Nilah has some of the greatest potential as an off-meta support champ.

Her ability to holster and provide utility to her team through her items, passive, and playstyle make her a top contender compared to other " support " ADC's.

Most ADC support champs want to/need to build full damage to get the most out of their kits like Jhin, Caitlyn, or Kalista. Though they all can make use of cheap lethality items like Umbral Glaive, or something like Serpent's Fang, they all suddenly need an exponential budget to get any stronger and provide something for the later game.

Thats where Nilah differs! Once she has built her mythic item of choice (depending on your build path), majority of her items will remain support items like Redemption, Mikael's Blessing, or Anathema's Chains and therefore giving her a more inexpensive build path, while still providing lots of utility regardless of damage.

Thankfully, Nilah has a few different build paths to help point her gameplay in the right direction! She can make great use of the Resolve tree, Precision tree, and benfits from bits and pieces of other rune trees.



First up: Guardian

Shield Bash / Conditioning / Revitalize / Zombie Ward / Ingenious Hunter

I highly recommend Guardian as the main rune of choice for both Enchanter & Tank Nilah. Since you're in the support role now, you will take a little more poke with less of an ability to fight back full force right away, so Guardian is a solid choice to help mitigate some of that trading damage.

Next we're using Shield Bash as a way to get in a little extra damage here and there, but also because Nilah doesn't make great use of either Font of Life or Demolish. We take Conditioning because it scales great and gives Nilah more survivability in the late game. This can be subsituted with either Bone Plating or Second Wind depending on lane matchups. Finally in the Resolve tree we're taking Revitalize which is arguably the biggest point in why we are in the Resolve tree. Nilah's passive Joy Unending already acts as a smaller Revitalize but when paired up she gains massive ammounts of healing and shielding which makes her a real teamplayer/monster enchanter.

Finally I chose to include runes from the Domination tree. Zombie Ward is to promote some vision control, especially if you choose to rush Umbral Glaive in winning matchups. Though you can totally swap it out for things like Ghost Poro which may be better for harder lane matchups, or Taste of Blood for more biref sustain to pair with your passive and Revitalize. Lastly we always are going to want to take Ingenious Hunter for a few main reasons: #1 being that it will reduce the cooldown of all our active items wich we will have lots of, and #2 being that if we specifically build Moonstone Renewer, Ingenious Hunter will actually cause it's combat healing passive to tick faster and more often at max stacks, granting you more healing overall.



Next up: Conqueror

Triumph / Legend: Bloodline / Last Stand / Conditioning / Revitalize

This is your second best (as of now) choice of runes. Conqueror is Nilah's best ADC rune so natually its going to be just as effective in a support role. Stacking healing and extra AD while building enchanter/tank items is helpful especially if youre snowballing or in a winning matchup. I recommend taking Conqueror if youre deciding to go down the Tank build path.

Taking Triumph is just a solid rune in this position. A little extra gold on takedowns and health back never hurt anyone! If youre new to Nilah though, you can definitely swap it out for Presence of Mind if youre struggling to manage your mana pool. Next we're going with Legend: Bloodline for some lifesteal that will get increased by, you guessed it, Revitalize and Joy Unending, though again this is a personal preference and is interchangeable with Legend: Tenacity if youre into heavy CC comps. Finally for Precision we're gonna take Last Stand because realistically youre going to be low and in danger 90% of the time, so the bit of extra damage goes a long way in early trades sometimes. I recommend Last Stand especially if youre going down the Tank build path, but if you chose the Enchanter path, you can take Cut Down instead since you will have much less health.

Next we're dipping back into the Resolve tree for our favorite rune Revitalize and its funky little brother Conditioning. These runes are going to be standard across all builds in reality because of the utility they provide to Nilah personally and her team.



