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

1…456810

Comments

  • Ruinate
    Ruinate Posts: 528 Critical Contributor
    Now that he's been out for a bit, what do people think his build should be? Mine is nowhere near usable and I see that setting up his black for damage is a chore, but I'm still thinking 3/5/5. 884 strike tiles is really good isn't it? My thought is that mowing people down with strike tiles might be better than possibly wasting time by sending targets airborne. I don't really know.
  • jtmagee
    jtmagee Posts: 158 Tile Toppler
    553 due to how little you will get black to fire.
  • Lopan15
    Lopan15 Posts: 225 Tile Toppler
    jtmagee wrote:
    553 due to how little you will get black to fire.[/quote

    I'm coming to this conclusion. Been running my 4-4-4 nova with OML and JG and it's working well, but two PVE runs against top nodes and OML/nova on essentials and I still have only made the stacked black go off twice. Maybe if I run with 3* bullseye I could get it a little more often and not lose all the dagger damage after casting. I think even then it's iffy. U have to go red yellow black or red black black, but by the time you get AP for the third, at least one of your daggers has been removed (usually 3 or more in my experience)
  • spectator
    spectator Posts: 395 Mover and Shaker
    red damage only increase with covers not levels is that correct?
  • trat73
    trat73 Posts: 79 Match Maker
    Been running my 5/5/1 Nova out there with Prof X and OML with good success in PVE. The few times I've gotten the Nuke black to go off was pretty much just clean-up duty at the end of a match
  • bbf2
    bbf2 Posts: 109 Tile Toppler
    They make changes to him with every new patch, I think he was released a bit prematurely.
  • dokiy
    dokiy Posts: 238 Tile Toppler
    So my Nova is under covered at this point, but I'm having fun running him with SW, and 3 star.png Bullseye. SW generates purpleflag.png for Bullseye to knock out the strike tiles Nova creates. Then, after one kill from Bullseye, there's a good chance Nova's blackflag.png will hit hard.
  • TxMoose
    TxMoose Posts: 4,319 Chairperson of the Boards
    undercovered hes a blast with GR on trivial nodes.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    I just maxed my Nova and I have to say I am very pleased with his performance. Nova, Rulk and Doc Ock got me through four straight PvE clears without using a single health pack, and Nova did most of the heavy lifting. He's not unlike Iceman since Nova can also damage one enemy (with Nova Blast) and immobilize another (with Rocket Man). Having it on two different colors makes it a lot easier to pull off too, even if it does less damage.
    I have a 5/5/3 build too. It's easy to get Rocket Man going, it's a lot harder to trigger the secondary black.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Glad to hear it Quebbster. Nova seemed useful and interesting when he was introduced. He's fast and has a unique color mix for 4* land. I look forward to using him in 2017 when he is covered (still only 2/0/2 for me now).

    I do wonder about the utility of the good newer 4*s (punisher/nova/quake). They all seem good. But not so much better than the current top tier to justify a huge amount of effort. If you already have jg/rulk/iceman/cyclops/imhb maxed, then I don't see much extra value to the newbies. They are certainly good, and extra bodies help save healthpacks, but it's not going to really change one's play experience.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    I left Nova on defense in PvP last night, and he definitely attracted more attacks than Hulkbuster would have. On the other hand, I did get a few defensive wins and some juicy retaliations, so I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.
    I'll likely switch to Hulkbuster for the final climb though. Nova is certainly good enough to use in PvP when no other member of Team Red is boosted, but I doubt I'd break him out when he's not boosted - I can definitely do that with Hulkbuster.
  • Meander
    Meander Posts: 267 Mover and Shaker
    I think people are looking at the blacktile.png / redtile.png debate incorrectly. The precis states that red's damage is fixed for the secondary ability, so the only thing you're changing is the strike tiles, which go from (values at maxed) 126 to 198 or a boost of 144 total. Meanwhile black goes from 3 126 strength tiles to 4 221 tiles, or from 378 additional to 884. Even if the black secondary never fires, 5 black all day.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2016
    Meander wrote:
    I think people are looking at the blacktile.png / redtile.png debate incorrectly. The precis states that red's damage is fixed for the secondary ability, so the only thing you're changing is the strike tiles, which go from (values at maxed) 126 to 198 or a boost of 144 total. Meanwhile black goes from 3 126 strength tiles to 4 221 tiles, or from 378 additional to 884. Even if the black secondary never fires, 5 black all day.
    Rocket Man's damage increases with the number of covers. I checked. I can fool around a bit in the Simulator and give some numbers.

