So the general logic that was communicated to me when this change was coming in was specifically on how Nidalee gets a lot of free defensive stats, and she got this when design was under the belief that all melee fighters needed to have innate tankiness in any fight. These days, there is a more deeper understanding that movement speed and positioning both alleviate the need to be tanky, so champions that get both movement speed and free tankiness are becoming, at some points, unkillable. It's one thing to be elusive - it's another to be elusive with free defensive stats.

The other point is that Nidalee's cougar form was always intended to be that elusive huntress that can dish out a pile of damage while skirting around the opponent's party. A cougar that dives right into the enemy team is a little odd from a thematical viewpoint.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you don't care about thematics, so I'll say this: You've seen just how popular AP Nidalee has been in the LCS because of her high split push and utility (when built tanky) or her incredible poke damage as AP. The increased AP ratio on swipe was to literally dangle a bigger carrot on a stick for Nidalee players to utilize her high damage in cat form and to use it in a way that promotes her mobility more than anything.

Think of the new champion, Quinn, and her ultimate which gives her incredible offensive prowess and mobility, but no free defensive stats. When I first saw Quinn, I was frustrated because I felt that a melee transformation means you have this window to be in the enemy face all the time, but I kept dying because of how squishy I was. Quinn (and, to an extent, Nidalee) both require mindset changes where their forms are meant to be used for high damage and mobility because their kit imparts precisely that. If you want to BUILD tanky to take advantage of the free offensive bonuses, then you're welcome to do so (and I intend to try bruiser Quinn just like I think tanky Nidalee is still very strong), but getting both free (offensive prowess and free defensive stats) is a little unbalanced.

This is all coming from my understanding, so let me keep this discussion rolling: do you feel that Nidalee's free MR / AR and MR/lvl were part of what made her unique and competitively viable as a champion?

Dont get me Wrong. But I think Balance Nidalee is Tough Like Balance Vladimir . You gonna Over Nerf them or make them OP.


Right AP nidalee have insane poke. But Listen Carefully FeralPony "we want encourage ppl jump into team fight". Now When you playing AP nidalee you are so squishy that you will just NOT JUMP into team fight. That "free MR ,AR and MR/lvl" gave her that ability.


At other Hand I agree Bruiser Nidalee is/was OP. But When you nerfed Bruiser Nidalee AP nidalee also suffer. and suffer mutch MORE

This'll be my last post for a bit because it's 2:30am here and I just wanted to give some love. FeralPony was right in saying that he wanted people to jump into a team fight, but he was saying it in the same way that Quinn's ultimate encourages her to jump into a team fight: intelligently! Nidalee is a champion who is all about finesse, so the team was hoping that the higher Swipe AP ratio would more effectively communicate that intelligent use of Cougar form as a high damage - high mobility cat that chases down her opponents.

In other words, FeralPony didn't quite mean "JUMP IN SWIPE EVERYONE YOU'RE DOIN' DAAAAMAAAAGE," but more like, "use that Cougar form for more than pouncing away to increase your spear damage!" Basically when a team fight happens - sure, keep chucking spears - but when an opportunity arises where you need to deal EVEN MORE damage, you have the risk-reward option of jumping in with Cougar form (and risk getting blown up if you don't do it intelligently) or just staying back and feeling like you missed out on the opportunity.

No, I'm sorry, but there is just no way this change was warranted. Nidalee saw use because she's strong in the current meta. Taking her durability away is not going to change WHY she's been seeing use - all it does is punish you for no real reason.

Let's compare Nidalee's cougar to some other AP melees.

Katarina is known for her high mobility and burst. She's got a safe escape/engaging skill with a range much higher than Pounce, her ratios are much better and she has 4 damaging abilities while AP Nidalee for all intents and purposes only has two. These skills have excellent synergy with eachother and while she is fragile, she has enough damage to let her get in, do her job and get out.

Elise is very like Nidalee in that you skirt the edges of combat flinging poke until you can commit in spider form. Not only does Elise get her ultimate at level one while Nidalee does not, she too has a better gapcloser/escape, a better execute, hard CC in human form, and shreds bruisers with only spell penetration. She's also allowed to keep her defensive stats. And did I mention she gets access to spider form at level one? Yeah, that's kind of an important point.

Akali is another high-mobility AP champion that is melee and relies on skirting combat before jumping in and blowing all she has. Her shroud gives her defensive stats as well as invisibility, her charge can be used more often and has roughly TRIPLE the range of pounce, and we all know about Akali's burst damage.

