Nidalee is one of the most mechanically demanding champions in League of Legends. However, the reward for mastering this champion makes all the effort worthwhile. To ease our journey of mastering Nidalee, the greatest thing we can do in the beginning is to focus on setting the right foundations. We can begin this task by consistently building the highest win rate Nidalee items.
Best Nidalee Items
Lich Bane
Lich Bane has been a core Nidalee item for almost a decade. The main perk of this item is it’s passive that increases our basic attack damage whenever we use an ability. A cool thing about this passive is that we can trigger it even with our Q in cougar form, this makes the passive extra viable on Nidalee.
Mejai’s Soulstealer
The second item I would build on Nidalee is Mejai’s Soulstealer. As many might already know, this item has a stacking system in place. With each kill, we get a few stacks. However, the item also loses a huge chunk of stacks each time we die. Running it is somewhat risky, however, it forces us to be mindful of our playstyle, which in turn teaches us how to play calculatedly.
Zhonya’s Hourglass
Another crucial item for Nidalee is Zhonya’s Hourglass. The core gameplay of Nidalee entails a lot of close combat, therefore, it’s pretty reasonable that we want an item that can grant us some safety. The protection from Hourglass and its “statis” passive is quite great for Nidalee.
Rabadon’s Deathcap
When it comes to AP heavy builds, there is no escaping Rabadon’s Deathcap. This great item has the highest flat AP ratio in the game (130) and it will offer us a generous 30% boost on our total AP amount. Overall, the item has pretty great cost to value ratio, especially when we have a full AP build going.
Void Staff
The king of closing AP builds is the Void Staff. Just like Rabadon’s whose unique purpose is granting the highest amounts of AP, Void Staff’s singular focus is granting the most magic penetration possible. The penetration that we will get from this item amounts to 40%, and it will be a major for increasing the overall damage output of our build.
Boots
The two boots we can run on Nidalee are the Sorcerer’s Shoes and Ionian Boots of Lucidity. Sorcerers are much more efficient and effective, however, you might try boots of Lucidity from time to time.
Runes for Nidalee
- Dark Harvest
- Sudden Impact
- Eyeball Collection
- Treasure Hunter
- Transcedence
- Waterwalking
The greatest keystone for Nidalee is Dark Harvest. Nidalee gameplay entails a lot of aggressiveness, therefore, having an aggressive stacking rune will be the best.
A good followup rune would be Sudden Impact, which would increase the damage following our W ability. The next two runes I would pick would be the Eyeball Collection and Treasure Hunter. These two will stack at the same time, and grant us quite great damage and gold values.
Finally, I would also take Transcendence and Waterwalking. Transcendence is pretty great for getting extra ability haste, while Waterwalking will enable us to have more map presence by enhancing our movement speed.
Final Thoughts
Nidalee is one of the greatest jungle picks there are. She boasts a pretty solid win rate despite being one of the hardest champions to play. The greatest build for this champion would be a full AP one. Such a build will enable us to exert plenty of pressure on the enemies, and snowball our way to victory!