User blog comment:Raknut/My Nidalee rework- v1.0/@comment-9705522-20140526203524/@comment-6281696-20140527130247

The point is to make them feel bad for spamming the spell. She's a huntress, not a piece of artillery. Plus, if her human spells cost massive chunks of mana the costlessness of her cougar form actually becomes justified as opposed to now where she basicly can do whatever she wants without a care in the world with respect to mana..

And as long as her spear deals significant damage it'l be abused to spam at max range. Safety is just increadibly valueble. If you give it a slow in addition to that it will be abused to high hell as subsequent spears will be easier to hit. A prey debuff is fine, but anything that is effective immeadiatly will lead to abuse given its large range.

As for enhanced damage in cougar farm. Don't make this her kill form, however, make it her duel form. Basicly her human form should be to set up fights, her cougar form to actually do fights. So don't give her massive amounts of burst damage and make her yet another glass canon that deletes whatever she gets her hands on, but give her decent sustained damage with some defenses. LoL already has enough champions that are effectivly played as assasins that just show up out of nowhere kill something in 0.1second and then go away again and it's boring as hell to play against.