League of Legends Designers Consider Bringing Nidalee Back to a Lane

League of Legends players may see Nidalee back in a lane instead of the jungle sometime in the [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends Nidalee
(Photo: Riot Games)

League of Legends players may see Nidalee back in a lane instead of the jungle sometime in the future if some of Riot Games' exploration into the possibility proves to be fruitful.

Nidalee has largely been a jungle-only champion for a while now with the transforming champ having her ups and downs between being over and underpowered. Her history in lanes is full of bullying other champions and bursting them with just one spear, but she may once again be back in a lane after some testing and adjustments.

Riot Games' August "Riot August" Browning commented on the possibility of putting Nidalee back in a lane as a follow-up to his tweet last month that indicated he'd been thinking about lane Nidalee at the time.

"Am interested in getting Nid back into a solo lane," Riot August said in response to a commenter on the League boards who wanted to know more about the possibility. "Seems high value if we can achieve it given her gameplay and thematics. The issue I'm running into is that her current kit doesn't seem to support lane play without a number of game health risks or risks of making her jungle bonkers."

Like some of the other champions that have received work recently including Rengar and LeBlanc, Riot August compared Nidalee's potential changes that would put her back in a lane to those of Rengar in terms of scope. However, the Rioter added that whatever is done to Nidalee won't come until later when he's had a chance to finish the Visual and Gameplay Update for a champion that he's working on at the moment.

"As a result I expect getting lane Nidalee back would take a number of larger mechanical shifts on the champion as opposed to simple numbers changes. This is doable, but would take time (Similar scope to the work we did on Rengar). Was thinking of doing some exploratory work on her once I wrap up work on my current VGU. No promises however, the exploration could end up yielding nothing of value (Would only make changes if we were confident Lane Nid AND jungle Nid were being made better)."

No promises have been made yet that Nidalee could return to a lane since the exploration into the idea hasn't fully started yet, but Nidalee mains and their opponents may one day be able to welcome Midalee and her high bully potential back to the main lanes.

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