Regarding Nidalee and her Q

aeVoWXYKH0·Jul 28, 2015·4 votes·1,820 views

Nidalee is pretty balanced. All the rage is aimed towards mostly her Javelin Toss and Takedown. People hypocritically say that her ratios are too op but they only show the side of the story that suits them. Her spear ratio is really weak at minimum range but they say it is the biggest in game as if any distance traveled grants the maximum damage. The thing is the spear is one of the hardest abilities to land in game , it can be blocked by any kind of unit , the hitbox is 45 (probably the smallest in game) , the travel speed is decent and the trajectory is easy to read thanks to the long spear model. Lastly the damage is big only if it travels past half it's range which is enough time to dodge it , the increasing damage is there to reward good predictions and punish bad dodges. All of the other abilities are useless if she doesn't hit a decent spear or if you aren't a low health target right next to her. So stop complaining and pay attention .

30 Comments

RavenhaleJul 28, 20153 votes

For argument sake, what sort of damage can Nidalee put out at Level 6? I would assume she would land a spear (we'll claim the 200% damage cap) and follow that with pounce, takedown and swipe. Figuring three ranks in Q, her spear lands (100 + 40% AP)x(2). Figuring she has taken AP masteries and runes, she might have roughly 30 AP even before items. She just might have one completed item at this point, but I doubt it. More likely it will be a Doran's Ring and NLR (75AP) or just the Runeglaive (50AP) for those junglers. So either 105 AP or 80 AP at level 6.

Mid Laners Spear is capped at 284 damage. Junglers at 264.

Quick compare, Lux hits her rank 3 Q with the same items and it will do 230 damage, regardless of range. Annie's rank 3 Q also does 230 damage and cannot miss.

However, Nidalee has three more skills to burst you down compared to other champions.

Her pounce at Level 6 (rank 2 cougar) will add another 100 + 30%AP. Even if she hit you with a half range spear, she has made up for the lost damage with pounce. Midlaners 132 damage. Junglers 124 damage.

Takedown naturally comes next, which will get a 33% increase for being marked. Takedown base stats are 20 + 75%AD + 36% AP. Figuring neither Nidalee iteration will have any additional AD, she has a natural AD of 62 at level 6. Mid Lane Nidalee will strike for 139 damage and Junglers hit for 127 damage.

This will be the major departure though between Mid and Jungle. Jungle should have Runeglaive, which carries a Spellblade that should land with the next AA. Mid is going to deal out a meager 62 phys damage with an AA while a Jungler has a 100%AD + 30%AP boosted AA. Jungler will wallop you for another 148 (that added 86 damage easily makes up for all the small advantages Mid laners had to this point).

At this point, pure damage dealt from Mid Lane Nid is 617 damage while Jungler Nid dished out 663. These are maximums with the minimums hovering around 475 and 531 respectively (half range spears). Of course your armor and mr will reduce this damage, but these numbers can be used to compare with other burst mages.

Oh, but I'm forgetting Nidalee can easily get a Swipe in and probably pounce you again. Swipe does 130 + 45%AP regardless of whether or not a target is marked and has fairly decent range even if the target started to run. She could also toggle back to human form to land a close range spear, which resets her cougar form and allows her to dive right back into her combo.

It's a wonder why I do so poorly with her with all this damage she can dish out.

Oh, no it isn't.

Because Nidalee doesn't stun or CC you at any point of that mess. Her only real defenses at this point are base stats, runes and masteries. While she is bursting you down, you can burst her back. If you have any stun or CC to interrupt her chain, you'll probably end up ahead. Just compare the numbers.

Nid pounces on Lux. Lux will probably Q, Flash (out of melee range), R, AA, E, AA. Her cooldowns won't let her do much more than that.

230 (rank 3 Q) + 375 (rank 1 R) + 82 (passive+AA) + 120 (rank 1 E) + 82 (passive+AA) = 889 raw damage.

I don't think it would be too hard for Lux to hit her Q at short range, so this combo should be a valid counter that forces Nid to flash and retreat.

IMO I think Nidalee might be a bit weak for Mid Lane. As a Jungler, she seems to be fine picking off unsuspecting targets under 50% health. No different than any other jungler.

aeVoWXYKH0Jul 28, 20151 votes

Ok , first of all , I loved how you argumented and brought real stats to the table . You gave actual numbers based on generic stats , really well done. Second of all , you really made it look at first like you were against Nidalee , and then you brought the plot twist about her lack of cc and cleared things up. Cool.

