For this guide, we're going to be taking a look at the Snipe Weaving Nova build. This build focuses on nuking down your enemies, one at a time, without giving them a chance to react. You'll achieve this by weaving in and out of stealth, bursting them with
Anti-Armor Shells attacks and buffed
Snipes.
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For the first talent, you'll want to grab
Ambush Snipe which increases the damage of your
Snipe by 20% when used from stealth or 1 second after breaking out of it. As your main source of damage, buffing your
Snipe is essential to this build.
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At level 4,
Gathering Power is the best option. This talent grants a permanent 8% increased ability power, and then an additional 2% for every hero you kill. This bonus can stack up to 12% and is lost upon death. While this does make you play extra safe when you have high stacks, damage is king.
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At level 7, Nova gets a huge power boost when you pick up
Anti-Armor Shells. This talent makes your auto attacks 3 times slower, but it increases the damage by 300%. As a bursty assassin who can't afford to get caught out of position, this is great. It allows you to go back in stealth in between auto attacks without losing any damage.
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At level 10,
Precision Strike is almost always the better choice. It allows you to deal massive damage without compromising your position, and has the added global range which can come in handy.
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You could also go for
Triple Tap if your team is lacking CC to guarantee your precision strike hits, or if they have a lot of weak assassins you can get a lot of resets from.
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At level 13, grab
Headshot which reduces your cooldowns everytime you kill a hero by 4 seconds. This includes any form of takedowns, including assists or simply being near the target. This enhances Nova's playstyle by allowing her to keep firing snipes constantly.
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At level 16,
Crippling Shot is what you'll want most of the time. This talent makes it so on top of slowing your enemy, your Pinning Shot will also apply a 25% increased damage taken from all sources. This is like adding insult to injury. Just in case your damage wasn't strong enough, here's an additional 25%. If you're playing in a team, I suggest using this to burn down a tank quickly in the first few seconds of the fight, especially if they're only running one. The enemy team won't expect it and it'll leave them scrambling.
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If you at any point feel like your precision strikes are doing a lot more than your snipes and
Anti-Armor Shells, then try playing with overdrive. You can activate it to increase your ability power which will affect both of your precision strikes at level 20. You'll see a pretty big damage difference.
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Finally, at level 20, you'll want to grab
Bolt of the Storm. Adding an extra charge to
Precision Strike can be useful in some fights, but fixing Nova's main weakness, her lack of mobility, will allow you to stay alive longer in fights resulting in more damage.
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Nova is very weak before level 7, specially if you put her in a lane. Your job early game is to roam around the map, ganking lanes you see open and spotting enemies doing mercenary camps to alert your teammates. The less you show yourself, the more scared your opponents will be.
When using
Anti-Armor Shells, sou should never stand still waiting for the 2.5 seconds in between your auto attacks. Instead, you'll want to shoot your enemy, begin movin according to the fight, and then when you see yourself go stealth, shoot again. This will keep you safe between attacks and allow you to chase targets more effectively.
Nova's
Holo Decoy is an extremely undervalued ability and it has four primary uses. Because your clone acts like a solid object in the world, you can use it to body-block your enemies or even block a Stitches
Hook that would otherwise hit you or a teammate. This ability can also be great for baiting out heroic abilities. Since this ability doesn't break you out of stealth, you'll want to open with it in a teamfight. Sometimes, enemies will jump the gun thinking the clone is you - wasting valuable cooldowns on it. Vision is another great use of
Holo Decoy. Instead of face-checking a bush or if your opponents are doing mercenary camps, you can place the clone over the wall for vision. Finally, you can interrupt enemies channeling objectives without compromising your position since the clone will actually stop them.
Nova's ideal burst rotation without her heroic ability should be:
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With her heroic ability:
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Hi everyone, I'm Theselol. I run the YouTube channel GetBonkd and have been playing alpha since the first wave. I make all sorts of content for Heroes of the Storm including guides, spotlights, patch updates, and many more to come.
I've been playing games competitively for a very long time, although never at a professional level. Before I came to heroes I was a diamond league player and a world first raider in WildStar. I managed to reach Rank 1 by only solo and duo queueing and am currently sitting at 4.1k MMR.
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
Oracle, he'll be able to actively reveal Nova before a fight breaks out, which can completely throw you off or even get you killed if you're caught out of position.
Sentinel, you'll be revealed instantly. Also, if she picks up
Shadowstalk as her heroic ability, it will reveal you anywhere on the map upon activation.]Tyrande poses the same level of threat to a Nova's stealth. If you're ever hit with her
Judgment any time you reveal yourself in a fight. There's two ways of dealing with this. Let your team know what's happening and blow up the Tyrael, or make sure you destroy one of their carries before you get dove on.
Toxic Nest, you'll take damage and be revealed to the enemy team for a short duration. Not only can this screw up a gank, but also get you killed if the enemy is ready to collapse on you. Great thing is that if you ever find an Abathur in the map alone, you can easily two shot him and walk away alive.]As an early game roamer with stealth, you have to be very careful when fighting an Abathur. If you ever step over one of his
Clairvoyance, he'll be able to gain vision of a target location every 45 seconds. You'll be broken out of stealth if you're ever caught within the vision range.]Uther is capable of doing the same thing a Tassadar does, but to a lesser extent. If an Uther picks up
Farsight, though a bit better since it has a shorter cooldown.]Rehgar can also do the same as Uther and Lili with his own unique talent called
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