Nike SPL Builds

Hey, DV-8. A little late, but here I am to reply to your comment.

Without further ado, let's begin.

• Stone of Gaia:
First, we need to clarify some things about healing and HP5. As the 7.2 Patch Notes explained:


So, anti-heal effects will reduce your ability healing, your healing from consumables (potions/chalices) and your lifesteal from items.

Glad/Berserker's sustain is considered lifesteal.
HP5 items (Thebes, Gaia, Sov) won't be affected by anti-heal.

However, even with Stone of Gaia having this "advantage" of not being countered by anti-heal, there are some reasons why I hate this item:
• It has no defenses;
• It has no power;
• It's too expensive to be a bridge item (2250 gold) and isn't a justifiable item to be core (For instance Breastplate of Valor is only 50 gold more expensive and has way better stats overall);
• The solo lane meta at the moment is very aggressive, and HP5 doesn't benefit from such playstyle;
• Gaia's passive is useless (Sure, it's going to work against Tyr and Kuzenbo, but that's pretty much it, and the cooldown is ridiculous).

If you still want HP5, the only items I'd consider viable are either Sovereignty and Gauntlet of Thebes. However, they're support items.
If you want a big chunk of health, get Blackthorn Hammer.
If you want sustain, get either Glad or Berserker's.

I still don't see any reason to buy this item, honestly.

• Shifter's Shield:
It's not that this item is bad, the problem is that we have better options when it comes to physical protections or power.
BoV, Void Shield, Urchin all provide more in the defense department, while Blackthorn and Masamune will provide power with survivability.

I consider Shifer's a good option for Assassins and for bruiser builds, but in my opinion Nike should never go bruiser, she should always go full tank to be a backline harasser.

• Bulwark of Hope:
Because of the passive. Sure, it has good stats, but I'd only consider it against gods that can 100>0 me in one ability.

• Midgardian Mail:
Well, situational items have this name for a reason. They're SITUATIONAL and their stats are usually weaker than core items (Compare Bov to Contagion, Crusher to Brawler's, Deso to Divine, etc.)
For example, Void Shield is a better item than Midgardian Mail to finish a warrior build.

• Oni Hunter's Garb:
It might have been an overstatement, so let me rephrase it:
If you want to be full tank, there's no better magical defense item than this. Damage Mitigation can't be countered. This is why I like to pair it with Spirit Robe, so I can stack mitigations.

• Hide of the Urchin:
We'll agree to disagree then, because I can't see a tank build without either Urchin (solo) or Thebes (support).

• Spirit Robe/ Mantle of Discord:
To be honest, I always end up building Spirit Robe if I'm getting Oni Hunter's Garb, but I can't remmember the last time I built Mantle on Nike lol.
However, I think you should consider at least one of those.

• Reinforced Greaves:
Sorry, I can't get behind this at all. You'll lose more gold selling Warrior Tabi and getting Greaves than selling boots and going straight into a 7th item. There's absolutely no reason to get Greaves if you don't have gold for your 7th item after seeling boots.

• Shield of Thorns:
Fair enough, since she already has Barrier Formation, but if used correclty, you'll be surprised about how much damage you can reflect to the enemies, and not just for ADCs.
There's a reason why Zapman (ADC player for PK and world champion) cries so much about this relic lol.

I often will show counter items as part of an example build also...I see no problem with that. I do explain usually in the notes that those are potentially situational and you can sub out something else for them if you don't feel the need for it. But yeah, Midgardian is a solid item and I always expect to be able to get some use out of it.

I will say that for tanks, it may sometimes be a fine balance. The high amount of shred items mean your defenses can be beaten down, and at the same time, I don't like going TOO much for pure protection items (basically Urchin and Bulwark would fall into this category for me) because you're already not supposed to be the main target. It's just, you're usually the CLOSEST one. Smart players that are able to choose from multiple targets typically will want to go for the higher damage dealers, so you don't want to build so much selfish protection that they'll just ignore you.

So with Nike, who has high survivability due to her ult, along with that big shield, I would think that utility items that also help your teammates are a bit more priority, e.g. anything that does anything besides just provide prots and health. CDR, auras, counters are all solid choices IMO.

Super late reply, but I decided to turn this into a guide. Some of these topics are touched upon in the guide, so let me know what you think!

As for Blackthorn Hammer after Boots, I'm actually not a huge fan of this. Although it does offer a large Health pool, I don't think it trades as well when the enemy builds Protections. That being said, I like it as more of a third item.

As for Berserker's Shield, I considered including this (and even had some fun experimenting with some Ninja Tabi - Berserker's Shield builds), but ultimately decided against it in the end. I feel that Gladiator's Shield translates better into the mid and late stages of the game comparatively. Nike's abilities can usually tag multiple enemies (Example: Rend, Sentinel of Zeus), and she typically doesn't spend too much time dishing out basic attacks. In this line of thinking, I would opt for Glad Shield over Berserker's in most cases.