    Rocket Man level 5: 4618 damage
    Rocket Man level 4: 2374 damage
    Rocket Man level 3: 1251 damage

    This is for a level 272 Nova, but as you can see each new cover almost doubles the damage. Keep in mind that Rocket Man's secondary effect is a lot easier to access too since you just need one black strike tile on board and The strike tiles stay on the board.
  • Meander
    Meander Posts: 267 Mover and Shaker
    Quebbster wrote:
    Meander wrote:
    I think people are looking at the blacktile.png / redtile.png debate incorrectly. The precis states that red's damage is fixed for the secondary ability, so the only thing you're changing is the strike tiles, which go from (values at maxed) 126 to 198 or a boost of 144 total. Meanwhile black goes from 3 126 strength tiles to 4 221 tiles, or from 378 additional to 884. Even if the black secondary never fires, 5 black all day.
    Rocket Man's damage increases with the number of covers. I checked. I can fool around a bit in the Simulator and give some numbers.

    Interesting. Please do, this could drastically alter how I approach him. I drew 3 red covers today making my build 4/2/3. This makes the draws seem not as bad.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Meander wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Meander wrote:
    I think people are looking at the blacktile.png / redtile.png debate incorrectly. The precis states that red's damage is fixed for the secondary ability, so the only thing you're changing is the strike tiles, which go from (values at maxed) 126 to 198 or a boost of 144 total. Meanwhile black goes from 3 126 strength tiles to 4 221 tiles, or from 378 additional to 884. Even if the black secondary never fires, 5 black all day.
    Rocket Man's damage increases with the number of covers. I checked. I can fool around a bit in the Simulator and give some numbers.

    Interesting. Please do, this could drastically alter how I approach him. I drew 3 red covers today making my build 4/2/3. This makes the draws seem not as bad.
    Just updated my post with some numbers.
  • pabasa130
    pabasa130 Posts: 208 Tile Toppler
    I don't understand his appeal. Mine is at 2/3/3 and I tried to pair him with Rhulk and Doc Oc, but with his black nuke being too difficult to launch, he effectively only has one nuke in his yellow. And with unfortunate Rhulk at 5/3/5 I really am missing out on a lot of damage from abilities.

    Is his red's ability to take out one enemy from the fight that valuable? Is it his ability to spam cheap strike tiles?

    Help!
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    pabasa130 wrote:
    I don't understand his appeal. Mine is at 2/3/3 and I tried to pair him with Rhulk and Doc Oc, but with his black nuke being too difficult to launch, he effectively only has one nuke in his yellow. And with unfortunate Rhulk at 5/3/5 I really am missing out on a lot of damage from abilities.

    Is his red's ability to take out one enemy from the fight that valuable? Is it his ability to spam cheap strike tiles?

    Help!
    While boosted in Prodigal Sun, 5 cover Rocket Man on a champion Nova deals around 8000 damage. That's pretty dang good for just two red matches. More damage than 5 yellow does, in fact, but it doesn't put out any strike tiles. It's pretty useful.
    I Think he's more of a PvE guy though. He's just not scary on defense in PvP and can struggle against high level PvP opponents.
  • danielrandkai
    danielrandkai Posts: 90 Match Maker
    This may have been addressed already, but I find him an excellent way to get rid of problematic characters like Jean Grey or Deadpool/Thing. Unsurprisingly, having IM40 give him a jillion red is useful for clearing the board with rocket man and setting up to finish them off.
  • ZeroKarma
    ZeroKarma Posts: 513 Critical Contributor
    I only just champed Nova yesterday and he is part of my PvE go-to tandem with OML. 3rd guy can be Iceman, IF, or JG depending on what utility you need.

    He is essentially Iceman in opposite colors only faster. You hit yellow or OML black and you can stun and damage a character for 6ap. It is much like Iceman blue only you aren't waiting for 12. Drawback is you only get 2 turn stun (where the target can't be damaged) and a bit more than half the damage. The two together can lock down nodes very fast.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    ZeroKarma wrote:
    I only just champed Nova yesterday and he is part of my PvE go-to tandem with OML. 3rd guy can be Iceman, IF, or JG depending on what utility you need.

    He is essentially Iceman in opposite colors only faster. You hit yellow or OML black and you can stun and damage a character for 6ap. It is much like Iceman blue only you aren't waiting for 12. Drawback is you only get 2 turn stun (where the target can't be damaged) and a bit more than half the damage. The two together can lock down nodes very fast.

    I don't have nova or iceman anywhere near maxed yet, so this discussion is mostly thought experiment for me. But I would think that Iceman is generally a superior character because he has (i) a longer, easier to use stun, (ii) self-acceleration for blue, and (iii) a potentially high damage aoe.

    Nova has decent speed on all 3 skills and strike tile generation, so I suspect he plays well as a #2 on lots of teams. But if I were designing a team around a #1, I would think Iceman is the better choice of #1. They are both a bit squishy though (at least relative to the rest of the 4* tier), so they probably benefit from pairing with a tank to soak up damage.

    OML/Ice/Nova does sound like an awesome lineup.

Categories