How do you rework this character to be, well, not terrible? I’ll collate a list of common ideas down below: and leave my own Analysis in a spoiler tag.
Kethcup's Nova Analysis
Nova should be a roamer (e.g, going lane to lane to get picks, assist specific allies, etc.) This role entails the following requirements:
High Burst Damage (usually limited by cooldown since you (Nova) are roaming lane to lane, doesn’t necessarily have to be Single Target)
Nova has decent single target, not the best in the game and it’s unfortunately limited heavily by Snipe Master stacks.
The ability to traverse the battleground quickly/uninterrupted (either globals like Falstad or Stealth, usually movement speed as well)
Nova again, has this decently well–being able to mount stealthed is decent enough, though stealth is innately weak due to being broken by damage (any skill shot works)
Generally Roamers have decent reconnaissance (e.g, vision). Stealthies have their vision radius, and others often have reveals.
Nova is better at this than other stealthies due to Holo Clone. However, it’s immediately clear to anyone that Nova is nearby the area and she loses her movement/burst advantage.
Roamers have weaknesses–poor Soak, poor Sustain damage, bad survivability.
No one has these weaknesses worse than Nova. Her sustain damage is… Horrible to decent depending on build (and Snipe Master stacks), her survivability is abysmal (due to reliance on stealth and low mobility), and her soak is… Yeah.
Personally, I’d rather emphasize the strengths of the Roamer role rather than shore up her weaknesses (doing the latter often leads to homogeneous hero designs, coughs in Raynor). Just a few thoughts.
Move Explosive Rounds from 16 to 4 (and decrease bonus dmg from 90% to 50-60%) to give her earlier waveclear.
Maje her ER baseline but vs PvE targets only (no-heroes).
Q quest: doesn’t lose all stacks after missing Q, needs more stacks to complete quest (each stack gives less bonus dmg), Nova loses half (or all) stacks after dying.
Q deals more dmg.
You can control your E clone.
AO of clone is improved.
Ghost Protocol’s CD is decreased from 60 seconds to 30 sec.
Anti Armour Shells are baseline now but Nova can switch between simple AA and AAS now (like Fenix). CD is 5 seconds between switching. This ability is on Nova’s D.
I think this would be a fine change. It’s just a talent name, they could change it. It’s rather like Hanzo’s AA quest, you still lose stacks when you die, it just doesn’t punish you quite as much for missing one snipe.
I’m not sure about this, it might be a bit too strong. If she has this baseline the armor reduction should be less. Especially as you’re making it so she can switch between normal AA and AAS.
I wouldn’t rework her, but buff her weak talents. From HP, her win rate suffers a lot from her Q.
At lvl 13, Psionic Efficiency’s (her Q Snipe) popularity is fine, but it has the lowest win rate by far. The same goes for Explosive Round at lvl 16.
Psionic Efficiency could add bonus dmg to shield by a certain amount like EMP Grenade.
We have to keep some facts in mind for balancing the talent.
Varian’s Shattering Throw is on a 30 sec cd and up to 1400 dmg on a single target
Morales’s EMP Grenade is on a 12 sec cd and up to 400 bonus dmg on an AoE skill shot.
Fenix has a permanent 760 shield, which is 40% of his total effective HP.
Snipe is on a 6 sec cd, but can be reduced to 2 sec with Perfect Shot at lvl 7.
Snipe deals 230 dmg and 356.5 dmg at full stack.
With all this gathered, since Snipe can be spammed, the anti-shield dmg should not be a great number since Fenix would suffer too much. It would also means that Explosive Round would have an even greater synergy by having an EMP Grenade effect.
By rounding numbers and not over exaggerating, I’d put the bonus dmg to shield to 150.
Hey! I posted some on the other thread, check them out!
Quick summary: Q quest needs changes. She needs to be able to pierce. Controlable (or at least not random) clones. Triple-Tap better functionality (less predictable and less easy to counter with body blocks, but equally deadly).
I don’t play Nova but I think the hero that is supposed to be a secret agent should be more than just G U N and a potato hologram.
My idea is to give Nova Lockdown grenade/missile instead of the generic thing she shots with her W. Also, instead of 2 or 3 holograms, she should just have 1 but you should be able to control it.
I would make triple shot a mix between Pyro Blast and Tactical Shot. it needs range and a small channeling but after that, it reaches the target from above the screen.
Q just doesn’t have any sense. Snipping takes time, right now it’s just an oversized G U N and I think needs more range and a small channeling.
I also think in give her siege potential through the use of talents, one gives her a grenade just like in Cover Ops and the other one gives her a bomb that deals a ton of damage to structures.
Some thoughts. Apollo Suit should be reworked, removed or moved to a lower talent tier. I wouldn’t mind if you made this talent so it gave 10 armor which lasted for 2 seconds after you break cloak.
The “I can’t believe it’s a Lethal Decoy” needs to be removed or moved to a lower talent tier.
kek! I love this, “Buy Sand Blast Master for only $49.99, while stocks last!”
A poll that ran ~7 hours before you posted, had 29 active participants, 2 of which didn’t narrow their post to top 5, and despite that, I currently count 17 “votes” or even 18 mentions of “nova” on a /find.
17/28 (not included op) ≠70% of that participants, let alone “players”
Since the topic has 171 views, clearly that’s all the players remaining for the game, so evidently ~10% want a nova rework.
Is Nova commonly brought up here?
Sure, but it tend to be by the same folks, and they aren’t “70%” of the playerbase.
The big issue with nova is people want stuff from her that doesn’t really make sense of a stealth sniper (waveclear) and what she could bring to the table is effectively done by a few other heroes that have similar gimmicks, but better opportunity cost for it.
So either the “power creep” of not-sniper, but better nova, characters would need to be toned down, or she’d need something along the lines of a gazlowe rework and reclassification to establish a better niche.
Stealth + burst is “anti fun” so if she’s going to keep the “ghost” sabator gimmick, she may as well just be reclassified to a “support” so any outright burst can be shifted to utility options that are offset with with a aba/mediv/whatever hero to not break QM.
Otherwise, some of the other aspects of being a ‘ghost’ would probably just be better off being a whole new kit for another hero instead.
They should probably just look at covert ops, and make nova an assassin who can become melee or a ranged at level 4.
Basically multi class, but because they’re both (3?) assassins, shouldn’t be problematic like Varian is for MM.
What exactly they should or shouldn’t take from covert ops, I dunno.
A lot of people have/will call for damage increase, but the issue is high burst damage is what can make Nova feel oppressive/terrible to play against for new/low level players.
So buffing her much in that area is basically asking for something that creates a problem.
that feeling when you open a Nova thread for the first time in 2 years, and people still say that she needs waveclear at 4. oh boy, some things never change.
lol Imagine if they called Chromie’s old Q quest “Sand Blast Master” instead of “Mounting Sands.”