Nidalee has been the champion with the most "toxic" playstyle, according to the community, for a long time. Why is Nidalee such an unbalanced champion? Is Nidalee really a broken champion like the community says she is? Let's talk about Nidalee's kit before we get into this. Nidalee is a champion with high mobility, high poke, and high burst from range. Why is this such a problem? There are other champions with very similar traits, but the way Nidalee delivers her damage and utility is anything but healthy for the game. Some key controversial points on Nidalee are her Q and E in human form and her W in cougar form.


Nidalee's Q provides her with poke from long distance. The thing about Nidalee's poke is that when ahead or even her spears have the capability to send someone back to base in one spear by mid game. This indirectly gives her great objective control, and right now objective control is the most important part about the game. Even if you dodge 9/10 of the Nidalee spears that are thrown, you are most likely going back to base from that tenth spear. Nidalee's E is called Primal Surge. This ability is a heal with a .7 AP ratio. This is a huge deal because she is the only champion in the game with this high of an AP ratio. Not only does this heal pretty much counter any sort of trade or poke the other team throws at you, it also gives an attack speed buff. If your ADC gets poked to half HP then a Primal Surge will most likely take him back to full HP. This takes away any sort of counter play to Nidalee other than some sort of hard engage. This makes Nidalee fit into pretty much any team composition, and that is why she dominates competitive play right now. Nidalee's W in cougar form is a 2 second leap away. Nidalee has a 2 second getaway that can go over some walls. This part is a lot less controversial than the spear + heal combo, but I feel it is a key part in why Nidalee is so strong in this meta. Let's look at xerath. Xerath provides high poke and high burst from long range, but Xerath has no getaway that protects him from hard engages and no heal for when he gets poked. Nidalee's kit is designed to be a hard to catch poking champion who instantly dies to hard engage, but it's insanely hard to catch that cougar.


Riot recently proposed a rework for Nidalee which would really gut her spears, reduce her healing a tad, and overall make her cougar form more appealing to play. The rework offers a new passive ontop of her old one, which got a nerf. The passive grants more movespeed while moving towards champions with the Hunt debuff. This also increases damage to champions if using cougar abilities while the enemy has a Hunt debuff active. This rework also unlocks her ultimate at level one, similar to Jayce and Elise. This rework does even more justice by making Nidalee use her W and E in the direction of her mouse cursor. This makes Nidalee a lot more fun to play as you don't feel so limited with your mobility. The last important part about the Nidalee rework is the buff to her W. The cooldown for her W at max rank is 1.25s. This is huge because before it was 4 at max rank. People think she's slippery now? She's going to be nearly impossible to catch after this rework. Even though I haven't played the new Nidalee yet, I really think these changes will be for the better of the game. The question is: Will these changes keep the old Nidalee while toning her down enough to make her playable? Basically, is this going to "Olaf her"? My answer is yes, after these changes she will still be played mid and even more top lane, but I think she will see a lot less play and maybe none at all in the competitive scene.


The one thing that bothers me about this rework is the approach to her Q. Everyone sees is as a toxic ability that takes no skill, but a while ago Nidalee's Q was seen as an ability that required skill. How on earth could you change Nidalee's spear without gutting it? It either does damage or it doesn't. There are two easy solutions to this. The first solution is to create an execution system for her Q. This way you would have to land a few spears on said target before your spear actually does insane damage to them. The second solution would be to add a new passive to Nidalee's Q which would allow a spear to add a stack to that target you hit a spear with. The next spear would add a stack and deal bonus damage, and the next spear would add another stack and deal even more damage. I doubt Riot would implement this system, but I do think it would be for the better of Nidalee.


All in all, this rework will nerf Nidalee mid lane a lot and top lane a little. This rework is definitely a step in the right direction, though. I think they can still take some different approaches, but overall this rework is looking great. Thanks for reading my take on the Nidalee rework. Feel free to check out a new site I'm working on that will have a lot of LoL content along with eSports content. [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]