[Patch 3.10a: Worlds Balance] General Discussion - Page 128

Her playstyle revolves around auto-harassing people until level 6, abusing bushes for her passive and to avoid retaliation, then once 6 she can abuse the super low cooldown on her cougar form (and its good base values, her Q execute is bonkers when everyone is low and you get to play clean-up) to easily force trades and disengage. Her 4s cd Pounce in cougar form and passive give her excellent mobility and juking potential, especially with her traps to get vision of people anyway.
Like Teemo, she isn't good at straight-up teamfighting, however she has good 1v1, kiting, splitpushing, map vision (traps aren't as strong as shrooms for damage, and no slow, the resistances shred is huge for 1v1 though), and she's queen of escapes.
That's for bruiser Nidalee (items like Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, Chalice, etc.), often played top. AP Nidalee, more often played mid but sometimes top, is all about her spears, doing a huge part of someone's health if you hit from afar (fed enough you straight-up one shot squishies). She sucks at teamfighting too, and want to drop traps everywhere, sustain poke with her heal, and stack CDR and mana regen (blue buff important on her) to Q people until they die or have to go heal and you get a free tower/teamfight. It seems like less your style? Still a goddess of escapes.

Other shapeshifting champions, they can shift from level 1 though so their early laning is very different. They share the "ranged = poke+utility, melee = gap closing + execute/burst" paradigm with Nidalee, but their ranged->melee combo is stronger (they use spells in ranged form, Nidalee uses autoattacks, so they have more burst). Jayce has strong teamwide utility with the AoE slow from meleeQ, and his mini-Shurelya on Gate. Elise is more about catching people and escaping, with her E (stun in human form, gap closer/escape in spider form).

He used to be the #1 lane bully but range nerfs on his autoattacks changed it a bit. He still does pretty well against melee champs, especially if you can manage your W passive well. He's not the best duelist before level 11 (level 1 ult takes time to stun) and he doesn't splitpush well (not good at killing waves until he has a ton of AP and levels in E), but his E is a good escape, and his ability to apply marks to several people to stun them from afar can help him kite and protect allies (esp; with items like Rylai).
He's the kind of champion you rush Zhonya on, because his ult puts him in the middle of the enemy team.

She has low range, but her passive (bonus magic damage that stacks on consecutive attacks) makes her auto-harass hurt a lot early on. Her gameplay revolves around positioning her ball in her vicinity and cast spells through it (so she doesn't need to "be there") and a good Orianna puts a lot of pressure.
Her damage is rather low so you can't expect to 100-0 people like you do with Annie, however she has longer range and the "suck in" effect is great for AoE follow-up (imagine her pulling all 5 for you to hit the perfect Tibbers, now imagine all the other champs who can combo with her) or just to bring people back in your allies' range (or away from them). Her spammable shield and MS boost/slow zone make her great at kiting, chasing and mitigating damage. Her ball gives defensive bonuses but she's still fairly squishy and she has no mobility.

He has higher than average range and a passive which gives him bonus damage on his next auto-attack every X seconds, so he can easily punish and bully melee or even most ranged mages when they last hit early on. His Q has long range (between 850 and 1400 depending how you make it bounce) and lets him farm from afar and harass people over the creep wave, but it empties your mana pool fast.
His other spells are a minefield which controls a zone super well, and a ground explosive which knocks enemies and yourself away when it detonates (you can throw yourself over walls to escape), his ult is a high-damage AoE bomb with super long range but it takes some time for it to land so you have to lead your targets well (or have your allies cc them). The enemy needs to walk on the mines to take damage and the ground explosive has delayed explosion so his kit is bad to burst people like Annie does. He's much better at poking them with his Q from safety then only move in for the finishing blow, his other 2 spells being super good to prevent people from reaching him.
His minefield can easily block a full rampe or path in the jungle.
However he's squishy, spends a ton of mana, has long cooldowns on his non-Q spells and he's not good at just killing people.

She has high mana costs so she needs a Tear or Chalice, but once she has it (and possibly Blue Buff) she can basically farm with E from behind her tower, abusing her range, without risk. She has a shield acting twice (half when you cast, half when it comes back to you) so she reduces a lot of damage. When she deals damage to an enemy with a spell, she puts a mark on him which she can trigger with an auto-attack to deal bonus damage. It gives her very high damage even at low levels, and lets you kill minions fast with your AoE (spell + 1 auto on each minion, even without much AP you can kill them). The downside is that your autoattack range is average so you need to get close.
Her spells are either cc or protection (the shield works on allies on the trajectory, on both ways), with Q being a snare on 2 targets, and E an AoE slow which damages when you pop it. Her ult has 3000 range, huge base damage (it also triggers your passive's marks and then reapplies them) and a ridiculously low cooldown which is helped by her love for CDR considering all the utility she has.

With Lux you are very hard to kill because of your range making it hard to reach you, shield, and then cc to protect yourself from melee champions. You're also ridiculously hard to punish so you can just throw Q and E at the enemy team everytime they're available, and if you hit a key target just pop E and ult for a back or (very often, especially midgame) a kill.
You don't have escapes so even if you're harder to 100-0 than a lot of champions thanks to your shield (and players often take Barrier since she has high enough base damage on her spells to kill without ignite) if you're caught you have good chances of dying.

Despite her squishiness, her passive gives her a second life, and at later levels even buffs her resistances, so as long as you don't get caught alone with your team far it's really, really hard to kill you when your passive is up.
She has a slow auto animation and low AD so it's a bit hard for her to farm early. Once she gets to level 6, her ultimate (AoE periodic damage which you can toggle on/off with a 6s cd) lets her sit near her tower and just kill the waves in a pretty braindead manner (she needs blue and/or a Tear because of the mana cost though), and it'll stay this way all game long: if the enemy team doesn't have long range hard initiation (like Malphite, Zac, etc.) it's simply impossible to push against Anivia. Her wall also lets her entirely wall off your base entrances in combination with the ult (one on each side).
The wall lets her catch people and make all sorts of plays. It's not the easiest spell in the game and it's a bit tiny initially, however it's stupidly powerful and sometimes even stronger than cc (because you can't cleanse the terrain it creates, and it's not as constraining as J4's ult).
Her other spells are a line-skillshot which slows everything in its path and stuns around it when it explodes, dealing damage when passing over and exploding, it's one of the highest damage non-ultimates in the game and lets you "one shot" waves in combination with your ultimate. You can use your wall to force people into it. Its only downside is that it's slower than comparable skillshots. The last spell is a simple point'n'click nuke with longer than average range and average damage—which is doubled if your Q or ult slowed the enemy, giving you another spell dealing more damage than a bunch of ultimates, on a very short cooldown, albeit single-target.

The downsides of Anivia are a supposedly weak pre-6 laning phase, her total lack of escapes and squishiness, very high mana costs, and lack of burst: unless fed she won't 100-0 people, because her mana needs prevent her from building a lot of AP early.
On the other end she can deal as much damage as AP assassins with a less than 10s cooldown if people enter her range. Cave-ats are range being lower than most squishies (700 vs 1200 for Lux) and she should have less AP for most of the midgame so she doesn't reach all her potential (dealing 50+% of somebody's HP on a regular basis is still good, uh?).
She's supposed to be hard to use (mainly the wall, and the fact that Q moves slowly) but the skill floor to simply slow people with your ult, stop pushes, and hang in the back, stunning the people diving your team and killing them over time is much simpler as long as you don't go for flashy plays. It's super passive too.