Lets talk about Nidalee

Nidalee SO NYAAA·Nov 30, 2015·7 votes·783 views

As someone who plays a lot of Nidalee I think she needs a bit of help. Her Q is really unreliable and her human W is almost a worthless spell even for jungle clears. I started out playing Nid in Mid lane but ever sense the Passive mark to work in the jungle shes been nerfed to point that she can't play in lane. AD and AP nid feel really bad. Her Winrate is 43% right now just about Ryze. I was afraid to make this thread because nid threads seem to bring a a lot of people that hate Nidalee. So do you think Nid needs some help or do you think she needs more nerfs?

14 Comments

LankPantsNov 30, 20153 votes

I think she needs another rework TBH.

She needs to have power taken off of her spears and more power put into cougher. While they did this change a little already I don't think they went extreme enough on it, her spears still hit way to hard and are still way too effective at forcing people to seed objectives to her if even one lands.

BastionKrossDec 6, 20151 votes

Pretty much this. Even though she's chucking ballistic missiles instead of nuclear missiles, she's still got that old toxic playstyle of "I'm going to throw Q's at you until I hit you enough times that my cat form finishes you off. If you try to fight me I'll turn into a cat, leap away, and heal myself up."

It's like playing against a Zed , and nobody likes him either. Although at least with him you can QSS a lot of his all in damage.

Crowe StalkerNov 30, 20152 votes

What she needs is to not have so much damage front-loaded into her Spear while simultaneously having an Execute. The problem with Nidalee as a Champion was before, if you got hit by either one spear, you were (at best) now needing to go to fountain or, at worst, dead. Now, if she lands a spear it doesn't do as much damage, but she's still choosing when to engage and when to bail and that's not healthy. She has no realistic price to pay for her poke-until-execute playstyle Riot tried putting her into in order to 'make up' for her losing so much damage on her Nuclear Warheads.

KaylaDaBamfNov 30, 20151 votes

{quoted}

What she needs is to not have so much damage front-loaded into her Spear while simultaneously having an Execute. The problem with Nidalee as a Champion was before, if you got hit by either one spear, you were (at best) now needing to go to fountain or, at worst, dead. Now, if she lands a spear it doesn't do as much damage, but she's still choosing when to engage and when to bail and that's not healthy. She has no realistic price to pay for her poke-until-execute playstyle Riot tried putting her into in order to 'make up' for her losing so much damage on her Nuclear Warheads.

She's an assassin; that's what assassins do. coughcoughzedcough

Crowe StalkerNov 30, 20151 votes

Except pretty much any assassin you or I know about has to jump in to deal the insane amount of damage that a Nidalee Spear alone does. What makes Assassins fair is that they have to eventually go all-in, whereas Nidalee only needs to chuck spears until she chooses the fight, which is incredibly toxic gameplay-design. The only way her playstyle could get even more ridiculous at this point is if her autos matched the range of Caitlyn .

KaylaDaBamfDec 3, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Except pretty much any assassin you or I know about has to jump in to deal the insane amount of damage that a Nidalee Spear alone does. What makes Assassins fair is that they have to eventually go all-in, whereas Nidalee only needs to chuck spears until she chooses the fight, which is incredibly toxic gameplay-design. The only way her playstyle could get even more ridiculous at this point is if her autos matched the range of .

Except for all champions have poke. Zed Q's do I lot of damage. I know it's not as much as a max-range spear but also, the hitbox on Nidalee spear is extremely narrow. And on top of that; every champion is designed to have a decent engage ability and a decent escape ability. Sometimes they're the same ability; such as Nidalee's cougar form W, or Zed's W, or Ekko's E, or Gnar's E, the list goes on. My point is, my idea of balance in a champion is a champion that has counterplay. It's extremely easy to counter play a Nidalee. Sidestep until she's low on mana, bait a Q-R-W, cc her, and go all in. She hurts; but every champion hurts if you play them right.

Crowe StalkerDec 4, 20152 votes

Nidalee is the one that chooses when to Q-R-W. That's not Counterplay no matter what CC you have, that's them making mistakes, not you being good. And yes, Nidalee's Q was reduced in hitbox and yes, it doesn't do as much damage as it did before, but it's still not fun to play against to have your health bar torn in half from almost an entire screen away.

AbyssphereDec 4, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Nidalee is the one that chooses when to Q-R-W. That's not Counterplay no matter what CC you have, that's them making mistakes, not you being good. And yes, Nidalee's Q was reduced in hitbox and yes, it doesn't do as much damage as it did before, but it's still not fun to play against to have your health bar torn in half from almost an entire screen away.

You missed his point, though. He's saying that Nidalee is not the only assassin with a "poke until you can safely all-in" pattern. Zed forces people back through poke much more reliably than Nidalee not only in the early game but in the mid. Obviously her spears do more damage but for every spear she lands, 5 Zed Qs land, and he can go for harsher trades if he likes too, before going all in.

