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how to beat nidalee (guide)

SwiftKitten88··10 votes·2,154 views

With all the hate nidalee is getting, i get the feeling people really don't really know how to face her. nidalee has alot of counterplay and many weaknesses, and if you know them she is a pretty easy champ to negate. as a nidalee main i know every one of these weaknesses far to well.

and while i normally wouldn't tell the world how to beat her. i feel that people really don't understand how many counters she really has. and i feel its time that people learn she isn't the "op" champ people make her out to be.

first off lets start with the main weakness nidalee has. all her cougar abilities get a bonus effect of attacking a hunted target. and her human ability proc hunted. now that doesn't sound like a weakness but it is. because for any trade nidalee does to be worthwhile nidalee needs to proc hunted at the start of the fight.

this means SHE is the one that needs to initiate the fight. so any person who engages on nidalee forces her to either immediately try to proc hunted or to get the hell out.

this ties into this weakness is the fact in order to proc hunted nidalee needs to land a skillshot or have the opponent step on a trap. this means unless your opponent walks into a bush that happens to have a trap in it you NEED to land a skillshot to proc hunted a therefore engage

if nidalee ever misses a spear, she has ZERO means to proc hunted unto her spear comes off cooldown.. this means that as soon as nidalee misses a spear she will lose any trade until she can proc hunted again. THIS is the time to get out from behind the creep wave and engage on her.

Landing that spear: despite what people tend to think, landing a spear is quite hard. they are very easy to dodge if you know how. to avoid getting hit by a spear there are a few things you can do. you can : stand behind creep: spears stop at the first target hit so if there is a creep between you and nidalee she cant land a spear on you you can wait her for to throw and sidestep the spear. spears are VERY thin and it really is quite easy to do this if your paying attention close the gap between your and nidalee. this wont stop your from getting hit by the spear but it will reduced the damage if you do get hit.

Nidalee's "free farm" another complaint i her about nidalee is her abiltiy to "free farm" in cougar form. and while if she has no opponent in lane this can be true. free farming in nidalee with an opponent near by isnt quite as "free" as you might think.

with the nerfs to nidalee attack damage and attack speed it became almost impossible for nidalee to Cs in human form. so all nidalees will try to Cs in cougar form when they can.

the problem with this is that it is very dangerous so here are the drawbacks: the main csing skill in cougar form is "pounce" this is because when pounce kills a minion its reduces to coodown if the next pounce. now there are two issues here. first off is that nidalee has to be in melee range to CS she makes her a very easy target to get free hits on. second, because pounce is her main CSing ability it removes that ability to be used as her ESCAPE ability if she is engaged upon. and third because nidalee is in cougar from while farming and cannot proc hunted and therefore cant engage a fight on her opponent or defend herself if they engage on her.

compare this to zed who can free farm at range in complete safety (granted zed is completely op but it shows that nidalee isn't)

champs that counter nid:

nidalee has a HUGE number of champs that counter her

almost any bruiser will do it and champs like Ahri, Zed ,Diana have huge advantages over her mid lane

so what are nids other weaknesses?

first off because she is an assasin she is very squishy.

almost any form of CC with end her immediately.

nidalee is completely hardcounted by any silence or stun.

stuns are self explanatory but i feel i should explain while silence is so bad for her. nidalee main advantage in a fight is her ability to disengage if it goes awry. if nid is silenced she cant do ANY damage and he has zero means of escape. this means any silence is effectively a stun vs her.

i am not going to comment on her "invisible spears" that is a rare bug that doesn't effect everyone and NO champ should be considered unbalanced because they have a BUG that buffs them. while i don't think that is bug is as prevalent as people make it out to be i agree it needs to be fixed.

nidalee is a very versatile champ that has many strengths but also MANY weaknesses. i am pointing them out to you so you can stop complaining that she has none.

21 Comments

stuartk114 votes

I'm not entirely convinced about her weaknesses. Instead of making passing remarks though, I'm actually going to make an effort to explain why I feel this way.

First point, she is very reliant on having her target having the hunted mark on them for her to win trades in any effectiveness. She doesn't tend to do well without it in a straight fight (usually anyways). There are, however, a few problems with this being aired as a weakness, as she does have the tools to negate it.

