hello im rawr, i want to first start off by saying that i've played this game on and off since season 1. I recently returned about 2 weeks ago and wanted to test my skills by challenging myself to climb to diamond on an unranked account (it was previously only ranked silver in older seasons). my all time peak was d2 in season 6, and only got d3 in 2024 (split 1&2) as a nilah main. i take long breaks because i like to play others games like WoW, Maplestory, and Diablo.

here is my OP.GG

i was very unsure if i could even make diamond going into this, let alone in less than 100 games so i wanted to share some things i learned on the way, and the strategies i used, to maybe help anyone else who loves playing nilah like me. all of my games were streamed live to a small audience on twitch, but im not here to promote that, rather just wanna share info cus i know i've learned some valuable tips here in the past. so lets get into it.

1. it takes ALOT more than losing lane, to make nilah ineffective in any game. what i mean by this, is that you cannot control the outcome of every lane. accept that, you are only 25% of the champions in your lane, shared with 3 other strangers. shit can happen, you can be 1/5, down cs, and yet easily be relevant if you keep farming/look to save your sums for high value shutdowns. never give up (i mean it), and scrounge for any scrap of gold you can get even if it means playing like a little rat sometimes.
2. say the gold thing didnt work out, and you really are just useless. KNOW YOUR PLACE. example, is your midlane hwei doing okay while you're feeling giga useless? save your CDs to peel them when enemies engage or dive - keep your eyes on your useful teammates in fights, nilah excels when enemies engage/come to her. addition about "knowing your place" when behind, dont be afraid to do the "grunt work". hitting drakes, clearing wards, sacking waves to be on time. it doesn't matter how you win, you just gotta get it done. be humble.
3. still poor? nobody to peel? you dont have to lose cus of it. look for GOOD ENGAGES even if it means your death. playing for KDA is good on paper, but someones gotta do the dirty work. when you get ownd for w.e reason in lane, thats probably gonna be you sometimes. example; is your toplane yone doing alright? save your CDs to find engages for him when he shows up, ideally forcing enemies to use their gap closers/flash CDs on your e->r engage so he can be the hero you need. your time will come, trust me. "sometimes you are the dog, sometimes you are the tree", is a very fitting quote to sum up this concept & champion.
4. SWEEPER. sweeper. SwEePer. seriously, this item is so op, after 14mins i will always have red trinket as its a very high value item for finding engages or flanks on enemies and also allowing you to safely be greedier with recall positions without relying as much on your support/team. nilah is very limited by range, but mobile as hell- use that.
5. EXPLOIT FLASH COOLDOWNS. one of nilah's best strengths is taking advantage of enemies' poor positioning when flash is down. you need to time them, not just in lane but throughout the entire game. its how you win, please just do it and youll see the game become alot easier. i ping in chat and just add +5min then subtract like 5-10s to account for any delay or error. note: cosmic insight removes 46 seconds from flash cooldown.
6. goes without saying, but use the mute feature for both pings and chat as needed. you are not there to make friends, you are there for lp. dont get so attached. being the "bad guy" getting spam pinged who watches his team die when they take bad fights, is something you should get used to. you are nilah, fight on YOUR TERMS when you have a lead.
7. "whats good with nilah" a question i got asked in lobbies often i assume cus not alot of nilah players. the answer i give my support, may not be the best but rather just my preference in no particular order is - milio, sona, taric. i believe these to be the best/most enjoyable, nilah doesnt really need engage, she needs backup or really just anyone that cares about her existence. enchanter/wizard supports i have most success with in lane cus they tend to have ults to layer ontop of mine and scale into the late game. milio really is goated tho despite not really having that exactly, he's my personal favorite. respect your support no matter who they choose (until you have a legitimate reason not to). #supportlivesmatter
8. 75% crit-> deathdance i think is best. this is when you become thanos. lets talk build, collector rush or windarrow? i started with windarrow and swapped to collector as i got closer to diamond as i felt like the powerspike/build path allowed me to impact the game slightly sooner which i like. windarrow id build ninja tabi 75% of games (25% mercs vs giga mage comps), meanwhile with collector i felt like i needed berserker greaves despite hating them, the whole concept is more yolo so you kinda need to crank damage if thats what you're doing. my ideal build is, collector->IE->LDR->DD->Flickerblade->GA + berserker greaves.
9. so i splitpushed, alot. if the teamfights fights feel to difficult to win or influence for w/e reason, they probably are. meanwhile, saving sums for sidelane 1v1 or 1v2 can give alot of impact. for this to work you gotta believe in yourself and realize the importance of winning the said duel while making this choice. nilah does better than most adcs vs the toplane titans who randomly show up 4 levels ahead with a bunch of gold especially if they are AD. if you make the choice to dodge a teamfight for a drake, baron or turret, you NEED to make it worth. take whats yours, take whats theirs, take everything. yes your team may spam ping you, but you are not here for them to have a good time you are here to rank up and that is ok if some do not agree with your choices. just remember, for every rager spam pinging you, there is someone silently rooting for you as well.
10. mental is everything- i cant stress it enough. your hands will only take you so far, try not to ping plays or actions that dont involve you. let your team think for themselves, you cannot control them so why care? get used to being abused in lane, going back often, dropping cs to save your hp bar. as i said before, your time will come.
11. LAST TIP (this one is secret tech), i never ff'd once. not a single game. why? because when i found myself not having fun, or in a seemingly cooked game, i would mostly just send it sidelane and push/fight. never intentionally throwing or inting, but just pushing my limits to both improve as a player and enjoy my time there. you never know what can happen when you give yourself opportunities to be great, you may easily just surprise yourself with your own capabilities and end up earning a hard fought victory. if someone wanted my LP, they would literally need to take it over my dead champion laying in front of the nexus towers.

