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Why does Nidalee have no costs in her Cougar Form?

Ultîma··2 votes·843 views

Title is self-explanatory. Before her small rework, Nidalee was granted her transform ability as an ultimate - it was appropriately powerful as a tool Nidalee only had access to after the beginning stages of the game, which significantly broadened the scope of her abilities and her sphere of influence in the game. After the rework, she was given her transform on level 1 and her Cougar abilities were strengthened to compensate for a shift of power away from her hilarious spears of doom.

Now I don't mean to say that any particular skill is over-the-top, but rather ask why she is given nigh-flash mobility, on a 5 second cooldown, at no cost? To me, Nidalee seems to suffer a lot from the jack-of-all-trades syndrome that Jayce used to sport where he had enough tools that he is able to deal with just about any situation thrown his way, and his numbers were high enough that he could win virtually any trade. Nidalee can siege, she can sustain, she can dive, burst, track, and escape all with great efficiency... and it just begs the question how is someone supposed to deal with all of this once she gets ahead?

Nidalee leaves a lot of room for players to express their skills with her, and that's great, but there's something really strange about her numbers being so strong that she is able to trade blows with Champions who specialize either in long-range combat, or close-quarter skirmishes, and come out on top. Wouldn't a good step towards making Nidalee feel better without having to touch her values be to have her Cougar form skills cost some mana? If not... why?

tl;dr; Why does Nidalee have no mana cost in Cougar form while Jayce has to pay mana for his skills in either stances?

8 Comments

FERViD RAGE4 votes

I can answer this very simply. Nidalee requires a fuck-ton of mana usage when deploying traps/chucking spears. This basically means that she relies on landing a spear that has the hitbox of a cigarette, and going in. Jayce on the other hand, has a TON of burst potential in both forms, and doesn't have to land a certain skill in order to proc a passive.

Ultîma1 votes

[{quoted}](name=FERViD RAGE,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=oz8hz2IW,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-01-21T21:57:32.386+0000)

I can answer this very simply. Nidalee requires a fuck-ton of mana usage when deploying traps/chucking spears. This basically means that she relies on landing a spear that has the hitbox of a cigarette, and going in. Jayce on the other hand, has a TON of burst potential in both forms, and doesn't have to land a certain skill in order to proc a passive.

Wouldn't you think that, instead of being completely reliant on either hitting Q or W in her human form, that her kit would flow better if her mana costs were distributed among her other skills?

KDragonL1 votes

No, otherwise people would spam spears or heal.

iainB852 votes

Been a while since I seen a good old Nidalee hate thread. Bravo.

Ultîma1 votes

{quoted}

Been a while since I seen a good old Nidalee hate thread. Bravo.

I'm not exactly hating on Nidalee - I rather enjoy her kit - I just think there's a balance issue that needs to be addressed to make her feel good when she's being played while also feeling fair to her opponents. Currently she's a generalist with no clear weaknesses or exploits - the only way to deal with Nidalee is to not get overwhelmed by her abilities and hope she runs out of steam from spamming... which most good players won't. Otherwise she can farm and push relatively well, assassinate and roam efficiently, all with great safety due to her manaless pounce.

Like I said, I'm not advocating a 100-mana tack-on to her cougar form abilities, but why is it that a character has access to great damage and mobility tools at no cost when they are mana users, and doesn't suffer any of the implicit penalties associated with manaless abilities (high cd/reliability/damage)?

Abyssphere1 votes

I'm not seeing the argument for giving her mana. You go on a big discussion about skill expression and counterplay to her kit, how she's a jack of all trades and so on.

And then at the end you conclude out of nowhere that she needs mana costs in cougar form. And suddenly it sounds like a "this is unfair to Jayce!" thread. What is the advantage of giving Nid mana for her or her opponents? If it's just gating her ability use then it's unnecessary - she's as mana-reliant as any mid laner and she'd need significant buffs in compensation. You say that giving her cougar form mana costs would make her "feel better" without needing to change her numbers. What about increased gating makes a champ feel better, and how do you expect her to deal with massively increased mana costs without buffs elsewhere? Her win rate is already on the lower end...

Balance-wise I'm pretty sure the reason for there being no mana costs is because when she has 7 abilities, they're all less impressive than just 4 would be. She can't do her burst combo without using every cougar ability, + a spear or trap (but ideally a spear). Most assassins use far less abilities than that to get their kill, and Nid also has to worry about her very expensive sustain ability. It is also consistent with assassins in general having few/no resources - see all energy champs and Katarina. Finally, it's consistent with Elise who is identical in how she transforms and also has no mana costs in her second form.

Ultîma1 votes

{quoted}

I'm not seeing the argument for giving her mana. You go on a big discussion about skill expression and counterplay to her kit, how she's a jack of all trades and so on.

And then at the end you conclude out of nowhere that she needs mana costs in cougar form. And suddenly it sounds like a "this is unfair to Jayce!" thread. What is the advantage of giving Nid mana for her or her opponents? If it's just gating her ability use then it's unnecessary - she's as mana-reliant as any mid laner and she'd need significant buffs in compensation. You say that giving her cougar form mana costs would make her "feel better" without needing to change her numbers. What about increased gating makes a champ feel better, and how do you expect her to deal with massively increased mana costs without buffs elsewhere? Her win rate is already on the lower end...

Balance-wise I'm pretty sure the reason for there being no mana costs is because when she has 7 abilities, they're all less impressive than just 4 would be. She can't do her burst combo without using every cougar ability, + a spear or trap (but ideally a spear). Most assassins use far less abilities than that to get their kill, and Nid also has to worry about her very expensive sustain ability. It is also consistent with assassins in general having few/no resources - see all energy champs and Katarina. Finally, it's consistent with Elise who is identical in how she transforms and also has no mana costs in her second form.

I don't see how Nidalee's skills are less impressive than other champions in either her human or Cougar form. Manaless mobility on a 5 second cooldown would be insane on any character, and her takedown can obliterate even bruisers. I'm not saying her costs should be high - I don't think a character that needs to use 4 skills or more in any trade rotation should - but currently Nidalee doesn't have to think about when to use half of her skills.

On the topic of Elise, I actually think she could stand to have mana-costs associated with her spider-form as well as I think it would limit her oppressive ganking behavior, and give room for Riot to buff her a little. I'm not saying the manaless nature of her spider-form was necessarily the cause of her being an absolute terror, but I do think that limiting her access to her tools would make her fall in line with a more healthy jungle pattern.

As for energy/manaless assassins... why draw that comparison when Nidalee is a mana champion? Saying there's another class of characters who fit the bill doesn't eliminate the fact that Nidalee is meant to be gated by mana in some capacity. Leblanc is a fantastic assassin who can't spam entire rotations of her spells nearly as much as Nidalee. Finally, all of the champions mentioned have low-end winrates but I don't think that correlates directly with their power over the course of a game. Historically, negative (under 50%) winrates have almost never been an indicative of a character's strength (see Yasuo).

Meep Man1 votes

Because her Human Form Mana Costs are extremely high and her cougar form abilities only become useful after she begins to Hunt or using her W Cougar to get away.

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