  1. She has sustain. If she loses a trade, then she can sustain up surprisingly fast. This costs a descent amount of mana remember, but her trade didn't cost much, so there really isn't a huge amount to argue here.
  2. She is able to escape bad trades. Her gapcloser isn't as good as some others. But remember, comparing each skill in a vacuum isn't the best way to compare them. If she does use her pounce after the enemy engages onto her, then it requires the enemy to have a 2nd gapcloser in order to punish her. It really does mitigate this weakness.

Even accounting what I said, there is truth to this being her weakness. It just only allows a very narrow selection of champions to punish her effectively for her failings. This being champions with massive burst who can remove the advantage of her sustain, and have multiple gapclosers and the ability to engage effectively. These types of champions can punish her quite well, while others, though still able to do so, have a lot of trouble doing so.

Second point, every champion in the game is countered by CC. I do mean every. single. one. Olaf, Irelia and Morgana included. Olaf can be kited very effectively while his Ultimate isn't available (which should be quite often with that CD), Morgana requires to use her Black Shield before the target is hit, and can be drained by other sources of magic damage (and again, it does have quite a high cooldown), Irelia is still effected by CC anyways. The 5-10% really isn't as much as people make it out to be. She's not suddenly immune to it by that reduction like some people will have you believe.

Ranting aside, saying that she is countered by being CC'd is utterly pointless, as every champion is countered by this. Hell, considering her long range poke, along with pouncing to avoid skillshots, she really isn't as vulnerable to CC as many other champions in the game.

Third point, and this is probably the main point to take away from this. She can play amazingly safe. She is able to poke with remarkable effectiveness for her design, and is able to heal away any poke or other damage that she receives. She can pounce over walls or simply away if the enemy tries to close the gap to attack her, and punish her "down-times" with her not being able to get a passive mark on her opponents. There are very, very few champions who can play as safely as Nidalee can while still being very effective in the full duration of the game.

More ranting. The number of people who will inevitably say that her spears are easy to dodge, please keep in mind that they're just about as easy to dodge as a Morgana dark binding, but with greater range and lower cooldown. Even the pros can't be expected to dodge every Morgana dark binding in a game. Add a few more and the 30% health chunks that it will take out of you before she pounces in (You are building magic resistance on all your carries over damage to counter a single champion, AmIrite?), and you have a major problem. Also, saying that "she is squishy" is not a weakness. It is a lack of fulfilling an additional role. Saying that a champion lacks what makes other champions viable is not creating a weakness. Otherwise, we should replace Mundo's E with Zed's deathmark, since Mundo doesn't have any burst damage, but at least he doesn't have massive poke. I fail to see the logic from some people.

Conclusion, there isn't enough of really any weakness to exploit in Nidalee's playstyle, as she is able to easily mitigate the rather small ones she has.

Erockandroll1 votes

{quoted}

I'm not entirely convinced about her weaknesses. Instead of making passing remarks though, I'm actually going to make an effort to explain why I feel this way.

First point, she is very reliant on having her target having the hunted mark on them for her to win trades in any effectiveness. She doesn't tend to do well without it in a straight fight (usually anyways). There are, however, a few problems with this being aired as a weakness, as she does have the tools to negate it.

  1. She has sustain. If she loses a trade, then she can sustain up surprisingly fast. This costs a descent amount of mana remember, but her trade didn't cost much, so there really isn't a huge amount to argue here.
  2. She is able to escape bad trades. Her gapcloser isn't as good as some others. But remember, comparing each skill in a vacuum isn't the best way to compare them. If she does use her pounce after the enemy engages onto her, then it requires the enemy to have a 2nd gapcloser in order to punish her. It really does mitigate this weakness.

Even accounting what I said, there is truth to this being her weakness. It just only allows a very narrow selection of champions to punish her effectively for her failings. This being champions with massive burst who can remove the advantage of her sustain, and have multiple gapclosers and the ability to engage effectively. These types of champions can punish her quite well, while others, though still able to do so, have a lot of trouble doing so.

um, first of all, sustain does not mean tankyness. yeah she has sustain, but so does any ADC after BT or BotRK. The trick is committing to the kill. Which is why OP mentioned Assassins suck as ahri and zed.

