Sure, Bruiser Nidalle is one of the strongest top chars, if played right. But you can beat her quite easily with Udyr, or even Lee Sin, besides Lee Sin is better in jungle, but hes also a Nidalee counter.

Hmm I can see udyr maybe working if u can land a stun when she comes 2 kill creeps if she choses to go in cat form but apart from that a good nid will always cs with aa from the brush to abuse her passive. As for lee sin if you can land a q and e if she pushes then lane maybe but if she just stands behind creeps u won't be able to reach her. Guess at least they can trade with her and come out on top in 1vs1 fights. Could work.

Irelia, yorick, cho, hurdyr, pantheon is decent too. There are quite a lot champions

I adore playing AD Nidalee top. I think I can call her one of my best top lanes I use so I might be able to give you some tips. AD Nidalee has hard times countering critplank because she can not outheal his parleys and all he has to do is crit her out of the lane + farm when you can or when she's gone and repeat. It just wrecks her and she can hardly recover from it before lategame so mid-game she will jump in, start, eat 2/3 skills and flash + pounce out, heal and stay back for the rest of the fight.

From my experience in Nidalee games I think someone like Grages would be able to beat her because she doesn't get tanky before the 20:00-25:00 mark and Grages AP can do some serious **** with his ult to Nidalee.
For the rest: Irelia and Talon shut Nidalee down completely, especially Talon because she isn't an AD caster, but relies heavily on skills to do succesfull. Hard CC (Stun, Snare, Silence etc. She does not care about slows, not even Nasus' slow) is the key to destroying Nidalee.

PS: Warding her top brush may be a wise thing to do so you can CC her without giving her the chance to pounce + brush MS away.

Wriggles Irelia works pretty well. AD Nid is reliant on supercheap harrass with autoattacks, and enough regen counters that hard. Also, I could imagine pantheon to work due to his passive....

Actually Pantheon is a poor choice as he needs to spam his stun + spear + multiple spear thing to get you low, and even then you won't die. Heal back up, go in again. Pantheon heals less from Wriggles then you do from Wriggles + heal AND he is way faster oom then you will ever be. Pantheon with blue will kill you , but without blue it's a mana battle which you will win.

If he only blocks/stuns you will still outdamage him and he needs to recall.
If he starts using all his skills you pounce in, do your 2 skills, get stunned + combo'd, pounce away, heal back up from aa & heal and go pounce in again. He needs his whole kit, so do you but he uses 5 times more mana.

Although his Ult could kill you but with pounce you should be able to avoid that and not get jumped by his stun afterwards.

AP's with range who aren't rubbish early, or flash+ignite garen. her amazing laning phase balances out her awful teamfighting abilities so just make sure you can farm fine

I keep hearing Nidalee offers nothing to teamfights, in my experience that is not true.

Wriggles -> Merc Treads -> Frozen mallet > Atma's Impaler > Abyssal Scepter -> Trinity Force/Warmogs/Force of Nature/Thornmail

With this setup you can easily survive the burst of the AP caster you jumped on to and wrecked while everyone focusses you and your AD beats their AD if they CC'ed it.