Savage Silence Nova... This is probably my most chill playstyle.

[NovusKnight]

A long time fan of Banshee, I learned the value of this often overlooked ability, Savage Silence, in how it can keep you alive via either stunlocks, or its combination with Skiajati - a blade everyone absolutely has - to grant invisibility.

Nova being the excelent frame she is, I decided to try and bring her to the next level. she has mobility, insane damage, and one of the best debuffs in the game, along with some room for creative use of abilities (portaling nukes for instance). but she's frail as all hell.

I tried to make her 1 good, but it just doesn't seem super useful even in ideal circumstances. adaptation + her 4 augment + max duration... and I STILL found her to be feeble.

So I went with pseudo-stealth, with invisibility. I almost gave her ivara arrows - which would work as well - but then I remembered something interesting.

You know how Nova applies a 75% Slow? you know how Savage Silence instantly results in a stun? this stun lasts about... 3 seconds? thing is, enemies will be slowed by 75%. this quadruples the duration of this stun, bringing it into the 12 second range. it also opens them up for finishers. You literally can just become Ash. see a deadly enemy? teleport, stun automatically, press X. instakill. Except unlike Ash, the enemies nearby are now ALSO stunned and one finisher away from death. FOR TWELVE. DAMN. SECONDS.

consider that Nova can chain-teleport, and you probably begin to see how surprisingly broken this is. she is... well... untouchable. enemies take twelve whole seconds to even BEGIN to react to her being nearby... in that time, you can easily nuke them like 5 times with AMD. and if this is NOT ENOUGH... run up to a survivor and go invisible, giving you room to teleport away.

hilariously, under Silence enemies won't notice gunfire, won't hear explosions, or even react to being damaged... and during their stun they DO NOT NOTICE YOU. I'm getting stealth kills with AMD. like, what the hell?!

...Did I just... turn Nova into a portal-happy assassin?

I am honestly starting to think this is the overall most versatily augment to give her, since it just complements many of her uses so well. Thoughts? what did you infuse into yours?

[AlphaPHENIX]

14 minutes ago, NovusKnight said:

Thoughts? what did you infuse into yours?

Tesla...just because.
I would honestly infuse anything into her 1 over building for maximum damage reduction. Still thinking of what else to put onto the other configs.

And cool build. _{don't mind if I barrow}

[UdsUds]

I uses this in my daily conservatory in Vallis. Sadly sometimes I forgot that my first ability is up and thus killing the wild life.

[NinjaZeku]

15 minutes ago, NovusKnight said:

frail as all hell

What content are we talking about here? Like, multiple hours into Mot or something crazy like that?

Between 90% damage reduction from her 1, bonus Armor from Arcane Guardian, free heals from Magus Repair,
plus of course the whole 75% reduced enemy DPS thing as well as enemies dying faster / easier,
my Nova is just nowhere near what I'd call frail, at all. *shrug*

But anyway, I also considered Silence, along with (Seeking) Shuriken and Pillage, to replace Worm Hole (because Void Dash),
but ultimately went with Mind Control mostly for the lulz, yay 90 seconds BFFs :D
(Just ... DE, can you make MC cleanse debuffs, like being slowed / disarmed / whatnot, on the target? Plskthx.)

[NovusKnight]

58 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

Between 90% damage reduction from her 1, bonus Armor from Arcane Guardian, free heals from Magus Repair,
plus of course the whole 75% reduced enemy DPS thing as well as enemies dying faster / easier,
my Nova is just nowhere near what I'd call frail, at all. *shrug*

 

I likely failed to convey my feelings towards her tanking abilities. it's just... how to put this? it forces me to kind of overkill my build with duration, sacrificing other areas that I require for my preferred playstyle, all to give me a constantly decaying DR that sits atop low stats. I have to constantly, repeatedly micromanage it and the purpose of DR is "not dying". Turns out, hard CC + invisibility are ALSO very very very very very very good at "not dying", and that's why of all the things I could have chosen to remove in Nova, I removed her 1, which is seemingly considered by a ton of people as an excelent subsume ability to give other warframes extra tanking...

ultimately TLDR, it takes a ton of work and investment to do something I can achieve in 1 click and if necessary no mods using Banshee's Silence. Keep in mind, I kind of hate to forma stuff, warframes specifically because they take a LONG time to rank up. I forma'd Harrow 3 times, then I forma'd my Wisp 7 times (Umbral buil) and made her my workhorse, followed by Saryn (second umbral forma, but only 1 polarization done)... and literally not a single other warframe has been forma'd... and I really don't want to, because almost always, the results they give me long as I build them with two braincells are SO GOOD, I don't feel like it is worth the time and resource investment to forma my warframes the same way I forma my weapons - a good collection of them over 6 forma, and the vast majority between 3 and 4.

As you can imagine, without forma'ing Nova prime, it gets rather clunky and complicated to accomodate an optimal DR build for her, and again - the time and effort requried to make such an investment will only give me a feature - survivability - that I can easily achieve without going that long road. all it took was ranking up Entrati (a pleasant rie as I was - still am- far from burnt out from it due to my chill-ass relaxed pace and avoidance of forced grind) and a quick trip to the Dojo, where I built a spare banshee off of literal junk I didn't miss.

that's why I'm so generally dissatisfied with her 1 - I fear the way I phrased it could come across as implying it doesn't work or is not good.

[Xepthrichros]

DE: Is that fun I hear? Readies nerf hammer.

[NinjaZeku]

4 hours ago, NovusKnight said:

the time and effort requried to make such an investment will only give me a feature - survivability

I mean, you also get a better (further reaching) Molecular Prime.

Which doesn't just make yourself harder to kill, it also helps the rest of your Squad / makes missions in general easier.

4 hours ago, NovusKnight said:

warframes specifically [...] take a LONG time to rank up

You can reach Rank 30 on a Frame pretty fast on the right mission
(especially with an Affinity booster like the 3 days one DE handed out for the weekend, heh).

Just kill as much as you can yourself, since weapon kills give 50% Affinity to your Frame while ally kills give only 25%
(ability kills of course go 100% to your Frame but dunno how feasible that is on Nova, especially before AMD is ranked up).