Secondly, your argument regarding gapclosers, assumes that one was needed in the first place. One piece of CC can give you all the engage I need, and even they do pounce, I will still have that gap closer. It's really an order of skill, that makes it more of a skills match up. You don't need Lee Sin Mobility to catch her.

stuartk111 votes

{quoted}

um, first of all, sustain does not mean tankyness. yeah she has sustain, but so does any ADC after BT or BotRK. The trick is committing to the kill. Which is why OP mentioned Assassins suck as ahri and zed.

Secondly, your argument regarding gapclosers, assumes that one was needed in the first place. One piece of CC can give you all the engage I need, and even they do pounce, I will still have that gap closer. It's really an order of skill, that makes it more of a skills match up. You don't need Lee Sin Mobility to catch her.

I don't even see how your post even makes an argument for balance. I never actually said that sustain meant tankiness, those are your own words only. Additionally, on your second point, being punished for major blunders is not a weakness, and every champion in the game is directly countered by CC. And I do mean all of them. Also, you did ignore pretty much all of my points that I made in my point, and instead just stated the same points that have been made every other of these "Nidalee mains".

I am not even sure you read my post. You seem more of some mad teenager who wants everyone to have their opinion, regardless of what facts and different experiences may depict.

tofutime3 votes

She's still too safe. Saying that CC will end her is a weakness of many midlaners anyways. Basically saying she doesn't fulfill a tank role. okay? btw, she has ranged autos, huge poke, sustaining spell and infinite free leaps so even a perma-bear udyr will never catch her. I have a hard time thinking of any champ that can catch a cougar form nidalee just spamming W through bushes.

Saying she's hardcountered by a silence or stun. That is a given on any mage. Also silences and stun skills are nowhere near the range of nidalee poke so good luck getting in range before she just leaps back into a safe position. She has to misposition really poorly to be locked down like that.

You commented about her "free farm" cougar form. Many midlaners have to manage their mana. Nidalee gets the least punished because 1.) she can still last hit with autos. 2.) her takedown is a free last hitting tool under turret. Lots of mana starved midlaners can't execute a low health minion without a spell so they're left with just their weak auto.

Let's just put this into perspective: I see you play a lot of Lux. You say a weakness of Nidalee is CC. If Lux is CC'd she is 100% guaranteed dead. Nidalee has enough mobility so that if the CC ends she can possibly get away (this is a lot more forgiving than most midlaners.) If Lux misses her Q she is gone. Nidalee doesn't have to hit a skillshot to get away. Her W is also on a shorter cooldown than Lux Q btw. Also, if you run out of mana with Lux it's incredibly difficult to last hit under turret. (2 autos, plus 2 turret hits kill melee minions and 3 autos plus 1 turret hit kills caster minion for Lux.) Nidalee doesn't run into this problem.

Enkidusmurf1 votes

TwistedFate https://youtu.be/KgmO32IdwuE

tofutime1 votes

I don't get what you're trying to say with this video

Enkidusmurf1 votes

Sorry. I was making the joke about TF's ult. You said that once she decides to escape, no one can catch her. Sounded to me like something Twisted Fate would be perfect for.

The lane match up is pretty painful, though, so I don't think I actually disagree about that.

tofutime1 votes

His ult is a 2 minute cooldown. Her pounce is a 5 second cooldown. Depending on your destiny positioning as well, it doesn't take much for a Nid to double back away from the circle of cards and pounce spam out of gold card range before TF even shows up. So no. I wouldn't consider it a viable catching strat.

Enkidusmurf1 votes

He can tp behind her. If his team follows up, she can either walk into a stun card, or become a cat on the bottom of a dog pile.

It's a viable strategy. It just takes some skill and teamwork.

Not to say Nid's not ridiculous and unhealthy right now; I think she is. (And I think Riot knows she is. And I wonder if that's not the reason 5.7 has been slow to come out.) But she's not absolutely unbeatable. Or absolutely uncatchable. She's just way too safe for the damage she does.

tofutime1 votes

What I meant with that statement is that she has a lot more mobility/lot more chasing/lot more escape potential than a lot of squishy champs. Saying that she's squishy and CC hard counters her is just a ridiculous statement. The majority of squishy champs don't have a 5 second cooldown pounce that costs no mana. Even Zed's W costs energy.

