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An analysis on Nidalee a champion without an identity (I kind of spent time on this on accident)

Neidox·1/3/2018, 5:25:10 PM·16 votes·2,181 views

Hello fellow Summoners. My name is Neidox and I am a Nidalee main. I love this champion and have played her for as long as I can remember. Her

thematic is so amazing and vicious that caught me and has had me stuck on her. I would like to go into an in-depth analysis of the damage side of her kit with all of you because I have noticed a few flaws in Nidalee’s kit and I believe that she has lost her identity split between three plays styles that do not compliment one another which are Assassin, Poker, and Healer.

Firstly, I would like to compare and contrast her kit to another very similar champion, Lee Sin. Lee Sin’s Sonic Wave/Resonating Strike combo carries with it the same mechanic as Nidalee’s Spear, Ultimate, Pounce, Swipe, And Takedown combo (long isn’t it?) Lee Sin’s Sonic Wave has a range of 1100 while resonating strike has an effective range of 1300. This allows Lee Sin to have more room to decide whether he wants to commit since his Resonating Strike has a longer effect range than his Sonic Wave.

  • Nidalee’s ranges on her abilities are awkward to use since they are meant to be cohesive, yet her kit does not provide this. I will provide a picture below to show an example. The first ally dummy is max spear range, second is empowered pounce range.

https://imgur.com/MtHsDVK

I will also give you her ranges in numerical form. Nidalee’s Javelin toss has a range of 1500 which serves as her poke/combo starter. Her empowered Pounce however is half this range at 750. What this creates is a race that Nidalee has to compete in to close the distance if she lands a spear from outside of pounce zone or from max range if she wants to make full use of her kit. The only problem I find is that Nidalee has to hard commit, and I mean ROCK SOLID commit.
When Nidalee lands a spear on you what would you do? Run. This in my opinion negates a large portion of her passive which is her movement speed buff when targets are marked which is 30% when moving towards. I do not feel that she is able to chase down another 750 units towards a target actively trying to escape her with speed and mobility being so prevalent without having to hard commit with a flash. A range increase on empowered pounce would feel great with a nerf to the damage on it I believe.

Another issue Nidalee seems to have is Commitment. Nidalee is no longer in the state where she could siege all game. Her spears are weaker and thinner, and her heal is not impactful anymore. She must hunt. However, if she engages she will have no escapes and has Zero crowd control to bring to the table which leads to unfavorable situations. This is the Assassin part of her kit which was brought to the focus with her rework. But what is an assassin without an escape? A Kamikaze. A good buff for her I believe would be to give her a second empowered pounce after the first if she wishes to disengage. This would make her feel more quick and agile allowing her to dash in and out of a fight rather than having nothing to do when she does go in after her initial combo.

Okay now for the thing that bothers me most about Nidalee’s kit. Unlike Lee Sin, Nidalee will ALWAYS get diminishing returns on her kits damage if she does not land a max spear regardless if she lands her skillshot, which may I add is annoying since her rework. (moves slightly to the left) What I mean by this is if Nidalee lands her spear at pounce range it will do less damage, which also means her Takedown will also do less damage since it scales off of missing health. What this means is Nidalee is I believe the only champion to be double duped by range. I will have a full display of pictures below showing Max range combo, max pounce combo, and melee combo to show you the DPS. I used the basic combo I mentioned earlier of Spear, Pounce, Swipe, and Takedown. You will see my build in the screenshots. I have foregone Lichbane and Ludens as they add damage that is not Nidalee’s own.

At max range I did 2431 damage with the combo. With the combo done from empowered pounce range 1984 damage with the combo.

This is almost a 500dps loss with a skillshot done at approximately half range. It gets worst the closer you get from empowered pounce's range. (750) I feel this loss is to high for someone that has landed all of their abilities and is now seen as an assassin. Also please keep in mind these numbers are the full combo. Dps varies greatly on Nidalee's skill (or luck) of getting a hunt.

Updates to her kit could be as I mentioned, the empowered reset on use, the extended range, or another idea is her passive working similar to Rengar's where she can empowower pounce from brush (without the refund). Working on her spear could also be viable. I believe a width extension by 5 or 10 units would be really nice for her. I am not recommending more damage. I am simply asking for ways for her kit to properly meld with one another since it seems to me that as of late her kit just doesn't synergize well like other champions that are similar to her such as Lee Sin, Khazix, and Rengar who all have easy means of applying their damage either through stealth leaps, dashes, or ward hops.

