User blog comment:Seventy-twelve/My thoughts on Nidalee/@comment-5035765-20131203075621/@comment-24242333-20131205091432

True that the new gold items are a good addition for her. One of the biggest issue I had during the few times I played her as a support (during S3, not preseason 4) was mana. You just couldn't poke AND heal without running out of mana. The ancient coin is quite nice for that, and it allows you to stay hidden in the bush. 7

Early on, the trinket ward doesn't last very long. A well coordinated team can use that. Not to mention that some supports take the sweeping lens. If you rely only on the trinket ward and the enemy support destroy it, you're in a bad position: but a awful lot of Nidalee support will just go "Whatever, I have my traps!" (which will leave them with even LESS mana, btw). And I can tell by experience that traps are not enough. These are more things to put in the enemy jungle to annoy their jungler than wards replacement like a teemo shroom, because if nobody steps on them, they don't provide vision.

So yeah, Support Nidalee is more a thing now with S4, since she can have AP; in S3, not CS-ing nor killing meant no AP, and that meant poor heal (the base isn't very high, but the scaling is big) and a support that had nothing but some (not so great without AP, again) poke and attack speed steroid wasn't worthy of that name IMO. But I still don't like it.