This build is centered around going after their easy to kill heroes. You ignore minions and towers completely (I usually hit around 3,000-5,000 siege damage... yeah). You go in and hit them with pinning shot, basic shot, snipe, basic shot, then you run off to get into stealth to do it again at a different angle when your cool downs are done.
Early game
What you do early game (levels 1-9) is the exactly what I said to do up above, hit their weak guys hard and then run away. You don't have to kill them (although that would be nice), you just have to wound them so they run off and think twice about going out into the open to face your Malfurion again.
Mid-game
In mid-game (levels 10-19), you continue doing what you were doing, but instead, you will watch for those weak guys that are at about half life and then triple tap them once they overextend from their structures. This will kill almost any non tank if they are around half life or lower. To start a combat, you do pinning shot to make them vulnerable (which will trigger an overpowered basic attack) followed by a snipe (which will quickly become a second overpowered basic attack). This will put some real hurt on most guys in the game. You can follow this up with a triple tap to kill any non tank.
Late game
The late game (levels 20+) is where you really shine. You will kill tons of guys and your hero damage will soar upwards. You continue doing what you have been doing, but now, when you kill an enemy hero with triple tap, you get to begin the process anew from the very beginning without having to run away. And, late game is usually team fighting, so after the first triple tap, the other enemies are going to be weakened, so you can immediately do it on the next low life enemy. This causes a chain reaction to give you a common triple if not quadruple kill.
Q ability-
- This is your main finisher if you do not have triple tap available, whether because it is on cool down, or you are still low level. It does a ton of damage and you can use it constantly because it has a lowered cool down, making it do more damage than if you chose that 20% extra damage.
W ability-
- This is your starting move. You can use it to slow your enemy to makes sure of your kill, and you probably will until you get
Crippling Shot at level 16, but this is great to start with as you are usually behind them already, so they cannot exactly run away, and you do a ton of damage to them, allowing you to do snipe to finish them off, or put them down until they are begging for you to put them out of their misery. In which case you promptly flee into the foliage to wait for that fast cool down snipe to finish the job in the next round.
E ability-
- This ability you won't be using too often. It is nice to put inside of some bushes as you run through them to catch your enemy off guard, but all the times I have used it, it has never actually saved me. It doubles as a "minion" so you can solo a tower for a small portion of its life. You can also try to use it in an attempt to pull their Nova and Zeratul out of stealth.
R ability-
- The frosting on the cake. This is the ability that you use to [insert map's narrator's voice] "Enemy Team Dominated". Easy to finish off plenty of badly hurt enemies with this enemy... as long as they don't annoyingly (and smartly) put Stiches between you and them.
Passive/D ability-
- This is your passive and the reason why you are so good at the ambushes Nova is meant to do. After 3 seconds of not being hit or attacking, you go stealthed, where enemies can only see you if they look hard enough (hence why they do sometimes AOE towards you). You may think you cannot be seen, but enemies can actually see a little haze on the battlefield that is you. I have seen it before and used it to my advantage to snipe the enemy Nova.
The other build is, called snipe weaving, relies on hitting your opponent from stealth for max damage on the first couple of hits. Now this is a very powerful build, but it relies on coming out of stealth. And, that level 10 talent is just blown out of the water when compared to what triple tap can do.
The first talent is
compared to
. The ambush snipe is really good for that instant burst damage, but then you have to wait that 10 second for it to cool down and (the reason why rangefinder is better) it doesn't have the range of the rangefinder. With rangefinder, you can snipe people from a position they cannot see on the map with the bonus of hitting tower (if you need to) at a range where they cannot fire back at you. And that snipe being on a slower cool down means you have a much faster rate of fire than the snipe weaver.
