Should You Main Nidalee? Tier S
Yes. Nidalee is tier S for maining. 6 Challenger and 19 Grandmaster mains across Korea, Europe West and North America, on 194,831 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Nidalee holds more high elo mains per game played than almost anything else in the game.
The numbers
Score 12.74 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 6 Challenger · 19 Grandmaster · 101 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 194,831 games played worldwide · 2.12% pick rate · 0.70% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
So yeah this is going to be one into the S tiers up here. So no is going to be an S tier jungler to play. So the reason being is that Nelly has always been very strong in terms of how many challenger and GM players play her.
If you're very good at Ni, you're going to be able to climb to the top. So definitely getting a lot of mastery in terms of Ni. I used to main Italy actually like in season six.
This was 10 years ago, but I started off main Italy and I used Niti to raise up you know like raise myself up in terms of ranks like very quickly. 2% rate almost no b rate 7% and six challengers 19 grand masters like actually one of the best champions to main if you're good at good good mastery on champion you know and then you just learn the game from an early standpoint you're going to be able to reach the top you're going to be able to reach the top easy easier than other champions I did it back in the day with ny and So yeah, has not changed I think.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.