I understand that being able to stay far away and do damage while having the potential to engage much harder than that is frustrating, but it's something that's increasingly common. Zed does it better than Nidalee, LeBlanc has extreme safety and difficult to punish trades, Ekko has huge safety and long range poke + CC, etc. Nidalee shouldn't be rendered unviable because she has a play pattern that Riot has made more prominent in recent years.

KaylaDaBamfDec 6, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Nidalee is the one that chooses when to Q-R-W. That's not Counterplay no matter what CC you have, that's them making mistakes, not you being good. And yes, Nidalee's Q was reduced in hitbox and yes, it doesn't do as much damage as it did before, but it's still not fun to play against to have your health bar torn in half from almost an entire screen away.

All champions ever choose to use whatever combo. That's the whole aspect of the game and more specifically, assassins.

Nidalee SO NYAAANov 30, 20152 votes

Yup I make a Nid thread and it gets down voted I LOVE this community

shaiithNov 30, 20152 votes

I've played Nidalee on and off and i'm crap at it every time. My biggest issue and failure is that i feel she has too many options and i try too hard to make them all fit in somewhere, unavoidably turning them all useless (spear, heal, trap, bite, pounce, claw). Many players make it work quite well, so this is more of a personal issue, yet i find the ultimate quite bothersome. Every time i have to choose whether to stay a human long range support or turn into a squishy melee combatant. That's good, it's her mechanics, it's supposed to work that way. However, i think it's too much in a way i can't really explain. My compatibility with the champion is pretty bad so don't expect anything thing useful from this, but i consider Nidalee's necessary 8-button push in 4s time to be an annoying experience that not everyone can handle. (spear/trap, switch, pounce, bite, claw, pounce in retreat/switch, heal, spear, trap, repeat)

For fighting games veterans, she's a cool choice to have. For everyone else, it's a button mishmash with disastrous results.

Edit: I'm not saying she should be changed to fit those who can't play her, like me. That would be a crappy decision. But if you're going to make something that need certain skills to apprehend, don't wish-wash and do it right. You're not supposed to have every champ tailored so that every chump can play with, but to have chumps who want to play a champ willing and able to learn how to play them.

A LiberalNov 30, 20152 votes

I was literally just about to make a thread. I doubt I play as much nidalee as you (I only have 30k), but I play a fair share, and she's one of my favorite champions.

Personally I feel one of her major issues is that the speed buff on her hunt passive is too low now that everyone gets free movespeed from items and most champions have something in the way of mobility. Personally I've been having a lot of success with stormraiders surge.

As for actual kit issues, w needs some touchups, even if it is as simple as a stun.

I also feel like adding back the movespeed and ad buff to cougar form could be nice, or a Cassiopeia like reset on her cougar e on hinted targets, but in exchange q now consumes the hunt mark. This would really help her in her get in, kill, get out play pattern, whereas right now its more like get in, almost kill, die trying to kill or leave before you die.

Another thing that's always been weird for me is that level does affect her cougar abilities, yet they are unavailable until leveled up. I think it would help her if her qwe cougar form was all abailinle from level one. It might be a little op, but its not as bad is if say, Elise had them all.

All that said, this thread will never get any attention because people have such a hate boner for nidalee, even though she's been trash for a while now.

That wont stop me from playing her tho

Also, on my phone so sorry for any errors

AbyssphereDec 4, 20152 votes

{quoted}

I was literally just about to make a thread. I doubt I play as much nidalee as you (I only have 30k), but I play a fair share, and she's one of my favorite champions.

Personally I feel one of her major issues is that the speed buff on her hunt passive is too low now that everyone gets free movespeed from items and most champions have something in the way of mobility. Personally I've been having a lot of success with stormraiders surge.

As for actual kit issues, w needs some touchups, even if it is as simple as a stun.

I also feel like adding back the movespeed and ad buff to cougar form could be nice, or a Cassiopeia like reset on her cougar e on hinted targets, but in exchange q now consumes the hunt mark. This would really help her in her get in, kill, get out play pattern, whereas right now its more like get in, almost kill, die trying to kill or leave before you die.

Another thing that's always been weird for me is that level does affect her cougar abilities, yet they are unavailable until leveled up. I think it would help her if her qwe cougar form was all abailinle from level one. It might be a little op, but its not as bad is if say, Elise had them all.

All that said, this thread will never get any attention because people have such a hate boner for nidalee, even though she's been trash for a while now.

That wont stop me from playing her tho

Also, on my phone so sorry for any errors

As a Nidalee player, I don't think you should want her to have access to her entire assassination combo at level 1. her QRWEQ combo would be hilariously strong compared to what any other champion can do at that point in the game.

Riven MainNov 30, 20151 votes

well for one when they up'd the duration of your spear before throwing by .25 seconds not alot but it makes a difference by reaction speed being less needed. you can completely ignore just going ap and go hybrid guinsoo kinda broken with jungle champs I feel needs to be just a laning tool xD though she makes good use out of it in lanes. As a mostly support player though, sight stone is generally something you need to build, but you really want a rod of the ages/ mana so she either suffers early mana problems or you lack some vision and hope shaco doesn't gank you lol