Major reworks
everywhere! Rito has just released two major kit reworks for vastly different
champions: Nidalee, everyone's favorite spear chucking, slippery cat, and Skarner,
the long-forgotten scorpion king of the jungle. Up ahead, I'm going to go over
all of the changes that occurred and what they entail, as well as how well I
think the change will go over in game.
First up is Nidalee.
She's been an issue Riot has needed to address for a long time now. Her
playstyle was really against what the core components of the game were, and
this led to an unengaging experience. Her kit revolved completely around
staying as far back as she could to stay out of range and maximize spear
damage, which could have the possibility of one-shotting squishies late game.
If she was too close,
she transformed to cougar form and pounced back to that range. Rinse and
repeat. Add on to that, she had a large heal as well, meaning she could out-sustain
you in addition to being able to run away from almost anything. In other words,
if Nidalee was ahead, she had to misposition majorly to have a chance for the
other team to win.
Her enemies weren't the
only ones that suffered. Nidalee's kit was stronger the longer a siege took.
More time sieging = higher % of spears hitting = less safe for enemy to hold
towers without healing. Teammates were stuck sitting around in front of a tower
waiting for Nidalee to hit enough spears to make the enemy run off. They
couldn't leave her alone because she isn't enough of a threat by herself when
taking a tower. It was boring, and the only person having fun that whole time
was Nid. That goes for either side.
So how could Riot fix
this without gutting her and making a whole new kit? Let's look at each change
and compare the before and after.
(Note: I go pretty in-depth into changes to
her kit here and what they entail for playstyles. If you feel you understand
the new kit and what the changes mean, I've put a TL;DR that summarizes my
thoughts on her kit as a whole and where she lies in the meta.)
·
First Nidalee has access to her cougar form at level 1.
Actually I think the
important thing to note is that Nidalee will have access to her cougar form at
levels 3-4.
Nidalee has to have at
minimum two skills to use cougar, and three to be effective in most cases. This
wasn't an issue before because she would have at least a point in every ability
by level 6, but now she needs to level the human skill before she uses it in
cougar. Nidalee used to be an easy gank pre-6, and the ult change is a slight
buff to her early mobility, but nothing huge. Pounce doesn't cover a large
area, and it received its share of changes as well.
Prowl
·
MOVEMENT---Moving through brush increases Nidalee's
movement speed by 10% for 2 seconds, increased to 30% toward visible enemy
champions within a range of 5500.
·
HUNTED---Damaging champions with Javelin Toss or
Bushwhack marks them as 'Hunted' for 4 seconds, granting Nidalee vision of
them, 30% increased movement speed toward them (within a range of 5500) and
enhancing her next Takedown, Pounce, and Swipe against them.
I couldn't find any previous numbers but I believe Nidalee's base movespeed increase in brush was nerfed, while her bonus when chasing is higher than the static number in 4.9.
At her core, Nidalee is
a hunter. Her old kit was more sniper than hunter though. The major attempt to
fix this is through the passive change. It leaves some room to be overall
faster in the jungle, but gives a much larger reward through chasing the enemy
you've marked. A much more cohesive kit and theme.
In addition, Nidalee
players had almost no use in going to cougar form outside of wave clearing
alone and moving around the map. Why trade in someone's face when you can chuck
spears from far away?
Sure the cougar form
damage is more likely to hit, but even if you hit everything in cougar you
could still lose the trade. If you chuck a spear from far away, you would
either do just as much or more damage and, if you missed, it wasn't a problem
because you only lost a bit of mana and a cooldown as opposed to a bunch of
precious health.
The stall tactic needed
to be addressed, but rather than trying to pull Nidalee's human form in line
with cougar, Riot gave her more effects to tandem human form into cougar. Her
offensive human spells mark her enemy. If Nidalee hits cougar spells on a
hunted target, her cougar spells do additional effects. I'll explain the
effects as I go over the cougar spell.
Credit to Surrender@20 for pic
Hitting a marked
opponent with a cougar spell does not consume the mark in any way, shape,
or form. In essence, if Nidalee marks a target, she has a much higher ability
to duel that person. If you're Nidalee, it means you should look to fight. If
you're marked, wait out the timer before you fight.
Ok, real skill time! I'm
going to split her human and cougar forms into different sections since they're
not related directly to each other and just share hot keys.