I'm really tired so I'm gonna head off now. Let me know what you guys think. Good Night (its 9:20am) Please open discussion and no flame. [slayer-jinx-wink]

tl:dr Nidalee's kit doesn't function well like her other assassin counterparts.

17 Comments

Dead Anime Dad1/3/2018, 8:43:27 PM15 votes

Where as it is true she has no gimmick now, her gimmick before was deleting people with spears after chucking 50 of them and eventually landing one. Her kit was extremely unhealthy and they tried shifting her damage to ad. What happened then? She literally dominated top. To sum it up, riot said her old play style was unhealthy for the game, threw it on zoe anyways much later and now we have a champion that is a shell of their former self that needs nothing short of a rework.

Death by Glamour1/3/2018, 6:13:05 PM5 votes

Strange how you compare her to lee sin and not elise or jayce. Shes shares alot it common with elise not just form change and 7 abilities but she was deemed far to toxic to be a true laner and thus got shunted into the jungle much like s3 elise.

Sire Hippington1/3/2018, 7:57:14 PM4 votes

One issue with nidalee is that she offers more than just assasination. Yes, her spear isn#t enought to do all the work on it's own anymore, but it's still more potent poke than any other assasin has. Her heal isn't as absurd anymore, but it's still a rather potent heal, an the AS boost should not be underestimated. On top of that she has her traps for aditonal vision controll. However, the biggest issue with nida is her jungle. If played well, her clears are to powerfull and her early dueling aswell as ganks are massive. Ever since she was moved to the jungle, she was all about abuseing a strong earlygame and snowball like hell, and to compensate that she lost lots of mid-lategame power. Also, you need to be damn good on her to really get enough out of her early.

Imo they should remove her abillity to proc the passive on monsters. Yes, Jungle nida is thematically fitting, but balance wise she was a nightmare ever since, and it came at the cost of midlane, toplane and support nida. With her no longer abuseing the early jungle, she can recive the buffs she needs to feel like a proper and cohesive champ at all statges of the game.

lilpokfluf1/3/2018, 6:30:05 PM3 votes

Honestly all I want is the old pounce reset back

VeganScout1/3/2018, 7:29:27 PM3 votes

She is high skill cap for sure, when do you pick her as ap assasin ?

What can she do pre 6, and what junglers an she 1vs 1 ?

HalcyonDweller1/3/2018, 10:09:57 PM2 votes

Interesting ideas and a worthwhile read. Good post! +1

Aimléss1/3/2018, 7:28:48 PM2 votes

I understand what you're saying and it makes a lot of sense. Depending on how far away you land her spear you should get more movement speed up to 60% so you can catch up to people after hitting a long ranged spear. And her pounce should reset upon kills to reward her for assassinating allowing her to get out. Those 2 changes would be great for her.

Hupsis1/4/2018, 7:54:52 AM2 votes

I don't get Nidalee. She has so many different roles that do not really complement each other and it feels like a mess.

If I were to redesign her, I'd make her a hunter champion with a pet rather than a transformation champion. The human form Nidalee would be the poke/heal character and her pet (the cat form) would be a "mini-assassin". Gameplay would center around setting clever ambushes and chasing prey.

JoeMG1/3/2018, 11:43:27 PM1 votes

Just played Mid yesterday for the first time in maybe a year. Overall I think she's in an awkward spot. While her mid-late game is strong, the meta is favoring early clear junglers pretty heavily.

I was reminded yesterday how fun she is but I don't see a reason to pick her over Lee or Elise right now.

MetalGearTeemo1/4/2018, 10:03:00 PM1 votes

Zoe has her identity now, and Jayce. Both are cancer. You don't want that identity back, thats for sure.

SpearKitty1/4/2018, 8:40:14 AM1 votes

Alright, I'm going to do my best to break this all down and address it piece by piece, so please feel free to let me know if I interpreted any of what you said wrong.