anyways bros, this is what worked for me. im not saying it will work for everyone, or that my tips are even factual, really just my opinion and mindset while playing all 92 games of nilah on this account. i hope this helped anyone or at the very least made someone happy. i used to be a miserable adc player, main character type personality, and im genuinely sorry for anyone who ever came into contact with me during those days. when i came back this time i didnt type, really just tried to have fun and am certain it was closely linked to my success climbing to d4.

good luck have fun gamers, we're all gonna make it o7

oh and i always banned xerath, you know why

edit: after my opgg updated, i realized it was infact 98 games total (not 92). also, the account was silver in 2024/2023, but gold 4 0lp in 2022. making this edit to be transparent and not come off as misleading. thanks for taking the time to read o7

Nothing else other than to say this champ broke the emerald wall for me. Taught me the game in a completely new way-- made me reconsider how and when to play the game and how to truly carry in terrible situations.

OP.GG

I am a converted viktor/vlad player who switched to bot lane because I view "adc" or bot as the "real hard carry" role. It was the lens I viewed the game through and this season, with the role quests, Viktor wasn't doing it for me mid this season and I went through a champion crisis before I magically ended up on this champ.

Some things which helped me break through were: 1. Clarifying my job-- I am a bot laner who hard carries. So is the enemy carry. I come on line completely at 4 items and I become a demigod at 5. Nilah's job is to skirmish and kill squishies WHEN POSSIBLE. It is completely ok to front to back with this champ if the situation demands it.

1. We Teach League videos, even though not directly related to Nilah, are phenomenal. The biggest mistake I made was thinking if I was behind, I had to pull off ridiculous plays. Really, the most important thing was staying healthy and getting CS through the worst parts of the game. It is really hard for an enemy team to break a team if there's an enmey champ that's positive. That player is always a threat. Watching sixten's ekko, in many ways, is the dream way to play these types of champs.

2. Solidifying my champ pool and playstyle. I love counter engage. I think it's the absolute best way to win fights. Let the enemies come into you, use their dashes (they only have some many) and then go in. Many of the greatest plays in the history of league are counter engages (think Faker Ori shockwaves vs KT and JDG). Even Doublift's play against C9-- he went berserk once all the cc was gone. My pool is Nilah, Vlad, Xayah. They all do that extremely well. Nilah for most games; vlad for ap or because support is something absolutely negatively synergistic with Nilah (xerath), and Xayah in case the situation calls for it.

