User blog comment:Seventy-twelve/My thoughts on Nidalee/@comment-13944607-20131202175051

I think the biggest problem with Nidalee is that people don't fully understand the point behind her shapeshifting. Her human kit doesn't make sense in itself, but it makes sense in conjunction with her cougar form. The idea definitely is NOT to have human form Nidalee to have synergy with itself and have kill potential, and it has neither. You can get kills with her human form, obviously, but you'd be very hard pressed to win a duel with it alone. Don't look at how her human kit fits with itself, look at how it fits with her cougar kit. Her cougar form has moderate cooldowns, other than Pounce, so you can't just go toe to toe with another champion purely in cougar and expect to win. This is true against all but the very squishiest of targets. Her human form is the same way, you shouldn't expect to stay in human form the whole time and pick up kills left to right, especially in a dueling situation, and this is achieved, again, with all but the very squishiest of foes.

But look at how they complement each other. Her cougar is burst damage, and while it is decently high, it's not the best. It won't 100-0 someone. Which is where her human form comes in. The whole idea of it is to whittle them down with your spears, shred their defenses with your trap, then go in for the kill as a cougar. Once they are dead, you heal your wounds and begin the process again. I'm not going to go in to the concepts of balance, or fun/anti-fun, but talking solely of synergy, her kit DOES fit. I think the main issue is people don't look at the kit as a whole when speaking of synergy, but rather section it into her 2 forms. Neither of her forms were ever meant to function alone, so why think of them that way?