It's Pretty Clear that Nidalee Is Getting Nerfed Right?

Take Nidalee's damage out of her human form and put it in her cougar form. Buff Cougar form's damage across the board but reduce the spear damage (remove the distance scaling and nerf base numbers, leave scaling alone). Remove the heal and give Nidalee a different ability in that slot that synergizes with her kit more, or hell, leave it alone (and remove the ASPD buff) but give it a lower mana cost. Make Nidalee's play pattern depend on Cougar instead of just using it very well most of the time but still having insane poke. It's not difficult - with the current Nidalee kit, her kit feels lopsided anyway. She can poke you down and chunk you from full range and then jump in and finish you off. It's not a healthy play pattern. But if you nerf her spear damage you can give the current jungle/assassin Nidalee some nice buffs - nerf the spear damage and you can give her more width on her spear again. When her poke isn't toxic her assassination potential doesn't feel so overwhelming, because there's actually ways to stop Nidalee from killing you (and if she jumps on your head and you use a defensive cooldown or something she's stuck in your team). This is a much healthier kit (in my opinion) than the current Nidalee, who chucks a spear at you for 1/3rd health and then can basically pounce on you with increased range + execute + lichbane. Make her depend on that Cougar form to do her damage and her kit becomes much more balanced, imo.

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Were you fine with AD Nidalee top, when she was at her peak?

Honestly? Yeah. It was overtuned, but when Nidalee focuses on AD she inherently ends up with more counterplay. You can plan around the fact that she needs to burst you down as a cat, and you worry about spears more because they give her a window of strength (with Hunt) than because they rip your health bar in half.

I also think she'd have been a lot easier to deal with without her whenever-it's-up heal. In human mode, she's built to wear down the enemy with traps and long-range spears. In cat mode, she's built to dash in, burst, and escape with tons of mobility. Neither of those should include a targeted heal, and in fact the free sustain it grants ends up eliminating a lot of her weaknesses in both forms.

So let me ask, how would you balance Nidalee? Change whatever you want about her kit, make her spears do no damage, remove her heal, whatever you want. And then tell me why you would want to play Nidalee after you made your changes. Tell me what makes your changes to her 'balanced', while still giving players reason to play her, from a gameplay perspective; what does she do that no other champion does, what makes her unique and fun to play?

When her rework went live, her spears had a TINY hitbox. Then they widened it to roughly what it was before. I would put the hitbox back to where it was - smoking a target at close range means you get a reliable Hunt mark, but if you can hit the spear at long range despite the thin hitbox, you deserve the reward. Plus, a thinner hitbox makes it easier to thread the needle between minions for those really clutch shots everyone loves to see. The counterplay for a long-range skillshot should be to dodge it, not to hide behind minions.

I'd also rework her E entirely. Targeted heals have no place on her kit, and the attack speed doesn't fit with her human form playstyle. To replace it, I'd do something like this:

• Self-buff only; press E and it instantly applies on Nidalee.

• Low mana cost (40ish?) and moderate cooldown (maybe 14/13/12/11/10). Gives Nidalee a whole bunch of spellvamp for 2 seconds, with the heal doubled vs champions or Hunted targets. Cooldown reduced by 1 second each time Nidalee autoattacks.

• Allows Nidalee to "call her shots", in a sense. She throws spears willy-nilly, and that's fine; that's a huge part of her identity. But if you pay close attention and activate this just before a spear lands, or just as the enemy walks into a trap, you get a huge reward in terms of sustain. In a pinch it also means she can fire this off, go catmode, and use her full combo on a minion wave to top herself off... but that won't heal as much as a max-range spear to the enemy laner's face.

My biggest gripe with Nidalee is the way she has so much effectiveness without really needing to interact. Her heal means damage doesn't stick to her. Her mobility means she doesn't have to stay to fight you. Her spears cost her practically nothing and the punishment for being hit by one is absurd.

I don't mind that she has all that safety, but she needs to be made to put forth an effort if she wants to recover from a misplay.

Yes. She's one of the most hated champions in the game for a reason. Because you can dodge as many spears as you want, but if she lands even one none of that matters. And second, you can say they're easy to dodge all you want, but there are two things you can't change.

1. Buffs don't dodge. Nidalee's ability to steal Dragons and buffs with absolutely no risk is broken. And if you try to body block her spears? Her damage is not non-existent.
2. She's landing spears in the LCS, and you expect everyone to be able to dodge all of them. Every last spear she throws throughout the entire game. No. Just stop trying.