This season Nova became my most played hero (from 2-nd most played), and I currently need 1 game to get her to level 39. But after playing her this much, I finally understood why people don’t pick her in competitive. While she’s not a “useless” hero, and can certainly work in some compositions, on some maps, she is extremely situational, and here is why:
First let’s cover her strengths:
- She’s ranged, the only ranged stealth hero.
- She got good burst damage.
- She has stealth
Then let’s go trough her weaknesses:
- She’s in top 5 heroes with lowest health pools.
- She has no self-sustain, or defensive tools (apart from 1 underperforming talent).
- She has no damage once she dishes out her burst.
- She has no reliable escape (Ghost Protocol is not a reliable escape tool)
- She has no mobility.
- She’s extremely reliant on her positioning. Yet she has no tools that allow her to position herself better.
- Her main damage source (outside heroics) is a skillshot, which can miss, or be blocked by anything.
- She has absolutely no waveclear until level 16 (and she has waveclear then only if she picks Explosive Rounds), or she needs to use her heroic to clear waves.
Then let’s check things that nullify the value of her strengths:
- Her being ranged is nullified by heroes with dive. Combine that with her low HP, lack of escape and lack of mobility, and she suddenly becomes a liability.
- Her burst damage isn’t all that high. It can kill some squishies, but any healing/shielding/protection, that allows them to survive Nova’s burst saves them, as Nova has no damage to finish off enemies, once she uses up her combo. And attempting to stay there and finish them with basic attacks, or while waiting for her cooldowns is dangerous, due to her low HP, no mobility and no escape.
- Her stealth isn’t really that big of an advantage. It helps you do rotations a bit easier, and gank, but stealth itself the way it is now isn’t really useful. Any skillshot/AoE can reveal you, and then you are in a situation where you need to run for your life.
Then let’s analyse why she is bad:
- So, she is skillshot dependent. Her skillshot needs a clear path to the enemy, or it can be blocked by anything. Which means Nova needs to put herself in a position where she can hit that enemy. However, due to her lack of mobility, by the time she puts herself in such position, the enemy can (most of the times will) change their position, so Nova would be in a bad position again. And sometimes in order to get into a “good” position, you need to overextend, which is quite dangerous due to lack the lack of escape in case reinforcements come, or you simply can’t finish the enemy by yourself.
- Her lack of waveclear makes her only playable when your team has at least 2 heroes, who can clear lanes. Otherwise her team will be losing the map, even if they are winning TFs/objectives.
- Her only purpose, with her current design, is to burst down squishies, who are out of position. Yet if enemies don’t overextend, and stay grouped, she can’t really do much. She can poke with Snipe from time to time, which by itself isn’t something significant, and other heroes (Hanzo, Ming, Chromie) can do a lot better than Nova.
- If she fails to kill a target, it’s a lot likely for her to die instead. Ghost Protocol is useless as an escape tool, as any incidental AoE/skillshot can reveal you right after using it. And in situations where it could actually save you, it’s usually on cooldown.
Nova can work when:
- The map allows spliting up, and fighting away from minion waves (WHJ, DS, ToD, ST), but she’s terrible on maps where enemy team stays together, or all the fighting is on the lanes (IS, TOSQ, BOE). She’s kind a neutral on the other maps.
- Her team has plenty of waveclear to cover for her.
- Enemy team doesn’t have dive/insane cc.
- Enemy team consists of at least 3 squishy heroes.
- Enemy team has no reveals like Murky’s Fish Eye, Tassadar’s Oracle, Lunara’s upgraded Wisp, Kharazim’s Air Ally, Cho’Gall’s eye, Rexxar’s torch. These make your rotations/ganks a lot harder.
Or:
- Her team can isolate a single enemy from their team (has a good Garrosh/Stitches/Junkrat/Diablo/Alarak).
- Her team is composed of heroes who can delete heroes instantly (Butcher/Valeera/Genji/Greymane/Varian/Alarak… sometimes Illidan)
And some more thoughts:
- It’s hard for her to focus down a specific enemy in a TF, as their teammates can be between you and your target, preventing you from using your main damage source. While Explosive Rounds helps with that, hitting a summon/minion/merc prevents snipe from getting the cooldown reduction (from the level 7 talent). Also, missing is always an option. And by missing, you also lose big part of your damage. I don’t know any player who never misses skillshots.
- AAS makes her burst a bit better, but hinders her damage outside of combo even more.
- OitC build was needlessly nerfed. It used to be a viable alternative for dealing reliable damage when you can’t reliably hit with Snipe (and hitting with Snipe isn’t so easy due to it being blocked by everything), but the nerfs to it made it insufficient to do its job.
- Her decoy’s AI is bad… terrible even.
And some suggestions, that can make her viable in case a complete kit overhaul isn’t an option:
- Give Snipe a talent that allows it to pierce, and put it in earlier tires. So her main damage source is a bit more reliable, and so she can have some waveclear earlier on.
- Increase Ghost Protocol’s unrevealable duration, and reduce its cooldown. So she has a bit more reliable escape, that isn’t on cooldown when most needed.
- Increase Nova’s basic attack damage, and maybe remove Snipe Master. Make it a talent again. So she has some damage outside her initial burst.
