Greetings this guide will go over all the aspects of Nova from how much damage she can do, her match ups, positioning and much more. Nova has a fairly basic kit of abilities but how you use them can be tricky and there are a lot of things that separate the good Nova players from the Great Nova players and in this guide anything you wanted to know or needed to know should be here so just read through and start making the big bucks as Nova says.



Alternatively if you are too lazy, too cool, or just want to listen to a guide rather than read it a video will be provided highlighting the main points of the guide.

Pros

-Highest single target burst
-Stealth
-Mana efficient late game
-Great quotes


Cons

Very low health
-No real escapes
-Can't push lanes well
-Can't solo or help much in merc camps
-Early game mana and damage issues

As Nova you have no escapes and need to rely on your passive to help you engage and slip away afterward. Stealth is NOT invisibility and people will be able to see a shimmer you can't be targeted but skill shots can still hit to reveal you. Towers, forts, and hero made structures will not target you while cloaked but the Nexus and objective minions such as those on Sky Temple will be able to attack you in fact being in range of the nexus will reveal you regaurdless if it hits you with the lazer or not.
Snipe is your big damage ability that you will need to land to get the majority of your burst. Snipe has a long reach but a very thin width making it very easy to miss especially against heroes with small hit boxes like Murky. However, This ability fires almost immediately where ever you are pointing it so you don't have to lead the shot and it can time to get used to but practice makes perfect.
Pinning Shot is not really used for the damage so much as it is for the slow. With the slow you can set up snipe hits a lot easier as well as help your team chase or get away from enemy heroes. When your clone hits with a Pinning shot it also slows the enemy. Furthermore if you pick up Crippling Shot your Pinning Shot will apply a 25% vulnerability but your clones will also apply the vulnerability though it is hard to guarantee the clones will hit the right target consistently.
The Decoy creates a CLOAKED clone that will walk around and shoot at things doing no damage. At level 13 you can pick up lethal decoy and have the clone do 25% of all of your damage, not only auto attacks but snipe and pinning shot as well. I will discuss all the cool things you can do with your Decoy further down under Decoy Shenanigans.
Triple Tap is considered the weaker heroic choice because the damage can be blocked and Nova will need to stand still and channel being revealed which makes you all too easy to take down this on top of your target you are trying to hit may not have the damage ever reach them and it can be interrupted but does more single target damage than Precision Strike. The real reason you would want to take Triple Tap is for the level 20 talent Fast Reload to keep refreshing the cooldown on a squishy team. Triple Tap is also useful against teams with high mobility heroes as they may consistently dodge your Precision Strike.
Most will recommend Precision Strike over Triple Tap and rightfully so. Precision Strike has a lower cooldown, has more utility than Triple Tap, can synergize with your team, and doesn't have you stand still for long amounts of time though it does have Nova throw her hand in the air which will tip off that you are the real Nova. Precision Strike may do less single target damage than Triple Tap but the damage has a large AOE effect and at level 20 base if you hit all 5 enemy heroes you will be dealing 5000 damage. The range is also global with no need for line of sight so you can cast it anywhere from anywhere making it possible to stop people from activating objectives, checking boss (ability gives vision), killing Murky's egg after you kill Murky on the field, and killing Abathur from lane. With the versatility it is usually the better choice over Triple Tap.

The Nova Combo is always going to be the same unless you pick up rewind then you just repeat.
>>>

Level 1
Total Damage 236
Level 20
Total Damage (no ult with and without Gathering Power) 2630 < 2799
Total Damage (with Precision Strike with and without Gathering Power stacks) 3680 < 3949
Total Damage (with Triple Tap with and without Gathering Power stacks) 4961 < 5352



With Rewind
>>>>>>>

• Total Damage (no ult with and without Gathering Power stacks) 4397 < 4734
  Total Damage (with Precision Strike with and without Gathering Power stacks) 5447 < 5884
  Total Damage (with Triple Tap with and without Gathering Power stacks) 6428 < 7287

As Nova using your Decoy effectively will grant you much more than possibly confusing enemies or 25% more damage potential. No the Decoy can save lives and not just your own.