Finally: Summon Aery

Nimbus Cloak / Celerity / Waterwalking / Conditioning / Revitalize

Taking Summon Aery is a more experimental build right now but still has its benefits to Nilah's gameplay. I definitely recommend taking this ONLY if youre going down the Enchanter build path, but feel free to experiment with the Tank build as well. Summon Aery during laning phase will mostly be used for some extra/consistent poke to help you trade down your opponents, while allowing you to have a keystone that scales into the later stages of the game providing shields to your teammates when you start proccing things like Redemption or Moonstone Renewer.

Within the Sorcery tree, we're gonna start by taking Nimbus Cloak. This will provide us with bursts of movement speed to hopefully outrun danger in sticky situations or reach our team faster if needed. Again, if youre newer to Nilah you can totally switch its out for Manaflow Band to help manage your mana pool a bit. Next we're gonna snatch Celerity for lots of extra movement speed overall. This is just beneficial for chasing, peeling, and generally moving around the map. Celerity also pairs well with Boots of Swiftness for lots of added movement speed and slow reduction. Last we're gonna grab Waterwalking for, again, movement around the map, roaming, and some added offensive stats. Waterwalking can in theory be swapped out for Scorch for early lane poke/dominance or even Gathering Storm if you're really planning on snowballing the game and want the extra AD, but thats never guaranteed.

And finally, we're headed back to the Resolve tree for Revitalize & Conditioning (that could be swapped out for Second Wind or Bone Plating). Bonus resistances and healing/shield power is always gonna be the best on Nilah support.



For all rune pages, we're taking Attack Speed / Adaptive Force / Flat Health. You can opt to change out Adaptive Force for either Shield or Tenacity and Slow Resist depending on enemy team comps.

With Nilah, she has two optimal build paths for the support role being a straight forward Enchanter style build (like Lulu, Soraka, or Bard) or a Tank style build path (like Braum, Alistar, or Leona). What keystone you choose will also somewhat dictate which build path you choose.



First, we need to choose a support item! Now you may be inclined to pick Spectral Sickle since youre going to be auto attacking and would want the mana regeneration (though we're going to build plenty of that), but in reality you should definitely be taking Steel Shoulderguards as it provides you with health regeneration and allows you to proc your passive Joy Unending giving you and your lane partner bonus EXP when you execute a minion for your support quest. Obviously pick up Health Potion's and a Stealth Ward as well in the beginning.

Second, lets quickly go over some boots options! Depending on team comps and how lane has been going, you've got great choices in Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads. If you arent feeling pressured to build more defensively, I recommend picking up Boots of Swiftness (especially if you took Summon Aery) or you could take Ionian Boots of Lucidity for extra haste/summoner spell hates.



Now lets talk real items...



Enchanter build:

Mythic Options: Moonstone Renewer / Locket of the Iron Solari / Shurelya's Battlesong

Overall for the Enchanter style build, I recommend taking Moonstone Renewer due to its great utility stats as well as its phenomenal combat passive/active grating stacking healing to allies while in combat. A bonus is 5% stacking heal/shield power while in combat up to 20% total. This item pairs fantastic with, GUESS WHO, Revitalize and Joy Unending! Next you could choose to take Locket of the Iron Solari if youre a bit more worried about burst damage from the enemies. This item, again, also works fantastic with Revitalize to increase shield power. If you need to move it move it, you can lastly take Shurelya's Battlesong for engaging, disengaging, and general move speed. This item unfortunately does not have any added benefit with Revitalize so take it at your own risk.

Core items for this build include Redemption for the again great stats it provides Nilah and heal & shield power/active ability, and Vigilant Wardstone as it will allow you to control vision more at level 13 by allowing a fourth Stealth Ward to be placed and an extra Control Ward, and additionally provides you with a 12% stat increase to attack damage, ability power, bonus health, and ability haste!

