No, it doesn’t work without the zeta. The reason she works well against nihilus is his attacks ignore protection, meaning each time he hits you gain 50% tm if you were at full health. In addition, you have a 50% chance to reduce his Tm by 20%, allowing you to push him back while you push forward whenever he takes a turn.
MT is used when you’re trying to get your toons to die so you can raise them and gain TM with asaj/Daka. The reason this is used in p3 is because each time a boss is hit they gain Tm, unless they are toppled, which can only occur in p3. The Daka/asaj chain hits the boss lots of times in a row, so that will feed nihilus’ Tm too fast for you to gain the benefits from it, unlike against traya who gets nothing since all the multi-hits occur while she is toppled.