The next talent is
compared to
. Now I have used gathering power before, and either it didn't do enough, or I have forgotten how good it is, I will check it out and edit this guide if need be, but before then, I will say that extra small amount of damage is not justifiable. You do enough damage without it and you are too squishy to get max value from the talent. Nova has that problem with never having enough mana. Perfect shot fixes that somewhat. You will still be out of mana a lot, but you will be able to sustain your bursts for much longer periods of time.
is horrible as it relies on the decoy.
is a really nice skill, and I find it better than any of these other skills if you want to kill quickly. But, I like the mana refund of perfect shot, so I do not have to go to the sippy cup or hearthstone after every ambush.
The third talent is
against
. Now this one is what I think is the big difference between the two. Anti armor relies way too heavily on killing your opponent with one shot, but that just isn't realistic. And if you try to argue that it is against weakened foes,then my build does just as well at finishing half life guys as the sniper weavers. One in the chamber allows you to fight the long fight because you have a huge bonus in your rate of fire. And, your starting of combats will mean two of these one in the chamber shots.
-
-
-
. That is two 180% shots and possibly a 100% shot compared to a single 250% shot that you get from anti armor.
The Ultimate. I really do not see why
is the choice here. It is a horrible power for someone like Nova, a hero that excels in finishing off heroes, not attempting to hit them all for 1/4-1/2 their life.
allows you to easily finish heroes off from a distance, and they cannot [easily] escape from it. You are firing three completely overpowered shells into the poor back of that fleeing Valla or Illidan.
The fifth talent is a comparison between
and...
... well what do you know! We do have something in common! This is an excellent ability. I am shamed to admit that I have used
once, man was that a joke of an ability!
is one of the ****piest talents in the game, shame on you if you ever choose it on any hero, and
is nice, but is blown a few miles outta the water by headshot. Headshot is that one thing that really helps with killing multiple heroes in one go. At this point in the game, you can safely rely on [more or less] one shoting enemy heroes, and man is halving your snipes cool down a blast!.
The sixth talent is also the same, being
. Now I know that I said that you do enough damage already earlier on, but really, what else are you going to bring?
is a joke as you are a single hero killer, not a group of minions killer, if you wanted to kill groups of minions, then you should have chosen Zagara.
is a complete joke. The decoy already fails to save you most the time unless of course you play against AIs, but then again, they can see past your stealth, so I doubt that an extra decoy will help. And
if a joke of
. Too much micromanaging if you choose overdrive. And it wastes your mana way too much, even if you have the mana refunded from
.
is amazing because, along with slowing your enemy, he takes more damage from your attacks! This could also be used on bosses so it takes 25% more damage from the whole team for 2 seconds. This talent should always be the pick on any build.
The last talent is a little tricky, but the one I chose allows for some serious killage. The snipe weaver has the
, which is completely fine as it gives your hero a great way to escape. I also see a lot of people choose
. The only thing worth rewinding in this build is the triple tap, but if you are playing Nova right, then triple tap will have an instant cool down anyways.
works perfectly with your finishing ways and allows you to kill most if not the whole enemy team within seconds (I would know, I have done it multiple times before). This can also be a huge game changer when you end up killing all the enemy heroes with them having no way to escape from the death.
*note* I found on some forums that anti armor shots are 2.5 times the amount of a regular shot (so you get 2.5 regular shots compared to 1 250% shot) assuming this is true, (in this example we will assume your regular shots do 100 damage because that is easy math) then in 5 seconds (enough time to fire 3 250% shots as the first shot starts the timer at 0, and fire 5 regular shots). Your 3 250% shots will do a total of 750 damage in that 5 seconds. Your two overpowered shots will do 360 damage. Assuming you will not use your decoy for that extra little bit of damage, then you will do an extra 300 damage. That equals 660 damage, 90 less. Now, lets see what the damage output is for if you follow the combos, then run off. Snipe will do the starting 115 while pinning shot will do the starting 40 damage. The snipe weaver, with the anti armor shells, is optimal to do
-
-
, which will do 250+115+23+40 damage (428 damage). The Finisher combo is
-
-
-
, doing 180+180+115+40 damage (515 damage). In those two examples, I have shown that anti armor is better in the long fight, while one in the chamber is better in the quick burst that Nova is meant to be doing.
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