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The Current State of Nidalee

Bruised Ego·12/8/2015, 10:25:31 PM·33 votes·3,905 views

Hi, I little bit of background first. I first picked up Nidalee when I first started playing League of Legends in season 3. Season 4 came around and the Nidalee was reworked. The rework was great and it made Nidalee a riskier champ to play, although more rewarding. Nidalee was no longer about chucking spears for 1.5k damage anymore. However, the last year has been nothing but constant nerfs to Nidalee and Nidalee is basically unplayable in the current state.

Lets just take a look what happened. Mid-season 4, Nidalee was a really strong AD bruiser in Top lane. As a result, Nidalee had 5 base AD removed and cougar’s AD ratios significantly nerfed. The message was clear, she should be played as an AP champion. Fast forward to season 5.

  • Spear – Immensely reduced damage, now comes with a delay on cast, narrow hit box.

  • Traps – Reduced damage, reduced duration from 7 minutes to about 2 minutes, reduced vision time limit if triggered, reduced vision radius when first set. Essentially, traps are now ONLY to put a mark on opponents, nothing more. The damage is negligible.

  • Heal – Cooldown significantly increased, Heal amount decreased.

  • Cougar form Q ratios are poor, W cool down increased and damage reduced, armor/magic resist bonuses removed from cougar form.

  • In addition, patch 5.7 brought on 30 hp nerf and 10 per level hp nerf to Nidalee.

How were these later season 5 nerfs justified? Simple, the strength of the runeglaive on Nidalee. It was a relatively cheap item that had everything Nidalee needs. However, during the preseason, all AP items received price increases, including runeglaive. In addition, Runeglaive is being removed from the game next patch. Where does this leave Nidalee? What place does Nidalee have?

Nidalee takes a huge amount of effort to play with very little reward now. If you are playing Nidalee, you are literally handicapping yourself and adding an extra challenge. I mained Nidalee from Season 3 to Season 5, but I cannot justify playing a champ that I love so much because it is an extreme disadvantage to play with it. Something has to be done, and the “buffs” in the next patch don’t even begin to fix the problem.

I understand that the problem with Nidalee and other high-skillcap champions is that they have alot of potential that can be exploited, granted skill is required. However, let me tell you, no matter how skilled you are with Nidalee you will be at a huge disadvantage against equally skilled oponents. I can't play Nidalee in diamond anymore, and I don't think I would play it even in platinum.

RIP Nidalee lowest win percantage at 39.3% on NA, it really breaks my heart.

85 Comments

Hayaishi212/8/2015, 10:55:34 PM13 votes

Cancer shouldn't be viable. Nidalee has toxic overloaded kit and deserves no buffs.

Penns12/8/2015, 10:41:35 PM12 votes
  • Has a broken kit that does everything well

Also ad/ hybrid Nidalee top is pretty ok atm from what Ive seen lol

Solidair312/9/2015, 3:41:59 PM4 votes

Nidalee is kinda like old ryze. When she's good it's oppressive, and when she's not, why play her over anyone else?

She needs some love, but I wonder if numbers adjustments will get her there in a healthy way

Creamy Eevee12/8/2015, 10:41:14 PM4 votes

nid still chunks unfortunate adcs so you can just show yourself the exit now

Squidblimp12/9/2015, 5:53:39 AM4 votes

Her winrate is low is because she is hard. Azir also has a low winrate, yet he is very strong. Nidalee completely relies on landing her slow-moving spear to do anything, and snowballing the early game. Her buffs will HELP her early game significantly. 30 extra damage in ganks and 30 extra damage when spearing monsters will mean more chances of kills in ganks and faster and healthier clears. So please. There are plenty of champs in a worse condition than her. Additionally, the new jungle item comping out, Runic Echoes, will be amazing on her. It's basically a weaker Luden's Echo. It also gives movement speed. If you haven't seen it, look on Surrender at 20.

But yeah. I don't agree with you TBH. Agree to disagree. Have a nice day.

FistOfSharkiesha12/9/2015, 11:24:32 AM3 votes

Maybe without runeglaive they can finally balance herself around herself instead one role. They could easily get her top mid and jg winrates to ~50% redistributing her damage and ratios now.

mtman31812/9/2015, 1:14:44 AM1 votes

I hope they do something about her traps soon. Maybe make them like Caitlyn's new traps and have them store up charges. Or give them a slow. Or give them their armor/mr shred back. Or just buff the damage. Personally I like the first idea best.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, aren't all other traps and similar devices in the game on a charge system too? Caitlyn's traps, Zyra's seeds, Teemo's mushrooms... I don't remember if Heimerdinger's turrets are like that or not. I don't think Shaco's jack-in-the-boxes are like that, but in his case that would be too powerful.