User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-5331854-20131211115121/@comment-4888212-20131211200604

seventy twelve, you seem to forget that her nidalees cougarabilities are an exchange for a missing ultimate. all she gets as "ultimate" is basically a 4sec dash with very small range.

sure she heals alot and her spear is strong, but she basically lacks an ultimate.

together with the bushremovals(less passive MS), the free wards(see the javelins coming), and some walls (at the new junglecamps) being made thicker (therefore making it hard/impossible to cross them with one pounce), there were some indirect nerfs to her already.

that was the OP's point with the items ; but this time it was the map that changed, not the items. even small things can affect several champions alot.

nidalee was also hard to lane with against many setups and had many hardcore shutdown enemies (rengar for example).

pros played her because their entire team was made to defend nidalee and then hardengage as soon as some spears would hit.

she was OP in those matchups the same that riven is OP in those matchups. pros dont use riven as a pubstomper (tho she can certainly be used as one easily), but she is often used with pokecomps to discourrage the enemy from hardengaging as soon as they took a few hits. would they come in with half life, a bit of damage and a ranged AoE execution ultimate would clear half the team before a fight could even occur.

so riven, in a pro-teams hands, is OP AS A MATCHUP TO AVOID COUNTERPLAY, not OP on herself. as she can go in very quickly as well, she can execute a poked down enemy as well and turn a 5v5 int oa 5v4 / 5v3 all the while being a good pick for the lane and avoiding counterplay for the entire team she is on. lets not talk about her being able to splitpush as well while your pokecomp can handle themself 4v5 in sustain/pokebattles.