Some thoughts/proposed changes following the recent nidalee nerfs.

Hello fellow Summoners. I'm Coincident and I am a Nid main. Recently and justly Nidalee has been receiving nerfs for her dominating presence in the jungle. While I as a Nid main agree Nidalee was a little out of hand, win rate peaking 54% prior to patch 5.15. They not only nerfed the wrong thing, but they nerfed the wrong thing too hard.

First I'm going to address the most recent changes in patch 5.15. The changes they did in patch V5.15:

Javelin Toss
    Cast time increased to 0.25 seconds from 0.125.
    Minimum damage reduced to 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 from 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 / 150.
    Maximum damage reduced to 150 / 210 / 270 / 330 / 390 from 150 / 225 / 300 / 375 / 450. 
Bushwhack
    On-cast vision radius reduced to 400.

Lets talk what this means for Nidalee. In the context of the nerf they wanted to make it harder for Nidalee to have a plethora of choices when it came to when she wanted to engage. One of their decisions was to increase the cast time on Javelin Toss, I don't think this properly addresses the problem. Adjusting the spear cast time gives enemy players a tiny amount of time to react to the fact that a spear is coming. This doesn't address the fact that Nidalee's spear's projectile speed is still decently fast and hard to dodge. During the cast animation Nidalee doesn't give a good idea of where the spear is going to go just that there is a spear. Adding this change not only made it awkward for Nidalee players but didn't actually add much clarity to the ability.

The second change to Javelin Toss reduced the base damage at levels after first rank. While I think this change is alright, it nerfs top lane ad assassin/tank Nidalee a little more than intended but I think that was sort of impossible to get around.

The final change this patch was Bushwhack. They changed the vision radius to 400, (shorter than Urgot's attack range). I think this shouldn't have happened due to the fact that the people that used the vision cast radius were using it as a neat mechanical trick and it was no way unhealthy. Often times I would throw a w over the wall and get vision of the mid laner, or someone thinking they were safe recalling behind tier 2 and throwing my spear out. I think this should be reverted or at least changed to around 800 in terms of vision, was 1200 before.

Following this patch and the changed talked about above Nidalees win rate dropped 6% from 54% to 47%. I think the Javelin cast time was a major factor in that win rate dropped. Out of the 42 most common junglers Nidalee's overall damage dropped 10 ranks. In terms of winrate she is in the bottom 7 (35/42) in terms of winrate for junglers this patch. I think it is pretty clear that the changes made were a little too harsh to be applied all at once.

Now this thread wasn't just here to complain about the nerfs. I think that the changes made this patch should be reverted and the following change applied and keeping the Javelin Toss base damage reduction.

Prowl
   Following Nidalee using takedown on a marked target prowl is put on a unique cooldown for that target, where the target
   cannot be marked for another 9/7/5 seconds. The debuff duration decreasing at levels 6/11/16. 

This closes the window of when Nidalee can kill you, makes Nidalee decide whether or not she can burst you and successfully get away. Not being able to proc Prowl again decreases her mobility in chasing you in both empowered w and the movement speed making it easier to get away and making it harder to get multiple rotations off on the same target. Thanks for reading my suggestions!