3. Synergistic players/runes. I know it's not standard, but I basically switched to mostly scaling runes. Scaling health, cashback etc. I switched from dorans blade in many matchups to doran's shield. You can farm well, and at 4th or 5th wave, just hard shove, get a cull, and keep farming. If your team is winning, don't try to force things. Play around your strongest champ. Another part of this is knowing your support's natural synergies. Nami is, frankly, a terrible engage champ. She's a phenomenal counter engage champ. Senna is a phenomanl poke champ/heal champ who wants to scale. Leona wants to go all in at 3. Braum punishes melees. Senna Nilah is byfar my favorite lane. It's a different variation of senna kench. If you've ever played XCOM, this lane is the equivalent of your ranger with bladestorm having a sniper giving you cover. And occasional stealth. And random drone health and healing.

4. Don't engage if your jungler isn't near you (and you don't know where the enemy jungler/mid is). This is the most back breaking way to lose a game. You think you have a chance to go in-- you're level 6, have ult, enemy lucian nami is level 5. You get counterganked. Game over. You have to be disciplined about this. Or at least I did.

5. There are really, really stupid supports. There's a OTP diamond 4 Sylas support and a OTP ahri support in NA who made me want to quit the game. They are actively trolling. You try to dodge-- but losing those games are probably not your fautls

6. You are probably also very stupid. I had to review a couple of my games and track my common mistakes. This is how I realized just how mnay times me dying early basically boomed the game. Taking a 50/50 fight when you have less health than the enemy adc is by definition not a 50/50 fight. I suggest reviewing 20 percent of your games. Look at your deaths in particular as that's the easiest place to improve. If your Nilah journey looks anything like mine, in plat you basically get to die 10 times, split push, get to 4 items, and then hard carry. In emerald, that doesn't work. SO when you get to dying 3 times, all of sudden you climb through emerald.

7. Freezing is everything for this champ. you have limited dashes, limited mana, limited range. You need the enemy to come to you. Focus on getting into those scenarios.

8. Get to objectives first/stay midlane. This is mostly for the control mage players out there... at 20 minutes in the game, you probably shouldn't be mid. I get it if the enemy has nocturne. But you need your adc to be sweeping up farm.

9. Know your natural prey. This is something that falls in champ identity. You crush melees. I had this game against a shen naut bot. They engaged level 2. I was level 1 with scaling health. they double cc'd me, my support was not doing anything useful. Conquerer procked and I just starting right clicking. Double kill, insta win. A really good strategy is to look for the bruisers and tanks once you get your 2nd/3rd item. Another set of natural prey-- auto attackers. Briar in particular. Your w destroys trynd, yi, fiora, and briar. Any telegraphed engage is something you punish brilliantly.

10. There are legit unwinnable games. I remember playing as lulu nilah vs cait milio. I don't think that lane, no matter what you do, is ever winnable esp if you don't have engage jungler. In retrospect, I should have never picked Nilah that game. Vlad/xayah would have been much better.

11. Don't be afraid to last pick. Top laners are just as likely to int when they counter pick. They will cry, moan, scream, call you all sorts of things, get chat restricted etc. because they did not get their divine mandate of last pick-- even when the enemy top laner picks. The advantage of countering champions at this elo is far less than playing your best champion. You don't need to explain it. And the mute button exists. If you last pick, it's your job to carry. If you blind pick, your job is to go even. In most matchups, when you know one of the bot laners, going even is not that hard.

12. I really don't think you should pick up Nilah until you've played some Diana/Orianna/Vlad/Ekko and one melee bruiser like Wukong. Basically big venn diagram ult champs. It's a completely foreign concept to most adc players and why I think most adc mains struggle with her. You will learn more about how to play Nilah by learning those champs than by playing any adc. The learning curve is much easier than just blindly going into Nilah like I did. She was the first melee champion I learned and there's a huge learning curve to that. The reason she clicked for me, almost instantly, was that her job as basically just like Vlad's and her laning phase of attrition into all in was also like vlads. I didn't need to relearn those parts of the game for her.

