Nova is one of those heroes that heavily depends on one's ability to play her. She is fragile with no escape mechanism and if you're not able to take out the opponent when you reveal yourself then you're pretty much dead. She definitely has a higher learning curve than other heroes, as your decision on when to strike where and how can mean life and death, and to your team, salvation or doom.
When played with enough skills, however, she is definitely a force to be reckoned with - especially towards the end game. Nova is able to solo kill
Anythingin the game, and there are no other hero who can defeat her in one on one setting, if you are the one choosing the battle.
I am currently only at rank 24 in hero league, but only played about 25 league games (almost all of these games with Nova) and am moving up steadily. I wanted to share what I know and what I believe to be a correct Nova play style with the above skill set choices in hopes of seeing more Nova players get better because more often than not your team mates will not like having Nova in your team (all for a good reason), or skeptical about your pick at best.
Nova is meant to be played as a
ganker, and thus you must be roaming at all times. Naturally, regardless of which map you're playing on, you will want to focus on their other ganker, over extended opponent, ones with low health etc etc. Nova is NOT meant for laning - keep this in mind. Be mindful of other team's positions and also aim to play a play style where your opponent cannot guess where you are. This means constantly being in the bushes, hiding behind the enemy lines (sometimes even behind the enemy walls to Q/W combo for low hp enemies coming to drink fountains) and only show yourself when you are 100 percent sure that you can take out opponent.
Having said that, this skill tree is designed for you to have easiest time in so called "1 shot kill". The
Ambush Snipe, together with
Anti-Armor Shells and
Lethal Decoy, will in most cases sufficient for you to get a kill.
** Tier 1 Pick**
Ambush Snipe is the only viable choice as a true ganker. You do not need to consider others, for any reason.
** Tier 2 Pick**
Most will pick
Gathering Power, or in some cases where you want surer kills,
Envenom. Both are excellent picks, but for this specific build we are going
Remote Delivery. This is less than popular pick and some may argue it to be useless, but this build focuses on achieving guaranteed kill - the 3 seconds reduction on CD makes it so that it matches the CD on Pinnning Shot. How does this change your game play? Well for starters,
Double Fake and
Lethal Decoy can be used
Every Single Time you cloak / decloak. Since Nova only should engage with full CDs up (save for ult), this means you're able to engage 3 seconds quicker in each fight - think about it. How many times have you had to wait for your decoy CD to be up while you had your Q and W up? By picking the said talent, you ensure that when you have your W, you also have your E.
On top of this,
your decoys are affected by
Anti-Armor Shells. As soon as they're cast, they'll first fire their each respective Q, and fire a normal shot, which now does 250% dmg. When you walk in with E / Q / W combo, on assassins and specialists, almost always guarantees a kill without needing to rewind or using R (given all shots fired are hit). Even in scenarios where you fail to kill off a target, you most likely would have drained a good chuck of the target's HP; since taking this talent increase your range in which you may cast the decoy by a ridiculous margin, once you have
Lethal Decoy the decoys now become somewhat of a finisher to targets with 5% or less HP which have run back to their base or their team mates. As less common as it may sound, I've encountered these situations on more than just a few occasions.
Last but not least, there has been an experiment done to compare the damage difference between taking Cripping Shot and
Lethal Decoy. Bottom line - very little damage output difference, but significant boost to your survivability so we choose Decoy.
**Tier 3 Pick**
For maximizing burst and utilizing fullest potential from 2 decoys, we take
Anti-Armor Shells. Other talents are not so useful even in some other builds.
**Tier 4 Pick**
Again, a debatable choice which is to take
Triple Tap over
Precision Strike. This really boils down to your personal preferences, and a lot of arguable points to favour one to the other. However, I can sum it up very easily:
Take precision strike if you're relatively new to Nova, and take Triple Tap if you're experienced & have good map awareness as well as good judgement.
Most will say the opposite; take triple tap if you're a noob and precision strike if you're good. Reason why I say otherwise is because precision strike does not require your Nova to be positioned along with your team at all; you just need a vision on which target is on in the map, and can be cast regardless of your position. This makes it very easy to cast, and you can literally "snipe" people to death or cast to help with objectives. It does not require a lot of skills other than to chain it with your team mate's CCs for surer hit, and since it has relatively short CD it can be "spammed", for lack of a better word.
Triple Tap, however, demands that you are given three conditions:
1. You must know for sure that your shots will not be blocked by bodyblock, structure and that all 3 shots will be fired (If they go invisible, take
Tassadar for example, your shots become null and cd will have been wasted)
2. That you're in safe range to pull it off lest you get CC'ed and die, or worse fire 1 shot and get cc'ed then die and waste your precious CD without even doing damage (Triple Tap's CD won't go on full CD if no shots are fired - only 10 seconds)
3. That
Triple Tap will kill the target, since it is a single target cast unlike
Precision Strike. Precision strike can be used in variety of scenarios given its global cast range and its AOE damage, while triple tap is not - so if you don't kill, you've wasted it
For our build of course, we want a single target damage as this is a ganker build so we take
Triple Tap.
**Tier 5 Pick**
Nova is squishy by nature,
Spell Shield will not save you if you get exposed & get jumped. In a team fight, this is even more true as you
should not initiate the team fight.
Advanced Cloaking is used by some, but you will need the 25% damage from your decoys in order for this build to work.
**Tier 6 Pick**
Double Fake boosts your damage AND survivability. Coupled with
Rewind, which I recommend for the final tier pick, you will see a magic where 4 decoys get summoned and literally guarantee a kill on any target in the game. Some may take
Crippling Shot, but as tested from other players and explained from before, 2.25 seconds of 25% dmg increase isn't very viable and certainly not more valuable than having an extra decoy.
Overdrive, is also very situational as it drains your mana like no other.
**Tier 7 Pick**
Rewind will guarantee a kill in most instances, even tanks. You just need to combo it right. If you're not confident about being able to land all the skill shots refreshed with
Rewind, taking
Fast Reload can be an option. However, this depends on how good you are with triggers!
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