@Riot,With nid buffs coming in 7.2, lets do this RIGHT

TLDR; scroll down to bottom quote box

lets start with a history;

As a nidalee main, i know the state she is in. i have mained her since the day i started playing in patch 3.6. during that time she was on the pre-6 free rotation. and when i hit 6.. she was on the free-rotation, she was the first champ i bought before that free week was over.

since that fateful day in 3.6 i have seen EVERY iteration of her, the ups and the downs. and with the exception of TWO changes.. EVERY other buff of nerf to her i was able to accurately predict exactly how it would affect her on the live servers, BEFORE they hit the live servers, and without ever having a pbe account.

i have lvl 7 mastery with nidalee on 2 accounts.

so. as i player who LOVES to play nid... i REALLY want this done RIGHT.

Now i have had two years to figure out how to fix her. since during those two years she has always been OP in higher elo or worthless in every elo.

another thing people need to note

4.9 and before nidalee had wider spears.. and as people like to affectionaly call them, nuclear tipped tree trunks her traps did 80 magic damage and had % magic and armor pen, and proced in an AOE, she could not use cougar form at lvl 1

aka pre-rework nid i would like to note.. that this is NOT the nidalee ANYONE wants

nidalee was reworked in patch 4.10 she got cougar form at lvl 1, her traps were changes to 10% max hp + 1% per.02 ap her spear width was cut by 30% and she got the hunted affect when she landed a spear. but most notably the VAST majority of here damage was moved from her spear to her takedown. she can land a spear and do some damage.. but your not going to get 1 shot.. and for her to do any form of trade it FORCED her to land a spear. finally giving her much needed counterplay

4.11 saw some minor tweaks to her re-worked state.. nothing huge

but between 4.11 and 4.16 nidalee started becoming a terror in the top lane. all the champ that normally counter her.. (aka tanks and bruisers) she countered... and although for a while i did dislike the change. in 4.17 her attack damage and attack speed was significantly nerfed, and her AD ratios where cut while her ap ratios were buffed, makign her back intyo a mid laner

and in 4.17 she became BALANCED she could still top but was no longer broken (50% win rate across all elos) she could mid and was also not broken (50% win rate across all elos) she could ALSO support, in a pinch with roughly a 48% win rate and although this was not done at the time... she COULD jungle, not very well, but it was possible. nothing you could take into ranked, but still fun for unranked.

so 4.17 she was perfect.. and she stayed that way.. until 5.2 when ONE small change destroyed everything

and this indeed was one change that even i could never have predicted the outcome of. for what happened in 5.2 was this 5.2

General

Attack frame sped up slightly Prowl: New Effect: Can mark neutral monsters as Hunted, rooting them for 2 seconds

yes... that's it... THAT is the change that caused this mess

no buffs to anything vs players... none.. just a small simple change. thats it...

of course it didn't help the same patch introduced small little bug that, gave all her skills zero cooldown.. but she was disabled and fixed in 5.3

at that point though.. she was on the radar.

and from that point on... we have had jungle nid

im not going to go into every patch.. but the first issue was removing the 10% hp from her traps (which was already capped at 200) an gutting them to 40 damage (half of her pre-rework, without the aoe, and without any magic or armor men, and taking twice the duration for the damage)

all they had to do was lower the cap....

but patch after patch every change was supposed to nerf jungle nidalee.. but never really had any effect other that gutting her laning by 5.15 she could no longer lane... sub 40% win rates in EVERY lane, but in the jungle.. she was still going strong

6.6 saw the first real nerf to her jungle, but all it did was nerf lower elos, higher elos wehere barely affected this created what would eventually become a 9% win-rate differential between bronze and challenger

6.9 actually was a fantastic change, very well done.. and i congratulate riot on this patch, although the starting PBE change pretty much gave every mid nid a heart attack.. but in the end... the change that went live was perfect

6.11 pretty much shattered the hopes and dreams nidalee would EVER lane again. as this completely destroyed her ability to trade OR farm in lane.

6.15 was another well done change, and afte this change nidalee was perfectly balanced outside of the top 2% of players. she stopped getting picked in lcs.. and the hat for her died down..

and then out of the blue.. came worlds... where she had a 100% pick ban. now SINCE worlds HAPPENS to include the top 2% of players where nidalee WAS still an issue. the WHOLE FREAKING WORLD, freaks the hell out. despite the fact that without a 5 man team with voice chat... who makes a team designed to work with her... she CANNOT do anything you see her do in worlds.

because lets think about it... what does nidalee do... she is a squishy AP burst jungler with high mobility.. but ZERO form of cc. well that's greats.. she is balanced around not having cc when she ganks... expect with voice chat.. and the best 5 man teams in the world.. EVERY time she in coming to gank.. guess what? the laner CC's the opponent so nid can land the spear. and yes.. landing a spear with a immobile target is pretty damn fucking easy. but that donest happen.. unless EVERY LANE you gank can CC them the EXACT moment you arrive. which DOES NOT HAPPEN... unless your in worlds...

so nidalee got absolutely needless nerfs in 6.21, just to make people happy.. honestly... they only nerfed her by like 1 % at most... and this is a prime example of riot just slapping on a nerf to "please the masses" while at the same time.. knowing the nerf isnt actaulyl goign to nerf her much at all.

but then.. dispite my EVERY WARNING... about strength of the ages removal killing her. and the patch AFTER she was just nerfed.. the new jungle comes out.. and strength of the ages gets removed. how honestly... i was 100% wrong about the new jungle.. it is actually MUCH easier for her to do her first clear. but the loss of strength of the ages... and replacing it with a mastery which BUFFS all her counters, and forcing her to go thunderlords (which had a 6% lower winrate compared to SOA) dropped her winrate by (and this is going to be some amazing number here...) 6%.. wow... who would have seen that coming... raises hand

anyways.. her she is.. 41% win rate after a small buff to her AD which brought her up from 38%....

and in 7.2 she is getting a buff...

so how do we do this?

well the BEST solution is to just go a FLAT revert to 4.17 -5.1.. where she was last balanced.. and then just see how she jungles... (obviously keeping the bug fixes in)

yes.. you heard that right... its been TWO SEASONS and not ONCE during that time.. was she balanced...(and by this i mean not broken or worthless in at at least 1 elo for any patch) i think its about time to give up...

becuase nidalee was designed to be a laner. her counterplay is to stop her from farming and to get in her face. and of course to dodge the spears

well lets think how does the jungle work.. does the jungle mobs start her from farming? NO do the jungle mobs get in her face? NO can u invade a hyper mobile jungler to GET in thier face? NO, you can push them away from that camp... but then they just go to the next one and do jungle camps dodge spears? well no, unless you count that FUCKING CRAB....

so... where is her counterplay in the jungle? becuase even as a nid main... i dont freaking see it...

put her back in the lane... where she HAS counterplay. where she was DESIGNED to be. and Lore be damned if she cant jungle... im sorry... lore is not more important that having a fun, balanced champ.

and WHEN her lanes are balanced THEN you can go and think about maybe slightly tweaking somthing to allow her to jungle again.. but NOT at the expense of ANY of her lanes