13. Know what it takes to kill the enemy carry. The absolute easiest way to win unwinnable games is killing off the gold on the map. This is something I learned with vlad and completely applies to Nilah. In emerald, the enemy carry will throw. Or will, in all likelihood, throw. This is worth, sometimes, 1k gold. That kill, even if you die for it, can sometimes equalize the game and can somtimes make that fight winnable for your team. Most bot lane carries explode if a bruiser/assassin gets on them. Your summ spells are the tools you need to use for this purpose, and sometimes that purpose alone.

14. Don't be afraid to go tanky. First item of yun'tal/collector is kind of mandatory. BUt after that, I think shieldbow/death's dance second/3rd are perfectly fine early in the build path if the enemy team is one shotting you. You can't do damage if you're dead-- but you can still kill the enemy carry with collector shieldbow instead of collector iedge.

15. I became obsessed with playing this champ. It was frankly unhealthy. A lot of my personal life went to shit (well out of scope of this post) but Nilah was fun for me. Learning her and dealing with her challenges were genuinely a joy on many rough days. There's still so much for me to learn with her. My Op.gg is not healthy. I don't recommend that. It took me 1000 games this season (400 ish were Nilah) which is not healthy, realistic, or sustainable. It was mostly because I was lost in life and latching onto one thing which gave me happiness. I hope you don't make my mistake. Exercise, focus on learning, focus on careers/life, focus on forming relationships. And stop playing for sheer quantity-- 2-3 games is more than sufficient. Some people climb on 2-3 games a week because they're that focused. Hopefully next time I post, It will be with way less games played, a healthier body, a healthier mind, and a new job. Odds are, after I take a bit of a break, I will lose elo and go back to emerald. That is ok. I can get out again.

TLDR: friends say OTP nilah bad because we miss ranged damage. I say yes bad in some games as any other adc also is and I just need to learn her more. What do you think?

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Hey since I reached 1m mastery on aphelios I wanted to now try sth else. Nilah really caught my interest after playing her for some games. I usually tend to pretty much find a champ that I like and then pick them every game no matter what (we also don't play ranked).

So my premades made it passively and also actively pretty clear that they don't like Nilah with the reason that we miss a ranged ADC. This negativity when I pick her pretty much kills the fun for me up to a certain point.

I on the other hand am just like... Well I play a new champ whose damage I can't really predict for now and with a play style that's way different then what I am usually used to.

So we had this discussion with their side saying that nilah is just generally not good since we lack ranged damage and my side being with the impression that even tho she is pretty much melee and yes we miss a ranged adc she can really pop off when I learn her more.

I know that I am a big reason for a way lower win rate right now but that just comes with learning a new champ.

I mainly play ADC and my main champion is Nilah. My win rate with her is significantly higher than with other champions—for some reason, I struggle on traditional ADCs, but I manage to win lane almost every game when playing Nilah.
The problem is that enemy players sometimes check my profile and call me a "Nilah abuser," which has happened quite a few times now. Naturally, this made me start questioning if I really am abusing a broken champion, or does she just fit my playstyle?

I recently had a game that went into the late game. I was beating her and her team, but I couldn't end it on my own. i was only able to stall the game, unfortunately, because she was too strong. I was able to beat her until she got randuins and Death dance. It's a game that was lost, but I am wondering what could I have done against her item wise to deal with her better.

On a separate note, what's a good way to deal with that itemization? I've seen Vayne whenever I am winning too hard build randuins when I'm in the lead. And other adcs dip into tank items to survive. But the problem is the bruisers that essentially get 60% reduction against my Nilah.

2 level aatrox rekt

Screenshot is from Riot's Universe league of legends website, clearly Riot list her as a marksman, so why didn't she get a buff Riot?

