User blog comment:Sagee Prime/Nidalee rework Final/@comment-5558329-20121002063356/@comment-5558329-20121002231637

I must say i admire your reasoning, and after reading more i admit i can see how this would make her weaker early then more powerful late game, wile relying on aggression to survive. However i think you must look at the extremes of weakness and power achieved through this proposed rework. Her late game power would be that of the old Jax; simply destroys anyone 1v1, or even 1v2, because of the kit. I'm still not convinced by the steroid in its later form. The point being:

Her current sustain ability is meant to have a high mana cost. Thats so her lane opponent(s) have the chance to force her to heal or throw spears, instead of just constantly hurling spear after spear while healing back up. While the suggested rework would indeed be weaker at low levels it still adds up quite quickly and when activated it becomes twice as strong, and at a duration of 8 seconds may be a bit long. Perhaps you could reconsider the duration of this Primal Surge rework or increase the cooldown?

I also think you can improve by claryfying the role you wish Nidalee to fill with this rework idea. By simply looking at these changes she seems to be able to fill several roles very well, if not so from low levels, then definitely at higher levels.

She could be played as an AD bruiser, utilizing the stagger (like a tiny stun right?) and a more tanky DPS build relying on the Primal Surge steroid to put out damage in teamfights.

Or a full-out AD Carry/Caster (eeep i want to say 'Like Ezreal' here, to clarify i mean casting and shooting for damage output, no more similarities, but i hear the attack coming...). Anyway past that a full AD build would allow her to take full advantage of her new scaling abilities and provide her with massive damage and (i know you dont like this comparison but here it comes) an extra Bloodthirster worth of lifesteal in a fight. You cannot deny this is a massive advantage for any ADC, not to mention the extra attack speed being more than a Phantom Dancer and then the extra shredding from Bushwack's passive meaning she will simply beat every other carry hands-down. In effect, at level 18, she would gain a bloodthirster and a phantom dancer minus the crit chance and AD by only pressing one button. Please rationalize this for me, maybe i'm missing something.

Then i notice something else: her new AP scaling ratios are terrible compared to the AD ratios. There is no incentive to actually build her AP (is this what you were trying to achieve?) except to do a tiny bit more damage with Bushwack and her passive. I say tiny as a relative figure when compared to AD; her passive states 20% of AP extra magic damage on basic attacks, but how effective is this, overall, when compared to AD? If i picked up Nidalee for the first time ever, with this kit, i would look at the ratios and say "why would i build her AP? I'll just get AD, not only will i do more damage, but i can just e and roght click to win!" By this statement i didnt mean to be sarcastic, i mereky wanted to illustrate how people would respond to this in-game. I presume you were trying to create better hybrid scaling? i'm not sure the current ratio distribution would work towards this goal.

One last thing to consider: imagine this new Nidalee, with frozen mallet and infinity edge.

Thank you for this excellent discusion and for geing onw of the few people in League of Legends able to present such a case fluently and clearly.