When I click 1 to escape make nova get cleanse. your escape is usless when you get poisoned or a dehaka is running faster then nova from bushes. At least when you pick advanced cloaking at lvl 1
Sure. Give it a 0.5 sec cleanse and raise its cd to at least 90secs then.
Nova already controls when the fight starts, by being invisible. ‘1’ makes nova escape targeted abilities like butcher charge and most auto attackers struggle to reveal nova (tracer, greymane, samuro, list goes on). It also doubles as an offensive ability: chasing enemies, or getting a few seconds without being attacked while your aa reloads, especially with the anti armor aa talent to win a teamfight.
If you have trouble surviving, I suggest the 25 armor talent, which synergises with ‘1’ as despite being revealed, you still force the 25 armor to activate. Otherwise, it’s all about positioning. Dehaka shouldn’t get to you unless he finished speed quest, which takes some time. You should still use ‘e’ (clones) to scout bushes. Similarly, damage-over-time heroes (xul ult, nazeebo, guldan, qhira, lunara, malthael) shouldn’t be able to hit you most of the time. Lunara might be able to R-R-W-auto-Q after 10 (not sure about the numbers, but it should be close), but then it’s on you not to overcommit against one of the worst heroes of qm…
4 Likes
maybe not relevant to PvP
but in AI my god they single out any and every stealth hero with a vengeance particularly nova
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Qhira-bot seeking vengeance for every PvP Qhira missing ‘e’ on an invisible, and ending up dead/ not killing the invisible: ‘You have just made this…personal.’
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Quite literally that
not all, you can’t escape Falstad lightning rod for example
an other way to protect nova from unstealthing on dot could be not a cleanse but maybe a shield when using 1 (having shield on stealthing like zera and valeera can)
True. Same for guldan drain. It probably only counters abilities that need permanent vision from cast to hit, my bad. You can still put pyroblast on 10 secs cd, unreliably troll butcher’s ult pre-10, and a few other stuff.
I think poison revealing invisibles is intended and good, though. Valeera before 20 needs to use an ult (so at least lvl 10) + D to camouflage out of a dot. Zeratul is also prevented from camouflaging. Lunara has a talent (practically 2 talents) built around being a soft counter of invisible heroes. Similarly, tracer has 1 such talent. Besides samuro who gets 2 cleanses from lvl 1, which I don’t think any non-samuros appreciate, I’d say Nova isn’t /shouldn’t be affected as much as melee heroes, by virtue of having (decent) range, so she shouldn’t get a survivability buff.
I’d rather see medivh invisibility on 20 get reworked to also give a small cleanse (and nerf the cd probably, or make it 1 stack).
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Comparing the stealth champ stealth skill/passive
Without any talent :
Valeera => 8s cd (main mechanic) => Unrevealable for 1s
Samuro => 15s cd (free escape) + % heal => Unrevealable for 1s
Zeratul => 3s cd after out of combat
Nova => 3s cd after out of combat + 1min cd with Unrevealable for 0.5s
so from weakest to strongest stealth it’s probably
Zeratul → Nova → Valeera → Samuro
The thing is later on you can get :
Valeera =>
-after using a stealth skill, regen 10 energy/s for 5s
-after using a stealth skill, 15% movement for 3s
-20% movement while stealthed
Samuro =>
-after stealthing and exiting stealthing +40% movement for 3s + heal 3%
-while stealthing and for 3s after exiting, 25 armor for him and images
-blink
-if broken by attacking hero, +30% damage on target for 3s
-6s less cd
Zeratul =>
-1s less cd + 30% movement while stealth at 1
-20% max hp shield over 3s while stealth
Nova =>
-after stealth for 1s, gain 10% movement + 3 mana/s while stealthed
-25 armor for 3s after losing stealth
-2s less cd
-(can get a 15s cd on ghost protocol)
it just swap Zeratul/Nova position in my priority list (thanks to the 20% max hp shield).
Nova stealth bonus movement comes after 1s while only having Unrevealable for 0.5s on a 1min cd 
, no shielding, no cleanse/split with clones, bonker ai
There could easily be some slight adjustments.
(also poor lvl 1 stats for a range and 404 not found waveclear, except with lvl 16 talent, which is quite late…)
Now you went on to compare some of the talents, completely ignoring that the other heroes are melee, so they need more survivability, while a ranged assassin needs more damage…
Did you know garrosh gets a taunt ability at 10, and varian gets one at 4, but nova doesn’t? I think it’s time for a rework. Nova q taunts enemy after lvl 7.
Also made it look like the 1 min cd ability is the only way for nova to stealth. Nova works like zera, and valeera like samuro, if you needed someone to tell you that… zera can get some survivability/ mobility / damage, nova can get survivability / damage / armor debuff (dmg buff for whole team, probably easiest to apply in all game).
But wait…samuro has to aa an enemy a ton with a lvl 1 talent to give -15 armor, but nova can shoot 1 aa from safe range for -15 armor. I’d say it’s time for a nerf… or let’s buff samuro 
Good post. She already struggles with competitive viability (SL/tournaments), no need for further nerfs.
And the active can be used in very creative, even offensive ways as you listed, if the player has any imagination.