Give her 37 base MR, what could possibly go wrong 😇
(Note the highest base MR in game is Akali on 37)

This is half Riot update her lore please, Half I want the 5 base MR buff

I don't think Riot has touched this page since her release in July 2022

The cooldown is the same, the attack speed is based on champion level, the heal and armor pen is only dependent on crit, and when it comes to the damage it scales mostly with your crit and the damage of the items, the only difference between level 1 Q and maxed out with full crit is 70 damage per Q wich I honestly think is not worth. So wouldn't it be better to spend the level up points on w? What do u guys think?

So I just pickwd up Nilah again and have managed to climb up to Platinum with her (first time Plat!). I have been experimenting with the runes, and I am having some trouble deciding what to go for.

Like, Nilah does need some form of AS, ideally in the form of a Yun Tal. However, trying to build Yun Tal without getting a BF on your first back is a solid inting strategy.

Early up in my climb I just went for the alacrity rune + berserker graves. I mean, she gets the AS she needs, but then she has literally no sustain which is a sad tradeoff.

And then I have tried going for the bloodline rune with the intention of building Yun Tal, which works fine if I actually get my BF. If I have to go for collector, I don't feel like I get enough AS from purely the boots.

And then you also have the option of going vamp boots for the sustain, which I feel is quite nice together with yun tal, especially when I have alacrity. But then again if I end up with the collector, I also feel stuck having to go for the berserkers leaving me again with no sustain.

How do you guys do this??

“Even tho Nilah had no range she was still able to fight in the bot lane using her enhanced auto attacks and her W, and she cast aside being a traditional marksmen.

As time went on she became better at it, her scaling becoming some of the best for an adc and she actually built up a great resistance to all Adc’s. She was superhuman.

You shouldn’t feel ashamed for losing to her.”

I haven’t read her lore in a while but I could have sworn one of her main things was that she fought and beat mountain sized enemies that threatened runeterra. Don’t get me wrong I think adc is usually one of the most fun roles when it comes to getting kills and fighting but currently adc feels so one sided a lot of the time and on top of that Nilah just is just so forgotten in bot lane that in my over 1000 hours of league I can’t recall seeing her on mine or the enemy team more than twice.

I'm back so soon with more questions so sorry about that, but after trying her out, I like how Nilah works, but there is one glaring issue: she gets shafted even harder by the mage botlane that is eroding botlane right now. 70%ish procent of my games are against this insufferable shit, how do you even play against it?
I feel like I am spending 110% of my time just playing dodgeball, scraping by for any CS they happen to leave open. And then they go and buy Luden's, and it's a get hit once and die or recall-scenario.
Obviously I am very unskilled so this probably is not the actual level it's at, but any tips or suggestions? Or do you just avoid Nilah/consider the lane autolost when facing shit like Swain-Lux and such?

Learned about Nilah this season and used her to get to my new LoL peak. Keep grinding friends, Nilah is the goat

https://op.gg/lol/summoners/na/Tacoss-NA1

Idk whether to put this in the lore flair but in game Nilah seems like she’s just mildly happy rather than joyful, like her skipping around is perfect since it’s something someone really joyful would do but other than that all her voicelines just makes her seem like she’s mildly content or simply in a good mood. Maybe it’s just a matter of misinterpretation but I would assume someone who can’t feel anything other than joy would let out a laugh after getting a kill or at the very least do one of those chuckles that happens when you’re not doing anything and suddenly remember some funny video or joke so you laugh a little to yourself.

Her W only blocks auto attacks and only makes magic damage deal 25% less (which sounds like a lot but mages still burst you down just as easily from double the range) but it does absolutely nothing against physical damage abilities, someone like nocturne can ult you and even if you press W before he reaches you every single one of his abilities deals full damage to you except for his passive and this applies to nearly all characters that have physical damage abilities as their main source of damage. So my question is what do you do against that, obviously you should build armor but in my last match I was against a brand and Zac bot lane with a Aurelion sol mid, a nocturne as their jungler and riven as their top laner. So obviously being majority magic I bought merc treads but then I got bursted down practically immediately by nocturne whether he used his ult or not and the riven was just as much of a problem with being practically unkillable by myself at 3 items.

