Nidalee

Nidalee was raised in the remote heart of the Ixtal jungle, where she was isolated enough that tracking came to her long before almost anything else. She belongs to neither world fully: part human, part animal, she slips between the two, becoming a cougar whenever it suits her, and she guards any patch of land she considers hers without giving notice.

Her abilities change with the form she takes:

• Javelin Toss is a spear thrown in human form that deals more damage the farther it flies. In cougar form the same slot turns into Takedown, which finishes off wounded prey.
• Bushwhack sets a trap that exposes and harms whoever triggers it. Its cougar version, Pounce, is a leap that hurts the area where she lands.
• Primal Surge mends and quickens nearby allies while she is human. As a cougar, Swipe rakes through everything close by.
• Aspect Of The Cougar is the transformation itself, letting her change from tracker into predator whenever she chooses.

Her Prowl passive rewards her for fighting on home ground. Movement speed in brush increases while visible enemy champions are close by. People who have run into her usually come away with the same impression: keen instincts, even keener claws, and almost no time to react before either one appears. Ixtal has produced other shapeshifting hunters too, and Neeko relies on a very different sort of disguise.

Nidalee is played almost always in the Mid lane and runs on mana, and brush shapes nearly everything she does. Her strength rises or falls noticeably depending on how well she uses it, whether she is poking with Javelin Toss before shifting into cougar form to run down a target already tagged as Hunted, or laying Bushwhack traps behind enemy lines before a siege, where they catch anyone already weakened. Her follow-up damage relies entirely on the Hunted mark, so staying out of range of Javelin Toss and Bushwhack takes that opening away from her. Since Javelin Toss hits hardest at distance, pressing in early tends to work better than trying to dodge it later.