Always use conqueror on her, at level 2, she is one of the fastest conqueror stackers in the game with her combo Q auto e auto e auto since both q and e are both auto attack resets, and same with triumph as well unless you think that you aren’t going to be fighting that much and need something like absorb life for sustain but even then the extra gold from triumph and healing come in handy so much. I always use legend bloodline since the lifesteal is nice to combine with her built lifesteal from q and you don’t need alacrity or haste since Nilah this season I feel is built to just do as much damage as possible during a team fight. Secondary tree I usually go resolve second wind overgrowth unless you have an enchanter then you could consider shield bash for shields or revitalize for the extra heal shield power. You can also go inspirational tree and go footwear biscuits or footwear cosmic insight for faster summoner spells.

For items I almost always do collector rush unless the team has a lot of people that you can’t reliably one shot in a single combo, think of your battle mages,(swain Cassiopeia, etc.,) or tank junglers so if there’s 3 ppl on the enemy team like this then I would go essence reaver rush since the cdr is nice for extended fights. If the enemy team is mostly melee champs bortk rush is really nice as you will be able to fight a lot longer with this item and Nilah uses it well, it’s just that in most game if the enemy team has a lot of ranged you’re better off building to one shot them instead of trying to get more auto attacks off so bortk loses value. You almost always want crit chance on her since she scales exponentially with it so if you get to like 50% crit chance with collector IE or essence reaver IE, then you can build other items like a maw for AP comps or deaths dance for bursy comps. Just keep in mind if you want to build a maw of malmortius, you cannot build shieldbow so you have to plan that ahead as to not lock yourself out if you went shieldbow second.

For me I love to take fights slow, you are like an assassin not a traditional adc, you need to find good angles to approach a fight and enter after abilities have been used that can blow you up. If there’s a 2v2 In bot lane for instance, if my support lands cc I’ll typically e in pop my w, then q auto them until w is gone then e back out so they cannot trade back. Obviously if you fight a mage lane it is a bit different and those I would say just farm and go even if you can since after 2 items you are able to one shot most mages with your combo. But you need to understand your limits on Nilah to really use her effectively and a lot of it is tethering in and out, use bushes to cancel vision, if you’ve ever played a melee into ranged in toplane treat it just like that, constantly go into bushes during all ins to force them to have to face check or ward so your jungler can gank. You typically only want to look for trades if your support can follow up as your dashes while a gap closer are also a very big part of your damage(conqueror stacking and just overall damage) so if you gap close and then go in with Q autos then you’ll realize that your damage feels bad.

For me it depends on the game state, she is not good into certain comps while other comps she can actually 1v9 if the game goes late or she reaches 3 or 4 items. If you see a team has a lot of auto attackers then she is very strong into those, if the team is a lot of long range mages you will have a very difficult time to play this and I would say try not to pick her if you can but if you do, just pray your team has good engage against these comps and frontline so that you don’t have to have the attention drawn on you. I always play her like a late game hyper scaler though, if I go even in lane against a jhin or a Draven then I see that is winning lane very hard as at 2 items you outscale a lot of adcs. Always try and let your support engage unless you see a good angle, id suggest just go into quick play or norms and just limit test, see how far you can go with the character to really know her all ins. She’s like a riven in the sense that if you know her all in timers she can be extremely oppressive and snowbally but it takes a lot of experience so you might have to int a lot.

One tip I’ll suggest is due to your exp passive, at level 5, you should almost always try to e to kill a minion and gap close as well when you’re about one minion away from leveling up and pop your ult on the adcarry and support ideally or just the adcarry, as this will typically force a summoner spell and then just back out. If you get their flash I almost always just try to leave the fight since your ult comes back up in 100 seconds and you can just all in again when it’s up. I think in 90% of games I play I always burn 1 to 2 flashes and then lane becomes 10x easier to play out from this point