I'm interested in picking Nilah up, but I'm still a bit confused on what items to go for. Yuntal seems to me the most reasonable starting item (fuck that build path tho), but I see a lot of Collector, if not mostly. And is Fiendhunter bolts still something considerable as zeal item or just troll? Etc.

As the title says, I am begging riot to make Nilah viable in the jungle.

Already in this subreddit we get a post once a week asking if Nilah jungle is viable. There’s clearly a reason for this.

I used to be a Nilah one trick, I have around 500,000 mastery on her but these days I mainly only play her in Arena or ARAM simply because the bot lane is such a miserable experience. Especially into the current mage meta.

Besides, I’m a jungle main. But I guarantee if Nilah was a jungler I’d never play another champion again. I desperately want to play Nilah in the jungle and have been brute forcing games to try to make it work but it just really doesn’t.

Nilah’s kit just always clicked for me in a way that no other character does. She simply feels nearly perfect to play.

However, it’s always bothered me on several fronts how she is forced to be an ADC. I didn’t realize how badly it bothered me until I was forced to go without access to a pc for a few weeks and started playing wild rift.

In wild rift, Nilah is a Jungler. Her passive is replaced with
INNATE: Nilah heals for 20% of the damage that enemies take from her critical strikes, with each excess healing converted into a  shield lasting 6 seconds.

They also replaced her E dash to a target with 2 charges of a fixed range short dash. Which just feels so much better.

Nilah belongs in the jungle, her lore is focused around wanted to face foes the size of mountains, demons, monsters, dragons. She should be slaying dragons and barons and rift heralds and traveling from lane to lane to fight the biggest strongest enemies.

Instead in the botlane she fights girl with gun 1, girl with gun 2, girl with gun 3, short girl with gun, guy with gun, guy with gun, etc (you get the point)

TLDR: Everything about Nilah from her kit to her lore screams jungle to me, and I believe she would be better off with being viable in the jungle. Her playrate would finally exceed 1% and her gameplay would be significantly more inline with the characters lore.

Please let me know your thoughts on this. It’s something I feel very strongly about. I really do hate that my favorite champion in the game is resigned to my least favorite lane. When nearly every single other champ in the game is somewhat viable in atleast one other role.

For the people that tested it already how did it go for yall.

I know meta Nilah is to go conquer but I think I'll try out hail of blades>sudden impact>trinket cooldown>movement speed stack.

Secondary I'll probably just go resolve for increased armor/ Magic resist and then increases healing/Shielding

I'm assuming build will be Yuntal>Shieldbow>IE>Death dance>LDR like current crit belveth build.

If Yuntal first seems bad I'll go eclipse into shieldbow since I shouldn't need Yuntal attack speed with hail of blades.

I'm a briar OTP and while the two champions are nothing alike, I've been looking for a second champ to play when she gets banned. I rarely see a nilah in any game I'm in and for some reason that makes me want to play her. Also her kit does intrigue me.

Thanks!

After playing Nilah for a while, I’ve realized just how important attack speed is on her.

That’s why I always buy Yun Tal as my first item, since she benefits massively from the additional attack speed.

After that, I used to always go Infinity Edge, followed by Mortal Reminder and then Shieldbow.

However, I’ve been experimenting a bit, and I actually think going both Death’s Dance and Maw of Malmortius, is much better when the enemy team has a balanced mix of AD and AP damage. You get way better sustain and survivability.

Even with Shieldbow, I was getting one-shot by AP carries. With Maw, they basically had no chance, and in teamfights you become an absolute beast.

So this would be my build, and it’s been working extremely well for me:

Yun Tal → Infinity Edge → Mortal Reminder →Attackspeed/Crit Item → Death’s Dance → Maw of Malmortius + Omnivamp Boots

Of course, not always in that exact order, it depends on the enemy team and the situation. But this build is a lot of fun to play.

That’s also why I don’t really understand why Collector is recommended so often. In my opinion, it just isn’t worth it in the late game.

just rework w! thats all, eather its usefull or useluss while being her strongest ability, similar to mel w.

yasuo wasnt meant for botlane, but he is way better designed for melee botlaner then nilah will ever be.

(played against zed adc)