Way to create more tradeoff for Nidalee's spears

ARRaisch·Mar 29, 2014·7 votes·255 views

So its not a surprise to anyone that Nid spears have been the cause of many qq'ing, and somewhat recently there has been a little discusion on how her spears have little trade off, so by mid/late game she basically gets to chuck spears, that can take out at least over 40% of your adc's health bar, at around 6 seconds (with no cdr) until it hits someone, so to make more tradeoff with them (and to add more incentive to hit people) make it so it has a higher cooldown that is reduced to the regular cooldown if it hits a enemy champion and if it hits a minion or monster a refuced cooldown that is inbetween the new cooldown and old one, and maybe make it so the cooldown (if she misses) scales higher with her champion level so by more mid/late game it hurts her more to miss her spears than it would during her early game, where her spear chucking isnt nearly as impactful. This is all just an idea and im a bronze noob so im expecting a lot of problems with this, but feedback is very much welcomed and appreciated!

30 Comments

Earl EulrichMar 29, 201412 votes

they have to take away the heal from her kit. Having Poke, mobility and incredible sustain all on one champ is just way too much. Only nerfing one skill doesn´t help at all, the kit is just broken and it direly needs a rework.

Knight DevoutMar 29, 20147 votes

Scaling down the heal will make her a easier target midlane, but wouldn't affect the core of the problem, that is the spear barrage in mid/lategame.

EDIT : you can downvote, but Morello said that they agree that they don't like Nida's power distribution.

ARRaischMar 29, 20143 votes

dont know why you so many downvotes, its very true, just straight up nerfing her heal doesnt address her main problem, the tradeoff of her spears isn't balanced, on the same note i dont believe straight up nerfing her spears damage will help the main problem either, as that doesnt address the abilities tradeoff either best course of action imho would be to slightly rework her spears, at the least

MackleDogeMar 29, 20145 votes

He has downvotes because the heal is still a problematic portion of her kit. Adjusting her spears is something that needs to be done, plain and simple. But her ability to have a heal and AS steroid, ranged poke, ranged and melee forms, and a whole separate skill set on cougar form that is incredibly strong (don't know what person said it was weak in this thread but they're just plain ignorant) is a perfect example of kit overload. Nidalee needs more than just spear tweaks to be healthy to play and play against.

ARRaischMar 29, 20141 votes

ah okay then i understand your point, im not the most experienced Nidalee player (hell i dont even own her :P) so im not to terribly familiar with her kit as a whole, but yes after reading your post i completely understand the point both of you are making

MackleDogeMar 29, 20141 votes

That isn't to say that he's inherently wrong mind you, her main problem is the easily abused spear mechanic she has. Just ignoring or saying the heal doesn't need to be touched is a little bit naive at best.

Knight DevoutMar 30, 20141 votes

I get your point, but when a champion is problematic you don't usually tackle all the problems at the same time. Morello latest stance was against Javelin Toss and inclined to give love to cougar form.

IF you nerf all together you get another Olaf/Rengar/Diana.

ShinRaigekiMar 30, 20141 votes

As I stated lower in this topic: you only need to do 2 major nerfs and 1 conversion:

H.Q - Turn to a Bonus AD Ratio, inflict physical damage.

H.E - Decrease Ratio by .1 or .2 (.6 AP or .5 AP Ratio).

C.W - Increase base cooldown to 6 seconds.

None of these would ideally break her, and would balance out her ratios which are oddly AP focused. Swapping Spear to bonus AD will give more choice to her kit, and like other healers who are not supports, draw away from building AP if they want the sheer damage output. It would also increase the viability of Bruiser Nidalee.

By dropping down the E heal rate even by .1, it will make her heal a little more manageable and less a near-instant turnable when used on an ADC (especially a fed one).

AP Nidalee would be more focused as a support champ choice who gains damage after 6 this way. I'm sure we've all seen Nidalees who can win duels with pure AP using only cougar form. I know I have. That would be the concept here. They would recieve all those nice cooldowns. In exchange for the lost of it's insane poke it would be the 'nidalee build' that gains the high utility.

