Overview
Did your brother get kicked in the ass? Perhaps the person who did it was a Nidalee main -- a champion with a deep and storied history, she has undergone multiple changes to her kit to land where she is today as a jungler that makes good use of swapping between her human form and her cougar form. She has good poke and carry potential if she is allowed to get ahead early. Click here for the latest data on her best builds, including Runes, Items, Summoner Spells, and more.
Keys to Remember About Nidalee
Nidalee is a carry-style jungler, which means you'll want to play aggressively early to secure ganks and camps in the enemy jungle. She has great dueling potential early but falls off later, so do your best to gain big advantages early.
She benefits greatly from having proper pathing and knowing where she can hop over walls -- part of mastery on her is simply knowing how to move around the map.
Strengths
Nidalee is a very strong early game jungler who can dominate the enemy jungler by repeatedly invading their turf to fight them and steal away camps. Part of this is because she has access to more abilities early than counterparts thanks to being a shapeshifter, which gives her both ranged poke to keep enemies at arm’s length and a cougar form that allows her to jump in for the finisher. The most basic combo is the Javelin Toss [Q] into cougar form’s Takedown [Q] to get up close and personal. The mobility from Pounce [W] also allows her to easily navigate across all sorts of terrain, and knowing what ledges you can or can’t hop over is a big part of Nidalee’s mastery curve.
Weaknesses
She’s a champion with a very high skill ceiling -- something you see even up to pro play, where fans will often lament their teams picking Nidalee. But the handful of junglers who are capable of playing her at a high level are dominant even at the highest level. That said, your Solo Queue jungler is probably not a professional caliber player, so results are going to vary greatly. She’s a champion who will fall off as the game progresses more and more towards team fighting, as she prefers skirmishes between only a few champions. She’s prone to being locked down and killed -- especially if she enters cougar form and dives in.
Early Game: Play aggressively and look either to gank for your laners or to fight the enemy jungler -- the more info your team has, the more they’ll be able to do in lane.
Mid Game: Continue to look for skirmishes as much as possible and fight around neutral objectives. You want to maximize your team in the spotlight before the team fighting phase and do your best to secure the game for your team at this point.
Late Game: If the game is in an even state, at this point, you’re best off shadowing your side laners or trying to poke enemies with your Javeling Toss [Q] from afar -- it’s going to be very hard to find value on dives at this point, so focus more on peeling backwards with your team unless you’re able to find a good flank angle.
