Rework Nova; she's the worst assassin in the game

General Discussion
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If I tell you there’s an assassin in the game that 1) lacks waveclear, 2) is very squishy, 3) have no mobility, and 4) have high mana costs, then you’re probably going to laugh at that hero having any chance of seeing serious play. Well that’s Nova in a nutshell. She’s so bad that pretty much every hero in the game can 1v1 her. Oh you’re flanking me? Well let me dump all my abilities on you and chase you down, because you’re as squishy as Valla without any escapes. And even if she does get the upper hand, a single Ice block or spell armor will nullify a big chunk of her damage.

The ONLY good thing she has is high burst damage, and that’s really all she has. But the problem is, who are you going to burst? The backline? You have no mobility and if you show your face you’re just going to die. The frontline? Her DPS isn’t high enough to pressure bruisers or tanks, and you’re better off playing a real DPS hero like Fenix or even Valla. As a flanker you’re better off playing a melee assassin or bruiser; you’re melee but at least you’re not squishy, you have more mobility, and you can trade with most heroes.

She definitely needs a re-design. I really like her clone and “trickery” mechanic, though right now it’s really just a joke. Something can be done to make it more impactful. I would also like to see her PvE, mobility, and sustain damage boosted while in return lowering her burst damage and perhaps making her W a skillshot.

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Is this a hero that you play or are you just pointing out what you think to be the worst of the bunch?

Her burst and trickery are what make her unique and useful. I look at her as an anti-assassin assassin. Stay on the outsides and clean up after the fight.

There is a bit of build to handle more tank/bruiser comps where you focus around pinning shot and armor pen as well as a level one talent that fixes any would be mana issues. My buddy plays a lot of and consistently has a significant impact on the outcome.

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You can theoretically play her as regular ranged single target damage dealer but you could just pick Raynor with probably better result.

Nova’s inherent problem is that she is tied to stealth mechanic, when stealth was strong (even if only in low leagues) she was strong, but stealth is a joke now and so is Nova.

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Even if you play her as a regular ranged assassin (possible with her Q build that refunds mana costs and sets cooldown to 2 seconds on each hit) you have to hit each skillshot with perfect accuracy.

As you said, you might just as well pick Raynor instead and do similar damage with each auto attack, get a self heal with armor, a peel with Q, attack speed boost on W etc.

There is no draft or scenario where you could ever think “I wish we had Nova”. She needs to be rehauled just as much as Chen.

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Nova has consistently been smack dab in the middle of the winrates since forever. Once upon a time, she was even known as being better then Raynor at being Raynor due to her, at the time, very high sustain damage she could dish out at a 6.5 range.

Course, reworks happened and all, but Nova is still middle of the pack - There are better ranged AA assassins, yes, but there are also worse AA assassins.

Nova also brings a solid amount of flexible utility with her lvl 4 talent - She can get a Ward with the increased range/duration on E, a steady channel interupt with the reduced mana/CD on E, or even a GREAT win-more Bribe. Practice blocking skill-shots with E too.

One of the main issues I see with Nova is the silly prevalence of Anti-Armor Shells. Do note that Anti-Armor Shells is, by far, inferior to the other 2 talents on the tier. The ONLY thing that it increases is your instantaneous burst, and if that’s ALL you are doing as Nova, well, you are doin it wrong mate.

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Give her the AoE damage early, and do something about that AP round. Either improve her poke and make her stealth into an escape instead or make her useful to be provided in TF.
I feel the dead weight of a Nova hiding until there is an enemy to kill. (TFW Nova lets the kill escape.)

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Nova doesn’t fulfil her fantasy as a sniper at all but as a character she is fine. Your key talents are Long Shot, One in the Chamber, and Crippling Shot. Those three talents make Nova viable as both a fight finisher or an initiator.

My one major annoyance when seeing anyone pick Nova is when they choose Triple Tap over Precision Strike. Triple Tap is one of the easiest abilities in the game to avoid damage from. Any half decent team will ensure that no more than one shot from it hits a weak target. Precision Strike on the other hand will do a considerable amount of damage to the entire enemy team, allows you to contest objectives from anywhere on the map, and at level 20 you can even nuke down lanes because of the fast cooldown.

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Best player in the game plays only Nova. She is an enigma for some, but for others she is THE most OP hero in the world.

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That AoE snipe talent available before 16 would be great.

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I don’t think she needs another major rework, but I do think she could use some general QoL buffs.

Her base mana costs are indeed far too high for a hero of her type. Advanced Cloaking feels super mandatory at level 1 and really shouldn’t.