But I have one single observation , you said that after Nidalee does her combo she can jump back , shapeshift , spear from close range and do her combo again , but the Hunted passive only resets her ultimate cooldown , her basic abilities will probably have their cooldowns still up unless around 3 to 4 seconds have passed. There was a bug when her passive reset all of her cougar form abilities and it was elo heaven then.

Anyway , really well said , more people should think like you. Respect!

RavenhaleJul 28, 20152 votes

Nidalee is my only Jungle champion. It bothers me when people demand her to be nerfed, when I'm struggling with her.

Gank Mid? Nope, Ahri charmed me and kicked my tail. Maybe this game against Annie? Um, nope. Surely I can gank a Mid Lane Cho Gath... ha ha, enjoy the Silence.

And this is the lane I'm supposedly viable for?

If I'm not outright dead, I end up running off and throwing a heal and apology to my mid laner.

The only time I win is when the target panics and runs. Most that stand and fight... win.

What's bad is I don't see how improving my skill is going to evade all forms of CC. Since most of the time I follow a landed spear with pounce, I'm not exactly in a position to dodge even skill shot CC. It's really going to come down to timing it so that I combo when their CC is on cooldown. That's asking a bit much for Solo Que where most communication is shared by pings.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

I was thinking to Edit, but I will reply instead. I made a mistake in the 200% calculation on that spear. I only did 100% bonus damage, not 200%.

The Max Range Mid Laner spear can potentially deal 426 damage while the Jungler can do 396. This is an additional 142 or 132 damage that I missed.

Bear in mind max range spears often place the target out of the 750 pounce range, so it is difficult to get any semblance of a combination in when landing a max range spear.

(I really need to work on my understanding of how Nidalee works)

Edit: I'm thinking Takedown works a bit differently than what I initially thought. Obviously I missed the execute portion of it, but it actually is a Basic Attack that procs on-hit effects like Runeglaive.

So, my estimations of 139 and 127 are off and there is no second AA. Instead, the midlaner does only that 139 plus a % bonus damage that depends on target's missing health. Assuming missing health is 60%, the actual value of Takedown is boosted by 90% for a total of 264 damage. The Jungler with Runeglaive gets a 175% AD and 66% AP basic attack that is boosted 90% on the same champion. That damage is actually 345.

So... no AA in there. Just a super hard Takedown that scales with missing health.

Zorae42Jul 28, 20151 votes

I really like that you included numbers. But there are a few errors with your lux comparison.

Lux maxes her E first, not her Q. Also, Lux usually builds some sort of mp5+cdr before nlr because she's extremely mana hungry and her abilities have decent cds, so your numbers are fairly off for her (slightly off if you switch the ranks in Q to her E)

Next, her Q only lasts 2 secs (before tenacity). Lux is not an ADC, her attack speed is slow. Include the cast time on her ult on top of that, and Nidalee would be out around the end of her first aa.

Plus, it's a snare/root, not a stun. Letting Nidalee pop back to human, heal, land a shortish range spear on the Lux (if off CD), and then pounce (with or without hunt since Lux wont have gotten far) in for the kill.

Finally, at the end of her combo, all of Lux's abilities are now on CD for quite a while (15 sec on her Q, 10 on her E without cdr). Since Lux does do quite a bit of dmg, it would make much more sense for the Nid to continue her combo on the now defenseless Lux (who would be extremely close to death at that point).

Of course, that's just because you picked Lux. The fact that a decent portion of her dmg is tied up with needing to AA, and that her waveclear ability is terrible compared to other ranged mages (in power, mana cost, and cd all while being her main form of poke), kinda leaves her in a sad spot.

The numbers would have been more comparable (and the example less in favor of nid) if you'd chosen Xerath or Ziggs. Since they do have hard CC and more dmg than Lux.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

Honestly, with Lux... I probably would have built a Fiendish Codex and Forbidden Idol by level 6 en route to a Morellonomicon. Either that or a build path for Athene's depending on how bad trades are going. Unless I'm stupid lucky, I probably will only have 75 AP at level 6.

And yes, it would be Rank 1 Q and Rank 3 E, since it's faster waveclear.

The way I pictured that encounter was Nidalee had already landed her spear and pounced in, meaning Lux was already behind two attacks (and possibly dead if this was a gank). But assuming Lux was sitting at half health or so, I figured a Q and flash back with instant R should force Nidalee to Heal. She can't continue her combo with Lux out of melee range and might be unable to escape a quick R without burning her own flash.

With Spear and Pounce both on cooldowns, there's no quick way for Nidalee to go back in cougar form (trap if you are silly lucky). By now Lux is out of cougar form range and Nidalee can't close the gap to get her Takedown or Runeglaive proc without eating an E and AA. Chances are Nidalee will eat an E anyways, since there's some nasty range on Lucent, which should allow Lux to retreat.

