Why Nidalee can't be easily balanced

Linna Excel·Apr 13, 2014·3 votes·1,591 views

I know a lot of people hate on because of her spears, but if you think about it, she's kind of tough to balance. This isn't to say she is or isn't balanced, this is just to say it ain't as easy as everyone wants it to be.

Most of the power in her kit pre 6 comes from her spears. Because she can't go cougar until 6 for more damage and clear ability, her one damage ability needs to be good for her early game.
Her spear is her only ranged offense. She's not an ADC and won't build that way on most occasions. All her skills in cougar form are melee. So her spears need to be good for her to be viable. Let's also not forget her role in a team fight is to poke the other team down, you nerf that spear too much and she's trash tier.
She can't jungle. Pre 6 she's got no clearing ability and her spear only really damages at long range. If you aren't in the mobs face, they heal up, so she can't be used there. She's also kind of item dependent, which is bad for junglers.
If the other team starts picking a lot of tanky champs, you are going to want someone with a kit to deal with them. That's just one instance where you need a champ who is good at grinding up the meat shields. If it isn't Nidalee, someone else will have to take that role if we don't want the game to become league of tanks.
I don't follow the LCS all that much, but when I do, I don't see her picked that often. So whatever OPness she has, it seems to be limited to solo queue. So this is something to think about as well.

So how do you balance someone who's main complaint is the only skill that is keeping her viable. People hate it when Riot does a nerf which completely kills a champ so you can't just ask for them sometimes and QQ when it happens other times.

So pick one.

Either you have to be okay with champs that are OP until riot fixes them or you have to be okay with everyone who is powerful getting nerf that just breaks their backs and makes them unplayable until riot gets around to fixing them. It's one or the other.

While she is popular, her win rate is just under 51%. So she's good, but unlike some other champs, I don't think she's breaking the game ATM to deserve getting one of those unviability nerfs. And this is why I think riot is rightfully trying to keep from breaking her back. If her spear is no good, she'd be completely unplayable I think.

40 Comments

Salty WaifuApr 14, 20144 votes

I think nidalee is THE one and only champion that deserves to be deleted, i would rather face pre rework kassadin over nidalee everyday.

Hitting one skillshot and getting a free objective for it is NOT fun.

ThamiosApr 14, 20141 votes

I dunno, at least nidalee can be shut down longer than 5 minutes and doesn't need two items to become unkillable and inescapable (RoA and AA>SE Kassadin is evil).

If there's any one champ I'd delete, it's freaking LeBlanc. She snowballs the hardest of any champion I've seen in soloqueue with the added benefit of being a soloqueue style champion. Team coordination is needed to shut her down, and even then it needs to be SMART team coordination. Unhealthiest champ for soloqueue I've seen.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20143 votes

People complaining are complaining about a when us nid players bring our A-game, which is like 10% of the time we play her, and we shit on them because they pick 0 hard CC. Pick leona, nid just died.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20142 votes

No people complain because Nidalee has to do nothing but press Q repeatedly for the entire game to be efffective. Her current state isn't healthy and could be much better, deny that is just silly. I agree that she is a difficult champion to balance, and quite a hard problem to solve, but she needs have something done to her. It's easy to say that changing her would be bad, but not changing her is also bad.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

Just hit q? So I can stand in spawn, hit q and be effective? Damn, been playin nid wrong.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20141 votes

Well if you are only playing one champion your doing it wrong anyways, so I'm not overly surprised.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

The point in the sarcasm was that a lot more goes into the ¨hit q¨ than you think. And to address you other point about 1-20 spammed spears, first, for the spear to do half your HP, nids needs to be fed OR you have to get hit by a max range spear. Solution, don´t feed the nid, and don´t dick around without minions or tanks. Also, learn to dodge.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20144 votes

What's that? You mean that something that was written wasn't 100% literal, that's just nonsense. You're sarcasm is just petty when you ignore the point of the message, as is your advice. You don't have to feed someone for them to build items, it's going to happen eventually as the game goes on. Let me guess, just end every game before Nidalee builds any items right? Super easy guys, every win at 20, no problem. You can say dodge all you want, but when it only takes a single spear out of Nidalee being able to just sit there and spam them the entire game, eventually one is going to hit, that's just statistics plain and simple. Nidalee shouldn't be rewarded for standing there throwing 20-30 spears and only hitting one just from sheer odds. But in all honesty, I'm not surprised that someone who has their name as "Only Play Nid" doesn't want to at least be up front about the fact that Nidalee has problem points in the game.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

