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Why Nidalee can't be easily balanced

Linna Excel·4/13/2014, 8:30:13 PM·3 votes·1,591 views

I know a lot of people hate on Nidalee 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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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 Waifu4/14/2014, 9:55:00 AM4 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.

elliodo4/13/2014, 9:00:44 PM3 votes

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

Only Play Nid4/13/2014, 8:37:25 PM3 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.

WereScrib4/14/2014, 4:11:17 AM3 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.

TheNine4/16/2014, 2:18:15 AM2 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.

Thamios4/15/2014, 12:36:26 AM2 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.

Caoil4/14/2014, 12:34:52 AM2 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?

elliodo4/13/2014, 9:17:17 PM1 votes

Lol good point