I think that Nidalee got the "Nunu treatment." By "Nunu treatment," I mean a champion that was once considered just average was shown to have exceptional power when used by the right people. I think awhile ago Leona and Brand were once considered just average champions before the right people got their hands of them and proved to everyone that these are actually incredibly powerful champions in Dominion.

Now, if this is enough to consider Nidalee "Cheesecake" tier at Sauron's level is another story. But I would think that in lower levels, Nidalee is incredibly powerful. However, I do not think she is as uncounterable as you say. Very annoying to counter or fight back is probably a better way to phrase it.

But going back to your original post, I do not believe Nidalee is the third strongest Dominion champion. But also remember that this is all opinion based. Even Sauron mentioned his Tier List is his own opinion and no one should ever use it in a disagreement.

Also, thank you for your edit explaining your point of view. It is far easier to respect your opinions when you at least tried to back it up.

It doesn't really matter to me whether or not Nidalee is 3rd strongest or not. What the main purpose of this thread is to get a community consensus that Nidalee is overpowered on the Cheesecake level, much like Eve was overpowered on the Cheesecake level yet considered to be 'tier 1'. If we are only comparing Nidalee's level of strength to Jayce, a champion who has been considered Cheesecake since release, then that already indicates something about Nidalee's strength. In other words, it doesn't really matter to me if Jayce is taking the 3rd strongest champion if that means Nidalee is 4th strongest.

I think one of the things I was comparing is the fact that when it comes down to point defence, poke on the level of Jayce and Nidalee is simply overpowered on Dominion. Both of them.They can both be dodged, but the fact of the matter is, dodging means you have to stop capping the point, and neither Nidalee nor Jayce need to commit to use this form of poke/point defence.

The main difference between Jayce and Nidalee is probably their key strengths. Jayce can scale into a late game hyper carry and have versatility as both a bot and top laner whereas Nidalee has stronger jungle control at all points in the game.

I'd personally rather play vs a Jayce than a Nidalee any day, though I am willing to concede that Jayce is potentially stronger.

Oh also, about the people stepping onto traps thing, Nidalee can just put traps into every bush. This means you can't step into any bush without taking damage and revealing yourself for 12 seconds. This automatically means that you can't go into bushes under normal circumstances whereas the enemy can. It has nothing to do with 'stepping on visible traps', though with smart placement, people are still going to step on those as well, especially the ones that abuse the way vision + reaction timing works. Tl;dr It gets to a point where it doesn't even matter if the brush has a trap or not, simply the fact that it could prevents you from facechecking (or using) any brush.

I know who he's referring to, hence why I stated my lack of patience for Nidalee threads.

I'm all for taking a swing at all of the penetration, but her the rest of the kit is no more powerful than it's been for months. Dodge spears or suffer, don't step on traps. Sorry if you're offended that I'm getting snippy, but I don't buy it.

It's a matter of exposure, really.

My general anti-kitty strategy consists of stacking a Leona full of HP and charging into trap city with Eclipse up or doing the same with Alistar and just skipping the preamble with Headbutt -> Ult. If you can stick a tank on her in a fight with some CDR and a decent gap closer to bodyblock spears then you're good, but you can't hesitate. If Nid pokes down your front line before engagement then you're boned; grab a minion wave for a meat shield for the first few spears then get right in her team's face. It's the same general strategy for any kite-reliant comp.

i remember when people felt ap nid was a trash pick that contributed nothing except throwing spears and running away from teamfights

oh how times change

Vi is actually one of the best champions in the game at killing champions who have a tendency to kite a lot (ezreal/kassadin/khazix/nidalee). Vi has a very high amount of burst damage. If Vi lands a Q onto any of these champions they are essentially dead since the short knockback will give you enough time to land an autoattack + autoattack reset on e (also procs w passive). If they use their dash then you can just ult them while they dash away and you will land at where their dash ends, allowing you to hit them with auto+ e again. Or you can just ult first and get a guaranteed q to land anyways. That said, champions like Kassadin still have an easy way out in that he should just silence then dash afterwards, but there are a lot of bad Kassadins out there(!!)