End the game before the late game champ builds items? YES. HENCE. THE. CONCEPT. OF. LATE. GAME. And one spear every 20 doesn´t do shit, it´s more hitting you and it´s because you cannot dodge them. And me playing nid gives me the perspective and experience talking about something. But you know what, final argument, if she´s broke, go play her and carry yourself to challenger.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20141 votes

There are power points in the game before late game. Late game champions can still do things before late game. I don't understand how you are so fucking dense that you can't understand any of this. So keep throwing out your hyperbole and other rubbish, I'll trust in the balance team of Riot to be smarter than you and make it so that Nidalee has to be effective at more than just throwing out spears over and over to be effective. There is a difference between unhealthy and broken, if you can't comprehend that, your ignorance, not mine.

OblongOtterApr 13, 20145 votes

I've played her, I'm pretty crap with her, and I'm still a menace to the enemy team. Also that last sentence of yours is just encouraging toxic gameplay.

Linna ExcelApr 15, 20142 votes

if she´s broke, go play her and carry yourself to challenger.

You know, this is interesting about GD. A lot of players would rather complain about a broken OP champ then picking said champ up and getting free elo from it.

I mean if that champ really is so broken, you should be abusing it in ranked as much as possible.

OblongOtterApr 13, 20143 votes

Hey guy's lets listen to "Only Play Nid" I'm sure they aren't biased at all.

(Also have fun getting to Nid since if you zig-zag she can outrun you as a cougar, and if you beeline she doesn't even have to try to aim her spears and a good Nidalee can switch between the two the moment they see you doing one or the other. They can do it so fast the spear practically comes out while they're still a cougar.)

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

Damn. If only there was a champ designed to catch people and kill them... Oh wait, I think I´m referring to assassins. All of these assassins can wreck a nid:

Lee, LB, Khazix, Akali, Yasuo.

And then there is tanks that will fuck up a nid: Amumu, malph, Naut.

And then there is tanky bruisers that can shit on a nid: Wukong, riven, Xin.

That´s not even all of them and those champs give nid a very bad day.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20141 votes

give nid a very bad day

Clearly ignores the fact that all those champions have to get to Nidalee while she sits at the back of the entire enemy team spamming spears.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

Clearly ignores that all of those champs have dashes, jumps, and grabs to do so.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20141 votes

Right, let me just dive through the entire enemy team, I'm sure they won't try to kill me at all while Nidalee just turns into cougar form and runs away (since that's the only thing AP Nidalee even uses that form for other than the free wave clear thanks to the free base damage).

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

Wait, you´re playing xin, wu, amumu, or naut and NOT diving into the team to tank dmg and CC people? LOL ok. Man, no wonder you´re so bitchy. Well, say what you want, I´m gonna lolz thinking how even if they nerf nid you´re still gonna get shit on.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20142 votes

Leeching because you're profiting off of a champion that abuses unhealthy game mechanics. Same thing like people abusing freelo champions then pretend like they're good. You can rage face all you want, still won't stop the fact that Nidalee will get changes because Riot has already stated she isn't healthy for the game as she is. QQ harder.

MackleDogeApr 13, 20142 votes

Right, at least I'll still have champions to play instead of leeching on to a glorified turret pretending I'm good. Whatever you have to tell yourself to make you feel better.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

#Playing my oldest champ = leeching.

Only Play NidApr 13, 20141 votes

And I´ll still play her, and I still win with her, because it´s my champ.

elliodoApr 13, 20143 votes

The reason most people complain about her is because they hate when they lose half thier Health to a well aimed spear

MackleDogeApr 13, 20149 votes

Or 1 of 20 spammed blind spears.

Linna ExcelApr 15, 20142 votes

Hard engage on her while laning whenever possible. If you look at the mechanics, her spears only do a ton of damage at long range. If you stay in her face (difficult at times) her spears aren't going to do all that much damage.

WereScribApr 14, 20143 votes

Honestly, I think the problem with Nidalee is Riot decided to support AP Nidalee and push AD Nidalee into an obscure pick that doesn't do anything it used to do well.

