Talk:Nidalee/@comment-5204031-20120617041831/@comment-3323227-20120617045419

the difficulty is in dealing with weaknesses and mechanics why also being able to pace your damage. Nidalee can't just run in and burst you down and kill you and she sucks at sustained fights. You have to be able to do damage back off and come back and do damage again until you have them low enough to kill. Her kit works best when chasing and not the other way around unless you are baiting into a trap.

AP Nidalee is all about positioning. Land your Javelins anytime you can from enemy blind spots. You need good map awareness and you need the enemy map awareness to be as low as possible. One reason why I hated it when they removed the ability to trap wards is it was a major hit to AP Nidalee and being able to snipe from the dark. AP Nidalee can only use her ult when enemies are below 50% and it isn't a full blown team fight.

AD/Bruiser Nidalee is almost identical early game and fails just as hard if things go wrong but mid game it is a monster if fed and/or farmed well. It doesn't really counter top as hard as people say and is normally on even footing a lot of tops and very few that it out right dominates. It still takes skill to use but is more forgiving than AP.

A thing to note about Nidalee in general is she doesn't do very well in any of her potential roles or lanes other than top bruiser or top AP. The reason for this is because top is normally dominated by melee champs with good escapes or kiting ability but at the same time top lane is also the most volatile lane in the current meta and generally the team that wins top has a high chance of winning the game. Nidalee has 1 2 things that allow her to take top lane: Ranged attack and a heal. Now something that people tend to disregard is that most ranged AD and mobile AP are very good top and in most cases will destroy a top laner. Picks like Vayne, Graves, Kennen, and Vlad are pretty strong vs melee top laners and will beat a Nidalee top in most cases.

your runes and masteries are all right but it doesn't look good for top lane.

For masteries I go 21-9-0 grabbing both magic and armor pen and all the AD damage bonuses I can.

My runes are either flat AD/AD per level/arm pen for reds, flat AD/arm pen/movespeed for quints, MR per level blues, and flat or armor per level yellows

I only use the movespeed page vs riven and renekton and my runes are generally a mix of the above stats for AD and AP Nidalee.

For AD Nidalee my general item build out looks like this:

boots 3 pots start for both

normally stack 2 dorans early on for both AP(ring) or AD(blade)

From here my build options split

AD Nidalee

build Wriggles or get merc/tabi A hard AD lane I would get tabi and wriggles but a magic damage lane I would get vamp scepter and merc and build wriggles later

Then I get phage and build into a trinity

Warmogs, FoN/Banshee, GA/Frozen Heart/Atmas

I normally sell wriggles for BT or another defensive item later.

AP Nidalee:

from boots 1 and 2 dorans typically I build catalyst and upgrade it to RoA

Boots upgrade to merc Treads typically or Ninja Tabi vs heavy AD team

Deathcap, Frozen Heart/Hour Glass/GA, Lichbane, Gunblade/Banshee/Void Staff/Abyssal

Sadly I can't make rage blade work with my play style anymore and it was my favorite item to build on her.