Of course, all of this is mostly just a bandaid until a rework. It would simply split Nidalee into two builds and help solve her obvious case of schizophrenia. ("I want to be a Mage! NO I WANT TO BE A SUPPORT! NO A MARKSMAN! I WANT TO BE LOOOOVED Q_Q")

Knight DevoutMar 31, 20141 votes

AD ratio on Q? No thanks, I don't want Jayce to get kicked any further than he already is T___T

Also, be careful what you wish for. Nidalee building AD would mean that toplane Nida is now godtier. E gives her massive attack speed, get a barrage of 150AD 15 armor pen Nidalee, try to run away, get chucked by a 1000 physical damage spear. Bye.

Changing the type of damage doesn't solve anything if the scalings stay the same: It's the mechanic of the Javelin's toss that needs some tradeoffs.

MackleDogeMar 30, 20141 votes

A rework isn't meant to be a nerf or a buff, and scaling and adjusting the entire kit would be a rework. Quite frankly I think Nidalee needs one, her kit is inherently toxic to the game, pretty damn unrewarding to play against, and conflicts with itself to begin with. I'm sorry, but it is better for overall game health if a champion is over-nerfed as opposed to overpowered.

Knight DevoutMar 31, 20141 votes

And here we disagree. As a Rengar main, I'd rather have riot take their sweet time and balance their champion right rather than buff/nerf/buff/nerf/buff/nerf forcing the player to go with whatever works well in the patch.

MackleDogeMar 31, 20141 votes

Having to go with whatever works well in a patch is part of a live balance MOBA. It's the inherent nature of the beast.

Knight DevoutMar 31, 20141 votes

In reply to what you posted below. Rather than part of the moba, is "part of league of legends". Other mobas just don't care about balance that much because they believe in counterpicking being more important than counterplay. I like LoL approach more but they need to be more responsible with the nerfs. AND they need to be clear with the players when they do something like they did with olaf and Rengar. Say it loud" we nerfed these champions because we don't want them in competitive play because they aren't balanced". At least players know that they have to try something new because Riot purposefully left them underpowered.

Their current approach is "hide the head in the sand and pretend to not notice the massive drop in winrates".

The7thKingMar 29, 20145 votes

rework entirely agreed +1

CaptainWednesdayMar 29, 20143 votes

True. She can heal more than Soraka. It's a little stupid.

DeathOmenMar 29, 20145 votes

I for myself have not been having trouble with her spears, yes she can chuck them with no worries of CDR time but if you're at least half as smart as she is, you'll be able to dodge them with ease by simply keeping a mind-set that she will throw another one in the next 4-5 seconds, so keep an eye out on where she is, where you are standing , and if you have minions or enough space to dodge, if not , then reposition yourself to that extent asap. (and yes she will get lucky and hit you once or twice but with some luck on your side, you should be just fine)

Just my opinion :)

Edit: There seems to be a downvoter among us.

aaronautumnMar 29, 20144 votes

Indeed. Minions are your best friend. Also it's best to engage a fight before she has time to poke everyone down. The longer you wait to fight the better your chances of being hit by a spear if you're not careful.

What's more frustrating about Nidalee is that she is very safe and hard to kill when she gets ahead. The damage is avoidable to a degree but her safety is what should certainly be looked at.

ShinRaigekiMar 29, 20145 votes

I personally find more than anything 2 things break nidalee:

Her Heal (which provides AS for little apparent reason) which is huuuge

And her Cougar W, which effectively with CDR is a 2.5 second leap allowing her to escape most issues. And the moment the enemies back off she uses it to re-engage with spears.

If you ask me the most toxic ability in her kit's the cougar W. It's got way too short a CD and it provides too much utility (wall jumping, low CD for Lich/Trinity and escaping, etc).

The Heal just makes dueling her a total pain in the ass though.

Personally I'd try to shuffle her Q to a Bonus AD modifier (you're throwing a spear, what part of that is magical) instead of a AP

Drop her Cougar W to a higher CD. Preferably 6 seconds (*.4 = 2.4 or 3.6 Seconds at max CDR).

And drop the heal AP modifier by .1 or .2 (It's got an AS bonus, do you need that much heal?).

Overall I ask myself why she's effectively a hybrid champ though...

aaronautumnMar 29, 20143 votes

Nidalee should take 400 damage if her spear misses and it has a 10% critical strike chance.

I Main SwainMar 31, 20142 votes

why the downvotes? He's obviously making a joke...

