"People hate the mobility creep in this game. They also hate nidalee. Let's combine those" -Riot

I agree with a lot of what you say. I also think Mini Gnar is going to prove very difficult to balance in the long run.

The problem with mini gnar is that virtually all of his power is loaded into hyperactive. He has no ult. His Q scales poorly unless you are building tons of AD--late game, you mostly just use it to slow targets and stack hyperactive. His E is a small jump, and its only offensive use is to increase your attack speed (which lets you stack hyperactive faster) and to apply a stack of hyperactive. His entire mini form is totally based around kiting targets while stacking hyperactive. And hyperactive itself has no active--it's just a passive with a massive damage proc that remains high throughout the entire game without building any damage.

I agree that mini gnar's dueling potential is overpowered at the moment. But the problem with nerfing Mini Gnar's dueling is that dueling is pretty much all he brings to the table. He has what is essentially a single target slow (unless enemies are grouped incredibly close together in a line) and a bunch of single target damage--that's pretty much it. If you reduce mini gnar's dueling potential, you're reducing the only thing Mini Gnar does, and thus removing the only reason a player wants to be in mini form.

The champion was designed to have obvious strengths and weaknesses in both forms. Gnar is supposed to reward players for managing rage well by creative specific incentives and disincentives to be in either form. If mini gnar can't duel well, players are never going to want to be in mini gnar--gnar changes from a transform champion with tradeoffs to a champion with a weak base form who is always trying to build rage and go mega.

I think Riot has basically two options:

1. make mini gnar more vulnerable without reducing his damage. Gnar players still have a reason to be in mini form, but mini form isn't as oppressive in lane, particularly against melees. A start would be to reduce boomerang toss's max range (it's unnecessarily long right now) and reduce either the duration or the power of the slow. This might end up totally screwing Gnar's ability to lane against champions with targeted dashes (fiora, Jax, Irelia) but maybe that's fair. Riot could also experiment with attaching the %health damage on his W to an active buff--i.e., three procs always gives him the speed boost, but three procs only does the % health damage for a specific window of time with a CD. This would give Gnar access to the damage when he needs it, while creating windows of time where melees might actually be able to efficiently trade with him.

2. Give gnar another reason to be in mini form. As I stated above, all mini gnar has right now is hyperactive. If they gave him some utility, they could nerf hyperactive without removing the only reason to be in mini form. The most radical way to do this would be to give mini gnar a separate ult that shares a CD with his current ult, and brings some different form of power to duels, skirmishes, and team fights.