So if Nidalee only gets two attacks and a heal in while Lux gets a Q, E and R... it's almost a wash. If Nidalee is only Rank 1 with her E... its probably better to hope Lux is still within AA range to proc Runeglaive to at least get a third attack in (midlaner should heal). The boosted AA should guarantee that the trade was at least a win.

My biggest point in the whole example was that any form of CC, even a weak snare, tends to be enough to shut the door on Nidalee.

Zorae42Jul 28, 20151 votes

I assumed the same (although I assumed you managed to swipe before Lux got away). I was mostly considering midlane Nidalee since just one combo would probably kill a Lux who was at 50-75% health before you ganked :P Not because jgl nid is OP, but because lux is really squishy.

I thought pounce gets a 1.5 sec cd if you hit your hunted target? Or am I mis-reading her ability? If Lux stayed within her AA range, it wouldn't be too difficult to pounce within/really close to melee reach.

As for my arguement about getting another javelin off: Javelin has a 6 sec CD, and it starts as soon as you throw it right? I assumed the travel time of a max range spear + time to get there and pounce would be around 2-3 seconds. Then after the 2 sec lux binding you'd just have 1-2 secs for it to be off CD (0.4-1.4 if you have runeglaive).

Since Lux will be waiting a long time for her Q and her E, it shouldn't be too difficult to wait just a sec or two and land another spear (if she backs off farther that's just more dmg for you), and then get to do your combo again. This time with a takedown which should kill the Lux since she's super squishy and low from your two combos.

I agree that CC wrecks Nidalee (I take great pleasure playing Amumu against Nidalee). It's just that Lux was a poor example. Morg and Zyra are snaring mages that have better ways to deal with any potential follow up from Nid. And Xerath/Ziggs would do more dmg, would back up much farther, and have short enough CDs to still be a threat after blowing their combo.

GengarJul 28, 20152 votes

{quoted} Nidalee is pretty balanced.

{quoted} The thing is the spear is one of the hardest abilities to land in game

This is funny to read

aeVoWXYKH0Jul 28, 20151 votes

Since I gave you an easy to comprehend argument I do not see why you find this funny , but I am glad you find me funny!

TeemoXNidaleeJul 28, 20151 votes

You're right sir, I'm tired of seeing all this Nidalee hate.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

In lane you are correct. In the jungle, hitting spears is one of the easiest things in the game. You don't have enough reaction time to dodge it the majority of the time since it's coming out of the fog and boom, you are dead. That is the problem.

Nid needs to have her spear adjusted where it does flat damage at all ranges so she still has poke and then buff one of her other damage abilities to compensate. This would make her balanced and WAY less toxic.

aeVoWXYKH0Jul 28, 20151 votes

Well , I can partly agree with you , I found myself getting hit by spears that I didn't see. It was mostly because I wasn't paying attention or because of the invisible spears bug which is probably caused by throwing them out of fog of war. But I found spears mostly easy to dodge even from fog of war if it passes trough revealed parts of the map too.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

The other problem is how fast she can spam them. You are going to get hit regardless of how good you dodge. Just watch the pro games.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20152 votes

I wouldn't mind a flat damage on her spear. Honestly, if you made it resemble Annie or Lux's Q, that would be fine. More consistent, reliable damage.

As for her other abilities, the only thing I felt would be nice is adding a flat 1 second stun on her Bushwack. It would take a little skill to make use of it with the trap set delay, but any form of CC for Nid would be nice, even if it ends up only as a disengage mechanism.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

Exactly, that way she has a complete kit and would still be valuable.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

In lane you are correct. In the jungle, hitting spears is one of the easiest things in the game. You don't have enough reaction time to dodge it the majority of the time since it's coming out of the fog and boom, you are dead. That is the problem.

Nid needs to have her spear adjusted where it does flat damage at all ranges so she still has poke and then buff one of her other damage abilities to compensate. This would make her balanced and WAY less toxic.

Honestly I think that's a bad idea. While people really struggle to take advantage of the ranges that Nid is weak at currently, one of the biggest balancing factors of having a 1500 range Javelin is that until you get somewhat close to the range limit, it's honestly quite ignorable. It means her range of influence is basically between 1000 and 1500 units away from her. Give her a spear with damage that's flat regardless of distance and suddenly someone closing the gap on her is a free initiation because she can land a point blank spear and use the rest of her combo to 100-0.