Nidalee's human spells
all enhance as you level that specific skill (Q, W, E). Cougar form spells, on
the other hand, are only enhanced by levels in her ultimate (R).
Human Form
Javelin Toss
·
HUNTED---Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for
4 seconds
·
RANGE----1500 units (damage caps out at 1300)
·
MINIMUM MAGIC
DAMAGE-----50/75/100/125/150 (+0.4 ability power)
·
MAXIMUM MAGIC
DAMAGE-----150/225/300/375/450 (+1.2 ability
power)
·
COST ----50/60/70/80/90
mana
·
COOLDOWN-----6 seconds
·
WIDTH----Missile width 60
⇒ 30
Big damage reduction overall on the spears, which was
necessary. Basically you can still sit back and siege, but it’s going to be
harder to chunk people and you’ll have to be more accurate. Oh, and about that
accuracy. Spears are half the size now. You get a Hunted debuff on them, though,
which is nice, but while you can still put a hurt on people, it’s harder.
You’re better off using them to set up a cougar follow up.
Bushwhack
·
HUNTED----Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for
4 seconds
·
MAGIC DAMAGE-----20/40/60/80/100 + 12/14/16/18/20% current
health (+1% per 50 ability power) over the duration of 4 seconds
·
DURATION-----2 minutes
·
COST -----40/45/50/55/60
mana
·
COOLDOWN-----17/15/13/11/9 seconds
·
CLARITY-----Only affects one target per trap
The important change here is the debuff no longer shreds MR
and armor. This was probably the least known of Nidalee’s strengths. Hitting a
trap would not only let her know where you were but make you more susceptible
to all kinds of damage. A trap into spear was able to chunk out even the
bulkiest tanks. Now, they apply the same Hunted debuff as spears.
Riot still wanted to keep an aspect of
their tank shredding ability though. They did this by making the traps do %
current health. It’s a nice touch to take away a large portion of Nidalee’s
hidden power but still keep what her traps previously did in a sense. The traps
were also made a bit more visually noticeable in what area they covered.
Primal Surge
·
HEAL ---45/85/125/165/205
(+0.5 ability power)
·
ATTACK SPEED
BONUS----20/30/40/50/60% attack speed
·
COST ----60/80/100/120/140
mana
·
COOLDOWN----12 seconds
The
base heal and ratio got hit hard here. Nid’s ability to not only poke like
crazy, but shrug off any counter poke, solidified her as the top poke champ in
the game. If you had already decided to poke but weren’t able to get Nidalee,
it was GG, because even a whole team had trouble trying to counter her
abilities.
She can’t sustain
forever anymore, now, and because her heal was heavily decreased, the attack
speed is more prominent and useful in the skill but overall her heal was
straight-up nerfed.
Cougar Form
Takedown
·
HUNTED
BONUS---The first Takedown
targeting a 'Hunted' champion deals +33% increased damage
·
UTILITY-----Nidalee gains +75 attack range for the
Takedown attack
·
MINIMUM
MAGIC DAMAGE----4/20/50/90 (+0.24
ability power) (+1.0 attack damage)
·
MAXIMUM
MAGIC DAMAGE----10/50/125/225
(+0.6 ability power) (+2.5 attack damage)
·
COST ----No cost
·
COOLDOWN----5 seconds
And here is where a lot of new things come into play. Cougar
spells get a lot of extra effects if used on a target just hit by a human form
spell. This opens a lot of dueling/assassin play where Nidalee didn’t have that
option available before, despite it being part of her theme.
At its core, Takedown, and what the spell did, haven’t
changed. The two largest changes are the Hunted bonus and the ratio change.
Takedown still is best used as an execute, but it has to be set up.
This is the spell that bruiser AD Nid fans were most upset
about. This used to deal AD damage, but for the sake of simplicity, which some
people are disagreeing with, it was changed to deal magic damage. This pretty
much gutted the AD build. While it still has an AD ratio, the fact that it now
deals magic damage makes Nidalee a lot easier to itemize against and she no
longer gets anything out of building armor penetration. It wasn’t an overly
popular build path, but some people still did it.
The second and more widely affected change was the addition
of the hunted effect. Now if Nidalee uses Takedown on a hunted target, the
damage is increased by 1/3rd. This is done instead of doing more damage
based on missing health. It lowers her possible damage done, while still
retaining the idea that it’s meant to be followed up after hitting a spear or
trap.
