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Think Nidalee needs less Pouncing

CoolSpot2·2/11/2015, 12:23:06 AM·22 votes·1,827 views

I am playing with or against jungle Nidalee in 70% of my games ( other 30% someone smart bans her )

Nidalee has Rengar's burst,Xerath's poke,Heal and high mobility . Her pounce acts like terrain skip,slow ignore,movement burst and has low cooldown .

She simply has too much going for her .

There needs to be RISK involved in getting into enemy jungle but where is risk if you can skip over terrain anytime you want.

Her mobility needs a nerf . Currently there isn't much counter play since she can escape from nearly all situations .

19 Comments

GigglingAngel2/11/2015, 2:40:00 AM6 votes

I happen to play Nidalee a lot in ARAM. (I like poking with her spears lol) From someone who admits that they really don't know what they are doing in cougar mode; if a carry comes close, I'll go cougar, mash buttons against them, and a lot of the time leave safely without dying.
I feel that's ... not right. If I don't know what I'm doing and just mashing buttons, I shouldn't win fights and escape so easily.

Mr Slowdeath2/11/2015, 12:52:56 AM5 votes

Agreed. Most Nidalees I see in games don't seem to be managing their form change, rather they're just using it. Her cougar form's cooldowns shouldn't be that low. 5 seconds on all of them, at all ranks, is too low. I wonder if they would feel more fair if they were at 6 seconds or scaled down each level to 5 or 6? Her spear is at 6 seconds and it feels a lot more fair to me.

She's even building item 3158 for lower cooldowns in Cougar form, but that's not because she needs to lower her cooldowns to be effective or to play a specific role well. It's because lowering her cooldowns even a little makes Cougar form's abilities abusive and spammable. They don't cost mana, which is a bonus already, but becomes absolutely nuts coupled with a 3 second cooldown at around level 5.

Darkwind2/11/2015, 12:44:51 AM5 votes

Actually, there are 2 mechanics in her kit post rework i strongly dislike:

  1. Killing a unit in cougar form resets Pounce's cooldown to 1.5 seconds if it is currently higher.
  2. Triggering Hunt resets Aspect of the Cougar's cooldown if nidalee is in human form.

The first mechanic removes most of the risk inherent in leaping onto an enemy. The problem is that killing ANYTHING works for this. You can jump in on an enemy champion, kill a lane minion and just harass your opponent, and jump out 1.5 seconds later. Furthermore, it dramatically increases her jungle clear- you can pounce onto the camp, killing the small monsters, then pounce again to do more damage to the large monster.

The second mechanic allows very silly super fast repeat combos- Ranged Q- r wqe r- q-r-wqe.

If they made these changes, I'd have absolutely no problems with nid:

  1. Killing a champion in cougar form resets Pounce's cooldown to 1 second if it is currently higher.
  2. Triggering Hunt resets Aspect of the Cougar's cooldown if nidalee is in the human form.
  3. Takedown Hunted Bonus: If the target champion is Hunted, Takedown deals 33% increased damage.
Scramrail2/11/2015, 10:29:38 AM4 votes

Why not just make her cougar form abilities cost mana so she actually has to think instead of just head-desking her way to victory? And remove any resets she might have. Resets in general are just stupid, and theyre usually put on the dumbest abilities (im looking at you Darius).

Undead Warchief2/11/2015, 11:34:50 AM4 votes

they should just make nidalee's cougar form abilities cost mana

Catarchy2/11/2015, 8:09:07 PM2 votes

I think that Nid is one of the best champs in the game for skirmishes and picks, in and out of the jungle. High mobility, scouting tools, long range damage and short ranged burst make her a true bestial huntress in small fights. Which I think is awesome and fits her theme perfectly.

However, she can't teamfight for shit. I mean really. Her whole assassination relies on hitting a spear, and the chances of hitting a priority target with a spear while they're grouped with their team is close to none. Essentially all she adds is some attack speed to her ADC (which is very nice actually) and maybe chunks a tank.

This isn't always the case when she flanks or "cleans up" and this is what she has to do in order to really do anything, essentially leaving her team to 4v5 while she waits for people to die out.

She rules the early-mid game when full 4-5 man fights aren't really a thing, but falls off hard whenever the enemy team decides to group.

She split pushes much weaker than something like a zed as her 1v1 potential is reliant completely on hitting a skinny slow moving skill shot.

Honestly I think Nidalee is pretty ok where she is. She has one stage and role of very high-effectiveness and other stages of utter uselessness. Counterplay is more at the macro level than the micro level.

HOWEVER, that being said, I could support some nerfs to her early clear speed, as hitting the fast level 3 and then pouncing to the enemies second buff while they're still trying to complete it is sorta dumb.

A Miss Fortune2/12/2015, 9:03:40 AM2 votes

I believe that Nidalee is very unbalanced at the moment due to her versatility while still being able to escape anything really if she's smart, and also while dealing tons of damage. AP Nidalee can one-hit late game with spears and against supports like Sona and Soraka, they might as well just sit there and give Nidalee free kills and save her the time it takes to pounce on them if the spear happens to not one-hit them.

Nerfing Nidalee's spear (again) and a small decrease to her mobility would easily rebalance her. Making her kit less of hitting the Q, W, E, and R buttons just because she can with almost no consequences and making her require better positioning and reason behind her throwing a spear for example, would be nice. But of course in the patch notes when they buff Nidalee they're going to say "dodge the spears."

My friend played Nidalee for the first time not knowing how Nidalee works at all or any of her abilities and how powerful they are. She went 10/4 with her and agreed from her first game with Nidalee that she was broken.

HelpfulYordle2/13/2015, 1:53:06 PM1 votes

Her kit is just overloaded. I can take the spears, but does she really need 2 passives that also have multiple mechanics, a heal with 50% ap ratio and a 7 sec attack speed buff? Her heal is the best example of her kit being overloaded. No need for 7 sec attack speed make it 5 sec or reduce the ap ratio on the heal or make it so the attack speed is only for nid when she heals herself.

Jasiwel2/11/2015, 4:24:12 PM1 votes

I don't think Pounce should be targeted. It should be a skillshot or something similar. It's just way too easy for her to melee nuke people and there is often nothing you can do about it.

Zoroastrian2/11/2015, 4:30:52 PM1 votes

Nidalee doesn't need nerfs just because she's doing decent in the jungle. It's the jungle that is the problem.