While I am still writing and editing this guide I will save and publish it a couple times unfinished.

I hope you can all appreciate that and I'd wish you not to rate this guide till this very chapter is gone.

Of course commenting is totally okay and even wished for.

Hi everyone, first of all I want to thank you all for reading this guide. I will try to make an in depth guide on playing Nidalee while getting the max out of capabilities. I first learned to play Nidalee through the guide made by HotshotGG though I quickly found it was a hard champion to play and though HotshotGG is the best Nidalee player; let's be honest his guide just sucks.
Now there are some others around but they didn't satisfy me well enough. Therefore I am writing this guide in the hope it will help many new ( Nidalee) players in their quest on to the battlefields of LoL.

Now of course, just as any other champion Nidalee has got her pro's and her con's. Here I will put together a list why to and why not to play Nidalee.


Pro's

Nidalee's got THE best escape in the whole game.
Her heal can reach up to 600-700 late game even while it's been nerfed.
Her spear does MASSIVE damage and is a tool of death upon the other team. (In a good snipe I could hit around 2000 on my target champion)
She is a 7 skill champion which makes her extremely fun to play.
She can give a great solo top.
She has got great pushing capabilities


Con's

She is extremely squishy.
Nidalee is extremely hard to master correctly.
She is often focused in team fights.




Of course I'm fan of Nidalee so I can't really see too many con's and I am sure I'm leaving some out on the pro's too so if you've got something to add jut post is in the comment section and if I agree I will add it.

First things first, before you start to play Nidalee you will have to tackle your base build, meaning your runes and masteries. Those I will be threating in separate chapters though here you will find some basic information.


I'm not yet level 30, what should I do???
No worries, the sooner you start playing the better, after all everyone has got their main. Though if you look at runes and masteries it usually brings forth some problems but nothing too serious. Your masteries will just have to be added while you level up and though most others will say that runes are worthless beneath the level 20 I don't agree. Use your IP to buy tier 1 or if you're above level 10 tier 2 runes. They aren't as powerful but not as expensive either. So in the end it's just an extra boost.

Why are there so many runes in your build while a rune page doesn't support as many?
Well though the question is quite complicated the answer is simple. I do not believe in one page being the best and therefore I've put together different builds so that everyone can judge for themselves which suits them best.

Your runes give you an early game boost which is gonna profit you enormously late game. So don't screw your runes up!

So what you want to pay attention to when buying your runes, is to respect their uses, meaning you buy the runes according to what they're made for.
The Marks are the Red Runes. They have the physical offensive and magical penetration boosts as their primary runes. So those are strong in offense.
The seals are the Yellow Runes. Primary seals give boosts to a champions defense. So those are strong in defense.
The glyphs are the Blue Runes. They have the Magic boosts as their primary runes. So those are strong for magic.
And last but certainly not least: The Quintessence, they are the Gold/Purple Runes. They have superior power and stats to all of the glyphs, seals and Marks as well as offer stats that cannot be found on any of the other three rune types. They become available every ten Summoner levels starting at 10 up to a total of three. So these are the absolute over powered runes.


If we respect these characteristics we'll soon find that, for Nidalee, Greater Mark of Magic Penetration is the best way to go concerning Marks, after all that's one of the primary Marks.
Also we'll see that seals should be treated as defense but... wait Nidalee doesn't really need any defense so what are we gonna do now? Well I've arranged two options for you. You can actually use the defense seal Greater Seal of Evasion this will give you extra dodge which could even more increase your chances of escaping. And you can kick the whole defense out of the window and go for that relatively small amount of extra Ability Power ( Greater Seal of Ability Power), which one you chose is totally up to you, I tend to play with both; if I suspect to need the extra escape power I'll go by Greater Seal of Evasion, if not I make a deep bow and take the Greater Seal of Ability Power runes.
And when we look at the glyphs we, of course, get a huge smile on our face because hey, these are magic runes. We all know what that means, of course! CHA-CHING! There is no doubt about what glyphs you should use, take this chance to get some good extra early game nuke power and put all your slots on Greater Glyph of Ability Power.
Quintessences are quite strange runes, they are as strong as any and have no specialty. But they are powerfull so there are kinda two good ways to go. One is to take as many AP as you can and get those greaterquintessence of potence runes. Or you take advantage of the special runes and go a bit more complicated. Nidalee is a gold and mana sucking champion so it can be smart to treat her like that. Which basically means we use our Quintessences quite scattered and we take them for mana regen ( greater quintessence of replenishment), gold per 10 seconds ( Greater Quintessence of Gold) and last but not least give Nidalee an extra escape boost, we'll go for some extra dodge ( Greater Quintessence of Evasion).