Argument 1: ● Range discrepancies ● Lee QQ's have similar ranges, allowing for better decision making ● Spear has really long range; Pounce range (even extended) cannot come close to matching this ● Conflicts with assassin identity ● Claim: Kit is not cohesive because of this

Counterargument:

Much of the complexity in Nidalee's kit comes from the difficulty of working with three playstyles at once. Her spear has a long range because it is part of her Sieger identity, but the ability doesn't conflict with her Assassin identity because of the fact that it Hunts the target essentially at the cost of somewhat reduced damage for the potential of following up that damage with her Cougar combo with her empowered execute. A max range spear may be useful in some cases because all you're looking for is some zoning/threat on priority targets, or something to force them out of the fight. Compared to Lee Sin, her choice is more fleshed out. Instead of just "To go in, or not to go in, that is the question," Nidalee asks "should I look for max range spears to chunk people, or should I just go with spears to mark priority targets and put pressure on them." Her kit is only as cohesive as the player using it by design -- not by coincidence.

Argument 2: ● Commitment ● Spears are weaker and thinner ● Heal is not impactful ● Engaging leaves her with no escapes

Counterargument:

Her spears are thinner now, but that only allows for more skill expression. Don't get me wrong, the hitbox can still be wonkey (https://webmshare.com/xB908 ), but overall better players will know how and where they can throw spears to threat perfect needles right through the front line or minions directly to the squishies in the back. I'd like to just disagree on this point. Nid's heal is supremely impactful. Giving your ADC a free item's worth or more of Attack Speed along with the empowered Athene's heal mid-late game can absolutely swing fights in your favor.

For the last point, I suppose I have to assume you're talking about in team fights here, in which case I have to simply say that Nidalee's team fighting is somewhat weak. It would be foolish to assume that you can just hop into a fight off of a spear with no consequences. She just isn't that kind of champion. In order to have certain parts of her kit she has to give up strength elsewhere. You shouldn't be looking for a lot of plays like that unless they present themselves perfectly. Nidalee is a much, much better skirmishing champion that an all-out team fighting one. She excels in 2v2 or 3v3 fights, especially in close spaces where opponents can't easily avoid being marked and she can abuse her hop to jump walls. Just like you wouldn't say Zed has problems because he doesn't have long distance poke, you can't say that Nidalee has problems because she doesn't have easy escapes if she chooses to dive into the enemy team in a way that she is not designed to perform well in.

Argument 3: ● You lose a lot of DPS for not landing max range spears ● (Referring back to point 1 here) This creates conflict with her ability to be an assassin, because even if you land that spear you can't easily follow up on it

[Just a personal note here, I think it's a bit silly to leave out Ludens/Runic and Lich Bane for your damage comparisons, as realistically in most games you'll have both, and weaving autos is a large chunk of Nid's damage when you have to hop around and get off multiple rotations.]

Counterargument:

Of course you lose out on some DPS for not going max range with a highly damaging ability. This is a matter similar to what I mentioned in the first point; you trade some of your damage from the max range spear in order to have higher overall damage potential with your execute. This is especially evident if you had Lich and it wasn't a target dummy with 100 MR and at 95% health. Realistically a squishy target would only have 40-80 MR depending on how afraid of you or other AP's they are, and not nearly as much health, so they would be much lower for that execute damage. Cougar Q being an execute seems to be a seriously underrated fact, especially with its empowered damage.

tl:dr response:

Nidalee's kit doesn't function as well as other assassins because she's not purely an assassin. She has long range poke and a decently powerful heal (especially with Athene's, which is basically core at this point). The way to take advantage of her kit isn't to say "she's not as good as regular assassins so she needs a fix," it's to blend all three playstyles into one fluid and singular unique playstyle. That's why I'm so fascinated by her and absolutely in love with her kit. In fact, it's a large part of why she's so difficult -- if not impossible -- to truly master.

Sincerely, some loser who just wants to play Nidalee

Edit: I'm an idiot and was viewing the screenshots in the wrong context; I updated what I said to reflect that.

swanington1/3/2018, 6:28:20 PM1 votes

I feel like her ability to poke and heal should make her top notch in a support role. Plus she's still able to contribute to a fight beyond that.

That being said, I like the idea of giving her a second pounce to disengage with (provided the first one lands)