Nidalee Build Guide by Tragdor

Welcome!

Hello, This build here is built around being the hard poke. You may play mid, or solo top with this. It works very well with both lanes. The second is support/sustain, that is when your need to sustain your lane rather than trying to poke early on.

Please Read: The second build you can still build the same runes and items.

Pros / Cons

Pros -

Nice Poke
Good Heal
Escape Artist/Chaser
Great Harasser
Dominates Lane
Allows for nice Map Awareness

Cons -

Squishy
Pretty Mana Dependent(Blue is very helpful)
Learning Curve
CC'able

Skills

Passive: Prowl- Moving through brush increases Nidalee's movement speed by 15% for 2 seconds.


This is your passive. It is very handy when it comes to escaping, and chasing. It allows nidalee to be the escape artist she is. Along with a very good chaser.Also, while laning, bushes can be very useful to use to harass players with your spear. Just use it to give yourself a speed boost for poking early game.

Q: Javelin Toss/Takedown- Human: Nidalee tosses her javelin, dealing 55 / 95 / 140 / 185 / 230 (+65% of ability power) magic damage on impact (deals up to 250% damage the further away the target is).

Cougar: Nidalee's next attack deals additional damage based on how low her opponent's life is.

Cooldown 7seconds
Cost 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 / 120mana
Range 1500


This is your bread and butter, it is what makes nidalee so dangerous to face. If you succeed with it, it is a very dangerous tool. You can do pokes through walls or just in lane. In cat form this is your huge "takedown". The Javelin however in late game can be devastatingly game changing. It can allow you to kill a runner, or to change the tide of team fights. This can make a trigger happy ad carry run in fear.
W: Bushwhack/Pounce- Human: Nidalee lays a trap that deals 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+40% of ability power) damage over 2 seconds, reveals the target, and reduces their armor and magic resistance by 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% for 12 seconds. Traps last for 4 minutes.

Cougar: Nidalee lunges forward, dealing damage to surrounding enemies. Pounce is not affected by cooldown reduction.

Cooldown 18seconds
Cost 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 / 120mana
Range 900


This is nice early game to do some nice bushchecking, and bush warding. It can help prevent ganks as long as you watch your map. This allows for a nice laning phase, and helps to ward baron, or dragon if near it. This an amazing warding tool, use to allow maximum lane sustain, and map awareness. Pounce on the other hand is a useful tool. You can use to kill creeps, or initiate a lane fight. This is very succesful when it comes to chasing, and running. It also helps keep your rageblade procs up. Their are some walls you can pounce over also.

E:Primal Surge/Swipe- Human: Nidalee heals an ally champion for 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+125% of ability power) and grants them a 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60% attack speed for 7 seconds.

Cougar: Nidelee claws at enemies in front of her.

Cooldown 10seconds
Cost 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 / 85mana
Range 600

Her heal is useful in pushing towers, lane phase, and team fights, a great support tool. It can allow you to sustain longer then most. It can also help with taking down turrets with the extra attack speed. Primal swipe is nice for farming too, helps clear creep waves fast.
R: Aspect of The Cougar- Passive: Each additional rank increases the effectiveness of Nidalee's cougar abilities.

Nidalee transforms into a vicious cougar, gaining 20 movement speed and a new set of abilities.

Cooldown 4seconds
Range 20

Once you hit 6, your laning phase jumps up drastically. Along with your killing in lane, you may now chase and do more damage to your opponent. You understand, this is the epitomy to nidalee, allows for chasing, running, better fights, and more farming.

Skill Order

Build 1

: Hard Poke
-Bushwhack is picked at level 1 for Map Awareness/Counter Jungling
-Primal Surge is picked at level 2 for Lane sustain
-Javelin Toss is picked from their on out as top priority in order to do your nice pokes, and awesome harass
-Primal Surge is then maxed out after javelin in order to maximize laning, and team fighting. Allowing you to support, and live longer.

*Spears are not picked at level 1 due to lack of damage, and huge mana cosumption

Buid 2

: Sustain/Support
-Same order as Build 1 however one change
-That change is Primal Surge is maxed first instead of Javelin Toss
-This heal allows you to support nicely, and lane longer

Runes

Greater Mark of Insight: This allows for more damage on spears, and alot of your other abilities. This helps harass, and mid-late game.
Greater Seal of Evasion: This rune I am doing some work with. It helps you against melee champs, and helps you when you are in melee range with cougar. This can be a helpful rune choice. This is definetely not a bad choice for a rune.
Greater Seal of Resilience: This rune is very nice for melee champs, and helps you early, and mid game. It can also help you from taking too much damage from ganks.
Greater Glyph of Force: This is my glyph of choice. This is because potency may seem nice early game, force real scales nicely. You get more ap out of glyphs of force. These help your spears, heals, and are veyr nice for solo lanes.
Greater Quintessence of Insight: This is a nice quint, it allows for that heavy harass, and hard poke damage. Very beneficial late game.
Greater Quintessence of Potency: This quint helps all of your abilites. Helps you out early game, and late game. It is a nice bonus to your heals, harass, and damage overall.

Summoner Spells

Right Now it is up in the air. All of them work nicely. However with the impending nerf coming to flash it may be replace with ghost. But for now flash/ignite is my prime choice.

Ghost- Allows you to run ,and chase while attacking and maintaining melee range. Something flash cannot do.
Flash- This is very nice also because it allows you to initiate a lane fight, gank, run away, or make up lost ground. Many junglers look to see if the lane wasted flash. But for nidalee you can save it due to your passive,and ultimate.
Ignite- This ability is that ability that helps you finish off that pesky champion. Helps you kill that lucky guy who managed to escape.
Exhaust- This can help slow in case of a gank, or can help you win a 1v1. It can stop enemies from escaping in many situations.
Clairvoyance- Just in case your team needed it or you decided to support nidalee, this is your second spell. This helps to stop ganks, and helps counter jungling.

Team Fights Healing

So a team fight roles around and you are confused. Who do I heal?

Initiations you want to heal the ad carry or tank because it increases attack speeds. This helps you with the extra umph needed to possibly win. Once it is commenced and underway their is a different change. Your carries have high priority, if needed tank is next

Items

Core Build

The Boots you choice may be based on your opposing team. If their is alot of cc's / ap, Mercs Treads can prove to be very useful.


Situational




Abyssal Scepter: Is nice if you see the opponents not building MR, take instead of void.
Void Staff: If your opponents are building MR take this. A solution to no stacking AP.
Guardians Angel: If you feel you are being a little more focused then others this may help.
Zhonya's Hourglass: MORE AP! And some nice survivability with Armor, and a Invincible Active Ability.
Will of the Ancients: More AP with the nice extra spell Vamp. Not a preferred item of choice. But it is decent, helps the team if you are heavier AP.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter:If you feel you need a slow and more health this is nice. It has that and MORE AP! We all love ap.
Morello's Evil Tome: Never used this with nidalee, but it has a good cd reduction, and a good amount of AP.

Wall Jumping

Professional Nidalee