Now it's quite useless to say that not every rune should be the same for everyone, there is no best and it all depends on your personal play stile. Therefor you should chose what you think is best for you and once you've got enough IP just experiment with different rune builds. However you should NOT do that before you've reached level 30.

Masteries are another great advantage to you in game. But more important than that, they have the absolute power to make or break a player. Therefore they should be well balanced and adjusted to your personal play style, though once again; not until you reach level 30 because till you reach level 30 you won't really know which will suit you throughout the game.

For Nidalee you will find that the 'Utility' tree is the way to go. But because it's never smart to put more than 21 points in one tree you want to upgrade your Javelin Toss / Takedown and Aspect Of The Cougar by putting some in the 'offense' tree. So enough of the theoretical 'brabling' let's start explaining why I think this is (one of the) best mastery build(s) for Nidalee.


So I will start by explaining the amount of points in either tree.
As you've probably noticed before I've put Nine points in the offense tree. This is because there is one mastery which we absolutely want; Arcane Knowledge . Now be patient, because I won't explain exactly why, just yet. But I assure you, you will understand at the end of the next chapter.

Further more you notice that there are none points in the defense tree what so ever. Now you might ask yourself why not, after all a good defense is the base to a good offense; right?
Well for Nidalee things work a bit different. She has got an amazing escape and can escape almost any situation. Not only would that make a good defense rather useless but also will it make a good offense harder and it will suffer your ability to escape. And whether you like it or not, a great deal of Nidalee her power comes from the ability to escape.

I can be pretty short about why there are so many points in the utility tree. After all the utility tree is the tree which gives you extra points in magic and above that it can dramatically increase the speed at which Nidalee can be played. The same thing which makes her so hard to play can be the key to the winning of a game. And that key is simply the speed at which Nidalee should be played.

In this chapter I will explain to you why I chose the offense masteries I did and what use they have in the game.


Well this one is important because of your spear. Your spear can deal absolutely Massive magic damage, but now imagine someone's magic defense comes around the corner and safes the day, your target walks away with just 50 health left. You will totally rage, slap your head on your desk and wake up in the hospital because you've been unconscious for a week. Well we don't want that to happen, of course we don't! So what are we gonna do about it? Well we are just going to upgrade our Magic penetration and now - because of our 15% extra magic penetration - instead of 50 health left he will be stuck at minus 60 health. Must love Magic penetration, right?

Nidalee has the potential to be extremely maneuverable, jump over loads of walls, be unable to get caught and dodge everything which she gets thrown at her. All she needs is a lot of cooldown. So why not start with the 3% 4 points in Sorcery gives you? Furthermore you need it to get Arcane Knowledge .

Well after the recent update this one became quite interesting to use when playing Nidalee because now it gives you some flat ability power which can be used to give your spear a small early game boost. And where Butcher never was all that interesting for Nidalee and Brute Force just gives some attack damage we are not really gonna need to use either one of them. Easy made choice right? So you could now ask me why there are just 3 of the possible 4 points placed on Mental Force . Well, that is all because of Summoner's Wrath . The reasoning as to where Summoner's Wrath is more important than Mental Force will be given in the explanation of Summoner's Wrath .

Actually the only reason we really want this mastery is the 8% bonus speed it gives us while using ghost. And that might not sound like all that much but it just might safe your *** which is always a huge deal in a game. Which in it's turn just over rules an extra ability power given with Mental Force

So in this chapter I'll explain to you why my utility masteries are arranged like they are. As will I explain what use they have in-game.


This skill will give you a great advantage in using your flash and ghost skill as it reduces 15% of it's cooldown time. That means that if it would take 200 seconds to recharge a summoner skill you will now safe half a minute! It may not seem all that much but my experience in League of legends taught me that even half a second can make a huge difference. So with the 15% Mastermind gives you you will have a great advantage throughout the whole game.