The decoy can and should be used to block skill shots. Any skill shot in the game can be blocked by a decoy and sometimes this can mean living where you normally would die such as blocking a Nova Snipe or Zeratul Singularity Spike. This also messes with CC skill shots such as Crusaders Blessed Shield where the ability bounces and if you don't block it there is a good chance Blessed Shield will soak up a bounce. This also works with auto target abilities like Lili's Blinding Wind or Sylvanas's Withering Fire.

Decoy placement is something that can be easily messed up by an unskilled player by making it too obvious. You always want to place your decoy somewhere you would probably be as Nova already such as in a bush with a clear escape path. Placing your decoy in situations where it doesn't fire immediately can make the decoy very convincing if an enemy walks into a bush and your decoy is ready and waiting as a Nova would be. The decoy is also the only escape Nova has so you need to use it wisely and act wisely after you use it for instance running from an enemy placing a clone into a bush you were running into, run into the bush then back toward your enemy. Doing this will break line of sight and you will seem like a clone acting dumb this can save your life more than you may expect.

Clones love to soak up turret and fort shots for you. In the early game this can help safely secure kills by placing a clone into enemy turrets as the enemy runs toward their base so your team can continue to chase right up to the gate. Clones soaking turret shots can actually help run them out of ammo and in the very early game it may be all you can do for your team. Finally this is how Nova can kill Abathur and Murky eggs tucked near forts. Make sure you put your clone down before you uncloak and WAIT for it fire and be shot at or the clone will be cloaked when you fire causing you to be the fort's target rather than the clone. Wait till level 7 or you won't have a good chance at killing Abathur.

When it comes to doing damage with your clones to ensure full effectiveness in the damage they do make sure no other enemies or minions are around. Clones tend to focus heroes but also have a tendency of getting distracted so giving them a clear goal is your best bet for full damage.

This is the best map in the game for Nova to play on. This is one of the few maps that REQUIRE a team to split up. Nova hunts single targets so getting the enemy team to split up for temples can give you easy targets and if they decide to roam together then you can keep recapping points to ensure the enemies won't be getting the Dragon Knight. Though this map is fairly linear in design people will usually be able to tell where you are going once you reveal making chasing the Nova down easier than it could be. Your goal on the Dragon Shire is to try and catch people once the shrines activate and stay close to the team in the in-between. It is worth mentioning that the channel to take the Dragon Knight can be interrupted by your clone even if the clone deals no damage making defending the Dragon Knight safe and easy.

Haunted Mines is a very tempo oriented map that values pushing. Nova does not push very well making her weak on this map. Nova can't really participate in the objective, can't take merc camps, and can't push a lane effectively. The only reason you may want Nova on your team on this map is to specifically counter someone like Kael'thas which is still difficult because the size of the map is small and it can be really hard to get behind enemy lines in team fights as Nova and even harder to live after you reveal. The other instance is if you have s specific AOE combo pre-made team for some reason other than that try to pick something else for this map and in quick match just try to burst the squishy heroes best you can and work with your team heavily.

A top tier map for playing Nova since people will tend to separate to gather coins you can hunt them and take their coins because you are jealous that you can't get the coins from mercs yourself. On the other hand teams sometimes decide that they should all group and remain as 5 most of the game and this hurts Nova but since the map is filled with tons of nooks and crannys to hide in or strike from getting behind enemy lines is fairly easy and this makes escaping easy as well. To note you can stop coin turn ins with your decoy even if it does no damage this can sometimes help delay safely until your team can arrive.

A wonderful map that lets you take full advantage of your kit and put your skills to the test. Your experience may dictate how well you do on this map more than others but with some practice you will realize that the design of the Cursed Hallow allows for so many different angles for attack, escapes, and jukes. Getting behind enemy lines is a breeze since there are way too many angles of attack for the team to properly defend from and if you are patient an opening will present itself. What you want to be trying to do on this map is catching people going to the tributes. The tributes will tell you where the enemy team will be going and you can set up in the pathways they may take to get there waiting for your prey to walk by. The only real disadvantage Nova has on this map is that Nova cant really do much with the merc camps and there may be long periods where you don't do anything of real value. It is worth noting that your decoy can stop a team from taking a tribute even if the decoy does no damage.