Her weakness right now is people jumping on her because Javelin Toss makes it essential for her to start fights with people at long distances. Give it flat damage and she will be just as strong starting fights from melee range as she is from 1500 range. It's just not a good idea.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

She can start fights from point blank right now with her traps. So that argument doesn't matter.

Plus, all she has to do is hit from half the range to start doing heavy damage. Her max range spears do more damage than 75% of the ults in the game and she can spam them! So she is eventually going to hit you and either make you back or kill you. No sane person can say she is balanced at all.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

Her Rank 5 Q deals out 150 + 40%AP that gets up to a 200% bonus. A Nid with Luden's, DeathCap, RuneGlaive + Masteries should at least have 400AP. That's a 310 damage point blank spear that can max out at 930.

Lux with the same 400AP rank 3 R will only dish out 800.

And Nid can throw those every six seconds with no CDR....

Edit: Annie's Rank 5 Q with 400 AP does 540 damage every four seconds with no CDR... ouch Her Tibbers does 745.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

She can start fights from point blank right now with her traps. So that argument doesn't matter.

Plus, all she has to do is hit from half the range to start doing heavy damage. Her max range spears do more damage than 75% of the ults in the game and she can spam them! So she is eventually going to hit you and either make you back or kill you. No sane person can say she is balanced at all.

You can't seriously compare Nidalee landing a point black decent damage spear and assassinating you to Nidalee starting a fight with a Trap. Her traps do absolutely no damage - if she Hunts you with those she is almost entirely reliant on her cougar form damage to kill you and given her most damaging ability in cougar form is an execute, she really needs to have chunked you with her spear before then.

The argument matters hugely. Flat damage spear is a gigantic buff to her close range fights and you have to take into account the fact that you have made it so that the point at which she is currently easiest to fight is no longer safe to fight her from.

Don't get the point of the second paragraph anyway. Jayce Q is exactly the same, Varus Q not far off. Nidalee does not have the only massive damage long range skillshot in the game.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

Her spear does do more damage than most ults. It will take over half the health of a carry and she can throw them every 5-6 seconds. 2 hits and you are dead. The Jayce Q/W combo is similar but it does less damage for an AoE instead. The Varius Q is VERY telegraphed and easier to avoid, plus it does less damage at max range.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Her spear does do more damage than most ults. It will take over half the health of a carry and she can throw them every 5-6 seconds. 2 hits and you are dead. The Jayce Q/W combo is similar but it does less damage for an AoE instead. The Varius Q is VERY telegraphed and easier to avoid, plus it does less damage at max range.

I didn't say it doesn't do more damage than most ults, I just don't think that's a problem. There is so much more to comparing abilities than just the damage they do, and a basic ability outdamaging an ult is not inherently wrong depending on what else is at play.

The fact that you're arguing the balance of Jayce's Q and Varus's Q alone should inform you that the core idea of a basic ability not being allowed to outdamage an ultimate is faulty. Both Jayce and Varus have Qs that outdamage a variety of ultimates and both of those abilities also have large advantages over Javelin Toss (including outdamaging it until a certain range). There are so many things to argue about here regarding which abilities are better that someone could easily say all three of them are inherently broken. You could even argue that Javelin Toss is the worst of those three abilities (I would probably lean on that side).

You can't argue absolutes in LoL. I mean Riot themselves clearly don't agree that basic abilities should do less damage than ults so... I don't see why we should make up a rule of balance here.

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

That is the trade off you get when a champion doesn't have a true ultimate. Nidalee Jayce Elise Udyr all make up for their lack of ultimates with more abilities in their kits to balance them out. That added utility keeps them balanced against champs who do have ults. When you compare the Jayce combo to the Nid spear, Jayce has 2 abilities that go on CD vs 1 for Nid. The Varus Q does does do great damage because his actual ult is a CC, not a damage spell.

I just have a problem when a basic ability that is spamable does so much damage.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

That is the trade off you get when a champion doesn't have a true ultimate. all make up for their lack of ultimates with more abilities in their kits to balance them out. That added utility keeps them balanced against champs who do have ults. When you compare the Jayce combo to the Nid spear, Jayce has 2 abilities that go on CD vs 1 for Nid. The Varus Q does does do great damage because his actual ult is a CC, not a damage spell.

I just have a problem when a basic ability that is spamable does so much damage.

Why does it matter if Jayce spends two cooldowns on his empowered Shock Blast? Jayce spending two CDs on his poke doesn't make him hit it any less often than Nidalee's does, it just makes the mana investment a little bit higher. Again, when your initial argument is "It's inherently wrong for a champ to deal more damage than an ult with a basic ability", you can't then find little nuances in the abilities to decide they're fair. Jayce uses two abilities but he hits far more reliably because it's faster, has a larger hitbox and hits in an AOE. Nidalee uses one ability with (potentially) higher damage on a single target, but she instead has a smaller hitbox and a slower missile speed. There's a huge list of trade-offs on both sides there - how can you possibly say one is clearly more powerful than the other?

