Back when I first played Heroes of the Storm, I played quite a bit with Ed, who you may know as Grainy­rice.

This was during a Nova free week, and Ed appeared to have fallen in love with Nova. He played her every game.

Not long after, Ed stopped playing Heroes of the Storm. Because of this, I will most likely remember him as the Nova player.

Unfortunately … he was awful.

He would come to my lane, sit inside a bush, and wait for the perfect moment. The perfect moment obviously didn’t come, because he needs to take the initiative to set up a situation and reposition himself to deal damage. So, because the perfect moment didn’t happen, he would just walk away.

A minute or so later, he would come back, and do the same thing. Sit in the bush, do absolutely nothing, then go to a different lane.

I eventually got so infuriated at his stupidity that I told him to always do something when he comes to my lane, and never to just sit there in stealth doing nothing.

So he did. He came to my lane, sat there for an extremely long time, watched me fight and still did nothing … then sniped a minion, mounted up, and left my lane.

I was a little upset when Ed stopped playing Heroes of the Storm because I had one less friend with whom I can play the game and gain 50% bonus experience for my matches.

But then I think back to these matches, remember how awful Ed was at Nova, and then my sadness all goes away.

Fast forward a good amount of time and I start playing Heroes of the Storm a lot more seriously, grinding my way up to Level 40 and Rank 1.

During my journey, I encountered a lot of Novas, but most of them were also terrible. They would walk out of the bush to gank me, but I would see the shimmer of their stealth, hit them with a skillshot to reveal them, then pummel them with ten times more damage than she dealt to me. Nova was basically ganking her own self by coming to my lane.

So, as you can imagine, I’ve always had a pretty bad impression of Nova. I assumed she just wasn’t really that great of a hero.

… Until I started playing her myself.

If you can spot stealth heroes, Nova doesn’t really become much of a problem when you’re just regularly laning. But, when you’re already engaged in a fight, it becomes a lot harder to keep track of her because you’re so focused on trading damage and using abilities. That’s when Nova can go in and get the kill.

If you can’t spot stealth heroes, then you’re basically screwed in the hands of a skilled Nova. There isn’t really much more to say about that.

During early- and mid-game, when I play Nova, I stomp on most people. I keep track of who can see stealth and who can’t, and target those who can’t. Once I’ve devastated them enough that they hide behind their wall of turrets, I go to those who can see stealth and be a little bit more patient, waiting for them to be distracted by something before going in.

But I always encountered a problem. My late-game performance always went downhill. I could barely as­sas­sinate anyone for some reason, and I couldn’t figure out why.

But then, I discovered the importance of clones and the clone-related talents.

I’ve always thought that using her clone was a waste of mana. Why not just go in, use your damage, then walk out? What’s the point of the clone?

Well apparently, a lot of people don’t realize that Nova’s clones don’t have markings on the mini-map, and a lot of people focus down and try to kill the clones. On top of that, once you get the damage talents, the clones do enough damage to make up for the small bit of health with which your victim would have otherwise survived.

I started using my clones more intelligently, placing them down first and/or revealing my stealth at the same time as my clones so three Novas pop up at the same time, and the confusion factor has really been helping me out. The clone damage is just a bonus on top of that.

Since taking clone talents and managing my clone ability usage, my Nova performance has increased drastically.

I took a pretty funny screenshot of Quick Match grouping me with three supports.

(Click to enlarge)

Although I haven’t been streaming or uploading videos of any Nova games because I consider them practice games and I’m still learning Nova, I think I’m going to get there soon.