Hi i am xxlilithx. I am not a high elo player or anything. I was just a good player last season. Anyway welcome to my nidalee guide. This is i believe the best way of playing nidalee. However on a hybrid champion anything is situational so you can change everything when you believe you should.

I usually play a split pushing nidalee so i build like this normally. It allows you to outtrade top lane bruisers and after some harassment you can easily kill them.
It also allows you to be useful in teamfights. Nidalee's main problem is that you usually don't know what to do in teamfights. You usually won't be able to oneshot enemy ad/ap carry so it is really hard to be useful as a bruiser. However by building tanky you will actually be able to absorb so much damage. It's like you won't have any damage. Cougar form base damages are so high you don't even have to build any ad/ap items.
Like i said any build is ok on nidalee based on your lane opponent. You have a hard ad lane? Just build Warden's mail first. You have a hard ap lane? Go for chalice+spirit visage. You are just stomping your opponent? Go for tri force+inf edge.

I am not even gonna discuss that. You are a top laner. If you b as a top laner without outcsing/pushing you lost your lane. Just max out e for sustain. You want the sustain you need the sustain.
Max q after e. It deals huuuuuge damage even if you don't have any ap.
Take ult whenever you can.

Any build works really. Anything. But since you are a hybrid champion it is good to take both arpen/mrpen from the mastery tree.
If you wanna go tanky just take arpen from offense tree and go 9/21

Same thing with masteries. Any combination of ad/arpen/mrpen/hybrid pen marks-ad/arpen/hybrid pen/ms quints works. However always take armor for seals and mr for blues. Scaling or flat. Depending on your lane. You are supposed to be tanky.