Now, Nidalee isn't just about her cougar as we know - but her human form is already pretty crappy. She has two spells useful for teamfighting, and one of them is her heal, which has already been nerfed and drains a ****ton of mana. So now all she can do is stay in that unfun human form tossing spears hoping she can hit someone who isn't a tank by hiding around a corner, which in itself puts her in a vulnerable position as her team will probably be squaring up to the other a bit away from her.

Even Quinn, while using her ult, has it better. She has a blind, to prevent some incoming damage. She has a massive attackspeed steroid, which as an AD champion, is fantastic. She still has heavy sustained damage and burst with Skystrike and her other spells. Yeah you don't give her any defensive abilities, but that is the main theme here - she doesn't NEED them because she does enough damage to kill her target and get out before they kill her.

There is no "BUT IF YOU'RE SMART YOU'LL BE FINE!". I don't know what fantasy birthed this travesty of a change, but it is NEVER going to happen that you get in cougar form without being noticed and you get to go anywhere near anyone - no matter how low - without being stunned and bursted down. And it is NEVER going to happen that you get the drop on someone and manage to do more damage to them than they will to you before their friends come running.

Nidalee is not in a great spot right now after these changes, because despite you buffing swipe's ratio she STILL does not do enough damage in cougar form to be worth the risk of using it in a teamfight for anything except cleaning up, and her only damaging ability is her easily-dodged Javelin Toss in human form.

If you try to go cougar in a teamfight, you will be blown up instantly, making you choose to either become tanky enough to last more than two seconds - which will mean you simply do not have the damage to earn your space on the team - or going glasscannon - and exploding the second anyone comes near you, keeping you standing miles away from the fight chucking spears because you have no cc to protect yourself or your teammates and your heal already got gutted ages ago.

Come off it, pounce is NOT going to keep you safe when every bruiser has CC and a dash and can't be killed. Nidalee's durability before allowed her at least time to escape, and meant she wasn't killed by errant AoE when trying to chase people in won team fights.


tl;dr: Nidalee DOES NOT DO ENOUGH DAMAGE in cougar form to make using it as a reliable source of damage worth it, because now she dies in two hits rather than three and her ratios are still horrible. And why do Jayce and Elise get to keep their defences when they have a much stronger kit and both get their other stance at level ONE?

Lol MEANWHILE Jax, Vlad, Xerath, Yi, etc...........

Remove Vlad, Xerath and Yi from that list pls.

In addition to, pouncing and swiping in cougar form is lets say uncomfortable. You go through minion wave, you are just about to pounce and suddenly your champion rotates to side or back to run around minion and pounce into a wall or even back. IMO, it should be something like - pounce to the direction of the pointer. And with swipe also it could be the same, so you wouldn't need to position yourself like this,because it takes time. And now as being an even squishier target every piece of second counts as a big deal.

It was a very severe nerf, which is uncharacteristic of Riot. Remove both mr/lvl and cougar defensive stats ? Why so harsh ? Nerf it less and see how it goes.

This nerf affects mostly AD/tanky Nidalee top lane which in competitive level is rarely peaked and rarely does well because she's extremely weak pre 6. AD Nid's most useful human form skill (E) has at lvl 5 140 mana cost which is ABSURD. Reduce the mana cost a little and give Nid back half of the cougar form defenses she used to have. See how that goes in the highest level of competition on NA, EU and Asia. Talk to the pros that are known for playing her (Hotshot, Maknoon, Stanley).

Balance correctly and not randomly. Nid is an extremely fun champ to play and watch. Don't ruin her or mold her to a specific thing you want her to be.

I understand what feral pony is trying to do, but you're not doing it the right way. you're saying you want an ap mage to jump in melee range to do additional damage. you're improving an ap ratio by 0.2 to "dangle a carrot", so people will do this. the only reason people could jump into a team fight BEFORE as ap nidalee was the added tankyness she got from it.

you're removing mr/level AND the 30 bonus mr she gets from being in cat form. why would i ever want to go into melee range to do a little extra damage when it makes me very vulnerable to the ridiculously tanky melee champions that are todays "meta". this change will 100% make me no longer feel comfortable to do what i was able to do before, which was jump into melee range pounce on someone and dash out elusively, because i know if i'm playing her as ap i wont have any magic resistance other than 13 flat from my runes, because abyssal scepter range is way smaller than my average spear hit. so effectively this change will do the opposite of what you want it to do.

no more ap mid nidalee, ad and support onry.