I think she could also use a buff to her AA damage. Snipe Mastery is much better than the alternative talents on that tier, and a buff to base AA damage would help those others out a lot.

I think her base kit is fine. A bit niche perhaps, but hey, niche heroes are ok to have in a game like this. I do feel like her strengths are not worth all of her weaknesses though, so that’s what numbers tuning is for.

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It would be cool to see a rework but honestly I dont think she necessarily needs it. They can make some of her talents better, or replace them entirely.

One thing I suggested in the past is allowing her to control her decoy the same way Jaina controls water elemental to give her team more reliable vision as well as increase her trickiness factor.

Another suggestion is to either completely remove her snipe quest or make it less punishing somehow. Right now, it feels super bad when you miss a target and you lose every single stack you managed to gain, which makes Psionic efficiency pretty much mandatory in snipe builds as the increased range and double stacks make it feel a lot better to use. I dont know how to fix this without removing the quest entirely but maybe make the snipe projectile faster?

One last thing is her survivability and mobility. I believe that being a bursty mage and having good escapes isnt really a good idea. Yes they can reduce her burst like you said but then that wouldn’t be Nova. She is a sniper after all, burst damage is kinda expected from a hero like her. Personaly I would like to see changes to Ghost Protocol. Make it so it doesn’t spawn a decoy but it gives Nova unrevealable for 1.5 seconds and a small burst of speed? Keep the high cooldown and thats potentially fixed.

There a lot of things I would like to say about her talents too but eh, this comment is already too long anyway.

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What do you guys think about this:

Snipe Master grants 15% extra damage, up to 75%. Stacks are lost if a Snipe fails to hit any enemies.
Quest: After hitting 5 enemy heroes while at 5 stacks of Snipe Master, Nova permanently loses one less stack when she misses an enemy.

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Just buff baseline Q quest damage reward.

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the stealth rework killed my love of playing stealth

Which i think was the intention, while unintentionally f***ing up nova, and never fixing because F2P

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Totally agreed

Losing 5 stacks of Snipe(?) just for missing one shot is ridiculous considering everything keeps moving.
Her Snipe ability isnt even that powerful in the first place.
Anything Nova can do, other ranged assassins can do much much better.

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she’s not very good but she’s not the worst assassin either (that would probably be Butcher). I think she needs less of a redesign and more of some good tweaks.

Maybe an increase to base AA damage and a baked in way to permanently stop the loss of snipe stacks (maybe every X amount of landed snipes, the amount of stacks you lose goes down by 1) that way Nova scales better into the late game?

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I can outdps ‘meta’ heroes as Nova. The potential is there but requires more effort and playing her in such a way is not as fun as it used to be.

So, in short, I agree she needs a re-work but I disagree that she can’t do damage. She can absolutely do damage. Add me as a friend and I’ll pull top damage as Nova.

The problem with Nova is that she lost what made her unique and now only retains the most dull aspects of her. She’s boring to play and that means something from me (probably means nothing to you) because she was the first hero I ever played and got good at.

So yeah, I wouldn’t mind a rework. Better yet, I’d like a full stealth rework because none of them are very unique in my book. Sure, they have their subtle differences but I miss the old Nova.

I miss pulling off risky plays and running for my life, unsure whether I’d be spotted or not. Now, I know I’ll be spotted 100% of the time unless I find a window of time to stand long enough to get true invis. No more suspense there.

I miss decoy dancing behind enemy keeps. If you know how it works, it’s easy to counter sure but most people would rather cry ‘unfun’ than learn it (aka, hearth right in snipe distance rather than moving one keep back further to prevent the pick).

All in all, she’ll always remain garbage tier as long as the community screams ‘UNFUN!’. That word has been the death of the game for me because so many elements have been nerfed so we can just mindlessly derp stuff without regard for anything.

As an aside, yes I’m still on the forums, yes I still try new heroes out and play with friends but I no longer play alone. I no longer spend 4 hours of my own time trying out new stuff.

It’s just a generic rendition of what it once was, shame.

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Snipe Master is a meme and needs to be removed. What is the point of Nova if she can’t even have reliable burst? Doesn’t she have enough weaknesses?

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How about we improve the state of melee assassins(other than Zeratul who is in more than a good spot) and their place in the game instead of circle-jerking which ranged assassin can be buffed to be the best hero in the game.

