DVA's 'E' is broken; buffs were unnecessary and ruined meta

General Discussion
1

Heroes of the Storm character DVA was already one of the strongest classes in the game, with various platforms reporting anywhere from 50% to 55% win rate. She was already very strong character, and felt extremely “cheap” to play against. In fact, I can’t think of any other heroes that actually suck the fun out of the game like she does.

There’s nothing more frustrating than draining her suit’s HP, only for her to strategically Eject to deny an Honor Kill, create an asininely large AOE zone with core overload, and immediately get back in her suit- with full HP. The hero has an infinite life loop, and can rarely be punished for it.

In fact punishing the character requires a set of highly specific conditions, which are rarely met.

Additionally, tactics have actually evolved recently in which the meta is to invite attacks de-suited to burn cooldowns, and then suit up. This tactic was far less prevalent when the hero was introduced. I don’t think this tactic was around when developers actually built the character, and now it has exposed that playing the Hero is essentially an exploit of unintended game design elements come to “bug” status now that players discovered ways to play the character that the developers failed to anticipate.

Right now she’s in every single game I play additionally adding to the frustration. Nazeebo and Tassadar, too.

It’s BORING to play the exact same heroes every single time.

There’s zero effective counters to boot, although DVA players while cheerfully shrill “oh just ignore the hero!” which is next to impossible due to her ability to demand attention.

Let me give one example of hero, amongst many, whom is actually deserving of a buff. Nova has close to a 45% win rate, and isn’t even fun to play because the community is so toxic towards the weak Hero. She literally gets two shotted by every other Hero, and in the case of Nazebo’s Corpse Spiders, can actually be killed 100% by a single ''Q". Yes, a single Q can kill Nova. There’s many other glaring examples of deserving heroes like Mei or Tychus or Probius whom generally stink no matter how good the player is. That’s the kind of Hero whom deserves a buff… not making an OP hero MORE OP.

In all honesty I feel like the developers don’t even play their own game and barely understand it.

1 Like
2

deckard basic attack, 55 damage
nova health: ~1400

don’t think this is true

yess im being intentionally obtuse, no i don’t care

6 Likes
3

Umm… that’s almost perfectly balanced. It’s also a lie. Looking at Heroes Profile, D.Va is barely passing 50% in SL since the last patch. She’s doing a little better in QM at 51%, but not much. In ARAM, she’s sitting at a rather sad 46%. Also, she has a pretty poor popularity in all three modes.

D.Va has a lot of weaknesses, namely her low out-of-combat mobility, weak crowd control, unimpactful heroics, and most damningly her pathetic damage. She is extremely reliant on her Q to do anything, and once that’s been used she’s a sitting duck until the cooldown is ready again or she can use an E. She folds to stuns and silences, she has little ability to interrupt mobile heroes. That’s not say she’s useless, far from, but she’s really not that good.

4 Likes
4

been playing her recently. forgot she received buffs until this post. she can be obnoxious to play against but she’s not over powering. she is slow to travel around the map, and can’t heal herself; her sustain comes from cycling between pilot and mech but if she doesn’t self destruct she is stuck and vulnerable in pilot form

2 Likes
5

This looks like low effort AI made post. nerf this UwU

6

If every unexpected interaction by developers was considered a bug I’m pretty sure at least 30% of the interactions in basically any competitive game would fall under that category.

Consider stutter stepping, of the few things nova is actually decent at that is one of them.

I feel like probius in particular is a terrible example of this given well he’s the 4th highest winrate hero in the game right now according to heroes profile (not a great source but you get the picture) but honestly all 3 are pretty insane to put in this category.

7

I missed that part of the post lmao, Mei is perfectly fine, Tychus is amazingly strong in ranked, and Probe has a high WR (though I attribute that to “OTP Syndrome” (e.g, no one in the right mind other than insane one trick plays them, therefore their winrate is inflated))

I do agree Nova is a little weak but that’s due to the character design. You can’t really have a character like Nova be numerically strong without it being way too uninteractive. Similar things to Valeera or Sgt. Hammer.

1 Like
8

A single Q will not one shot Nova even with the optimal combination of talents… before lvl 20 at least. If you’re so afraid, you can take the armor talent at 13 which will allow you to survive even against vile infection empowered spell hit.

Alternatively you could also get one shot without vile infection through a level deficit, in which case you should have bigger worries than a single spell cast determining the outcome of the entire teamfight.

If you’re playing as intended, you shouldn’t be getting hit by him as Nova.

