I’m practicing Nova in Try Mode, and more recently vs AI. I’m intrigued by the hero, but always feel sheepish when the numbers are posted. Especially without hard engage – and ideally roots or stuns to help with Q – it’s almost more like 4v5.
I’ve taken a look at the talents, and my thinking is to off-set my improving-but-still-bad-Q play with things like…
7 - One in the Chamber (works with misses!)
13 - Psionic Efficiency (helps me re-build stacks faster after I miss)
16 - Explosive Round (even if I hit a minion instead, I can still tickle heroes)
What are your thoughts on this approach? Any trap-talents here? Other recommendations or tips for just…contributing more to my team?
Edit: I’ve changed my hotkey settings for Q to “on-release”, and committed to only using Q after W, or if the target is stunned or rooted/slowed. These things are helping.
I was advised that Longshot is good. You Pin, you load up One in the Chamber, you get a pretty fat double whammy out of it.
Otherwise Nova is really good at securing kills. I’m no expert by far, but I’ve found she does really well with a partner who can load up damage but may not have her securing power.
Also don’t forget clones can distract towers. Facilitate dives and escapes from towers and keeps this way.
Annnnnnd pray they fix clone AI someday…
With precision strike you can insta clear a big minion wave giving your team more macro
Holo decoy can block shots like orbs and Lethal decoy (16) can be used with holy stability for last hits against people who are out of range (a expro did this a couple months ago, it was highly effective)
Or or you can do the anti armor shells build and just never have to worry about landing snipes because you deal insane damage anyways. It’s kind of like an in and out playstyle. You throw your slow, AA and snipe on someone, then walk away and wait for your AA to recharge. It can deal a very good amount of damage with double slows and the armor reduction at 16.
There’s also snipe build, which can let you spam a lot of snipes but requires good Q aim. This build requires Perfect shot at 7, Psionic efficiency at 13 and the explosive rounds at 16
Oh also, I personally believe that advanced cloaking is a trap talent. It’s pretty much not needed because all of your builds after level 7 have some form of mana efficiency which makes the mana regen pretty worthless. With one in the chamber you usually wanna go for lower cooldown and mana for your decoy but personally I dont like this build much anymore so its almost never bad to take bribe
backline can work with oitc or snipe build, you essentially forgo most of needing to cloak by being behind, and with, your team and focusing on capitalizing on damage dealt. Snipe cdr helps against front-line heavy teams, or oitc works as a more traditional aa dps with the extra range from pinning shots to help get mid/back line targets at opportune moments.
The finisher is closer to anti-armor or oitc and this nova spends a decent chunk of time in bushes or following-up with an ally for opportune take-downs. Having bribe helps alot - get kills, sneak merc camps, if a lone hero goes to clear the mercs, then you have another target to pick-off and build more stacks again. In this regard, you’d definitely want another ally that’s good for dishing out the damage while you focus on being in a position to pick targets off – so it’s closer to genji in effect.
The harasser is just being annoying; poke with pinning slows, set decoys to dismount, bait out some sort skillshot, and taking snipe shots only as an opportunity thing. This form is for bigger maps were teams split off to cover the all the lanes, but then need to converge for the objective. With this nova, you’re not the heavy damage dealer, so you goal is to keep a key target from getting back to their team; if their tank is delay, your side could then, if their healer is delayed, that can’t sustain the poke and so on. Don’t get caught trying to stall a split-push hero, cuz they want to be away anyway, you want to stall something that your side will have that they can then use for pressure in a 4v4.
By harassing enough, the enemy side can get frustrated, commit more heroes to deal with a nuisance than its worth, lose xp soak or merc camp opportunities, and otherwise get frustrated and not play as well against a ‘normal’ play. It is the sort of role that may backfire (ie, your team ends up losing 4v4 exchanges despite other side missing a tank/healer at fights) and it usually won’t generate worthwhile stats, esp since the gimmick is to deny the other side what they would get, so it can be hard to convey it as being ‘successful’ or rewarding to do.
Hmm the harass approach sounds fairly advanced. I’ll focus on other approaches for a while. Seems like there are subtleties to this hero, high skill ceiling etc.
Yeah, I basically do this. I take OitC and anti-armor on W, then I get in, poke, and get out. I repeat the process until the target is in kill range and finish them.
During the game, I’ll stay mid lane and watch the map. That way, the solo laners think, “hey, no one is coming, that’s cool!” and start to overextend. Then I rotate to the solo laner and kill them.
Perfect Shot build allows her to put out 100k+ hero damage and be a regular ranged assassin - that is if you can continuously keep hitting Snipe. It will have practically no cooldown.
You can increase your impact by just not picking nova. Just kidding I love good nova mains. On a serious note your best way to make a difference with her is to know when to pick her. She’s absolutely not a generalist and will be useless in games where she’s countered. Not like thrall or diablo who can play against counters and still be useful. As a jaina main I will say that Nova is very good against her, but i’ll leave it to the good nova players to explain her place. The bad ones will tell you she should be picked anytime and that’s why shes one of the most hated heroes in the game to be on a team with.
Old AI used to actually be good. The new “shoot and run away” AI is just terrible. A lot of the times the Decoy will do nothing and if you’re invisible it will do zilch when it comes to pve.
Consider using Anti-armor shells more often. Ever since One in the Chamber was nerfed and AA shells were buffed, I’ve found myself using the latter more. Being able to do guaranteed burst damage with strong AA’s and debuff enemy physical armor can REALLY help in the early-mid game and it lowers the possibility of missing out on damage because of missed snipes. One of my favorites is using AA shell Nova to stomp characters like Garrosh or Tracer in QM.
I’m a bad Nova so I actually assumed this was par for the clones but it’s not and like man, the least they could do is be like Samuro clones and beeline to the nearest hostile to fight it.
They just kinda stand there, like they’re from mid-90’s AI or something.
If i play Nova i use to play her as LI-ming.
(1) Longshot
(4) Bribe or cheap clones
(7)Perfect shot (this is the reset/mana refound MingLee talent for Nova)
(10) Precision ult
(13) situational, all 3 talents are good. 1st if you miss a lot and let’s you restack faster, 2nd if your team has more dmg dealers, 3rd for some extra defense if your team isn’t supportive (Nova isn’t a popular hero and ppl aren’t too helpfull)
(16) Explosive rounds for wave clear and AOE TF dmg. Also, with the reset talent on 7, at this point you will do about 700-740 dmg to enemy heroes in a fight every 2 seconds at the cost of 0 mana. So you just became a Li-ming with the orb rest, but a bit harder to hit Crippling shot is for bursting down someone, even the enemy tank/melee gets wrecked by it, good for 1v1 and for snipeing down back liners and healers. The ERQ combo on Nova can delete squishier chars like Valla and Hanzo.
(20 ) I usually upg the ult, so it’s harder for the enemy to get away from a Nova combo, but in general just a good TF ult. Plus it’s global and works in fog of war as well.
But if i take the Ionic force field on 13 than i consider the Appolo suite, Nova can run around with Perma 25 Armor in a fight. I found it very effective agains Illidan and Li-ming who like to tp on top of you
Yesterday i went up to 120k hero dmg and 10 kill/4 death with this
Tho matches were a loss due to late game throws
Really? Even Rapid Projection, which synergizes with One in the Chamber? I’ve been eye-balling Covert Mission but it seems situational, e.g., 2-lane map paired with a strong laning ally…