Pounce
·
HUNTED
BONUS----The first Pounce
directly towards a 'Hunted' champions will have up to 700 range
·
UTILITY----Killing a unit in cougar form reduces the
cooldown of Pounce to 1 second
·
UTILITY-----Nidalee now pounces in the direction of the
player's cursor
·
MAGIC
DAMAGE----50/100/150/200
(+0.3 ability power)
·
COST ----No cost
·
COOLDOWN----5 seconds
Probably Nid’s most
annoying skill both for her and her opponent. The jump was a little bit faster
than just walking, so people spammed it anytime they moved anywhere and it only
added on to her frustrating slipperiness with her passive. I can confidently
say the only time that this was used for its damage was to clear waves or in
times of desperation. Not for its dueling potential.
So Riot raised the
cooldown of the skill unless you kill an enemy in cougar form. It means Nidalee
can still clear with pounce well and use it to jump in and kill, but you can no
longer fly around the map jumping everywhere. Still useful to run around, but
much less so.
You might have noticed I
said that this skill was annoying to both the enemy and Nidalee. Since
Nidalee was released pretty early in comparison to other champs, her kit was a
bit dated. That’s putting it nicely. The way Pounce was programmed, Nidalee
jumped towards wherever she was moving. This is a much different thought
process than most champs who have smartcasted movement abilities.
Riven, for example,
dashes towards the players cursor when she uses her shield. Nid could jump
through a lot of walls with Pounce, but the way that it worked meant you had to
maneuver awkwardly so that you could move to the wall and face it
in a way to jump head on. Now, Nid just jumps towards the players cursor. It’s
a bit strange to pick up on after getting used to having to aim the jump, but
it will be easy enough after some adjusting.
As you can see there’s an indicator showing how close you
need to be to get the activation on the passive. It’s really useful and feels
awesome to jump in and start wrecking people with cougar form now.
Swipe
·
HUNTED BONUS----The first Swipe that damages a 'Hunted'
champion reduces the cooldown of Pounce to 1 second
·
UTILITY----Nidalee now swipes in the direction of the
player's cursor
·
MAGIC DAMAGE----70/130/190/250 (+0.45 ability power)
·
COST ----No
cost
·
COOLDOWN----5 seconds
Swipe didn't see much of a change. If anything,
it got a small buff through the new passive. Nidalee's main form of wave clear
is to Pounce into Swipe on as many minions as you can. She now has access to
that pre-6. Swipe had two things changed this patch and both are small, but one
has a large impact.
I'll touch on the less important one first.
Swipe got the same treatment that Pounce did. Instead of doing damage in front
of Nidalee's current position, she now swipes toward the player's cursor. Most
people already had her facing towards the cursor 95% of the time, but gone are
the days where you would Pounce too far and miss Swipe as well, now she'll turn
around if you aim correctly. Once again, it'll take a little to adjust to, but
it's a quality of life adjustment that's been asked for.
Next, the one that should actually buff some
cougar damage. If Nidalee Swipes a Hunted enemy champion, her Swipe cooldown
decreases by 1 second. I'll reiterate that Riot really wanted to pull back some
human form damage in favor of cougar, and this was the correct way to do it.
Not by straight up damage buffs, but rewarding what they want her kit to do.
Conclusion--also TL;DR
How has Nidalee been changed since the rework?
Can you still sit back and poke people out to win?
Well....yes and no. Her poke damage and sustain
both got hit pretty hard. You can still do it for sure, but you get less out of
it. In addition to less reward, it's also harder to do because of less MR shred
on traps and smaller spears.
Her old strength is still there, but to get the
most out of her kit, you have to follow up that poke with cougar form. Straight
AP Nidalee still works since she has an easy way to dive deep in cougar, but AP
bruiser could be a strat as well.
In short her damage has been funneled to be more
reliant on cougar follow up than poke. Making a mastery of both forms more
important than before and increasing her versatility in duelist ways while
lowering it in safety.
The initial reaction I've had and others have
told me is she's still a strong pick, and more fun to play as and against.
However, in a meta that is increasingly moving towards wave control/AoE mages
over assassins she'll most likely see a slow drop off from competitive play in
favor of Ziggs.
Her win rate has taken a steep drop this past
week, lowest in the game actually...Urgot pls. (Last week her new kit hit live.)
Although, don't expect it to stay there long. A lot of people have to relearn
how to play her, because the subtleties have all been tweaked.