AP Nidalee will always be unfun to play against, she'll always trash disorganized play. She will always be a champion that can go 20/0/10 and lose a game. I like the idea of a long range siege/poke champion. But I think Ziggs does it in a much more satisfying manner. You can deal with Ziggs, he has one escape. Nidalee's kit is built on safety and escape. Its a split-pushing duelist kit. Unfortunately, her ridiculous AP ratio has put her into the mid-lane mage camp and riots nerfs to her midlane game have crippled any other playstyle completely.

I just think it was a bad idea to support that build. I mean, hindsight and all that. AP Nidalee is stupidly fun to play. Its jut not fun to play against.

DantilqApr 14, 20142 votes

AD nidalee isn't overly fun to play either. The uncatchable and unkillable splitpusher that is tanky, slippery and have a strong self-heal.

Nidalee as a champion is just not fun to play against, and not with either. You rely too heavily on a single player hitting his spears, or she is useless. She doesn't have much of anything else to offer, and very little that is useful to team, except her poke.

Linna ExcelApr 15, 20141 votes

I think Riot doesn't really like hybrid champs, or rather doesn't like champs who aren't forced to go either/or.

CaoilApr 14, 20142 votes

My personal thoughts to balance nidalee would be to either reduce the damage done by her spears (perhaps by having it scale less with AP?) or put them on a longer cool down, and then to buff her cougar form making it viable for more than just wave clear and escaping. I don't play nidalee much, but when I do I notice that she's useless when she runs out of mana for her spears and her cougar form really can't contribute to a team fight because she's too squishy and does too little damage. Maybe it would be a good idea to give her cougar form more durability?

What do you guys think?

MackleDogeApr 14, 20141 votes

That's what I think is the best starting option. Make it so that the spears aren't the only important offensive part of her kit, since she has strong heal/support/utility from the trap and heal skills. By making it so that the cougar form works well with AP instead of a AD Bruiser based build you encourage and reward talented Nidalee players that are good at the siege game of her kit and skilled with the cougar form for dueling as well.

Linna ExcelApr 15, 20142 votes

Buffing cougar form doesn't help her early game. Also if you nerf her spears so that her early game sucks, her cougar form needs to be OP to compensate. I don't see the devs making it OP.

Adding durablity to her cougar doesn't help because she still has a weak gap closer and no CC. I wouldn't call her cougar kit something you assassinate people with.

That's another thing, she's meant to be an assassin. It's her job to pick off high value targets. However, this goes back into her needing Q to be strong because that's the real power in her kit.

ThamiosApr 15, 20142 votes

I'd post a reply to the massive thread that "Only Play Nid" helped build but I doubt it'd end up being constructive to the discussion. However I will reference points made in that. Please correct me where I'm off in numbers as I don't play Nidalee very much.

What's really frustrating about Nidalee is that there is no one thing that's making her OP. Spears are just her best way of getting damage out at range. Since she sees play across all skill levels it's not enough to say "just dodge the damn spears, bro". A good Nidalee player will know what to do to maximize the chance that a spear will land.

Nidalee is a swiss-army knife champion for a poke comp. She has great poke, sustain, vision tools, and she can peel for herself like no other champion. Oh and Bushwhack also shreds resistances, which makes all damage hit harder. Then she has cougar form which gives her TONS of waveclear and a manaless dueling ability that hits harder than most mage spells. She's just got a lot of everything built into her kit, as is the issue with any champion that gains additional spells through a transformation or a follow-up.

Nidalee's passive and cougar makes it almost impossible to successfully pick her off in the jungle without 100-0-ing her, which is harder unless you hard CC her first because of that damn heal. Of course that's if you want to duel her on your own, as her swipe deals about 500 damage, and that's not even her execute. Usually a caught mage with no mana would be fucked, but Nidalee just pops into cougar and pounces away.

Honestly I see her only counterplay is to push her to turret and STILL dodge her poke. However this stops working the second she ranks up Cougar form. After that it's just try to deny her blue buff, but that requires coordination from at least one lane and the jungle. Any level below Gold 1 is not likely going to have that... which is where the majority of LoL's playerbase is right now. I'm not saying that they need to cater to the majority, but it's something they need to consider at this point.