An optional item to rush over your mythic is Umbral Glaive. Though this item doesnt provide any defensive beneficial stats, Serrated Dirk is a fantastic early purchase on Nilah and will increase your raw trading power. Another bonus to Umbral Glaive is its passive to one tap Stealth Wards and two tap Control Wards since you are a melee champion. I recommend this only in winning/snowballing matchups!

Situational items for Nilah's Enchanter build come in a wide range. Noteable items are as follows:

Mikael's Blessing: Cleanse active / Heal & shield power / Magic Resist
Knight's Vow: 200% Health regen / Ally Damage Mitigation
Anathema's Chains: 30% personal damage reduction / 20% reduced linked enemy tenacity
Zhonya's Hourglass: Stasis active / Bonus Armor



Next...



Tank Build:

Mythic Options: Locket of the Iron Solari / Iceborn Gauntlet / Radiant Virtue

The mythic I would most recommend for the Tank style build has got to be Locket of the Iron Solari. The active team shield (that gets boosted by Revitalize btw) is a great piece of utility for Nilah to have, as well as the mythic passive of providing bonus armor and magic resist to teammates surrounding you! A solid secondary mythic for Nilah is Iceborn Gauntlet, being that it is one of the cheaper non-support mythic items and provides increadible bulk paired with a Sheen proc on autos and a slow field on top of it! The added 5% tenacity, health, and slow resistance per item mythic bonus also helps seal the deal on this being a great option for her. The last mythic option for Nilah is Radiant Virtue. This item synergizes great with Revitalize (WOO HOO), and provides her with great bulk and a fantastic active upon ulting. Though this is one of the more expensive items, I dont recommend always building it. Use it to cut through burst if locket isnt doing the job.

Core items again include Redemption for its active and heal/shield bonus and Vigilant Wardstone for increase map presence and major stat bonuses. Additionally a great core item for Tank Nilah is Anathema's Chains which provides up to 30% damage reduction from a chosen target and reduces their tenacity by 20%! This is a great item for shutting down any hypercarries the enemy team may have, or preventing snowballs from happening as well.

Again, you can rush Umbral Glaive if you have a strong lane/winning matchup, but you really lose out on the "tank" feel of the Tank style build by putting off building your mythic.

Situational items for Nilah's tank build dont come in as wide a range as the enchanter build but there are still lots of noteable items:

Dead Man's Plate: Bonus movement speed / Empowered auto attack
Frozen Heart: Huge bonus armor gained / Auto attack damage mitigation / AOE Cripple effect
Spirit Visage: 100% Health regen / 25% Increased shielding & healing recieved ( Revitalize again)
Force of Nature: Bonus movement speed / 25% reduced magic damage at max stacks
Abyssal Mask: Mana restoration / Magic Resist Reduction on enemies

In the grand scheme of things, Nilah support will have one singluar playstyle that can be improvised upon depending on her build, gamestate, and other various reasons, so lets start with the need to know:

Your job as Nilah support is to abuse your Slipstream mobility and utility built into your kit and items to bounce around fights being a distraction to the enemy team. Since we aren't building damage, Nilah support 's fighting ability will come from being a body in a fight and getting to use things like Moonstone Renewer and Redemption to keep her teammates alive and sustain a longer fight.

Things we want to avoid:

Reckless diving into enemies

Hiding behind your team too much

Trying to save yourself over a carry

We want to play Nilah support like Rakan! Slip in and out of fights while providing lots of utility to our team!

If you decided to head down the tankier route building Locket of the Iron Solari, Iceborn Gauntlet, or Radiant Virtue, you can obviously play more aggressive, but you still dont want to die immediately in a fight. Play like Taric in these situations, push forward as the enemies retreat but make sure you are within a safe distance to be able to exit the fight and return to your ADC/Carry's side.

April 4th:

Initial Guide Released

April 6th:

Ignite Summoner Spell Added

Changelog Added

April 10th:

Brief Playstyle Guide Added

More Threats & Synergies Added

Optimized Ability Level up Path Added

Abyssal Mask to Tank Build Added