I feel this mastery set could use some tweaking as the choice currently is way too skewed towards 1 choice over the other.
Between 1) nuke and holo decoy cooldown and 2) griffin airstrike cost reduction, full 30 points into cost reduction is in 99% of the time the superior choice, considering it saves you 300 minerals for a powerful, versatile ability with a short cooldown. Comparing that to the nuke and holo decoy option, putting 30 points into that will give you maybe 1 - 2 additional use in a game (saving 90 secs).
Splitting points into both options I also feel is not great as any points away from cost reduction and making the airstrike more expensive is not justified by a slightly faster nuke/decoy.
Now, that 1% of time that nuke/holo decoy mastery could be better: If you are playing mutation with Micro Transaction/Slim Picking and you are limited in mineral income. Even then, it’s such a small, niche scenario.
Easiest solution would be to buff the nuke/holo decoy mastery choice to save even more secs than 90. But maybe we could replace this choice with something else? Just want to bring this to dev’s attention.
the nuke and holo decoy cool down reductions is fairly useful. a buff could help but, the griffin air strike cost reduction is not exactly useful. they should instead replace it with a resource income increase.
Agreed with you there, Yuriprime. The other two that come into mind are Tychus Odin cooldown and Alarak Death Fleet cooldown:
Death fleet - for this one, it has its uses compared to empower me duration alternative, especially for the teleport so I don’t mind it too much.
Odin - this one is just overshadowed by how op the medivac pickup choice is so it could also use a tweak. But there hasn’t been a Tychus revamp yet so hopefully it’s planned to be addressed in the future.
Note: I’m excluding mastery sets that have 2 cooldown reduction choices (like Raynor banshee vs hyperion and Stukov apocalisk vs alexander) since for those, both choices are similar and have uses.
He is trolling. Airstrike is the only way to go. Nova + air strike clear maps very fast, before the cool down for nuke can even kick in.
Said that, decreasing cool down for nuke will be broken, spamming nukes around the map, fun, but way too OP.
I think they could add a cost to the nuke, so you can either pay for air strike or for nuke and the cost can be adjusted based on coverage of both. And mastery can be either reduce cost of nukes or air strikes.
For example: a nuke covers 2-3 times the area of an air strike, so the cost can be 2-3 times of the air strike. So the cost per area of damage is the same, but one is a circle and one is a straight line.
P.S. I don’t know the exact coverage area of these two skills, it’s approximate.
Honestly, the Heroic Ability Cooldown Reduction mastery needs to go, because they are competing for the same thing. The cost reduction on Airstrike is just too much better than the alternative.
I am in favor of it totally being replaced with something else relating to Nova, like perhaps a Defensive Drone improvement mastery that boosts the shield amount, cooldown reduction, and price reduction on its Charges, where at max mastery, it would basically be almost constantly spammable at a low price.
Alternative is another Nova stat buff, like with the options on the other Mastery Sets. Like a maybe further reducing the cooldown for Stance Dance to make hotswapping only take a few seconds between Assault and Stealth. Or adding Range to her vision, weapon attack range, and casting range for Q abilities (each point adding 0.1 range, to a maximum of +3)
I like the direction of this a lot. But instead of a mastery for Defensive Drone, I would prefer a mastery dedicated to reducing cooldown of Tactical Airlift. Current cooldown for it is 120 sec so if mastery is say 1 sec for every point, airlift with 30 points would cut 30 sec. That way, you can choose either cheaper airstrike or increased mobility.
It does. And it’s useful for early push and objectives. For example 20 points spent on nuke cd allows to use it on first hybrid set on Chains of Ascension.
Also if you play Nova well your units almost never die and you have tons of minerals in mid/late game. So airstrike cost reduction doesn’t even matter. That why I prefer to spend 20 points on nuke/holo cd and 10 points on airstrike cost in most situations.
