I don’t think a ‘ambush’ design would help her out much; that’s part of what she’s been shifted away from over the years (by ambush being, wait and then bam lots of damage in a short interval)
There’s a few issues I think Nova represents:
- She’s still a popular pick. A lot of the major overhauls have usually been when a hero isn’t popular, or their popularity has faded and so the ‘need’ to rework them brings interest back to the hero.
While nova has been changed a lot over the years, most of her talent interactions have remained the same-ish, so any drastic change is going see more vocalized backlash.
- Other dev comments have indicated that their design goals try to prevent additional summons from being added to the game. So any current hero with summoning abilities could be impeding design potential for other heroes. Nova having “halo decoy” as a ranged hero with some fake-own tech could (but not necessarily for sure) interfere with design potentials for a protoss adept.
Some players would like to have more control over the decoy, and with the Nova mission pack actually have Decoys be a device she uses there (instead of just something made-up for HotS as it used to be) but I think granting more control over the decoy would be grounds for a different sort of kit and would instead benefit a different hero – such as an adept – so, so some degree, I’d rather decoy be less a thing in Nova’s kit.
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Ghosts are either assassins or saboteurs. Since HotS doesn’t have loads of expendable army units, assassin-like gimmicks tend to be “anti-fun” and end up getting nerfed and nerfed and nerfed. Some of the better aspects of Nova’s changes have been in granted her debuffs, and I would rather see a design that way. I think she stands out better as a ‘utility’ assassin as is, and could use a bit more nudge that way.
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warcraft has made it ‘canon’ that rogues are straight up invisible. It’s not some mix of misdirection and fly-movements (if you watch a fly, the bug, the way they dart around can make it seem like they suddenly disappear) I personally think that’s stupid, but it essentially demeans sort of the impact of how invisibility works in something like Starcraft that takes something a bit more concrete than clicking their heels together.
In any event, ‘invis’ isn’t used the same in HotS as it is in starcraft, and most heroes have had vision-bolstering effects removed from their kits, so the accessibility to invisibility effects doesn’t have the same counter-play as it would in Dota. Without enough counterplay options, it limits how good invis-like abilities can be, which limits what heroes and talents can be built around that.
So all that said:
IF Nova get’s an overhaul, I could see most of her kit getting ported over to a different hero (such as Gabriel Tosh) as part of the ‘snipe’ gimmick she has doesn’t feel very ‘sniper-like’ compared to heroes like ana, chromie or hanzo. So having a similar kit (skill shot, point and click cc, scout/utility skill) could just be reskinned on a different hero and ‘feel’ better because it doesn’t have to have the sniper fantasy anymore.
IF nova were to build around 'gadgets" I think he new trait would be to set crates that rotate what gadgets she has. Instead of mana, she has an ammo resource and has to regularly switch weapons on the fly to keep on attacking. So, her use of stealth isn’t so much for sneak-attacks, but to prepare her equipment at zones she anticipates she’ll have a fight and need supplies there to fight.
So in that way, she becomes a bit more like gazlowe or probious and she builds around ‘setting up’ when she has downtime. I’d even remove some of her passive stealth, and turn it into damage variation that is effectively like Valeera’s smoke cloud: nova can attack while invis but only attack (self-silenced abilities) unless she takes specific talents later on.
Afterall a key part of ghost/templar invis is that they attack while they can’t be seen. If the hero can’t drop 5000 damage burst and invis back out, then steady instances of damage aren’t in so much need of ‘counterplay’ as a usual invisibile ambush gank would demand.
However, all that said, what I would want would require making more assets (new abilities, animations, spell effects etc etc) and is probably way to overly complicated compared to moving a few talents around and just focusing on new hero releases instead.