I think Vi has a realllllly good time if you land your q. If you miss it though, then you probably won't have such a good time. In fairness though she actually has a pretty good kit in that you have the 'leona treatment' where if they try to kite leona for too long she can just q them and if they don't she can land e. For vi, she can just threaten you with her massive autoattack damage. I don't think she has a particularly bad time to be honest.

Reason I mentioned Fiora is that she does a high amount of burst damage. IF she somehow gets into range of a Nidalee with her first Q, she can hit nidalee a few times, follow with a 2nd q when she dashes and ult to finish (a bit of a waste but alas). She has a better time at killing Nidalee than basically everyone else not Cheesecake or at least tier 1 =S

So you're basically implying that Nid's traps are OP because of their damage...

I find Ahri and Akali to be of good use chasing down pesky kitties. I prefer Ahri but Pounce has a habit of either dodging charm entirely or jumping out of one of her Q bounces unless you've watched her pounce path enough to figure out her general escape pattern.

Irelia is still my personal favourite for chasing her down with. Get enough CDR to take down her bladesurge cooldown and with a Phage you can stick to her permanently.

Yes, that .4 AP ratio is terrifying.

40% of your resistances missing for twelve seconds is going to hurt a hell of a lot more than anything else she'll hit you with; it's pretty much the worst example of the mess Riot made when they ever-so conveniently forgot to update any of the penetration effects in champion kits.

AP Nidalee's been a pretty popular pick in EU for quite a while now in competitive play. As people might have gathered it's not rly as easy as it sounds to dodge spears even at the pro level.

Exactly. I have never believed that Nidalee will land 100% of her spells, nor should she. When I assume her power level, this is on the basis of how often she should be landing her spells, taking into account people trying to avoid them or outplay her.

But as far as her Jungle Brush control is concerned, this should be happening in almost all of her games.

Though that said, if she isn't the 3rd strongest champ, where do you think she should be, if not 3rd? Who's actually above her? I can understand if people want to put champions like Teemo and Jayce ahead of her, but after that, who's still ahead?

To address the last point I also believe that strategy should be adjusted against different champions. But the thing is that Teemo, Kassadin and Khazix were considered 3 of the most problematic champions in Dominion at one point. You could definitely adjust your strategy vs them, but that doesn't change the fact that they were OP, even if there were counters or ways to play against them.

If we can all agree that Nidalee is OP, then why does the question of "how OP is she?" matters?

If you are referring to Sauron's Tier List, why does a champion's placement on that list matter so much? Sauron even put a disclaimer in the beginning saying that it was purely his own opinion. If Sauron feels that Nidalee is Tier 2, then Sauron thinks Nidalee is Tier 2. If you think otherwise, screw Sauron's Tier list, say that Nidalee is Cheesecake Tier. I don't care. If she's really as OP as you say she is then I'm sure RiotNome will look at her after he deals with Kass.

Edit: I feel...like I'm going to get massively downvoted for saying "Screw Sauron's Tier List..."

the only 2 champs i think are better would be jayce, and mabey elise.

shes got pretty solid poke but not quite as good from super far away, but my favorite part of her is end game she can gib pretty much any squishy from a bush in like 3 seconds.
i'm not completly sure if she is overall better, but shes darn close imo. Shes also a fair amount easier. the stun is pretty hard tho, but is about the only really hard thing on her.

She definatly doesnt get around the map nearly as fast as nid, but faster then average. I feel she has a better time in skirmishes with mele, she can kite then fight many instead of kite kite kite kite then fight. her spiders eat up skill shots which can be devistating against a lot of people. idk its pretty close tho

i would rank her 3-5 with nid jayce and elise pretty close, but idk its so dependent from team comp to team comp.

to the dude above, i personaly enjoy thinking about stuff like this because it makes you learn more about the champions. not only are u seeing them pwn, ur criticaly thinking Why do they pwn? Who do they pwn? How consistently? and then u get to see everyones ideas, because my own often arnt nearly the best.
its fun and knowledgable

edit- i cant believe i forgot about wukong -_- hes gota be close to as good, hes q and his e mixture with the crazy ratios he has. mix him with anyone like malphite or amumu and its all but an auto victory. i agree shes super good, but excluding khaz and kass there are a few that i think are pretty darn close and awsome.