Nova, as a Ghost Sniper, is not a warrior; she is an assassin. They way you should play her is different from any other toon save for
Zeratul. As
Nova you should be picking people off, you can appear first to burst people down, but you should then move to the flanks, even far behind enemy lines, to finish off your enemies as they try to heal, or teleport to safety. So many of your kills should come from helpless enemies thinking they are safely getting away that they begin to fear team fights, and flee at 80% health.
I open with
Pinning Shot because I've taken
Crippling Shot and that applies a
25% damage boost against the target toon. I then immediately hit with
Snipe because I've taken
Ambush Snipe that gives the
20% damage boost for sniping within
ONE second of de-cloaking from permanent cloak, sniper. Now, there seems to be an unintended bug with
Nova where your auto attacks will seemingly randomly attack a minion 50m in the other direction of your target. This can ruin a potential assassination so it can be very annoying.
THE COMBO
->
->
-> if not dead then
** The
Precision Strike can be used as the ultimate finisher, though if you're engaging wounded targets you should not need it. The way I normally use
Precision Strike is to:
A - Help drop some damage in team fights to give my team the mental advantage, and
B - finish off the fleeing wounded from it's
global range.
This one's a no-brainer:
Ambush Snipe
is the first choice here because it's giving you the
20% damage boost to your
Snipe ability coming out of stealth. We are playing as a stealth assassin here, a
Ghost. The one thing you have to watch out for is blocking ... all minions can take the damage of
Snipe and it cannot go through enemy walls or buidlings, so you need a clear LOS (line of sight) to properly land your
Snipe
I take
Gathering Power
because this helps us with the burst damage we are going to be doing in order to scare people into believing they are actually playing against a
ghost. This gives your
Snipe
a
5% damage increase up to a
max 15% (as you shouldn't be dying, and you should be in on most kills because you're bursting people down you should get, and sustain max damage easily). You will also see that increase to your
pinning shot
, though it may seem negligible.
This is where the burst shows up because you take
Anti-Armor Shells
which grants
250% damage to
Auto Attacks
. This is the bread and butter to this build here. In-turn this slows your auto attack by 250% as well, so you become really bursty and need to stay on the move: shoot and scoot, as they say. Essentially you can burst damage everything, run around for about
THREE seconds, which you'll be re-cloaking
by that time and you can launch another powerful auto attack. This burst damage can really surprise and scare your enemies,
DO NOT fight toe-to-toe.
For my ultimate ability I choose
Precision Strike
. This gives you
global range to deal a lot of damage.
Practice with this, so you can hit moving targets and catch enemies grouped up ... just like Chess, stay a few moves ahead of your opponents; know what they're going to do before they even do.
I take
lethal decoy
because this will help trick your opponents. As more people play against
Nova they understand that the
Holo Decoy deals no damage and won't react if they don't take damage. This little bit of damage that it deals out can be a game-changer because once their life bar drops a little they instantly react on your
Holo Decoy. You can use this to distract an enemy killing and/or chasing a teammate because everyone sees squishy
Nova and wants to show her how much they love her.
I like to take
Crippling Shot
here because it gives a
25% damage taken vulnerability to the enemy for the duration of
Pinning Shot. This makes your combo practically disintegrate anything you combo on (unless your auto attack randomly fires at a wall or minion 50m away). And it also allows all the damage done by your team to be increased as well, this is why I take
Crippling Shot and not
overdrive
Take
Precision Barrage
at level 20. Usually at this point in the game we are
STEAMROLLING to victory; and if you've done your job of making people dead, and disappearing like a good sniper, you should be too. The second
Precision Strike from taking
Precision Barrage is almost unfair to the enemy team, and if you're good with landing your
Precision Strikes then this will really give 'em hell. I find more opportunities, especially with it's
global range to kill people (that's plural, as
Nova's biggest problem is single-target dps only), to wipe enemies off the map than any other talent chosen here.
With Nova (and keep in mind I've played a lot on her testing out many different builds I have her to
Level 12) I have
112 games,
56 wins with
2079 takedowns and
379 deaths. I started playing this build at about level 9 with her and haven't turned back since. I usually average 20+ takedowns with less than 3 deaths, and getting
HERO OF THE STORM more often than not.
Thanks for reading, I hope this guide helps you to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, AND TO HEAR THE LAMENTATION OF THEIR WOMEN! -Dogmai
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