Hello and welcome to my first guide here on solomid. Since this is my first guide here, I just want to take the time to introduce my self. My name is Vipsy and I have been playing this game for about 9 months now.

I have for a long time wanted to write a guide, but I never had the time to do it. So now since we have a brake from school, I decided to write a guide for my favorite champion, Nidalee.



I have over 300 ranked games played with Nidalee and she is still the champion I enjoy the most. Nidalee can be played both as AD and AP, but in this guide my focus will be around AD Nidalee.
It has been a blast writing this guide and I'm proud to present it. Hopefully you guys will enjoy reading it as well, so lets move on to the guide.

My account: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/23230404#profile
My smurf account: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/28948017
My stream: http://www.twitch.tv/VipsyTV

Currently testing the guide item-builds on my smurf account lvl 25 atm.

Other good summoner spells:

is another powerful summoner, but I wouldn't recommend it in solo que. It has it's uses, provides more map control, dragon presence and if you're playing with your premade team and facing an unkillable lane, i recommend teleport.

is another powerful summoner spell the hole game. It gives you a chance to shut down an AD Carry, or just simply win you a 1v1. Very powerful. If nobody picks up Exhaust on your team, you should do it.

Note: I don't recommend any other summoner spells on Nidalee in this current meta.

These are my favorite runes for Nidalee currently in season 3. The rune set gives Nidalee a lot of movement speed which creates momentum for both poking and last hitting. By using the top lane brush to your advantage this rune page just makes split-pushing, escaping from ganks and just general farming a lot easier.

I do recommend this page for both beginners and advanced players.

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These runes are really helpful versus a top laner who tend to stack lots of armor, Malphite for instance.
With this set of runes you will notice that last hitting becomes a bit harder, but to counteract with this your poke with become greater.

I don't recommend this page if your not experienced with Nidalee.
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I like to run this rune page when I know I will be fighting and trading a lot 1v1, versus Irelia for example. The rune page is also great for people that struggle with last hitting. The +15 Attack Damage in level 1 is really helpful here.

I recommend this page if your against "trade lane" and for beginners.

This is by far the best mastery page if your playing against a strong lane opponent and your team is missing tankiness. If you know you have to dive into team fights to kill their carry, cause nobody else can do it, than this page will give you just the little extra durability you need to survive the fights. This page is also great versus a ganky jungler, like Lee Sin that tend to camp top laners.

I recommend this page if your team lacks tankiness or your up against a strong top/jungler.
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This page is great if your team is overall pretty tanky and your laning against a champion with a weak early game. Note: This page makes you far more squishy, so if your against a jungler that tend to gank a lot early game, this page might be a bit risky.

With that said, I really recommend this page if your an experienced Nidalee player playing against a weaker lane opponent.

Moving through brush increases Nidalee's movement speed by 15% for 2 seconds.


This is a decent passive. It really allows to take advantage of the bush, offensively and defensively. The main idea here is to go in and out early game in order to poke. If your ever running away or chasing, be sure to make use of this bush when you have the chance.



Human: Nidalee tosses her javelin, dealing 55 / 95 / 140 / 185 / 230 (+65% of ability power) magic damage on impact (deals up to 250% damage the further away the target is).

Cooldown 6 seconds
Cost 50/60/70/80/90 mana
Range 1500


You have to remember to run away from the spear, because the damage scales off the distance from you and the target.


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Cougar: Nidalee's next attack deals additional damage based on how low her opponent's life is.


The Q in cougar mode on the other hand, is amazing with this build. It allows you to do unexpected damage that will let you get that kill.





Human: Nidalee lays a trap that deals 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+40% of ability power) damage over 2 seconds, reveals the target, and reduces their armor and magic resistance by 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% for 12 seconds. Traps last for 4 minutes.

Cooldown 18seconds
Cost 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 / 120mana
Range 900


There are so many uses for this spell. Your able to ward yourself at a low mana cost, use it offensively for the armor/mr reducing, and warding key objectives like baron and dragon.




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Cougar: Nidalee lunges forward, dealing damage to surrounding enemies. Pounce is not affected by cooldown reduction.


The pounce is the spell that everyone despises Nidalee for. It can be used offensively and defensively, allowing the player to escape from deadly ganks or catching that stray runner. It can be spammed constantly, and with the use of her passive it makes her so difficult to kill.





Human: Nidalee heals an ally champion for 50/85/120/155/190 (+70% of ability power) and grants them a 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60% attack speed for 7 seconds.

Cooldown 10 seconds
Cost 60/80/100/120/140 mana
Range 600


This should be your main skill for sustaining in lane, and it allows to poke with the extra attack speed. Take advantage of this spell in lane to be aggressive, and deny farm for the other laner.



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Cougar: Nidelee claws at enemies in front of her.


