your advantage.
- allows you to win fights that you otherwise wouldn't because of its hard CC.
- Save your
- A well timed can turn fights in your favor. Time it to avoid high damage abilities such as or hard CC.
if you don't require it. It can be essential for surviving ganks or ganking others.
- Early and mid-game,
- Even if you aren't near the fight, don't be afraid to use to confuse and separate the other team.
- Using it during a teamfight in the jungle is extra powerful because the enemies outside of brush completely lose sight inside of it due to a lack of shared sight. It can cause them to unknowingly split up in the confusion.
is a great way to pounce on an overextended opponent for an easy kill. Late game it becomes a useful dash during teamfights ensuring that nobody escapes with low health.
- becomes more powerful with more map vision. His does not reveal the enemy champions, so you must have vision of them in order to dash to them. Because of this getting Wards and placing them around the map is highly recommended.
- For this reason, also synergizes with . As it detects a nearby low health champion, Allowing to use his and dash to the target.
can only target enemies in the radius of and with sight. For this reason, synergizes well as it gives sight to all enemies, even invisible champions and ones in brush, allowing to be able to hit a target in the fog of war.
- can use other skills such as while mid-dash with . Using while mid-dash will result in Nocturne starting the channel the instant he hits his opponent, resulting in a lesser risk of error and a smaller timing where the opponent can dash away.
- Mastery Usage
- Item Usage
- As his attack damage quite well, building attack damage can give him good burst when he hits all of his abilities on one target , and scale off
functions well as a mobile fighter or, more traditionally, a high survivability assassin. His prime statistics are armor penetration, attack damage, and health.
- As with most DPS champions, armor penetration, cooldown reduction, and most notably the movement speed active. has great synergy with because of the
- Combining a two enemy abilities, greatly increasing his survivability.
- Be aware that activating while is up will cause both shields to pop when hit by an ability.
with his will allow to ignore - will greatly assist Nocturne in surviving due to the Health, Armor, and critical strike damage reduction. Additionally, the Active will allow to stick onto anyone he targets.
- is also useful due to the health, armor, as well as the movement speed while roaming and slow on the first AA. This synergizes strongly with to grant a slow upon reaching the target.
- on-hit effects, but does not necessarily require them. They can be very useful on him, though. can certainly use
- When going for a more assassin-based playstyle, another viable choice is . Despite being auto-attack based, Nocturne is still quite reliant on his abilities, both to survive and to cause damage.
players should limit their choice of boots to a small range: , or with emphasis on and due to his squishy nature.
- Getting attack speed items can give
- However, one could argue that due to this fact that he gains attack speed, he doesn't actually need to build attack speed items, and can instead focus on pure attack damage items to increase the damage from his abilities. Indeed, it is viable to build Nocturne such way, but it is recommended to build at least one item that provides both attack speed and attack damage, such as or .
enormous attack speed advantage over other champions since he naturally gains attack speed due to 's passive.
- Although provides a wide variety of stats, nearly all of which are quite useful to . Nocturne lacks both a low cooldown spamming ability and an ability that procs on-hit effects, which are something that most users should have. Most of the time, it is better to buy . Not only it is cheaper, but it also provides the mobility, and damage that would provide, but on a way that benefits Nocturne more.
- In 5v5, if you think you are being targeted more often, it is best to build tanky items for survivability as
- and are examples of items that benefit Nocturne's damage output and survivability.
can be very squishy.
- is very mana hungry, however building mana or mana regeneration on him is not recommended, as it make him fall off late game. Be conservative with your spells, especially in the jungle.
- Countering
- Although
- Keep in mind however that he is resilient to zoning because of the spell shield from his .
lane dominance is great because of his and , He is very squishy early game. Putting aggressive pressure on him will make him under-leveled or under-farmed.
- Try to juke to avoid because this will increase movement speed if it hits you.
- Breaking
- Keep in mind that means he can initiate his fights/ganks without worrying about a Veil blocking his or if he does initiate with .
leash can be critical to your survival. It is his only form of crowd control.
- If greatly boost his attack speed. However, spamming low-cooldown spells will deal enough damage to Nocturne to render his shield useless. is being used, save your crowd control abilities for after it expires - or if you want to crowd control him faster, pop it with another ability. If he is chasing you, using a crowd control ability with a long cast time (e.g. ) will be counterproductive as he will use his Shroud of Darkness to block the attack and
- Always remember, dash to you. Another alternative is to use Quicksilver Sash or Cleanse, which will remove the sight debuff while his ultimate is active.
- Also, while under the effects of , you and your teammates can still see each other's map pings.
cannot target you with his ult if he can't see you. If you lose your vision, due to the effects of , try quickly hiding in the brush or stealthing to prevent his - Try to stay close with your allies when uses his so you and your allies are prepared to fight him.
- Never overextend when chasing . If you are also low on health and is attacked by turret, he will activate his and dash to you. This can result in your death.
- If you are playing as and the enemy team also has a , using immediately as the opposing Nocturne does effectively makes his dash impossible, unless he is right on top of his target. Keep in mind that this tactic clearly costs you a chance to use your ult, but timing this technique can save a player near death.