If you’re using it on the first set of Hybrid, which spawns by default at 9min mark then that’s way too late. Most efficient players spawn the first set of Hybrid by pushing J’nara, which occurs as much as 2-3min earlier. So even at 30s reduction, the Nuke isn’t worth the time.
I will say, even though Odin has been used to compare, Nova’s Nuke is vastly different than Odin. Putting points into Odin has many benefits in timing. Having Odin is already a power house when used correctly. Furthermore, BRB carries one of the most devastating damage and area of effect in all of Coop. Having it once more on most maps is vastly different.
Compared to Nova, having a much less powerful nuke that can only come at most 3times a game (and usually less, since even at max it reduces only -30s) is generally useless, especially when timings are considered.
Thanks for pointing this out; just tested it and the mastery doesdecrease the 600 second initial cool-up time as well. Edited post to delete that bit.
That being said, doing the test and trying out 30 points into the nuke/holo decoy mastery made me miss the cost reduction a lot. The 300 mineral save is quite significant as I and others have pointed out.
I disagree on having a ton of minerals in mid-game. Late game - yes, you should have a lot of minerals. But mid-game - that’s when you are still pumping out Nova’s expensive units, researching their tech lab upgrades, and finishing +3 attack for both bio and mech. Using airstrike at that time at the full no-mastery of 1000 mineral is costly.
Any avid Nova player would be able to say that when using her effectively, there is no point in the game where minerals are of abundance. (Like you said, at best very late game where she max out in supply).
Between dropping in units and Griffin Strike, the mineral demand is very high. Add in if Mines are deployed, the general intensity on resources is very high.
Not choosing the Griffin Strike mastery will hinder Nova’s ability to do a lot of things, intrinsically cripple her and therefore the player in control (when compared with one that chose this option in mastery set 1).
While Odin is a great trump card, in choices of Mastery it’s vastly outstripped by 45 second Tychus Taxi (medivac) cooldown. Because Tychus only has five or less units, you need the Taxi as often as you can get your grubby hands on it. This is both because he can’t afford to lose a unit and the Medivacs are an excellent clutch heal, and also because of the mobility they provide, which is both fun as hell and allow you essentially to be everywhere at once, which is handy on any mission.
The Odin fights hard, but sadly it becomes a millstone around your neck. Its mobility is dismal. If you’re trying to move your Outlaws somewhere else, the Odin will be there later than the rest of them – unless you use Medivacs to dump him on the heads of the new targets.
griffin air strike is an emergency situation ability. nuke and holo decoy is much more useful. it is possible to launch a nuke, then switch to holo decoy and send one out.
You have good points but I believe proper management of Medivac actually makes that mastery obsolete. I’ve always been able to get to where it is required as well as manage not to lose units.
Odin’s speed is less than desirable but between again proper use of Medivac and good positioning Odin doesn’t lose any utility.
And I say these with the context of playing Tychus usually solo or with a single outlaw for 95% of the games. Understandably, with more outlaws out, any scatter or multi split will thus require more Medivacs. Although I imagine this is only more for mobility (for you) since you avidly use Nikara
Please don’t spread misinformation. Airstrike can delete entire waves in a manner which Nuke and Holo Decoy could never hope to.
Floating Mins is quite common when you’re waiting on cooldowns for certain units based on the map/enemy comp. Such as against Reaver/Disruptor. It’s a bit of a waste to use your Nuke when you could just Airstrike and save your nuke for sieging a base or pushing an Objective.
Reading the thread it sounds like a lot of people around here use decoy and nuke for attack waves.
Isn’t that a massive waste in most cases? There are definitely waves which deserve a nuke like the two waves which spawn with the last pair of void thrashers on Temple of the Past.
Imo, most of the time both abilities are way better used when assaulting a huge base / objective, like the mainpath fortifications on CoA or the bases Defending North and (North) Eastern locks in L&L.
The mastery definitely helps me to get these abilities ready with my push timings and also to use them a second time on maps where I likely wouldn’t ge the chance without mastery.
