How to rework Nova

General Discussion
1

This is for everyone’s favorite sniper November Terra
With all the reworks I got disappointed at her not in this list. I first thought of giving her the ability to switch to shotgun like in SC2 covert ops and the coop missions but then I want to make this mini rework realistic

Here is my thing but feel free to share your thoughts and bring your own suggestion

  1. Covered ops removed
    New talent “blink”
    A very short range like Jainas blink at 20 which gives her a shield 10% of her max health

My thought
It gives her an escape without breaking the talent tree

4
Rapid Projection
Reduces Holo Decoy’s cooldown and Mana cost by 50%. When it gets destroyed it deals 50 dmg to the surrounding area

Holo stability Increase the cast range of Holo Decoy by 100% and its duration by 120%.
It also deals 10% more dmg

Bribe unchanged

My comments: It needs to do a little more

Level 7 Talents
Snipe: moved to 7
Explosive Round: moved from 16

Anti-Armor Shells: additional functinality
Now kills minions

One in the Chamber
No inspiration sorry : (

My comments:
This helps promoting her wave clear at a earlier level

13: Ionic Force Field 
Now also triggers when getting Stunned or Rooted

My comments: In combat this doesn’t give major value unless your playing hide and seek or have your 1 up, now it does.

16: Lethal decoy
Now deals 25% dmg instead of 30% dmg

My comments: I don’t want this to become too strong with holo stability when holo gets 10% increased dmg

20 Apollo suit:
Added functionality
If Nova doesn’t attack or more, she becomes invisible faster by 0,5s

Comments: Its a nice little buff

8 Likes
2

Here are my changes for what I believe would suit Nova well for now.

snippers gonna snip

Stats

  • Health increased from 1300 to 1360
  • Health regeneration increased from 2.71 to 2.83

Abilities

  • Snipe receives the following changes…
    • Damage increased from 230 to 255
    • Precision Sniper side quest receives the following changes…
      • Damage per stack reduced from 6% to 5%
      • Maximum bonus damage reduced from 30% to 20%
      • Maximum stacks reduced from 5 to 4
      • Bonus damage when at maximum stacks reduced from 25% to 20%
  • Holo Decoy will now prioritize attacking Heroes if they are within Basic Attack distance upon spawn

Trait

  • Permanent Cloak receives additional functionality…
    • Movement Speed bonus while in Stealth persists for 1 second after losing Stealth.

Talents

Lvl 1

  • Covert Ops time window after losing Stealth increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds

Lvl 13

  • Psionic Efficiency no longer grants an additional stack of Precision Sniper
    • Now receives additional functionality…
      • Failing to hit an enemy only results in losing 3 stacks of Precision Sniper.
  • Ionic Force Field receives adjusted functionality…
    • Gain 25 Armor while in Stealth and for 2.5 seconds after. Holo Decoy deals 42 damage per second to nearby enemies.

Lvl 20

  • Apollo Suit receives additional functionality…
    • Passive: Reduce the cooldown of Ghost Protocol to 20 seconds.
1 Like
3

Would it be op if she could throw an flash bang that blinds people or an emp that silences for 1s? With a nice talent that disables buildings and minions

Longshot is an borring abilitie.

2 Likes
4

İn my Precision Sniper (known as snipe master) is makes Nova’s snipe makes viable Nova once more.

  1. Current 5 stack quest remains same with each 1 stack gives %10 bonus damage and 5 stack bonus damage reward removing for replacing to piercing Rail gun Sniper to piercing all enemies in line.

  2. Added funtionality: When you reach 5 stacks of Precision Sniper become snipe master. Does not lose stacks instead you gain stacks which increased damage bonus %0.25 damage when you missing snipe shot however you will earn %1 damage when you land on any enemy this doubled on heroes and hero kills grants %2.5bonus basic attack damage and increase heroic ability damage this bonus quadrpled on heroic abilities

More is coming soon if devolopers remember Nova and convinced this idea Nova really viable for long time even after nerfs (small nerfs i mean) see you all

5

I agree, she needs some love. I also think her 20 sucks except for Precision Barrage. Also, since she cannot switch like samuro, maybe she could make more clones… or have more effective cc or more map presence (a global with a long cooldown?).