Enkidusmurf1 votes

{quoted}

Saying that she's squishy and CC hard counters her is just a ridiculous statement.

A ridiculous statement that I didn't make. ;)

First of all, you need to keep in mind, I was really just making a joke. I've played that lane, and it isn't fun. But part of that is that I suck at dodging skill shots.

And that's the thing with Twisted Fate. He's almost always a skill matchup. If you play it right, you'll do well. Even if it's a Nidalee.

So, I'm not just tossing the "countered by cc" bullshit back on you. What I am saying, is that, for someone who has a manaless 375 range pounce every 5 seconds, sticking potential is a really nice thing to have. And as far as sticking potential, it's hard to beat an ability that can immediately spot you anywhere on the map and quickly teleport there with a point-and-click 525 range, 2 second stun on a 6 second cooldown.

But if you're going to insist that there's nothing you can do against Nid, that's fine. Just bear in mind that you're limiting yourself artificially.

Even when a champ is OP, there's usually something you can do. It's just really inconvenient.

tofutime1 votes

Who said I was arguing with you? I was just furthering my original point. Saying CC hard counters her is stupid since CC hard counters most non-tank champions. It shouldn't even be put as a "weakness" of nidalee's since it's negated by her crazy escape potential.

2 minutes is a lot longer than 5 seconds and you are using a spell that you should be using to capture objectives or put pressure on other lanes just so you can catch an annoying nidalee who will be back in lane and shoving in less time than it takes for you ult to be back up. So yeah it's not really a solution.

Enkidusmurf1 votes

Well, you did hit the reply button on my post, so I hope I can be forgiven for assuming that. But no problem. I see where you're coming from.

2 minutes for a very reliable engage is not bad. And that's assuming you build no cdr. If you can get her when it's up (and if you're using it properly and your team follows up), you're in a really good spot.

Her pounce as an engage tool is pretty bad, especially if TF has Pick a Card available (which you should; that's your safety). As a disengage tool . . . I'm willing to let her have a 75-second window of safety between deaths. ;)

Schteltzer2 votes

no

TotalJerk2 votes

{quoted}

this ties into this weakness is the fact in order to proc hunted nidalee needs to land a skillshot or have the opponent step on a trap. this means unless your opponent walks into a bush that happens to have a trap in it you NEED to land a skillshot to proc hunted a therefore engage

if nidalee ever misses a spear, she has ZERO means to proc hunted unto her spear comes off cooldown.. this means that as soon as nidalee misses a spear she will lose any trade until she can proc hunted again. THIS is the time to get out from behind the creep wave and engage on her.

It's not a Thresh hook. The cooldown is 6 seconds. Who the hell can punish her in 6 seconds?

Enkidusmurf1 votes

How long does it take to make a play?

Not 6 seconds.

SwiftKitten881 votes

fixed a few typos

usul12021 votes

I feel like, especially for melee, you're kinda screwed. you have to be in her face. how hard is it to hit a point blank spear, then wreck the hunted target? also, she's just too damn safe. that spear range, combined with infinite jumps, combined with a heal, make trading with her VERY difficult. she doesn't have to be in your face, and can run from so much.

SwiftKitten881 votes

true it isnt hard to hit a point blanc spear. but it does mean the spear will do very little damage on you when it hits. most melee champs will beat nidalee in a trade as she is an assassin and she will lose any prolonged fight. nidalee stand almost zero chance vs any tanky champ. unlkess nidalee is fed there isn't really any bruiser in the game she can trade becuase she wont be able to escape and heal up.. its the fights that she can go in does some quick damage and get out that and heal up that play to her advantage. if she has to use her pounce ability to get away she cant go in on you and trade. if she uses it to trade she cant really use it to escape.

nidalee is a VERY squishy champ. any form of cc while in melee range pretty much means certain death for her what melee champ are you having trouble vs her with?

freeformline1 votes

Thanks, this is actually pretty helpful! I don't spend much time in the solo lanes and therefore don't naturally gain knowledge of lane match-ups, so these little guides on how to deal with solo laners really help me out when I step out of my support shoes.

Celeste Benal1 votes

tl;dr: dodges spears. Stay out of bushes so you don't hit traps.

Nothing has changed.

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