Nova needs a buff

General Discussion
1

Have not seen a Nova shout in a while so here it is. Any love for Nova on the horizon?

14 Likes
2

Last few changes to Snipe made her playable, but not viable, there are heroes that can do her job better. She needs a rework. Any buff would just bring back “Nova OP!! Nerf asap!” threads made by QM kids.

16 Likes
3

Along with the rest of stealth.

11 Likes
4

Nah.
Bring her back to 13.12.2017 post-rework state and nerf Ghost Protocol / Lethal Decoy synergy. Balance from there. She was borderline OP for a reason.

PS - wtf it has been a year D: Damn time.
PS2 - anyone know how to access old hotslogs stats? :confused:

4 Likes
5

No please :sob:

20 characters !!! :mage:

2 Likes
6

Nova need change E and she will be fine

7

Any time a burst damage hero has enough burst damage to actually kill people it gets nerfed because blizzard panders to baddies. I’ve been asking for valeera buffs for years. Blizzard said they had changes coming for her in my thread, then they nerfed her. What a joke.

3 Likes
8

Her decoy’s AI still can’t do shiz. Fix that.

5 Likes
9

None of your “nerf X” requests went live so its fine

10 Likes
10

I actually find Nova pretty decent in her current state… She can’t do everything, sure, but I win with her more than I lose.

11

I agree E is useless, no one that has been playing the game for more than 1 week know it is a fake.

2 Likes
12

She needs buffs, but would the 99% population accept it?

13

I think Blizz needs to first decide what to do with stealth and then change Nova (and other stealth heroes) accordingly. Joke in ranked and higher leagues, OP in QM and low leagues.

So either make it full stealth and change based on that or remove stealth and buff according to that. Before this is done, Nova will never be viable and won’t get a buff.

14

Nova’s biggest problem is a complete lack of waveclear. They should make snipe AoE baseline and then tweak a few of her talents to compensate.

15

She is far from decent. She is playable im QM, but only if enemies don’t know how to play against her ( I really have to solo lane with 20% HP!) or their team is full of squishy heroes. In HL she is generally hated, because most HL players have terrible experience with QM Nova pseudomains.

She is really far away from OP in QM, just people can’t use their brains. Every time I play against Nova in QM I try to help my teammates: Stay in the middle of minions, she can’t hit you. or Don’t overextend. But no. They just die again and due to their own stupidity!

It is a big problem, but not the only one. I don’t think baseline Explosive rounds would help much. Her kit id outdated. Nova has just one useful basic ability. Her Decoy is dumb as hell. If you look at Pinning Shot and Compare it with newer heroes, you have to realize it is probable the most cost inefficient ability in the game. Just j compare it with Alex’s E. They both have the same amount of slow, but Flame Buffet is AOE, has higher range, much shorter cd, it deals higher damage and it can refund mana on hit.

However her biggest problem is that she is just too noob friendly. Ana is a sniper too, she one of the strongest healers, but Ana players are rare in QM. Why? Because Ana isn’t such noob friendly! I made several proposals about her rework, how to make her generally stronger, but also higher to play.

Triple Tap should have been reworked into a skillshot ability long ago. In its current form it is probably the main reason why Nova can be successful in QM. It requires no special skill to use it. Just press R and bad player dies. On the other hand it can be very easily countered if the team is coordinated (or if you have tank and healer). In my opinion it should work similar to Eye of Horus.

AAS and Ghost Protocol baseline should both go. AAS is generally weaker than OitC, but easier to use so many QM players prefers it. I have never been a fan of Ghost Protocol, I didn’t pick it before her rework. It is also the reason why Nova was gutted right after Stealth rework. Because for some reason devs thought it would be a good idea for Ghost Protocol to spawn talented version of Decoy… Bonus movement speed in Stealth should remain, but Ghost Protocol is just another tool for noobs to survive being out of position. Good players will chase you and kill you right after unrevealability ends.

Snipe Mastery baseline should go too. Nova is the only hero in the game loosing all stacks of a quest when she misses. The problem is that even if you are god Nova plyers you will eventually miss. With reduced hero hitboxes in the last patch it is more likely you will miss. Additionally SM damage is now pathetic till you have max stacks and mediocre even if you have them. I go back to my comparison with Ana. Ana rewards you if you hit the right target. Nova rewards you if you hit the biggest and easy to hit target, because you have the least chance of missing. So many QM players just hit tanks all the time, which is totally useless, because you literally can’t kill them.

  • Every other flanker and diver: I wanted to kill enemy support (or backline mage), but I missed. Never mind. I will wait for cd and I will try it again.

  • Nova: I wanted to kill enemy support, but I missed. Now I have to keep attacking their tank to get my stacks back. :frowning:

SM needs to be completely reworked or it should be replace with something else.

4 Likes
16

the only thing I can somewhat agree with, is that she doesn’t need to spawn a talented decoy when casting GP. good thing balance team will never listen to you

17

I quite like Nova, and she was probably my most favorite here before the stealth nerf. I started liking her again after the recent buffs she’s been getting, but she still has problems.
Usually I’m up for a complete rework of her kit, giving her an Assault mode and stuff like that. But a smaller rework, that will work (imo) would be:

  1. Remove the baseline decoy from GP, but make it give her 1,5-2 sec unrevealable instead. Maybe reduce its cooldown to 40-50 sec too :stuck_out_tongue: (optional)
  2. Give her a level 4 talent causing her basic attacks to
    a) deal 150-200% bonus damage to minions, mercenaries and monsters.
    b) deal 25-75% bonus damage to non-heroes, and also cause them to splash to non-heroes.
  3. Give AAS an infinite quest, causing it to increase the damage bonus she gets from it by 1% for each basic attack against an enemy hero.
  4. Give her a level 13/16/20 talent, causing her GP to spawn a decoy.
  5. Merge her level 13 armor talent with her level 20 Apollo Suit.
  6. Buff Lethal Decoy to deal 40-50% of Nova’s damage (based on the level she gets her (4) at).

And then we’ll have a decent Nova with early game waveclear and an actual escape tool.

1 Like
18

Nova is fine…
The biggest thing she needs is for Holo decoy to be clear to players in what it does and does not do.

As well as change some of it’s current “working as intended” properties.

Example:
Drop it in a minion wave cloaked. It will do nothing.
But if it is near enemy towers by the minion wave, or there is a summon like Azmodan’s general it will take action.
If you are decloaked and cast in a minion wave it will stand still doing nothing and minions will hit it.

Outside of Holo Decoy being crazy unintuitive… Nova feels fine. She has one of the strongest wave clear abilities in the game for large maps in precision strike.

I would be happy to get more power on her overall, but she is in the best state I can remember playing since I started in 2015.

19

Alexstraza’s can be dodged, and doesn’t have talents which allow it to lower armor… or having a burst ability to follow up with.

AAS brings you faster burst, and when with teams who deal AA damage increases the damage your teammates do.

It also screws over holo decoy, but that’s a different story.

There is a reason AAS has higher win rates in TL/HL/QM than the other talents on it’s tier (checking on hotslogs just did amaze me).

It being hotslogs, the exact numbers are likely off. But I think they’re probably not off as far as 5-10%.

20

Make Holo decoy controllable, and Nova is viable again as she brings atleast some value there.

5 Likes