6

Alright dear People of Nexus im back now let us continue about speaking Nova’s rework

  1. My idea of Nova’s abilities should be changed like holo decoy and triple tap should be swapped and pinning shot replace to EMP round. Well i feel like everyone calls me mad now.

Triple tap now basic ability and deals %60 of current snipe/rail snipe damage. However this damage can be raised by snipe master’s 50th hits to heroes by addintional 40 and ignores spell armor (because its spell damage).

Holo Decoy now heroic ability and no longer takes double damage from all sources. Holo Decoy wielding Monomolecular blade powerful single target damage with armor reduction attacks up to 25 negative armor Holo decoy has dash ability which infilicts massive damage to all enemies in a path (dash range are 10 range). Holo decoy has twice health of Nova and if decoy was dies or whenever expires decoy will explodes to damage enemies from all around.

EMP Round has Nova’s new ability (an original ghost ability). İt deals damage to shields (more than varians shattering throw) and deleptes enemies mana completely and doesnt regenarate or any mana restoration skills wont work for 4 seconds. This skill can stun for short time then slow enemies. However with this skill talents deals damage to health as well their current mana they have and stuns longer.
Note this skill isnt silence but its worse than silence and this skill both point and click and skillshot. İf you use point and click mode this skill no longer AoE but useful on prioty target.

That’s it friends im trying more balanced ideas later im done for now dont worry this rework makes Nova’s True place many heroes are stupidly op by the way.

7

Blizzard has stated at many opportunities that they don’t like mana drain talents at all.
There is close to no chance that such an ability will ever be part of HotS.

I would give her Ghost Protocol a shorter cool down and a longer time for Unrevealable to give her a higher chance for escapes.

Holo Decoy should be replaced through a completely new ability. I’m open for suggestions.

2 Likes
8

Seeing how people want some form of EMP on Nova, how about:
EMP Round: replaces pinning shot
12 second cool down
65 mana
Novas next basic attack silences for .75 seconds and slows for 20% for 1.25 seconds. Resets Nova’s basic attack.
Just an idea.

3 Likes
9

Quick question: Does anyone find the baseline Snipe Master quest fun?

Looking at nova’s history, she was a hero that would grief low level players with her low skill / high reward playstyle. They added Snipe Master quest as a way to increase her skill cap to stop some of those griefers who weren’t actually any good.

If we are reworking nova, i think we should brainstorm ways to increase her skill floor without relying on snipe master quest.

Some ideas:

  • Pinning Shot should be a skill shot not a point and click.
  • pinning shot applies a stacking debuff (UI looks like ana’s poisons with 5 little dots under the health bar). Every 0.25s an extra stack is automatically applied. For every application your next Snipe deals X% damage. All stacks are lost after 1.5s.

Basically you do a pinning shot…then wait 1.25s to line up your Snipe for maximum damage. This kind of gives the sensation of looking down your scope to get the perfect shot. Wait too long and the opportunity is lost.

2 Likes
10

I believe Snipe quest exists solely because of its high single target damage on a ranged (not melee) stealth hero you can’t really keep track of on the map, so receiving a sudden burst of damage from a hero you can’t quickly react to really drives frustration levels through the roof.

Chromie received similar treatment over the years, except she’s not a stealth hero while boasting the honor of being the longest ranged assassin in the game. This means she’s practically always attacking you from outside of your vision range (Chromie’s indirectly invisible). Something that’s coming from a mile away and dealing high damage to a single hero (Nova and Chromie Q) are mandatory ingredients for an extremely toxic playstyle that turns off the average joe.

In my balance changes, I increase Snipe’s base damage and slightly lowering the rewards gained from Precision Sniper (Q quest) with the goal of reducing her reliance on the quest and reducing the punishment from missing, but still requiring some effort on Nova’s side to better differentiate a good player from a noob player.

I don’t have any ideas to change Pinning Shot, but I think another source of frustration that comes from playing against Nova is that W is a potent ranged point-and-click slow, but I think that’s a unique mechanic that only(?) Nova has in her base kit.

11

On the level, where Nova is quite effective, the mini map gets ignored completely. I guess this even adds to the frustration. Nobody wants to be reminded of his own failures over and over again.

