Heroes of the Storm - Nova

Nova is a fairly unique Assassin in Heroes of the Storm. Where most Assassins want to do high amounts of sustained damage, a Nova player wants to do as much possible burst in the two seconds after she de-cloaks, even if it means sacrificing total damage. Understanding what talents to take and how to position yourself so that you can get the most out of those few moments before the enemy responds can mean the difference between eliminating your target and them surviving the three seconds it will take them to turn and kill you.

Talent Build

Since Nova’s purpose on a team is to focus down high-priority targets as quickly as possible, her talent build is constrained to only a few choices, all of which either improve her damage output or her maneuverability. Ambush Snipe is the obvious choice at level one, as it significantly increases the damage output of Snipe early. At level four, you have a choice between Gathering Power and Envenom. Gathering Power offers you more damage at full stacks and allows you to break down endgame targets quickly, but Envenom allows you to kill targets in the early game and cement a level advantage. Against targets that you’re unlikely to hit with Snipe (such as Illidan), Envenom is the safer pick.

At level seven, there is a choice between Anti-Armor Shells and One in the Chamber. While One in the Chamber’s recent buff increased the damage output of the ability, the talent requires you to weave your auto-attacks in between your abilities while standing to deal sustained damage. Anti-Armor Shells can quickly chunk away the enemy’s life, but is subpar when taking objectives and is neutered by enemies selecting the Block talent. Against some enemies, like Chen and Lili, Nova loses the ability to damage them through auto-attacks, losing a large portion of her damage.

At ten, Nova is one of a few characters that doesn’t have a primary Heroic Ability. Both Triple Tap and Precision Strike have their uses and should be picked in the appropriate situations. Triple Tap offers absurd single target damage that cannot miss, but can be intercepted by other enemies and forces you to remain stationary during the channeled attack. Against characters that have evasion or the ability to reliably dodge the AoE of Precision Strike, Triple Tap allows you to reliably burst down your target. Precision Strike allows you to do massive AoE damage to the entire enemy team. When combined with any reliable AoE CC, Strike can be used to soften up the enemy team for the rest of your team’s damage dealers. It also gives you the ability to counter mercenary pushes from across the map and pick off enemies that ran back into the relative safety of their base.

The talent choices at thirteen make you choose between the maneuverability of Advanced Cloaking and the damage of Lethal Decoy. Pick Cloaking if you’re having difficulty positioning yourself during teamfights, as it will allow you to better pick your entry point in the fight. Decoy provides you more damage, and when combined with the level sixteen talent Double Fake will allow you to trick your enemies into overcommitting. Your other choice at sixteen is Crippling Shot, which makes enemies vulnerable for the duration of Pinning Shot’s slow. This drastically increases the damage that you can do to a single target. At twenty, you generally want to pick either the talent that corresponds with your Heroic ability or Bolt of the Storm, which will allow you to quickly disengage from enemies as well as reposition near your targets.

Ganking As Nova

Knowing where you should attack the enemy from is the other part of playing as Nova. Enemies will, especially at higher elos, be able to identify where Nova is by the shimmer of her cloaking field. Knowing where the enemy is looking will allow you to sneak near them and set up for your quick ambush.

Using the Jungle and many entrances to it, you can generally enter a lane from whatever direction you want. Generally, you want to place yourself between them and whatever paths would take them to safety. The only times that this is not ideal is if the enemy has a gap-closer (like Sonya or Illidan) or you’re merely attempting to harass the opponent for future. In those cases, taking a position perpendicular to the lane will allow you to quickly attack and retreat to safety in the fog of war.

Once you get into position, you’re going to want to think about dropping your Decoy. By dropping the decoy, you provide yourself cover in that they do not know which one of you is the real assassin, while your decoy provides damage or vulnerability depending on your talents. However, don’t become predictable in this tendency - part of the reason that this works is that they don’t know which of you is the real Nova. Sometimes, drop the decoy at your feet and let it engage, then reveal yourself and wander off. This will mimic the panic decoys some players drop to try and body block opponents, and should allow you to harass while getting away cleanly.

In the above gank, I notified the Nazeebo before I came down. He used his Zombie wall to hold down Valla while I repositioned and threw down my Decoy. The Valla reacted to this devoyby attacking it and then vaulted away from the situation. Unfortunately for her, I was already here still in stealth which allowed me to get a free Snipe and Envenom on her, ensuring the kill.

Teamfights As Nova

Positioning during teamfights as Nova is possibly the most difficult part of her gameplay. Running from lane to lane ganking allows Nova to pick what fights she wants to be involved in, while teamfights force her to become involved with people she can’t kill. Your primary focus in teamfights is fluid, but it usually should start with the enemy burst assassin. Not only does killing the enemy Jaina or Kael'thas stop them from substantially hurting the your team, they also lack abilities to quickly escape once you begin your attack. From there, focus on the healer so that they need to use their abilities to save themselves before transitioning over to their sustained DPS.

Of course, it would be rather hard for Nova to do all that in one sitting before being blown up. As Nova, you need to weave yourself in and out of teamfights, using stealth as way to force the enemy out of position. If the fight begins and ETC rushes your team, the enemy team will try to use him as a wall and harass your team from range. However, if you’re able to burst down one enemy in the back of their team and Bolt away, you force them to get closer to your team so that they can use their Warrior to protect them. Once you open up with Decoy/Snipe, run away into the brush so that you can quickly recloak. Continue this harassment until your team has the numbers advantage, at which point open up on the nearest target.

Conclusion

Nova gives her team incredible lane pressure that encourages her team to play around objectives due to the vision she can give her team when cloaked. While a bad Nova player can be almost completely irrelevant during the late game, a strong Nova can eliminate the enemy DPS before fights even start and can give her team almost complete control over the map. By picking your battles carefully, you can control the pace and shape of the game.

Tristam Mizak