Once hit, you can always force-cloak on demand which will trigger armor I previously mentioned and cause spider AI to drop target tracking. You do however need to be moving continuously to survive because the damage over time will break stealth and they will re-aggro, but you’ll still avoid the killing blow.

No one will disagree that Nazeebo feels a bit broken but he’s not exactly the most popular pick on the higher end of the ladder for obvious reasons.

Imagine Nazeebo having an invisible 30% bonus hp buffer on top of a tank-equivalent health pool. If he is patient and knows what he is doing, he will beat nearly any other hero so there’s two key things you need to worry about:

  • careful when you decide to pause your movement
  • avoid going into melee because spider jar loses animation delay on ALT-self cast

Once he misses the first cast he loses CDR that’s when you jump him. If you ever do get hit by spiders twice in a row, it’s very likely that you have already lost the fight no matter how low his HP may be. Tail between your legs and run away, you might just get lucky.

4 Likes
9

If you’re dying a lot as Nova, your positioning is trash and you’re not making the most of your decoys.

Say it with me folks: Get. Good.

5 Likes
10

If they were good, they wouldn’t be playing Nova.

4 Likes
11

I’m becoming a fan of her L1 Talent “Full Metal”… ya might wanna give it a look. :slight_smile:

For the Topic: D.Va’s main weaknesses: (In no particular order)

Poke

CC

Kiters (Especially ones who are also strong at Poke)

Losing her Mech, even via using Self Destruct still counts as half a Death and everyone knows the Game is very unforgiving of Players dying even when that Character is literally built around it. There’s no explaining to the game that asking a Character built around mechanics involving dying to still never ever die and waste half their power is not reasonable, though avoiding dying too much is still recommended. Characters like D.Va always face a very uphill battle trying to ever make it onto the MVP Screen.

Pilot Mode D.Va is quite vulnerable to Dive Heroes, especially if not opting for the Talent that unlocks the Pilot Mode juke move. They rely heavily on their Team’s Tanks and Peel to keep them safe especially if they lost Mech to lethal damage instead of Self Destructing. Pilot Mode D.Va also must fear the risk of getting CC Damage Bursted.

Good counterplay against D.Va can limit her ability to contribute for her Team and mitigate her surprisingly much. Remember the wisdom of TF2 Heavy: “Never dying does not automatically equal Kredit to Team”… If D.Va keeps getting hit hard and pressured away without being able to do a lot for large amounts of a Match, ya might not be able to kill her as often as your bloodthirst would crave for but ya can make her contributions to her team so underpowered ya can win through it and leave her feeling plenty Salty. :wink:

Killing’s fun, but don’t forget the big picture and that the real most important target is the Enemy’s Core, not how fat your Kill Count can be made. :stuck_out_tongue:

12

literally not true, self destruct doesn’t count as a 0.5 death

5 Likes
13

slightly untrue; the ‘good’ players use her as a support hero, the less-good try to play her as main dps :stuck_out_tongue:

Nova’s main contributions aren’t her Q or R, it’s her /dance :sunglasses:

2 Likes
14

My Support hero is Blaze :slight_smile:

2 Likes
15

Eh, I prefer Nova to other stealth heroes. I’m also a filthy casual.

1 Like
16

Honestly, I’ve always said that Nova, Tracer, Samuro, Zeratul, Genji, Valeera, and Butch should be in their own category rather than be considered a main DPS.

17

Thats terribly untrue. Nova does not get 1 shot by corpse spiders even if he has vile infection. Unless you are at a multiple level deficit. But you realistically should never be in a position where naz can tag you with corpse spiders as nova in the first place. Nova should be staying safely in the backline or flanking the opponent looking to get picks while using your decoy to distract enemies and block skill shots. In between fights Nova can be pretty safely scouting out areas with decoys and possibly looking for camps to bribe steal as well as helping with wave clear using precision strike or explosive snipe if you went snipe build. If necessary you can take her armor talent Ionic Force field which grants 25 armor for 3 seconds when dropping cloak for any reason it does add a lot of survivability to the otherwise very fragile hero and might be just worth getting if your just playing anti armor shells build anyway.

2 Likes
18

Wait, wut? Is that one of the things that changed during my Hiatus…? I’d swear I thought I heard fav pal’s sis while she was playing D.Va one Match look at the Battle Info, use Self Destruct, check it again, and report getting half a death added between those two checks…?

19

It was changed when big shot was made baseline I believe

1 Like
20

0.5 death on Self Destruct was never a thing unless you used the exploit of casting E during Q while getting a fatal blow.