1 Like
12

That’s not really why. It’s not that she was low skill/high reward. Nova has been pretty medicore for a longgggggggggggg time. Even back then, she wasn’t very good and was mostly a QM hero. It’s just that the average QM player is so bad that even a hero like Nova can become a favorite way to stomp noobs. Snipe Master didn’t really change this as even someone who wasn’t super great could still beat up bad/low skill players. Once, my glasses broke while I was in the middle of a QM game as Nova. I still managed to hard carry because lower skilled players are legitimately that easy to beat.

Increasing her skill floor without giving her some real buffs would just make her even worse. Like I mentioned earlier, she was largely chosen as a scrub stomper in QM because lower skilled players are just so easy to take advantage of, not because she was actually a low skill/high reward character.

Any changes/reworks made to Nova would need to make her more consistent/reliable FIRST. Having a discussion about her skill floor is useless when she struggles pretty hard due to how easy it is to negate such a large portion of her damage (her snipe).

1 Like
13

I wish, Nova would get Eye of Horus from Ana, like a true Sniper. No more Point&Click Triple Tap. Remove the heal and increase the damage. Ez.

And I really miss the old double Decoy Talent. :confused:
They should buff the Decoy on 16 again, its unplayable weak, as always after the Nerfs.

14

Have no idea why so many people want to rework Nova who is very dangerous when one knows how to play her (and she is really not complicated to learn and play) but never suggesting a rework of the Genji awful hero…

15

I’ve also considered making her more faithful to her SC2 self, and thus I suggested this design: Nova [big] rework concept
However, for a small rework, I made this: Nova [small] rework concept
I pretty much still stand behind that rework concept. And now for yours:

  1. The blink talent you are suggesting is a good idea, but I think that level 1 is too early. In my rework, I suggest it as 20 talent, that’s combined with Rewind.
  2. The buffs to the decoy talents seem interesting and meaningful.
  3. Explosive Rounds on 7 is good and all, but Snipe build will be kind a ruined when players can’t take both Explosive Rounds and the cooldown reduction at the same time.
  4. I also thought about giving her a waveclear in my rework, but I did so by replacing Bribe with waveclearing talent.
  5. Personally I’d prefer if Ionic Force Field gets its functionality merged with the 20 stealth talent. When 2 half-talents are combined - you can get a normal talent.
  6. Lethal decoy’s damage doesn’t need a nerf. Even if the combined damage from Holo Stability and Lethal Decoy will be higher, the STANDALONE value of Lethal Decoy will drop, and will make it even more unattractive. In my design, I’m just removing the decoy from Ghost Protocol and buffing Lethal Decoy to compensate.
  7. As I already stated, Apollo suit can just be merged with IFF :stuck_out_tongue:
16

As someone who is lvl 85 with Nova and WR of 56%, this is what I think nova should have

Soft changes
1 - Have her ‘1’ invisible timeframe increased to 1.5 seconds
2 - Decoy: First AA will deal 100% of real nova’s damage, then 50% each shot
2a - Decoy: To target nearest enemy NOT run around
2b - Decoy: For minions to target the decoy and decoy to target minions

Hard changes
1 - ‘1’ ability to have Nova leap (like in the hots trailer) then go invisible for 1.5 seconds
2 - Talent lvl 6: Decoy can now be controlled and will last 10 seconds and will deal 50% of damage dealt but receive 25% more damage.
3 - Passive: Nova’s AA to minions will be ‘explosive rounds’. AOE will deal 50% damage. Any heroes within the AOE will be damaged as well if Nova targets a minion.
4 - Passive: If nova is rooted, slowed or stunned, she will emit a pulse which pushes back enemies. This can only happen every 2 minutes

17

I dont like this quest. Im stressed when its full and I miss one

And this is a soft change!?

18

Make Nova a Support.

All that has to be done is to allow Holo Decoy to be cast on allies.

Then change Nova’s level 1 tier to how that Decoy works when used on allies. For example:

  1. Decoy shares % of damage taken with ally.
  2. Places ally in stealth + movespeed for X duration.
  3. Deals X% damage of ally’s damage.

Boom. Done. Might have to change her talents up a bit, but overall, she’s now significantly more valuable to her team.

19

Yup considering how useless the decoy is

20

What about modification for Triple Tap? Maybe at 20 the upgrade to it can be that your Holo decoys will all cast triple tap too and has CDR.