This map is ok when playing as Nova. Garden of Terror map is very large and has few mercs with many places to hide but the objective is not something Nova can really take part in. During the night teams will tend to group and this makes it hard to catch people out and there isn't much Nova can do during this time. Nova's time to strike is just before night, taking out just one enemy hero can give your team enough room to gather most of the seeds or at least many seeds with the number advantage. However, the biggest drawback this map has is games last a long time. Once Nova hits level 20 she doesn't get much stronger but other heroes gain more health making them harder to burst and the levels past 20 will help Nova's enemies a lot more than Nova since a lot of her power jumps are due to talents and not so much raw stat upgrades. Overall you should be able to sneak around and get an advantage for your team before the seeds spawn and that is how you will participate in the objective most of the time.

This is the second worst map to play on as Nova only second to Battlefield of Eternity. With how this map is structured the enemy team will often know where you are or where you will strike and try to run after you reveal. This on top of the fact that grouping on this map is required so teams will most likely always be together making it very hard to quietly take someone out. Even the objective is against Nova where she cant take temples alone and she is wasted damage if she trys to help. You need to use all your skills and tricks to overcome the odds on this map but with careful and smart play there is no reason you cant.

Tomb of the Spider Queen is a mixed bag for Nova. This map can snowball or drag out forever and just be an entire cluster. This is the smallest map in the game so roaming happens a lot especially in the early game so Nova can usually be in the right place all the time in the early game. During the later portions of the game you can often find someone pushing a lane and trying to collect spider butts making assassinations possible but not always available. The tun in is fairly easy to keep an eye on as Nova but you usually won't be using the turn in yourself in fact you should do your best to avoid picking up spider butts if your teammates can grab them just as easily as it will make you an even bigger target and you need to reveal while turning them in. To know if you should choose Nova for this map it comes down to team comps. If they have people like Valla, Jaina, and Kael'thas choose Nova but if they are a bit heavier or there aren't obvious targets other heroes may be better but still Nova is an overall ok pick for this map. To mention the spider turn in can be interrupted by your decoy even if it does no damage.

I would have to say that this is the worst map for Nova. In the Haunted Mines and Sky Temple there are times heroes may move out on there own to do something like take mercs, split push, or just try to heal up to get back in the mines. This map people are always together and there aren't a lot of places to catch people out. there are multiple ways for people to get back to base and the middle while has a lot of blind spots is still fairly open making juking around difficult. All of this on top of the fact you don't help take the objective well, you can't defend against the immortal, and while your team has an immortal all your targets are usually in pretty safe positions. If you pick Nova for this map you will struggle much more than you normally would on any other map to do your only job.

Her Hunter's Mark will give you 25% more damage on a target more burst the better try to coordinate with your Tyrande player for more instant take downs than you may deserve.
Grav-o-Bomb will group people up for you to land your Precision Strike for massive team damage.
Leap especially with the Crater ability keeps enemies in one place to be hit by your Precision Strike.
Similar to Tyrande Sylvanas with Cold Embrace can put 25% vulnerability on many targets improving your burst damage.
Void prison can be used to hold people in place for Precision Strike. Void Prison lasts 5 seconds so feel it out or if you are organized Zeratul can cancel his Void Prison to ensure Precision Strike's damage. Also double stealth assassins roaming together make for deadly ganks.
Devouring Maw can hold people in place for Precision Strike the maw lasts 4 seconds so try to count it out.
Mosh Pit will keep the enemy heroes stunned, er.. dancing so that you can hit them with Precision Strike for guaranteed damage.

Play Video

In conclusion Nova is a very fun sneaky assassin that can single handedly dictate the flow of a game. When played properly you can overcome Nova's many drawbacks and find your niche with your team to win the match. If you have any questions, differing opinions, or just like the guide make sure to leave a comment or message me directly and I will be sure to do my best to get your questions answered. Either way get out there and start making the big bucks this has been Genereral Wafflez of the Breakfast Brigade so till next time.