The cougar version of this spell, is just extra damage (basically icing on the cake). It adds to your burst damage, which is nice.



Passive: Each additional rank increases the effectiveness of Nidalee's cougar abilities.

Nidalee transforms into a vicious cougar, gaining 20 movement speed and a new set of abilities.

Cooldown 4 seconds


This is the ability that makes Nidalee the annoying cat thats she is. This is your fight-form, escape, cap-closer you name it. This ability was recently changed, removing the 10/20/30 armor and magic resistance increases from Cougar form. It's a quite big nerf, but nothing to special to make her unviable.

> > >

This is the skill order you always want on Nidalee!

Note: When you skill up your , and abilities you only upgrade the Human from spells.
When you level up your spells in Cougar is upgraded.



I do take at level 1 for a bunch of reasons. It gives my team a lot map control, together with protecting my self from early ganks. In the next chapters I will talk about how to use the bushwhacks properly.

This is actually one of the most important spells on Nidalee both early and late game. So there is a few things I would like to go over with this spell. First I will talk a little bit about what the bushwhacks really do, before I move on with how to use them properly.

Tooltip:

"Nidalee lays a trap that deals magic damage over 2 seconds when sprung by an enemy, revealing them and reducing their armor and magic resistance for 12 seconds. Traps last for 4 minutes".

Lets analyse this spell:

• Mana cost: 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 / 120
• Magic damage: 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+0.4 per ability power)
• Enemy Armor & Magic Resist Reduction: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%
• Traps last for: 4 minutes
• Range: 900

Now there is one thing here which is huge and a lot of people don't even know about it.
Yes, I'm talking about the armor and magic resist reduction. When this spell is max leveled, it will reduce enemy's resistance with 40%. This is huge.

This means that late game, when enemy tanks and bruisers have a lot of resistance, this little bushwhack can actually turn a fight around. It makes it possible for your self and your carries, to actually burst down the enemy tank line.

If you land a bushwhack on their AP or AD carry, you will almost make them take true damage from your teams damage. So that's why its very important to land a good bushwhack on the enemy team.
It provides your team a 12 second window, where the enemy tanks, bruisers or carries will take a lot more damage.

Moving on to the next chapter in this little Bushwhack guide.

Controlling the early minutes in a game is very important. If you know where the enemy jungler is at all times, your team has a huge advantage. Your friendly jungler can much easier counter jungle aswell as your lanes can play much more aggressive. This is why you want to have a proper start on Nidalee. She can use her at key points to track the enemy jungler in the early minutes, along with providing some extra protection from ganks.

You can place your bushwhacks where you want, depending on what you know. If you know the enemy team has an offensive jungler which often starts on red. You want to trap around that area as well as your own top lane to protect you from ganks.

I will now show you how I place my bushwhacks against which is a very common offensive jungler. In this example me and my team is on the BLUE side while the enemy team has the PURPLE side.

Lee sin often start on Wraiths (5) which spwans at 1.40, he then trasitions to the Red buff (1) which spawns at 1.55. After that he will most likely gank eather mid or top lane.

In 90% of my solo que games, I tell my support to place 1 at the wraiths entrance. With that ward our mid laner is safe from that side, as well as we know where the enemy jungler starts. I can also save 1-2 traps on that side, focusing more on the upper part of the river.



RED DOTS =

As you can see in this picture, this is a very defensive way of placing you traps. We have a ward at the left side entrance which protects our mid laner from early ganks from that side. Our team can also see if Lee Sin decides to cross the river to enter our jungle to steal either our blue or wolves, which can give our team enough time to kill him.
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Remember that if you are up against a hard lane you maybe want to blue pillar back for the 4th .
1.30 is when the minons spwans and you start getting gold per second.
You want to click B and teleport back to base in order to reach your lane before you lose minions.

NOTE: You can only do this if you start with
Use the brush in the lane to trigger your passive so you don't miss any creeps.

: The Iceborn Gauntlets are so good in this current meta. It provides Nidalee tankiness, CDR and an amazing slow. This is by far the best item for top Nidalee in this patch. You will lack abit of dmg with this item early game, but its worth it. If your laning agaist an AD champ pick up the first.

: Trinity force is still a good item on Nidalee, but I dont feel it a mandatory rush like I used to. You will miss some damage if you rush this item, so I recomend getting it later on, judging on the game because the sheen proc, the phage proc, the hp and the movement speed are really useful, but as I said this is no longer a must have.

As you see I find that > in this current meta.

Starting Items:

OR OR

Brings very good early game sustain and some Magic resist. I always get this item vs AP champions like; ect.

Domination:
Having problems vs AD lane:
Next items are depentant on the enemy team comp:

into is really strong vs AD top and jungler OR into vs AP top, mid/jungler.

