**** Nova (Sam Alexander) ****

hopper1979

Nova red is better for control and his red is much cheaper, Riri is better for damage.It all depends on your play style either way you get his strike tiles out and they are both solid.  Personally I would rather juggle 2 people than do her 2 person aoe, you can juggle with her as well and you can basically control the match and rarely taking any damage.  When you are down to 1 target her red is superior.  

maguirenumber6

Hi Nova fans - what’s his best build?

Roland113

Depends on your needs.  Personally, I usually run him at 3/5/5 and tend to use him with other red users.  There are certainly times that I'll go 5/3/5 if I have him paired with say Wasp or someone else that's going to use yellow over him.

Dormammu

Nova really doesn't have a bad build or a best build. I tend to leave him at 5/5/3 because I usually only use him when he's boosted and his red/yellow both pack a wallop boosted. At that point his black is just there to get strikes out for his red if I can't get his yellow off.

Roland113

Dormammu said:

Nova really doesn't have a bad build or a best build. I tend to leave him at 5/5/3 because I usually only use him when he's boosted and his red/yellow both pack a wallop boosted. At that point his black is just there to get strikes out for his red if I can't get his yellow off.

So, I went over to the Gamependium and the 5/5/3 build is waaaaaay more popular than the ones that I use.  Sometimes I find it fascinating the way that different people build / play.  I almost always favor strike tiles and consistent damage over a big nuke every day.  

I came up a little later than the senior vets.  When I hit the four star land, C4rol, Medusa, Grocket and Gamora were the meta.  I wonder how much my timing has to do with the way that I use Nova versus the majority of users on here.  

BlackBoltRocks

Most people play Nova the way Dormammu described. His Yellow does very solid damage at 5 covers, and can create Strike tiles depending on your teammates. Meanwhile, Black has the potential to do huge damage, but it requires quite a bit of setup, even at 5 covers, and gets rid of all your Strike tiles. Hence Black becomes the sacrificial lamb, and exists mostly as a setup to his Red, which acts as a 2-turn pseudo-stun with good damage after that.

sinnerjfl

Have to agree that 5/5/3 is the standard build. Both red and yellow are much better at 5 covers while black requires more setup and removes the strike tiles. The main reason you bring Nova is because of the strikes so removing them is a bit counter-intuitive.

You can probably play him 3/5/5 or 4/4/5, but its less effective. You probably do more dmg for the number of turns that strike tiles are on the board than with the black nuke in the end.

iron-n-wine

enjoyed using my recently champed Nova in the recent event where he was the essential 4* - have to agree that 5/5/3 was my preferred build too

hopper1979

It all depends, for pvp 5/5/3 is better due to the knockup ability of the red.  But for pve when you are grinding through nodes I prefer 3/5/5 and I pair him with C&D you get the strike tiles out from his black even quicker and when C&D starts putting down attack tiles they do much more damage, use his stun when necessary or switch forms to generate more yellow if you are getting close to the conditions for the nuke.  He is very flexible probably still the best strike tile generator in the game.