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Nocturne, Champion strategies

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Champion Spotlight

Nocturne Champion Spotlight

Recommended Items
Summoner's Rift
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Summoner's Rift (Jungler)

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Twisted Treeline
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Twisted Treeline (Jungler)

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Howling Abyss
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Tips
Playing As Nocturne
 Using Paranoia at a critical moment is well worth it even if you cannot use the dash.
 Duskbringer isn't only an offensive ability. It can be used to close distance out of combat or
escape from certain death.
 Use Shroud of Darkness in tandem with Paranoia's dash. Your opponents may panic and
waste a critical disable on your spell shield.
Playing Against Nocturne
 Stay close to your allies when Paranoia is cast - there is strength in numbers!
 Nocturne's Unspeakable Horror is broken with range, so try to save your movement
abilities for when he casts it.
Tricks
Ability Usage
 Umbra Blades allows Nocturne to jungle well. Attack speed runes and his Shroud of
Darknesssynergize well with Umbra Blades since its cooldown is decreased with every
autoattack landed.
 Using Duskbringer is an effective way to chase or escape an enemy.
 Be sure to hit your target with Duskbringer when you are ganking, as it will allow you to close
distance and stay on your target more easily.
 Stealthed champions hit by Duskbringer will leave a trail, allowing you to momentarily observe
their movements despite their invisibility.
 Duskbringer can be a good tool when attacking turrets. A well-aimed Duskbringer may not
only damage oncoming minions, but also gives you the benefits of a Dusk Trail, 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 Duskbringer 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.
 Unspeakable Horror has great synergy with Duskbringer. You can either use the fear to
ensure landing Duskbringer or vice versa.
 Enemy champions closing on you might not see Unspeakable Horror in time. Use this to your
advantage.
 Unspeakable Horror allows you to win fights that you otherwise wouldn't because of its hard
CC.
 Save your Shroud of Darkness if you don't require it. It can be essential for surviving ganks or
ganking others.
 A well timed Shroud of Darkness can turn fights in your favor. Time it to avoid high
damage abilities such as Requiem or hard CC.
  Early and mid-game, Paranoia 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.
 Even if you aren't near the fight, don't be afraid to use Paranoia 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.
 Nocturne becomes more powerful with more map vision. His Paranoia 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.
 Nocturne's Paranoia can only target enemies in the radius of Paranoia and with sight.
For this reason, Destiny synergizes well as it gives sight to all enemies, even invisible
champions and ones in brush, allowing Nocturne to be able to hit a target in the fog of war.
 For this reason, Warwick's Blood Scent also synergizes with Nocturne. As it
detects a nearby low health champion, Allowing Nocturne to use his Paranoia and
dash to the target.
 Nocturne can use other skills such as Unspeakable Horror while mid-dash with
Paranoia. Using Unspeakable Horror 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
 Nocturne functions well as a mobile fighter or, more traditionally, a high survivability assassin.
His prime statistics are armor penetration, attack damage, and health.
 As his Duskbringer, Umbra Blades and Paranoia scale off attack damage quite
well, building attack damage can give him good burst when he hits all of his abilities on one
target
 As with most DPS champions, Youmuu's Ghostblade has great synergy with
Nocturne because of the armor penetration, cooldown reduction, and most notably the movement
speed active.
 Combining a Banshee's Veil with his Shroud of Darkness will allow Nocturne to
ignore TWOenemy abilities, greatly increasing his survivability.
 Be aware that activating Shroud of Darkness while Banshee's Veil is up will cause
both shields to pop when hit by an ability.
 Randuin's Omen will greatly assist Nocturne in surviving due to the Health, Armor, and critical
strike damage reduction. Additionally, the Active will allow Nocturne to stick onto anyone he
targets.
  Dead Man's Plate 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 Paranoia to grant a slow upon
reaching the target.
 Nocturne can certainly use on-hit effects, but does not necessarily require them. They can be
very useful on him, though.
 Nocturne players should limit their choice of boots to a small range: Mercury's Treads,
Ninja Tabi or Berserker's Greaves with emphasis on Mercury's Treads and Ninja
Tabi due to his squishy nature.
 When going for a more assassin-based playstyle, another viable choice is Ionian Boots of
Lucidity. Despite being auto-attack based, Nocturne is still quite reliant on his abilities, both
to survive and to cause damage.
 Getting attack speed items can give Nocturne enormous attack speed advantage over other
champions since he naturally gains attack speed due to Shroud of Darkness's passive.
 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 Blade of the Ruined King or Youmuu's Ghostblade.
 Although Trinity Force provides a wide variety of stats, nearly all of which are quite useful
to Nocturne. Nocturne lacks both a low cooldown spamming ability and an ability that procs
on-hit effects, which are something that most Trinity Force users should have. Most of the time,
it is better to buy Youmuu's Ghostblade. Not only it is cheaper, but it also provides the mobility,
and damage that Trinity Force 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 Nocturne can be very squishy.
 Frozen Mallet and The Black Cleaver are examples of items that benefit Nocturne's
damage output and survivability.
 Nocturne 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 Nocturne lane dominance is great because of his Umbra Blades and
Duskbringer, He is very squishy early game. Putting aggressive pressure on him will make him
under-leveled or under-farmed.
 Keep in mind however that he is resilient to zoning because of the spell shield from his
Shroud of Darkness.
 Try to juke to avoid Duskbringer because this will increase Nocturne's movement speed if
it hits you.
 Breaking Unspeakable Horror's leash can be critical to your survival. It is his only form of
crowd control.
  Keep in mind that means he can initiate his fights/ganks without worrying about a Veil
blocking his Duskbringer or Unspeakable Horror if he does initiate with
Paranoia.
 If Shroud of Darkness 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. Cho'Gath's Rupture) will be counterproductive as
he will use his Shroud of Darkness to block the attack and GREATLY boost his attack speed.
However, spamming low-cooldown spells will deal enough damage to Nocturne to render his shield
useless.
 Always remember, Nocturne cannot target you with his ult if he can't see you. If you lose your
vision, due to the effects of Paranoia, try quickly hiding in the brush or stealthing to prevent
his 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 Paranoia, you and your teammates can still see each
other's map pings.
 Try to stay close with your allies when Nocturne uses his Paranoia so you and your allies
are prepared to fight him.
 Never overextend when chasing Nocturne. If you are also low on health and is attacked by
turret, he will activate his Paranoia and dash to you. This can result in your death.
 If you are playing as Nocturne and the enemy team also has a Nocturne, using
Paranoiaimmediately 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.
References