Yea, it's a bit like "poke until you can all-in", sort of like Jayce or Elise, maybe Gnar to a degree, but Nidalee has a bit less flexibility because she pretty much only offers damage (and the heal, but that's not terribly interesting as far as gameplay; traps aren't too combat focused anymore, especially since they gutted the damage). The rework was meant to bring more interplay between her forms, which it certainly did, but often times it feels like her human form is more about setting up her cougar form, which basically just functions as an execute.
Part of this is due to her being a form-change champion, and therefore her spells are individually weaker than others (or, in Nidalee's case, her spells are heavily weighted on one side at the expense of other spells), and also her thematically being a champion that lacks CC (at least that's what Riot told me when they reworked her), but I do think they could make some of her spells more interesting/dynamic, or at least more useful on their own.
She does have a lot of interesting gameplay in the right circumstances, but her basic play pattern is, well, pretty basic (proc hunt passive -> cougar form combo; AP Nid can/needs to poke more or wait for a good opening). I still have fun playing her, she's my favorite champion, but I don't play her much since I feel like she's pretty situational in mid lane and I think jungle Nidalee is stupid.
EDIT: I think another major factor in her feeling binary is how linear her play pattern is; her skillshot is linear, her dash becomes targeted on hunted targets; her combo more or less falls on the same line. She still has some of the dynamics that I enjoy, in having to use her pounce or just good positioning to get proper angles around minion waves, etc to find the right spear to throw, but it feels a bit less now with the way her passive works.