Core builds:
vs heavy AP teams:

vs heavy AD teams:

Last optional items:

The ideal build vs balanced teams:

AD Nidalee's strength is from her ridiculous laning phase. By going full Armor Penetration runes and 21 on the offensive tree you can drive people off your lane by the 5 minute mark by simply abusing the bush and auto-attacking your opponent non-stop.

Use the brush to your advantage and try to keep the creeps away from your tower, but not all the way other to their side. If your lane opponent is pushing, auto attack all the time to keep the creeps away from your tower.


Once you hit 6 you can go really offensive. Go into the brush, activate your Cougar Stance and use the following combo: W > E > Q.

Do this 1-2 times and when your opponet in low on health about 40-50% you can acually burst them down.
in human form, activate and do your combo: W > > E > Q.
After that swap to human form use and auto attack for the kill, a lot of players fall for this trick and will often secure you the first blood of the game.

Mid game for nidalee is arguably her strongest. Cougar form exchanges deal a tremendous amount of damage and her auto attacks with primal surge deal a high amount of sustained damage. Constantly try to poke down the enemy and use your cougar form to win exchanges.

Try to get the first turret down, once you are able to roam the enemy jungle the game is in your hands. Buy a lot of wards and keep an eye on the enemy jungle. If you pull more than one champion always back out and re-enter when your wards have spotted that it's safe. You must buy wards if you intend to split push and roam the enemy jungle.

You should by now either have or this gives Nidalee the ability to kite, chase and fight porperly. You this to your advantage, help your team, support other lanes, split-push and keep the pressure on the map.

As I said Mid game is where Nidalee is strongest. You should aim for team fights around the 15-25min mark. This can win you a lot of games.

Nidalee is know for begin a really bad lategame champion. This is some what true, but at the same time she brings another ascpect to the team. She can splitpush and if you are ahead in items, you can easily take on 2 of their team members. Keep up the pressure from midgame and ride your way into a strong late game.

When the really late game hits, +50min ingame. Your job will be either to protect your AD carry or to be a frontliner for your team. This is dependant on thier team and your item build. If your going for a somewhat tanky build, you should be a frontliner.

Land key Bushwacks to take away their tanks resistances and go in for the engage.

Controll and kite the fights with and jump in and out poking with all your abilites.

This is the order you should use your spells. Land a good - follow up with a heal for attackspeed on your ADC . Try to land a - jump into and use + + for damage - back to casterform. Rise and repeat.

There is one role that I really like to take when I play Nidalee and that is the defensive role. Your job is to defend your AD Carry and with Nidalee, this is easy.
You want to posision your self a little bit to the side or behind of your carry. So its easier to jump in with cougar, as well as landing bushwhacks on the incoming bruisers.
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Now as the fight starts, enemy bruisers will try to go for your AD carry. You wanna tag them with auto attacks for Phage slow, so you can kite them with your AD carry.

With your you can give your AD carry +60% Attack speed together with a pretty strong heal, you wanna use this every time its off CD.

Now as your AD carry is safe and have increased attack speed, you wanna go in and do some damage.
This is where Armor Penetration comes in the picture. Bruisers usually stacks a lot of Armor so with ARP you are able to take them down much quicker then they will expect with your Cougar Stance.

Go into and your combo should look like this W > E > Q
Switch back to Human form
> Auto Attack > your AD carry OR your self > Auto Attack > > Auto Attack
Rise and repeat.
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The reason why I auto attack between all my spells is the passive brings you. If you learn to auto attack properly between your spells, you will see a massive damage increase.

Nidalee is known to be weak in team fights. Its true, but at the same time if you can master this play style, you will see that your winning team fights much easier than before.

Nidalee is one of the best splitpushsers in the game and you can drive off the hole enemy team if you do it right. The only problem with split pushing is that you need to make sure your team knows what to do. When your playing solo que, this can actually be very hard. So the key to split pushing in solo que is to buy a lot of wards trougout the hole game. If your planning to split push top lane, you want to place 2 wards. 1 in the top tribrush and 1 in the upper mid enterance.
Here are a picture which shows the placement of the 2 wards.

With this ward placement, you are able to see the enemys before its too late. Also use your passive to your advantage. Spiltpushing is dangarous and takes a lot of time to master, but at the same time it can be very reawarding for your team.

Nidalee is a champion that have a lot of escapes and utility. This makes her a perfect champion for splitpushing. If you play right you can actually make the enemy jungler chose between losing a lot of towers or camp you. If the enemy jungler decides to gank you, you already here provide a lot of help to your team.


You give time for your jungler to counter jungle and the other lanes can play much more agressive.

Thanks for reading my Nidalee guide and I really hope you found it useful! I've had a great time writing and testing different items, runes, builds and much more for this guide.

With that said you can always find me on my stream over at Twitch.
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/VipsyTV

I will start to post videos on youtube with my new channel as well.