This is the build I use, as well as a version of Hotshot's build. Hotshot is considered one of the best players in the game, and the number one Nidalee. This guide will help you learn to play Nidalee correctly. In my opinion, Nidalee is one of the best solo laners in the game. It's rare that you will lose your lane if you can play her well. Soloing top is her prime, as she can use the bushes to poke her enemy solo.

The runes are not implemented in the guide system yet but the runes are Hybrid penetration runes. Opt for AP per level on blue runes if your match up has only physical damage. Examples are Riven Jarvan Wukong.

Farming on Nidalee is VERY easy. Once you have cougar form, you can obviously just pounce onto minions and spam e+q. Of course, playing as Nidalee, you should be farming as much as you can while you aren't doing anything else, since the cost of her full build is fairly expensive. Another thing you can do to to make farming easier is that you can bushwhack a full line of creeps which will make your w and e combo one hit caster minions during lower levels. You basically want to spam her abilites, it will just make everything go faster.

Nidalee is a really great pusher. I think that anytime you go to farm top or bottom and nobody is around, you should push towers. Nidalee is great for this because she can kill minions fast, and with the attack speed buff from your heal, towers die fairly quick. Don't be afraid to over extend. It's not always a bad thing for them to focus on you. Most of the time when you see someone coming for you, or even there whole team, you will be able to find your way to safety, especially with both of your summoners. It's pretty much a win-win situation. It gives your team time to push while they are focusing on stopping you. For example, if your team is working on stopping or getting a kill on dragon, go ahead and backdoor top. In my opinion, Nidalee is one of the best at back dooring. Also, remember to save your sheen for turrets. Also, just to add a little more detail, when killing a tower, if you know you're safe, you should walk ahead of the tower while it's killing your minions and clear the on coming wave.

Nidalee can be very useful in team fights. You NEVER want to go into team fights right off the start with cougar. If you are usually the first one to be focused, try to stay in human form and support your team with heals/spears/traps. If you lose the team fight and you need to get away, there are a number of walls you can pounce through, such as at baron, dragon, and many other places, as seen below. Before your team engages most team fights, there will be alot of foreplay. I usually can poke them with spears while waiting, and setting up a few traps. When engaging, I suggest you stay in human and support with heals while poking. Basically just spam everything. You also want to give the AS buff to any AD carry as you engage. If you are winning the team fight and nobody on your team really needs heals, then I usually will go fight in cougar. If you're losing, I would stay in human and back off while still supporting, unless you think you can go around and clean up a kill or two. I only recommend doing this if you have your summoners up.

Also, just to emphasize this even more, you should ONLY go into a team fight with cougar if its very obvious that your team is winning and you can go in there without taking much damage and are able to clean up some kills.

Nidalee's traps are very useful. First of all, during laning phase you are going to obviously want to toss traps into bushes that you may be ganked from, and bushes in your lane. The best part of her traps though, is what she used to be able to do with them. She used to be able to find wards and kill them, but with the nerf to them you no longer can. This is not the end of the world though, as the traps are still very useful to put down during lane phase, as well as other times.

Warding on Nidalee is also a very important aspect the game, as well as in general. Having wards up will protect you from ganks, and also alert you when you enemys are coming while you are back dooring. Since anytime you play Nidalee, you should almost always be in top lane, I made this map of all of the viable wards that you should put down while playing her.

Nidalee can still be viable, the recent nerfs made AP nidalee pretty much ****. This build is a good alternative if you are still a fan of Nidalee like i am.
Hope you enjoyed my 2cents on nidalee and i hope you will have a lot of fun with her in the future.

Please bare with any mistakes or if some parts of the Guide look unfinnished since this Guide is still under construction.