Is a powerful skill which gives you an extra 6% cooldown reduction. And - as mentioned before - Nidalee Takes huge advantage in cooldown reduction as her incredible speed is a great advantage in spamming Javelin Toss / Takedown, Bushwhack / Pounce (Pounce's important), Primal Surge / Swipe (Swipe's important) as well as Aspect Of The Cougar itself, which - in hostile situations - that require huge and multiple burst damage combo's. What exactly I mean with a burst damage combo is something I'll explain to you later in this guide to playing Nidalee. Now that is just the offense advantage Intelligence gives you. While in fact it can be a key to escaping almost anything thrown at you. Remember that in cougar form Bushwhack / Pounce has a cooldown of 3,5 seconds. With some simple math that makes us able to calculate till how far we will be able to reduce those 3,5 seconds using this very build. The answer is 2 seconds. Well now that's a nice surprise; can you imagine pouncing away every 2 seconds while you run from the enemy and jump over all kinds of walls? Well I assure you your enemy team is going to hate you for it once you master this skill.

This mastery gives you some extra experience points to work with and I'd suggest to only use this mastery (possibly combined with Sage ) in solo top, or possibly mid lane. That's because the importance of experience grows exponentially when you're competing against one or two champions on your own. While if you're with somebody the points could be used way better, in which case I'd suggest to put one on Perseverance and one on Swiftness for that small extra speed boost and some more mana regen, which you will be needing throughout the game. However, that's a really personalized choice and there will probably be a couple different choices which will work as well. You will have to wind what works best for you.

By putting two points on this one you can increase your starting gold by 40. Now when I play Nidalee I tend to try and stay solo top as long as possible and only go back when I am low on health, reached level 10 or got 5k gold. And that is just the first time I walk out, after that the game begins. Now the longer you cans stay the more experience you will get and the more you will be able to farm. There is just one but and that is that you will probably get ganked at some point. Now a good Nidalee player will be able to escape a gank by dodging stuns and live to tell the story. By having those 40 extra gold at the start you will be able to buy yourselves a nice potion and either you're gonna take Health Potion or Mana Potion, you'll be just a bit more tough and harder to put down.

This is quite a useful skill to use with Nidalee. Nidalee is a gold sucking champion, for example: With the build I'm giving you here in this guide you will need 15760 gold to finish the build. And believe me when I say there are much more OP builds to use for Nidalee, only they are just way to expensive and can cost around 25000 gold. It might not seem all that much in early game levels but in the end you will have to be way more than extremely fed to make that possible. Anyway, let's say an average game will take about 40-45 minutes. Let's just for the sake of simplicity say that you will have around 40 minutes of actual playing time in which a difference can be made. It would've given you 480 gold of which you could buy some wards and secure a win. (You will get some more information about wards later on.) And even without that it gives access to Wealth which can be important to secure a win.

Nidalee is a champion which profits big time from every buff she can obtain. Therefore you should try and take the buffs an keep them as long as possible. With this mastery you won't obtain is fast but it will last 20% longer as without. That is just more than worth the point.

And again, wards what are those things and what do they do? Well basically they just show a part of the map. Don't worry I will go in depth about them in their own chapter but for now that's all you need to know. Well this mastery gives you 5% longer sight range which could give your team a nice tactical advantage. Even with Nidalee it's definitely something you want to take if you'd like to be protected against ganking and to upgrade your map awareness.

Especially early game Meditation can be a huge deal. It gives one extra mana regen (per 5 seconds). And if you want to be capable to solo lane correctly you will need some mana regeneration to allow your skills to reload so you can cast em again. Early game mana regen is just something important. When you enter late game you will find that mana can be of the same value or even a bit more. Though that will never make it worthless and mana will mostly be found in items, not in masteries or runes.

This mastery gives you extra mana per level which on it's turn will greatly advantage you late game as it gives you more than 200 extra mana. If that ain't a reason to throw some party spears upon the enemy team I don't know what is.

This one is kinda like Summoner's Wrath in the previous chapter as it is a buff to your summoner spells. In this skill we are looking to get some cool down reduction for our Flash, which can be used to make escaping impossible for the other team as well as to make catching you impossible for the enemy team.

Congratulations! You have just completed the pre-game setup and now we're gonna get ready to rumble! First you'll have to learn the ropes also known as the basics of the basics. After which we will go more and more in depth about the game and everything you need to know to play a good Nidalee.

If you still don't (really) understand why I chose these masteries and runes I recommend you to first go back and read it all again. Understanding every aspect of this guide will be important later on.

In the following chapters I will explain the ropes of the game and some musts for playing a good Nidalee. While you're going through those chapters I highly recommend to practice, and practice A LOI!

While I am still writing and editing this guide I will save and publish it a couple times unfinished.

I hope you can all appreciate that and I'd wish you not to rate this guide till this very chapter is gone.

Of course commenting is totally okay and even wished for.