First off, Nidalee used to be like that. She couldn't follow up on her spears (this is pre-rework), and as a result, her spears dealt more damage than they did now. And no, playing a "conservative Nidalee" has, in fact, changed, because back in the day, a "conservative nidalee" didn't even use cougar form in the first place. You just sat at the back of your lane, chucked spears, and hoped that you'd oneshot your lane opponent. Now, Nidalee has to actually close the gap in a relatively short time in order to secure that kill, which means she's predictable. AFAIK you can also see a visual indicator of Pounce's range, so you know when Nidalee is close enough to do the combo, at which point you can prepare the CC.
Secondly, removing the Q and W hunt bonuses would completely invalidate her passive, (minus a slight MS buff) which ONLY empowers Takedown and Pounce.
Now let's just take a moment to think what this change would do to Nidalee. In order to do the maximum amount of damage with her spears, you have to land them from ~1300-1500 range. Cougar form is MELEE ONLY. That means that in order for Nidalee to combo you down, after landing a max-range spear, she has to then run up to you, into pounce range, so that she can do the Pounce-Swipe-Takedown combo to execute. Pounce has a range of 450 (700 for hunted targets). Even removing the ability to Pounce hunted targets would absolutely destroy Nidalee, because now she simply cannot follow up on her spears, and now the Pounce-Swipe-Takedown combo is roughly half of Nidalee's damage, as opposed to 10%, like it was pre-rework.
Thirdly, you state that Nidalee needs to be
put back into line
however fail to realize that Nidalee is fine (arguably slightly weak atm, due to the tank meta).
To support this idea, let me compare Nidalee to other assassins (as she is an assassin, not a mage).
LeBlanc can 100-0 you faster than Nidalee without having to land a slow-moving, easily dodgeable skillshot.
Zed can 100-0 you without needing skillshots period, and doesn't have mana (if NIdalee is spam-chucking spears it eats into her mana really fast)
Nidalee, unlike pretty much EVERY OTHER ASSASSIN IN THE GAME, is hard countered by 
, as you should be dodging spears often enough that the banshee's veil passive will block the one that you don't.
Finally, please note that you clearly don't understand how Nidalee even functions in the first place. Nidalee's cougar form abilities scale with points in her R, for example Takedown doesn't scale with points in Javelin Toss. You're also suggesting that Riot nerfs Nidalee's ability to burst people down, yet that is the whole point of her being an assassin, is it not? Do you think that LeBlanc/Zed/Talon/Kha'zix/Ahri/Evelynn/Fizz/Kassadin/Katarina/Nocturne/Rengar's burst is somehow lower than Nidalee's?
Because I can assure you that Nidalee is by no means more powerful than LeBlanc or Zed. So how would you compensate Nidalee, were you on the balance team, for these crippling nerfs that basically prevent her from even using half her kit? Perhaps we should revert Nidalee to her status back in the day, where her spears could 100-0 you in a single hit, but the rest of her kit does practically no damage.
Plus nerfing her ability to follow up on her spears will just make Nidalee players play like they used to, where they just throw out spears, and eventually one will hit you and you get chunked really hard, because removing ~20% of her damage (assuming she can even engage, the amount of damage removed will be more like 50% most of the time) will result in compensatory buffs elsewhere, most likely in her spear damage, as that's her only human form ability that does relevant amounts of damage for an assassin (Bushwhack's purpose -was- to soften up high-health targets with its %current health damage, but that got nerfed even though it had a damage cap vs monsters)