Transform champions give up having abilities that are as impactful as proper ultimates but that doesn't mean they can't have abilities that do ultimate level damage assuming they lack in other areas (i.e. neither Nid nor Jayce's Qs have any utility whatsoever, they just do vaguely unreliable damage). I mean if you had a choice between having Primordial Burst or Javelin Toss on your R button, would you really choose Javelin Toss? If you had a choice between Unleashed Power and Shock Blast, would you pick the latter? I don't think so. Because even though they do ultimate level damage, they trade a huge amount of power in other ways (most notably reliability).

LuggJul 28, 20151 votes

Because Jayce's CDs are almost double Nids. That's the tradeoff. Plus Jayce doesn't start doing serious damage until mid game, Nid does insane damage ALL game. There is a big difference there since by mid game you can itemize against Jayce but Nid has already done her damage by then.

Plus it's like my intial post said, Nid is played mostly jungle so you don't see the spears coming in time to avoid them. When was the last time you saw a Jayce jungle?

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

Most damaging form is an execute? Are you talking about how Takedown procs the next basic attack to do up to 150% AD?

First off, it will never proc 150% AD because that requires the target to be missing 100% of their life. It's an AD based execute on an assassin that probably is building AP. Yes, having less life means she does more damage. That doesn't change the fact that a Level 18 Nid that has built no AD only has a base AD of 107.

Seriously her execute even at 150% AD is less than 270 damage. Her point blank spear does more damage than that.

Also, her trap does deal damage. It's a DoT over 4 seconds that doesn't scale much with her AP but has decent base numbers. A rank 5 W deals 200 damage. Not sure how you can dismiss 200 guaranteed damage and then worry about an execute that is maxed at 270.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Most damaging form is an execute? Are you talking about how Takedown procs the next basic attack to do up to 150% AD?

First off, it will never proc 150% AD because that requires the target to be missing 100% of their life. It's an AD based execute on an assassin that probably is building AP. Yes, having less life means she does more damage. That doesn't change the fact that a Level 18 Nid that has built no AD only has a base AD of 107.

Seriously her execute even at 150% AD is less than 270 damage. Her point blank spear does more damage than that.

Also, her trap does deal damage. It's a DoT over 4 seconds that doesn't scale much with her AP but has decent base numbers. A rank 5 W deals 200 damage. Not sure how you can dismiss 200 guaranteed damage and then worry about an execute that is maxed at 270.

...? Takedown has up to 120% AP scaling. Even on a 30% HP target it'll massively outdamage both Pounce and Swipe.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

I'm sorry. Is this page out of date?

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Nidalee

I'm pretty sure Takedown scales according to what that says though I might be calculating it wrong.

AbyssphereJul 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I'm sorry. Is this page out of date?

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Nidalee

I'm pretty sure Takedown scales according to what that says though I might be calculating it wrong.

I think you're reading it wrong or it's been fixed since you looked at it but the numbers on Takedown are:

Minimum Magic Damage: 4 / 20 / 50 / 90 (+ 75% AD) (+ 36% AP) Prowl-Enhanced Maximum Damage: 13.3 / 66.7 / 166.7 / 300 (+ 250% AD) (+ 120% AP)

As you can see, its damage goes far beyond both Pounce and Swipe. That's why Nidalee is poor at fighting without landing a spear - her execute is the strongest nuke in her cougar form.

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

Ah, I see what they're doing there. They're applying the 33% Bonus for Hunted and 150% for 100% Missing health to the raw numbers before instead of after. In my head I was keeping the minimum of 48%AP, figuring out the damage, and then multiplying the percent health bonus. This is multiplying the percent health bonus before figuring the damage. It's the same number, though it does make it look like it scales insanely with AP.

Hmmm... so a 400 AP, 107 AD Lvl 18 Nid would dish out 526 damage to a marked, full Health Champion with Takedown, 723 damage to a 75% Health, 921 for 50% Health, 1118 for 25% Health and 1307 for 1% Health.

So a standard Champion with about 2500 Life dies from Takedown at 1000 Life (40% Remaining).

RavenhaleJul 28, 20151 votes

I'm going to agree with Lugg here that the point blank is not a problem. Every burst mage can start point blank, so why should Nidalee be forced to start at range? It's not going to be a problem, since she still has absolutely no defenses.

If her Q does get flat damage, that six second cooldown would have to change.