Nidalee has been nerfed continuously since her rework.
She was nerfed out of top lane, nerfed out of midlane, and if Riot touches her again she'll be nerfed out the jungle too.
Jungle Nidalee is just holding on by a thread currently, but there really isn't that much of a reason to play her over any other jungle outside of personal preference. if someone's doing well on the current Jung Nid then it's because they're just flat out better than their competition, she was never easy - but she was extremely rewarding when utilised correctly, now however she's about as rewarding as any other damage jungler, except she requires far more finesse. It's a =/= situation tbh.
Lane Nidalee is gutted, at top she loses pretty much every matchup on account of having low base ad, being extremely squishy, and lacking the brute force that she initially had upon her rework which made her such a successful top laner (But even then, she was known as a bit of a 'win lane lose game pick'). Her resets have been nerfed all across the board, Hunting no longer resets all of your cool downs as it used to, her damage is nowhere near as high as it used to be early game (Her Q does less damage than most other auto attack modifiers in the game even at maximum amplification during early levels, whereas before it was really potent.) Her heal was nerfed, damaging her in lane sustain that allowed her to deal with the more difficult match ups, which have no become virtually impossible to deal with unless you're far, far better than your opponent. And to top it off her damage has become more reliant on putting points in Q - do you level up Q early so that your spears, and by extension your full combo does reasonable damage, or do you gutt your damage and invest in a mana-consuming heal which isn't nearly as strong as it used to be?
Finally, the pounce reset nerfs were a massive nail in the coffin for lane Nidalee - her weakness top was always that anything that could pin her down and whack on her could beat her, now pretty much every top laner can do that as her pounce CD will be on a 2.7s+ reset until level 6, and won't drop below a second until level 16 + 40% cdr; this is massive, it's like Riven not being able to dash out after dropping her combo or being incapable of mitigating damage with her shield. It completely destroys her trading potential, match ups that were easy before are now difficult, while those that were hard are now nigh impossible unless you're significantly better than your opposition - which begs the question, why not just play a meta top laner and have an easier time of things?
So Idk what kind of favouritism you're trying to call on here when Nidalee has been getting nerfed like every third patch since her rework - many of which have been quite brutal. Removal of skill resets, removal of aa resets, the complete gutting of her bushwhacks (The vision it provides is laughable, and its damage is much less than a shadow of its former self), nerfing of her base stats, continuous changes and nerfs to her pounce mechanic, and number nerfs to pretty much every single one of her abilities.
. Just because she happens to be a "favourite" champion of Riot's.
over her anytime. But the thing that annoys me the most is that she is not a mage and yet has the most powerful poke skillshot in the game.
and 
, both of which have some of the best mobility in the game but none of the drawbacks from playing traditional low mobility mages. (Mages were originally designed to have no mobility to BALANCE them, however Riot, in their infinite mobility creep designed both these champions to have rediculous levels of mobility and therefore making an ENTIRE CLASS of champion obsolete. Why would you pick Xerath when Ahri does the same thing with more safety?)