2 Likes
Bots above Adept will immediately attack mobile stealth heroes. If they have the means to do so, they’ll knock you out of it first chance they can. It is only if you are stationary that they’ll leave you alone.
Adept and lower will not acknowledge the existence of stealth heroes, mobile or no, until their stealth goes night-night.
You can tell if you are playing alongside a good Valeera if they’ll withhold using Vanish until they are within punching distance against Veteran or Elite A.I.
Which on Valeera, she is probably the worst off of the stealth heroes and deserves more attention than the platinum blondie bombshell or the lipless warping wonder.
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Just play Valeera and use her Cloak of shadows ult wala poof
it was just to show that some heroes have real upgrades on their talents while nova does not.
Also the survivability for melee while ranged needs more dmg is so obvious that I did not mention it, but we can look at this point :
At lvl 1 (and then everyone get the +4% per level so no breaking changes on stats at other levels),
Hero => Atk => AtkSpd => HP
Valeera => 82 => 2 => 2192 → that’s 164 dps
Zeratul => 131 => 1.11 => 1687 → that’s 145.4 dps
Samuro => 106 => 1.67 => 1794 → that’s 177 dps
Nova => 109 => 1 => 1352 → that’s 109 dps
Melees have more HP - ok
Range should more dmg - not ok
What’s next ? she’s ranged and plays like a caster so she does not need stats ?
Zera Q : 208 AOE 6s cd
Nova Q : 239 +quest stacks, ST 6s cd
Zera W : 250 12s ST cd
Nova W : 104 ST 12s cd
Zera E : no dmg but a blink gives a lot of survivability
Nova E : bonker ai and deals 10% of nova dmg (but nova stats are still low)
Even her spells (except Snipe) are way lower.
Nova playstyle is mostly defined by her lvl 7, so you either go caster with full Snipe build or deals dmg by your boosted auto attacks (anti armor or one in the chamber).
So if she does not get some real stealth upgrades (because she’s ranged) she could at least receive a slight buff on dmg (because she’s ranged and should have more)
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I don’t understand. Why/how would being cloaked protect you from heroes moving faster than you?
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Idk if you do it on purpose… but I’ll humor you with same level of common sense.
Nova w: an undodgeable damage + slow.
Zera w: a skillshot that does some dmg and slow after a delay.
Nova q: a damage skillshot that gets huge damage if you keep hitting it
Zera q: a small spin that hardly hits 1 hero.
Damn…it’s about time we buff zera…
I was saying in terms of talents, a ranged stealth needs more damage options, while a melee stealth needs some sustain and survival… not comparing base kits. But if you want to compare base kits… this game isn’t balanced around AI games. In a PvP game, a ranged hero will spend a lot more time autoattacking heroes than a melee one.
So yes, ranged does more dmg. I don’t think any of the invisibles can do as much burst as a nova with anti armor on 7, hitting auto + w + full stack q, and it takes < 2seconds + with slow on 1, the q is unavoidable by most heroes.
Meanwhile melee invisibles are also bullied by all CC, since if they reveal, they get cc-ed… that’s quite an advantage for a ranged assassin that can stay away from all melee-range CC.
Nova is one of the worst heroes actually the 3rd worsed win rate. probably you dont know how to counter a nova but she is one of the easiest heroes to counter. Nova is all about positioning I agree with that but many heroes can close up the distance even if your running in the backline and someone flanks you. Say a valla hits you with her q and then you click your cloak… so what? your gona get revield again. Even 60 seconds cd is bad for her… make it at least 10 second or 20…
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No waveclear and no campclear goes a long way. I’d say she has worst time to clear a wave at lvl 1 from all ranged assassins. She’s in a weird place as she’s ganky but teammates need to compensate for her lack of pve, so she ends up with nothing to gank as everyone is supposedly taking camps and laning. She’s conceptually useless in any remotely optimal play… she’d need to do massive damage on a huge cd with her combo for her to be viable (to the point she can kill tanks in 2 rotations), and then she’d have insane winrate and pickrate in qm…
And frankly, looking at the average Nova, I can see why… I can’t say she’s ‘OP’, but seeing people just wait for last shots, save precision strike for minutes (or worse, pick triple tap), spam clones to stack enemies even after I tell them not to… no wonder Nova has bad wr. It has more afk players than aba and valeera combined, despite those too being fan-favourites for playing on 0.5 APM.
This game has too many incompetent players for stats to mean anything. Dehaka is ‘balanced’ (50% wr according to heroes profile on last major patch), but if you go in higher elos, he has over 54% wr. And as far as I played this game, even in dia where he has over 53%, people still don’t know to clear waves or take camps.
EDIT:
https://www.heroesprofile.com/Global/Talents/Nova?timeframe_type=major&timeframe=2.55&game_type=sl&statfilter=win_rate&build_type=Popular&mirror=0
More than half the people picking Nova in ranked on last patch can’t even pick the right lvl 1 and 4 talents, and almost half can’t pick the right lvl 7. I think tychus’ voiceline applies here: ‘balance updates can’t fix stupid’.
I wouldn’t hate this. I can’t remember last time I’ve used Ghost Protocol more than once every two or three minutes.
2 Likes
True. And it would still not be as annoying as samuro.