Nilah Abilities, Release Date and Lore

Season 12 seems to be the season of leaks, with every champion's name and abilities leaked before they get released. So was the case with Nilah as well. However, it seems the leaks were not all that accurate, ability-wise at least.

Nilah is the latest addition to the League of Legends roster of champions. She is the newest melee bot lane hyper carry. However, aside from that new dimension, she also brings new mechanics to the game with her release, as well as exploring familiar lore from a different perspective.

What Abilities Does Nilah Have?

Nilah, as we said previously, is a melee bot lane carry. That means that her playstyle is unique to the usual ADC playstyles. However, her choice of a weapon, the Urumi, which is a whip-like Indian weapon makes it even more unique than we expected.

• Passive - Joy Unending: Nilah amplifies the healing and shielding abilities of nearby allies.
  • Allies that heal or shield Nilah gain a bonus heal or shield for themselves.
  • When an allied champion heals or shields themselves near Nilah, she gives herself a bonus heal or shield.
  • If Nilah last hits an enemy minion, she and her nearest allied champion will gain the normal amount of shared experience, plus half of the experience that would have been lost due to sharing.
• Q - Formless Blade:
  • Active: Nilah’s Formless Blade strikes in a line, damaging all enemies hit. Hitting an enemy will briefly increase Nilah’s attack range and attack speed and empower her basic attacks, causing them to splash in a cone and deal additional damage.
  • Passive: Attacks and ability damage against champions ignore some of their armor and heal Nilah for part of the damage dealt. This effect scales with crit chance and converts any excess healing into a shield.
• W - Jubilant Weil: Nilah shrouds herself in a Jubilant Veil briefly gaining:
  • Bonus move speed
  • Reduced magic damage,
  • Dodging all incoming basic attacks.
  • Touching an ally champion hides them in the veil as well, but they’ll be protected for a shorter period.
• E - Slipstream: Slipstream lets Nilah dash through a target unit, traveling a fixed distance every time and damaging all enemies she passes through. She can store up to 2 charges at once.
  • Casting Formless Blade during Slipstream pulls a wave in your path, dealing damage after a quick delay and granting Formless Blade's enhanced basic attack effect.
• R - Apotheosis: Nilah unleashes a surge of power, lashes her whip in an area around her and, with a final burst, pulls enemies in toward the center. Apotheosis heals Nilah for part of the damage dealt, converting any excess healing into a shield. This effect scales with crit chance and is granted to nearby allies.
  

What is Nilah's Lore?

Nilah channels the power of the Demon of Joy to be an epic, monster-slaying hero who’s building out her own legend day by day. The demon in question is one of The Ten, whose member is also Fiddlesticks, the Demon of Fear.

Nilah herself hails from the same continent as Viego, from a country called Kathkan south of his own. There she was a member of the Seventh Layer, an order whose sole purpose was to keep the Demon of Joy, whose name is Ashlesh sealed in his prison.

Unfortunately, it is now unknown as to what exactly happens to Nilah to gain the power of the demon. All that is known is that she must always pray to be able to keep using its power for good, and not get possessed.

Even then, the power comes with drawbacks. The only emotion she can feel, at all times, is joy, and she is doomed to be a stranger to everyone, as every memory of her existence was erased once she bonded with the Ashlesh.

On the other hand, she is now, as the developers describe, someone who kills epic monsters as an afterthought and the most powerful woman on the planet, which is nice.

Will Nilah be Overpowered?

The concept of an OP champion changes from one person to another. However, some things are usually unavoidable. That is, every female champion in LoL must be conventionally attractive to boost skin sales, and new champions break the game. Unless you're Rell, of course.

There is no denying that even her passive is an ability that will cause headaches in the bot lane. Just the experience sharing is enough to cause one side to have a big advantage. Add to that the fact that enchanters are kings of the support meta, and Nilah is bound to be one difficult champion to deal with.

Riot Games, though, state that the usual way of hindering Nilah will be as it is with any hyper-carry. By harassing their early game. It will only take some time for proper counterplays to be developed by the player base, and the developers themselves intend on monitoring her intently as she is meant to bring a completely new style of play to the Rift, thus some post-release tweaks are expected.

When Will Nilah be Released?

There should be no delays in releasing this champion, as things stand now. After all, Riot are intending on tweaking her post-release, and not prior to that, so any potential balance issues will be taken care of once she is released.

The release date for Nilah, the new melee bot lane champion, is in patch 12.13, or more accurately on July 14, 2022.

We are looking forward to seeing a new legend in the making make her presence known on the Rift. Especially one that is so heavily inspired by the heroes from the Ramayana.

What Skin Will Nilah Be Released With? 

Nilah is going to be released with a Star Guardian skin onto the Rift. She is going to join Kai'Sa, Sona and Ekko as a Star Guardian, ready to protect Valoran city from the evil Star Nemesis Fiddlesticks. That's a pretty tough job for a first-time LoL champion, eh? 

She might be the last champion released in 2022 so we need to take what we can get with Nilah, but she looks like a lot of fun and she is a very unique champion. So test her out once she is available!