Granted her poke is not near as free as champs like Ziggs, Grag, or LB, but it shouldn't be so punishing as it is now. Despite arguments towards rewarding Nidalee players for landing that skillshot I don't think ANY magic spell should crit for landing, let alone IEdge levels of crit at that range. Anivia's crit requires her to land something else and get close. Nidalee's spear just needs to hit someone from almost off-screen. While this takes an extreme level of skill to pull off I don't see any of these kinds of rewards built into one ability. Elise's cocoon and Morgana's Binding have comparable range but need a follow-up to provide the kind of damage that spears do. They're also on much longer cooldowns in part due to their utility. Nidalee's utility is vision and a spammable single target heal. This means she can keep a tank alive a little longer while chunking down whoever she can land a spear on.

My favorite solution that I've seen so far is to increase her cooldowns. Specifically her heal for me. If even Soraka needs to have her passive almost maximized just to get similar scaling for her ultimate (run numbers later on heals per second), a late game nidalee can keep her frontline up with blue buff and little difficulty. Her spammable kit is what makes her frustrating to play against, as you either need to burst her down or nothing you ever do will stick. Come later game you need to break her team to get through to her and that's if she doesn't pick you off while low.

Linna ExcelApr 15, 20141 votes

Good post.

I agree she has a lot of options. But I think the game needs a few champs like that to be healthy.
I think the biggest change I'd do on cooldowns is maybe her ult. Just keep her from being able to change forms and go back so quickly.
I think she has counterplay, but not all of it is obvious. CCing her is one option. Against a bad nidalee, all you should need is a Banshee's Veil. But if you are playing a ranged champ, I think her real counterplay is finding that sweet spot in her range, stay far enough away to keep her from going cougar, but close enough that her spears won't hurt that much. When you can't, try to keep minions between you and her.

If you ask me, it's the fact you have to know how to minimize spear damage by moving in but not too much that throws people off. People keep talking about her obscene spear damage, but they are only getting it because they are at a distance.

She is sort of meant to be long range artillery, but her cougar form is complicating issues. This is also why I'm resistant to just making the cougar better. As I see it, it is part of the problem.

ThamiosApr 15, 20141 votes

I understand options are good, but any champion with a flash-like ability on a short cooldown (able to jump a wall) and no mana cost has potential to be a problem. If tear was a viable pick, Nidalee would build it all the time as she's the best stacker of tear after level 6.

I just don't think Nidalee has suitable costs for the power in her kit. This is mainly AP Nidalee I see. Nidalee's costs are squishiness, high mana costs, and a difficult to land main offensive tool. Solutions are easy because she has her own peel AND heal plus her passive means chasing through the jungle is pointless, blue buff exists in the game, and skillcaps mean nothing if the player is good enough. It seems that her only limitation is blue buff, which teams can play around her to make it work. Plus spears are a great tool for steals if she knows the timing.

Here's what's weird about the idea for changing her ult cd: Elise's transform is the exact same cooldown with similar stat changes. Part of what make Elise feel fluid is her mobility from Rappel after landing her mage abilities. So far she suffers the same ways that Nidalee does: High mana costs in mage form, pure melee in critter form. The only difference is that Nidalee has longer range in mage form from spear and her heal instead of a stun. While I find the constant switching to be annoying, myself, I'm not sure how much it should be tweaked. Jayce's transform is just 2 seconds longer and it feels clunky.

Nidalee's counterplay is a lot harder to execute than for other champs. Often I'd have to advise the tank, jungle, and mid as to what to do when facing a nidalee because they don't know how to force her into a bad situation. Nidalee is hard to poke down after 8 minutes without blue buff control.

Long story short, not a lot of strong poke champs have a built-in heal PLUS escape. Putting both on a champ whose only limitation is mana costs so easily solved with a blue buff is a pretty binary condition. Sure she's not like to carry a game.

Nidalee's real balancing problem is she's completely dependent on team play. Her success revolves around whichever team plays best around her. As a lower-tier player this gets increasingly frustrating because more often than not teams don't have the coordination nor the cooperation needed to keep a Nid down. This is only my personal experience, though, and biases are biases.

Only Play NidApr 15, 20141 votes

But balancing something so that it´s bad in upper-level play just because it requires coordination to kill is stupid. That essentially says that champs should have very low skill caps because that way people know how to kill them. This is my issue, you´re balancing for low-level with no compensation. She will be useless halfway through gold unless you get those utterly incompetent teams, and then I might as well just play LB.

