League of Legends’ 161st champion Nilah was released in LoL Patch 12.13 on 13th July and has been played a lot in Solo Queues across regions. However, it took a few weeks before pro play could enable Nilah since competitive games are always played on the previous patch. Hence, players and teams have ample time to test the new updates in Solo Queue and get accustomed to the meta. As a result, after two weeks of being unavailable, Nilah was up for grabs on Week 7 in the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and the League Championship Series (LCS). The teams played on League of Legends Patch 12.14 in both regions.

Nilah played in LEC and LCS

Over in the LEC, Excel Esports (XL) was the first team to lock in Nilah alongside Taric support in the bottom lane for Patrik “Patrik” Jírů. In the game against G2 Esports, XL had a steady early game lead with the Nilah and Taric roaming to mid-lane to secure kills. Again, the entirety of the XL squad roamed over to the top lane to secure the first tower and utilize the Nilah-Taric synergy to its advantage. But a poorly executed tower dive on G2’s attack damage carry (ADC) and support in the mid lane caused XL to lose its momentum in the game. But as a champion who has to go face first to get some damage done, Nilah was facing beefy targets like Jarvan IV and Ornn on the opposing side and was completely shut down, allowing G2’s Sivir to scale. After a tough loss, Patrik’s Nilah had a KDA of 1/4/1 with a creep score (CS) of 232 in 28 minutes against G2 Esports.

In the LCS, Cloud9 (C9) drafted Nilah for Kim “Berserker” Min-cheol and paired her with Sona support against 100 Thieves (100T) in Week 7. Notably, 100 Thieves also countered the Nilah pick with a Sivir ADC. Despite being dove upon at the 3-minute mark in the game, the bot lane of C9 managed to answer back with its own kills and also took down the first tower with the help of the Rift Herald. After losing a significant team fight in the bottom lane, C9 was on the back foot and was left scrambling for scraps. Yet again, the Sivir shone through the match and overtook Nilah, and had a bigger presence on the map. In the loss against 100T, C9’s Nilah had a KDA of 3/5/4 and 361 CS in 39 minutes.

After both Nilah games ended in a loss for the team that picked her, Nilah’s win rate in the LCS and the LEC is stuck at an abysmal 0%. However, it could be due to the fact that she was just enabled for play in Week 7 and teams might take a while to figure out a composition that works best around her. For instance, Nilah pairs really well with enchanter and healing supports like Taric and Sona. However, retired ADC pro Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng wondered if Taric is a must-pair support for Nilah in pro play. He wrote, “Is it just me, or is Nilah without Taric almost useless?”

The reason why champions like Sivir are working well against Nilah could be because of the fact that Nilah plays like Samira who has to go in and fight in melee range, whereas other ADCs can kite away and dish out damage.

Even if teams don’t want to experiment with Nilah on Week 8 since the last few weeks of the 2022 Summer Split are crucial, we could see more Nilah picks in the playoffs. Both the LEC and LCS have super weeks coming up and the standings of the leagues are very interesting and entertaining.