Surf’s up! Nami’s dive into the competitive scene

If you watched Season 3 professional play you will recall the reign of Nami once before, and it appears to be happening again. There have been a number of changes that have brought Nami into competitive play regarding buffs and nerfs to other champions and other aspects of the game. As a support she offers a great deal to a game, sustain, disengage, multiple target crowd control and most importantly; an on-attack slow and damage buff for her ADC.

We didn't see much of Nami support in the west until recently, where both her pick and ban rate have increased from last split going from a mere 5% pick/ban rate in EU/NA LCS to even drawing out bans this split. However it seemed that the Koreans in OGN never underestimated her abilities; even through the Annie/Thresh/Leona days our Asian overlords still reverted to Nami as a safe and sensible pick.

Nami's spell kit

First of all, a high amount of people appear to be confused with what actually makes Nami so strong in terms of her kit. Her Aqua Prison is a multiple person stun - but that's not what sets her apart from the other supports, the slow moving bubble can be easily side-stepped if you're ready. Nami's E Tidecaller's Blessing is what offers this bot lane fish a place in the top tier support list.

The Tidecaller's Blessing buff to an ADC is comparable to an Elder Lizard buff, and it's on an 11 second cooldown. The on-hit damage takes a pretty big chunk of HP, especially early game with the usual starting build of Frostqueen's Claim AP/Gold item. To compliment her ADC doing buffed damage and slowing the enemy, Nami's W Tidal Surge with the help of the extra AP does enough poke by itself. Maxing E is almost all of the time the correct way to play Nami in lane, as bubble is hard to land and doesn't scale with level in terms of crowd control time, and putting more than 2 points in W simply gives it a ridiculous mana cost, making W most efficient for Nami at 2 points before getting Chalice for mana regeneration.

Synergy with top tier ADCs

One of the reasons Nami is such a good pick right now isn't even due to her experiencing major buffs or nerfs, she simply synergises well with the current ADC meta. For example the current favourite is Lucian, an ADC who is strong almost regardless of support pick. However Nami does bring specific benefits to the lane; Nami is very strong with ADCs who have autoattack modifiers, such as Lucian's double-attack passive on spell proc. He can get a higher amount of damage of in a smaller time with Tidecaller's Blessing and slow down the enemy to prolong trades yet still escape safely with his dash.

Alongside the standard Lucian pick, we have seen an increasing number of Kog'Maw and Twitch picks in the recent weeks. Both Kog'Maw and Twitch were typically seen as unsafe picks due to their lack of mobility or get-aways. Nami helps both champions though with both disengage and sustain whilst providing the kill potential for situational all-ins with Twitch's stealth, and enables Kog'Maw to be constantly chasing down his enemies and spam his ultimate through her slows and passive speed-ups. Nami/Kog'Maw is probably the most beneficial lane match-up with the Nami incorporation probably due to the fact that Kog'Maw boasts an autoattack modifier himself, made only stronger by that Tidecaller's Blessing.

In the game between Supa Hot Crew and Fnatic of EU LCS we saw the Nami/Kog'Maw composition played by Rekkles and Yellowstar. In the image below of the teamfight, you see Nami and Kog'Maw standing together, as is necessary for the protection of the ADC. Also during this teamfight Kog'Maw is able to stand at the back and fire his ultiamte and spam autoattacks with Nami's E buff on him.

How does she fit into team compositions?

Something that Nami excels at is disengage and catching people out of position. Her long range ultimate doesn't even need to hit her enemies to possibly displace them from the rest of their team or force them into a bad position. We first started seeing Nami being played in the West during the Heal buffs where teamcomps such as protect the Kog came back into flavour with serious amounts of protection from picks like Nami support and Soraka/Lulu mid or top. Nami offers both agressive and protective play; as said above her ultimate can be used offensively to catch people out and such, but what's its brilliant for it disengaging engage compositions to turn around fights. This makes her particularly good against popular champions like Shyvana, Evelyn and Leona in teamfights.

The support is rarely focussed if positioned well during a fight, which enables Nami to land bubbles defensively once the fight has actually started, as the chance of landing good Nami bubbles whilst the enemy team are expecting it is not exactly reliably high. Nami's W is also exceptionally strong in teamfighting situations, you have a spell that bounces between targets, doing damage to enemies and healing allies; it's everything you want from a heal in a teamfight, and this goes hand in hand with her kiting capabilities from Tidecaller's Blessing.

So why exactly is Nami being played now and not before?

Various people wondered why Nami was being playing in Korea at the start of the season when she was barely being recognised in the LCS. She hasn't received any noteworthy buffs or kit changes. Honestly, it's a VERY simple explanation. Since the start of Season 4, Nami has always been just above balanced. The reason she wasn't played so much was due to the holy trio of supports; Thresh, Leona and Annie. Once the Annie nerfs were released and everyone started playing Morgana as Thresh and Leona counters it took a while but the West finally realised - Nami is more than viable, and she was fitting in perfectly with the ADC meta to top it off. She's exactly the type of sushi everyone is wanting right now.