This game has been dominated by ranged assassins and bruisers forever IN DRAFT MODES not just QM, and it is because the dev team keeps focusing on buffing the balance between them…like say, how good Nova is compared to Raynor, or how good Imperius is to Artanis…without caring how it affects melee assassins in the long run or how useful it makes certain supports/healers. Can we stop trying to buff Nova and Lunara when they already can dominate melee assassins(except Zeratul) when played right and focus on heroes that need it. Not every ranged assassin is supposed to beat every other ranged assassin…but Nova and Lunara already excel against melee if played correctly, and certain ranged assassins, especially mages. If you buff them more you make melee assassins even more worthless than they already are, again, except ZERATUL.

Stop picking Nova into teams that counter her and you might have a better time with her. Don’t first pick her. Her burst has long range, high damage with fairly low cooldown and once you are good at landing shots, the only one that one-ups her is Hanzo. When played correctly she is a reliable finisher that can pick off straggling enemies without putting herself into too much danger, again, assuming smart drafting. People seem to think she shouldn’t be killable at all. A well played Master rank Nova is more dangerous than you think…just use smart drafting. She got enough buffs not too long ago.

Even though they are bruisers, Chen and Yrel need looking at, they are in a bad place right now, far worse than Nova. How about instead of trying to buff more ranged assassins when the game is already a ranged paradise, we focus first on heroes like Valeera(melee), Kerrigan(melee), Probius(ranged/support), Chen(bruiser), Yrel(bruiser), and other heroes the balance team seems to have mostly forgotten. These heroes are not worth picking AT ALL, because there are always better choices.

Or the balance team could just make Nova able to heal and dart like Orphea. Who knows, they do weird things and tend to give ranged assassins too much protection, self-sustain, mobility, and damage or a variance thereof. If anything the other ranged assassins should have as many weaknesses as Valla and Nova.

How long has Jaina been a good pick…even into dive? Yes even into dive…in Master rank?

Orphea has burst, conditional mobility, and self-sustain. Practically a dream come true for a Master player that knows her well. They need to remove Orphea’s self-sustain…I’ve seen good Orphea’s 1v3 that would make Sonya blush.

You simply feel like Nova is garbage because there are too many overblown ranged assassins in the game…but if you buff Nova/Lunara that don’t actually need it then they dominate heroes they already do well against even more. This is the same problem with buffing Tracer.

Instead how about we nerf the ranged assassins that have too much going for them right now.

Want to know why the Raynor/Nova comparison doesn’t work? Because Nova can essentially snipe a low hp enemy to kill them and escape, something Raynor has a harder time doing. It has nothing to do with stealth. Treat her like Genji in way. Use her as poke, but also as a finisher, and pick her into low HP teams. Go around a side and snipe a fleeing enemy. If you drafted her correctly the enemy can’t do anything to you. If the enemy is body blocking for their ally, then that is 2 enemies not helping the team. Nova just removed another enemy by proxy. You didn’t even have to put yourself in harms way like Genji has to really.

Nova is niche just like Lunara is niche…stop trying to make her anything but…hilarious that when Kerrigan threads pop-up people scream niche, but Nova? Nah she needs buffs amirite. L2P.

If anything nerf Hanzo and Raynor slightly. They both need it. The latter is too easy to play for what he provides, and the former is not as vulnerable when played well as people think, with damage, cooldowns, and mobility that play to his strengths too well.

TLDR…STOP BUFFING RANGED ASSASSINS…and certain bruisers.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA. no. the dev team is notorious for constant nerfs, not for constant buffs.

Nova has less than a 3% pickrate in masters. Lunara is sitting at under 15%. these aren’t “dominating” numbers.

stats say otherwise.

Maiev, Alarak and Thrall are in top 20 most picked heroes in Master League (I know thrall is TECHNICALLY a brusier but whatever).

There is some tasty irony is saying “oh yea but well a Master nova!” and ignoring the fact Nova has one of the lowest pickrate in the ENTIRETY of master league.

Chen stinks because people like you keep demanding Blizz NOT to buff heroes. Yrel isn’t in a great place because people like you keep demanding Blizz NERF heroes.

Neither is nova lmao. in fact, some of those heroes are statistically more useful in master league than nova outright.

asking for nerfs again huh? then you wonder why so many heroes are bad?

Jaina has been the best mage in the game for a long time because her overall kit and talent choices are great. she can slow, root, deliver burst, poke, has ice block as a baseline quest, etc.

Orphea has ~10% MASTER pickrate. she’s statistically worse than LUNARA in Master League lmao. also “ive seen good Orpheas do thing X” is called confirmation bias. plays like that confirm to you that she’s some high level Goddess character that just requires a skilled players. the reality is her stats don’t support it.

because then you make comments like this where you complain about how so many heroes suck.

The ultimate irony is that your post is why the game is in its current state. demanding nerfs and demanding that Blizz NOT buff is why so many things stink.

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