Nocturne Champion Guide: Essential Tips for the Nightmare Assassin

Nocturne Champion Guide: Essential Tips for the Nightmare Assassin

By Marcus Chen

February 27, 2025 at 06:01 AM

Nocturne is a powerful assassin jungler known for his unique map-darkening ultimate ability that creates chaos and forces enemies to retreat. He excels at dueling and can outmatch most junglers in 1v1 encounters.

Core Strengths:

  • Easy to learn with only one skillshot (Q ability)
  • Strong jungle clear and farming capabilities
  • Powerful ganking potential with ultimate
  • Effective duelist

Key Abilities:

  • Q: Primary damage source and AD boost
  • W: Spell shield for blocking crucial abilities
  • E: Fear for CC and ganking
  • R: Map-wide engage tool

Optimal Skill Order:

  1. Start Q (better clear speed and AD boost)
  2. Take W second (attack speed passive)
  3. Situational third skill:
    • Q if purely farming
    • E if planning to fight or gank
  4. Max order: R > Q > E > W

Jungle Strategy:

  • Focus on efficient farming when ultimate is on cooldown
  • Use ultimate aggressively for ganks when available
  • Time spell shield carefully to block important enemy abilities
  • Look for isolated targets to maximize assassination potential

Build Path Priority:

  1. AD items for damage
  2. Health for survivability
  3. Ability haste for ultimate uptime
  4. Tank items for teamfight durability

Playing Style:

  • Farm efficiently between ultimate cooldowns
  • Target isolated enemies for guaranteed kills
  • Use darkness to create pressure across the map
  • Coordinate ultimate usage with team engages

Core Items:

  • Stridebreaker/Goredrinker as mythic
  • Death's Dance for survivability
  • Black Cleaver for damage and ability haste

The key to mastering Nocturne is balancing farm-heavy periods when ultimate is down with aggressive map pressure when it's available. Success comes from smart ultimate usage and proper timing of spell shield against key enemy abilities.

Related Articles

Previous Articles