With patch 12.13, the new champion Nilah was released in League of Legends. She is an AD carry with a short range but very strong passive ability. However, she was so strong at release that a nerf followed within 24 hours. The complaints about Nilah still continue. Additionally, there were other issues with the patch.
What is the champion all about? Nilah is an AD carry with a standard range of 225. This places her on par with melee characters such as Aatrox, Fizz, or Hecarim. However, she can temporarily increase her range when using her “Q” ability.
Nevertheless, Nilah has a hard time on the bot lane due to her short range. To compensate, Riot Games designed some interesting mechanics that you can read about in this article. The most important points:
- Through her passive, she shares 50% of the experience from minion kills, which would normally be lost when shared. This applies both to her and other allied champions. Therefore, when playing on the bot lane with a support, both gain more experience points.
- Also through the passive, healing and shields from allies are strengthened. Here too, she benefits immediately with the right support.
- Nilah can also temporarily become immune to normal attacks (“W”) and has the ability to jump to enemies (“E”).
These abilities and the strong attributes at release led to Nilah being much too strong.
How strong was Nilah? 24 hours after release, Nilah had a win rate of 52.4% across all tiers (via lolalytics). While not extremely high, for a champion that essentially no one knows how to play, it is very dangerous. Riot Games also saw it this way and immediately implemented a nerf.
Riot brings a nerf, but many feel it’s not enough
How did the developers react? Already on July 14, a new patch was released that made some adjustments to Nilah:
- Base health reduced from 590 to 570
- Base armor reduced from 30 to 27
- Healing from passive reduced from 10% to 7.5%
- Shields from passive reduced from 20% to 15%
- “Q” enhanced attacks reduced from 110% to 100% of damage
- Additional attack speed from “Q” reduced from 15-65% (depending on level) to 10-60%
- Cooldown of “E” increased from 24/21/18/15/12 to 26/22.5/19/15.5/12
However, these adjustments are still not enough for the players, as she still has a win rate of 51.6% after the update.
Even on the test server, Nilah received multiple nerfs, including for attack speed through “Q” and damage of the ultimate.
What are players demanding? A lot. Many players feel that the nerfs are not sufficient. Unhappy_Window commented on the hotfix briefly: “This is still not enough, in my opinion.”
The biggest point of criticism lies with the experience gain through the passive. It allows Nilah and her support to almost always have a level advantage, regardless of whether the early game goes well or poorly for them.
Some players report on reddit that Nilah can reach level 6 almost a minute before her opponent. For 60 seconds, the player of Nilah has access to the ultimate ability “R”, which creates an advantage in direct combat, but also applies pressure on the lane overall.
The reddit user Chejsarn demands a completely new passive for Nilah:
In my opinion, it is one of the worst feelings in this game to fall behind in levels. You feel so useless when you are 2-3 levels behind the enemy ADC, and that happens in every game against a Nilah. I have never made a post here to complain about something, but when Nilah comes to lane with a boatload of extra experience points, that is the point where it crosses a line.
Other players complain that Nilah’s “W” is hardly visible (via reddit). The criticism is that Jax throws his weapon in the air and spins it for a block of attacks, while Nilah only gets a blue effect. Especially with the new “Star Guardian” skin, this is said to be hard to see.
In LoL, there are generally some skins that cover abilities, which makes them pay-to-win in the eyes of some.
Patch 12.13 brought many balance issues
What else was problematic about the update? A hotfix was released on July 13 that slightly nerfed Gwen and Sivir. Sivir had received a small rework in patch 12.13, which made her way too strong.
Additionally, on July 15 the now third patch since the release on July 13 introduced adjustments to the new game mode “Ultimate Spellbook” and a buff for Senna.
However, Senna is currently also under heavy criticism, which is why the buff surprised many:
Two unusual champions are currently dominating in LoL, and a supporter is to blame for this