MackleDogeMar 31, 20141 votes

It's not funny?

Knight DevoutMar 29, 20142 votes

A few ideas that don't just straight out nerf her.

1/------------/

Increased mana cost on successive Javelin Toss cast within 14 seconds from the last (not affected by cdr), but that is only applied if the spell misses.

2/-----------/

Increased cooldown when she misses .

3/----------/

Add some cool interaction like "Target hit by Javelin toss takes %increased damage from Nidalee Cougar form ability and refund her health", while nerfing either cooldown or mana costs.

Be wary though. A nerf on poke is pretty much what moved Jayce from good pick in competitive to tier2.

Remlap1223Mar 29, 20142 votes

I agree that Nidalee's spear needs to be nerfed. However, I don't think that it should lose all it's power, it's just that Nidalee is such a heavy poking champion in her human form, and then goes full predator in her cougar form. Instead of gaining damage the further away a champion is, have it deal double bonus damage on retreating targets (backshots). And knock down the AP scaling. I know everyone just harps about staying behind minions, but you're not going to have minions body blocking abilities everywhere you go. It's the same reason why I believe that Blitzcrank's pull is massively overpowered, because somebody has to get pulled, or the Blitzcrank has to be terrible at skillshots. There is no other counter. Same goes for Nid's spears. If the AP scaling went down significantly, and instead did double damage on retreating targets, I'd go as far to say that the spear can ignore unit collision on minions, much like Ez's Essence Flux.

TL:DR, Nidalee should be a cougar on the prowl for her prey, not a helpless pussycat taking potshots.

(44 (+52% AP) to 109.6 (+130% ap) at level 1 to 184 (+52% AP) to 460 (+130% AP) at level 5).

Duke of NukingMar 30, 20142 votes

If you were to nerf her spears too much, the whole point of her would be moot. If you nerf her heal too much all she's good for is spear chucking and the ability to "maybe" go cougar and close in for the kill.

There are things that can be done, like toggling how much damage it does at certain ranges, maybe CD changes making the spears more precious instead of random chucking and others, but nerfing them too hard is breaking the champion.

She has no built in CC that a lot of other mids have, if she has no cc break that some others have, and you have to turn into cougar to escape with W, but you have to wait til' you go back to human to heal, throw spears, or use traps which can be useful.

Some of her ratios can be tweaked to bring her more into the mortal realm and less of the psuedo-champion god realm some champions are in now, but some of these ideas will nerf her into uselessness.

Sai AquariusMar 30, 20142 votes

Increase her cooldown on the spear. have it land like Olafs axes. if she picks up the spear her cooldown is lowered. pretty easy and would motivate people to use cougar form. The problem with her heal is that it increases attack speed while healing ALOT. While Kayle's heal increases movement speed and doesn't heal as well. This is a balance issue. They should nerf the heal.

The MoisturizerrMar 29, 20141 votes

nidalee isnt OP by any means, you eventually will be able to predict when and where she is going to throw spears, and once you are able to dodge her spears, you'll realize shes not a problem, not a weak champ by any means, but also no OP imo

KexusMar 30, 20141 votes

I wouldn't mind seeing a change to her passive. She really doesn't need the movespeed bonus since she already has her cougar form.

Just throwing this out as an idea - what if instead of her spears dealing more damage the farther they travel, they gain magic penetration.

3ST RippyMar 31, 20141 votes

Nidalee isn't really that over powered but i do believe she does need a few tweeks. Maybe by increasing the cooldown on her cougar form/ Human form~ which is her R would make her less flexible and would remove a little bit of the utility because she already has her bunny hops which i think they should totally make a bunny skin for her. And they should also reduce ap scaling on her q to about .2 or .1 and add more ad scaling which would motivate Nidalee players to build more attack damage instead of going full glass cannon and relying all on her q. I think the heal is fine but i do think they should increase the cooldown on it to about 15 seconds at level 1 and make it go down by one second and make it .1 ap scaling. They should also make it cost around 100 mana at level one so that you cant use it all the time, it would overall subtract the sustain that she already had. And they should also have her cougar form abilities cost mana and up the mana cost on her cougar form leap and up the cooldown to 5.00 at all stages. Bye doing this she would bring less utility to the team and still be a big part of the game just lowering her stats a bit would make her less overpowered