Reign of Gaming

I have been only playing her as support lately and I have to say she is really strong.
I agree with most of what Emerald said.

I would like to add she is quite strong with Cait too, probably the best support for Cait after nunu. The combination of MS boost + slow on cait's allows her to deal a retarded amount of autos with no possible retaliation. And you can chain the trap + bubble quite easely.

Like you said the w mana cost scales quickly but I like to rush mana reg on her, if you do you can cast one out of two w just for sustain and keep your mana pool in a good place for a full combo if need be.
Also concerning w, I am afraid this skill is a bit too strong. If you play with any ad that can trade evenly or just slightly loses trades, this skill will just make any trade a win with close to no effort. W on your ad when he goes in for trade, he recieves a heal and the bounce range is so good it will dmg the enemy making it a heavely lost trade for the opponent and you don't have to time it extremely well like a Lulu or to put yourself in danger like a Sona poke and you don't require a particular positioning of your ad for the bounce, autohit range is plenty. If the enemy comp do not have sustain you can cheese win the lane very easely by doing this every time the cd is up. She could force you to play some soraka to be able to outsustain her or at least require quite a bit of coordination between the enemy ad and support to make sure she doesn't outtrade you until you are forced out of lane time and time again. Oh yeah this skill do not hit minions so do not worry about pushing the lane unwillingly.
I think her w really need a number tweaking on the bounce. I think at the moment you get little if you don't use the bounce but you get too much if you use it even only once. One thing though, if you want to get 2 bounces and use the spell at his max potency you DO need to put yourself in somewhat of a dangerous position, which imo should be how it is supposed to work but atm you just get too much from one bounce to want to put yourself in any scary place.

On the other hand her Q requires very good timing as I am pretty sure players will eventualy learn to dodge it which is not all that hard, but is definetly worth it as it's quite a devastating CC

Her E is balance and flexible, just need the friendly AD to react more when you cast it on him as many players tends to not see it and stop trading when they should force the trade. It just requires more timing and anticipating until carries learn to use it well.

Her ult is SO DAMN FUN TO USE, but just like the bubble it can and should be dodged. It is her trickier spell to use as it is not very fast while having massive range, so it can trick you in some bad uses at first.  I believe that it is not best used as pure initiation but as follow up initiation. Once you will get used to it you can see it's weaknesses. It is amazing but requires a very good timing or massive surprise effect to use it as pure initiation. Once players are used to it Nami players will need a good amount of thinking to land this correctly but like sona ult it will be a game changer. Until then you can really stomp a bunch of fights against unwary players.

Anyway if you enjoy support I have no other advice than BUY HER NOW ! She is strong, flexible, packs a good balance of offense and defense but more importantly she is insanely fun to play. You can rely on her easier spells while you learn to master her skillshots for some epic supporting and while you are not a Blitz you can really set up nice kills and carry your lane or even some teamfights.

Have fun.

Oh yea I almost forgot her auto hit range is huge, you can auto harass quite well so take your pick pocketmastery and get fed.

To me she is hard to get into, so I appreciate this blog.

She plays much like Lulu, as I see her and Lulu (after having made a real try) is more effective playing as Lulu. Most of all her Q annoys me no end. I have been killrd by Xin as fast as it took me to aim it, have it cast, have it land and have him go up in the air.

A quick question, does her passive stack? If i blow all of my abilities on an ally, does he gain 120 ms?

And also, do you prefer to max Q or W for support Nami bot?

q or w ? what's with e? some1 like draven will get more of the e than the small heal from w

Yeah, with Draven maxing E seems viable, but most adc's don't use their autoattacks as their main source of harrass, most have some sort of skillshot. With adc's other than Draven though, maxing Q or W will probably be better.

Nami's Q actually counts as a stun; it can be cleansed out of with Summoner Cleanse, QSS, Mercurial Scimitar, or by having an ally use Mikael's Crucible on you.

The "knockup" portion is just the animation of the stun ability.

[Edit] Another note, she lanes well with Ezreal because his Q can apply the on hit buff from her E. This can actually eliminate his need to rush a Phage and allow him to pick up a bit more damage early if the health loss isn't an issue.

Quote from Cronosmite»

Nami's Q actually counts as a stun; it can be cleansed out of with Summoner Cleanse, QSS, Mercurial Scimitar, or by having an ally use Mikael's Crucible on you.

The "knockup" portion is just the animation of the stun ability.

What he said Emeraldw, the "lifted in the air" of Aqua Prison is just a visual effect (see here). Nami's Q is already pretty strong, but if it was an airborne/displacement/whatever-you-call-knock-ups, like Janna's or Alistar's Q, whilst during 1,25 sec, that would be a little OP.

Aside from that, nice article one again.

Yeah I feel your pain. Knock-ups and displacements effects are borderline OP because, when they hit you, you have just to deal with that no matter what:

1. they aren't affected/get diminishedly reduced by Tenacity (you can find many Red replies/confirmations about this browsing around the net, here 1); in short they last as long as the animation last, and the animation is not shortened by Tenacity
2. you can't Cleanse/QuickSilver/Scimitar out of them

I was very excited as well when I read of the Aqua Prison, then playing on PBE  I found out people where just Cleansing out of it. Nevertheless, Nami's still a very strong support imho.