ThamiosApr 16, 20141 votes

At least with LB you need to be closer to do your damage and also use more than one spell plus you have to be closer and put yourself into harm's way to get that chumk out of someone. If someone is out of position it's your job to take advantage. Nidalee's spears feel like a cheap trick because she can just spam them out until they land because they end up with about a 4 second cooldown when you get athenes and blue buff. While I know it takes skill to land such an easy skillshot to miss, I think the reward for that skill could be tuned down a little. One-shotting a support or a squishy carry while their Banshee's is down is kind of a bullshit thing for a basic ability.

Though, as far as balancing goes I feel Nid is nowhere near problem levels, just really annoying and could use a little tuning. The only change I would like is to drop her spear max scaling down to 200%. While that's likely the average bonus most spears from range would end up getting I feel that with penetration it's more than enough. I apologize to OP on this as I tend to play devil's advocate more often than I should.

Only Play NidApr 17, 20141 votes

If by ¨Tuning¨ you mean complete and total rework. She either needs to be 100% reworked or left as is. She´s one of those champs where she´s only good because of the ¨cheap trick;¨ it´s what her entire kit is built around, because if you don´t move the power, her only source of viability is too weak to justify her as a pick.

ThamiosApr 21, 20141 votes

Thanks for taking the time to read everything I say. I know I make it hard by writing these essays, but I feel like getting my whole thought process out sometimes.

By "tuning" I mean tweaking some values around. Nidalee's unique design as a poke mage is that she lacks cc and depends on mobility to kite her targets. When in a siege situation usually 4-5 members of the defending team need to be under turret in order to not be dived, meaning that Nid usually knows where all her threats are plus has a nice tight bunch of targets to hit, too. Nidalee's designed to be flanked and captured... until she runs into the jungle, where she hops into Cougar form and gets free Alacrity enchantment (at level 6 before Boots 2) plus 15% from bushes which is where she'll always run when flanked (thinking midlane here as that's likely the most commonly sieged lane). Nidalee's whole job is to keep blue buff and launch spears. If she did decent in lane and has 1.5 big items (Athene's and Blasting Wand and Boots) if she hits any target other than a tank they've got to either lifesteal it back or base, or risk getting dived and AA minions or leave the team in a 4v5 at a turret. The ONLY factor behind this is Nidalee, her team is basically just interference while she tries to flank around the wave to land more spears. If any dive can land on her she can just bait the dive, heal, and pounce out, usually over a short wall. Nidalee can burst any carries down safely without risking a single thing. All I want to do is turn this "land 1 spear > take objective cuz their carry has to base" to "land 2-3 spears...". Nidalee is stupid amounts of safe since she gets free alacrity enchant + double zeal MS buff in brush. She's pretty much impossible to catch within jungle. This is allowed she just can't be THAT impactful in the safety her kit gives her. Heal and mobility > cc.

If a champion is viable because of some cheesy trick then that's an error in champion design. Nidalee's cheese is the raw damage she puts out in pretty amazing safety. I don't want to take away from her safety as cougar form is part of her identity, so why not take away from the problematic amounts of damage she does? All I'm asking is cutting 20-30% off the damage so she's not hitting carries and supports for over half their health. While it's a band-aid solution, it's perfectly fine. Whether the reduction comes out of base values, AP scaling, or distance scaling (honestly I feel that the distance is too much bonus damage). I just feel that not having a "spell" ult kind of tied the designers' hands when they were designing her to be appropriately powerful.

On an additional note, I find that her cougar form feels incredibly clunky to use... Her attack range is kind of hard to read and I feel that pounce could use a quality of life improvement.

TheNineApr 16, 20142 votes

I don't think I've seen this idea brought up, but what about spears that did like half damage or so at first, travelled a bit faster, but did more damage with each consecutive hit on the same target? It would eliminate a lot of the frustration of eating a random ass spear then having to leave the fight, while actually rewarding good aim on the part of the nid.

Also, this is just a personal pet peeve, but I think heals in pvp games that are balanced around characters not dying in 3 hits or so are dumb. Nid has everything to stay away while doing more damage and negating yours: hit her heal and safety too, either hard on one or balanced on both. She just has too much in her kit.

elliodoApr 13, 20141 votes

Lol good point