Nova - Non-channeled abilities and stats

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I think Nova is an interesting frame to build because I can never truly get everything I want with her; this means that in any given build I have to make strategic decisions about what to give up, and this results in builds that feel truly personalized to my tastes.  The other day I found a new build option for her that I personally hadn't seen before, so I wanted to share it with the community.

Some quick setup to get everyone on the same page:

• Nova's Null Star ability gives her a number of orbs determined by her Duration.
• When you get close enough to an enemy, you lose orbs at a fixed rate as they leave your body to attack enemies.
• Each orb gives +5% damage reduction up to a cap of 90%, so having more orbs is appealing.
• Nova has an augment for her Molecular Prime ability (Molecular Fission), which makes it so that the death of an enemy primed by the ability dynamically generates 2 Null Star orbs.
• While it doesn't explicitly state this on Molecular Fission, players have noted that this dynamic generation of orbs cannot result in a total orb amount greater than the amount from a Null Star cast.

So I wondered: if Nova's Duration changes after a Null Star cast, will that affect the amount of Null Star orbs that I can generate from Molecular Fission?  (If you want to play along at home, note what you think the answer is now!)

Personally, I hypothesized that while Nova would never be forced to shed orbs due to decreases in Duration, whether Molecular Fission would generate new orbs would be determined by her Duration at the time of any given kill.  It was a bit tricky to determine because the only tool I had to test this was Molt Efficiency — while Shields are Active, gain 6% Ability Duration per second, up to a maximum of 36% — but the result was clear and consistent: my hypothesis was wrong, and the maximum amount of Null Star orbs is locked-in at the time of the Null Star cast.

This means that temporary buffs that enhance Duration like Molt Efficiency and Ris Invocation can be used to cast a high-orb Null Star, and then Molecular Fission can be used to maintain that same number of orbs even when such buffs are lost.  This provides Nova players with some ways to free up Warframe mod slots while still reliably maintaining a high-DR Null Star.

I'm not sure if this has ramifications on any other frames or abilities, but I thought this was worth sharing, especially since it wasn't recorded on the wiki.  At the very least, I hope inspires some folks to try new things!

[Xzorn]

Yea, Nova is an older frame. You can specialize those a lot more than ones of the past years due to "synergy".

I personally just dump Ability Range and use a shard to hit her 18 cap. I also prefer to use Neutron Star over the M Prime augment. You don't have to level the augment if you're short on capacity but more importantly it gives you full control over your count which you keep more often because they only have a 4m range.

Antimatter Drop got out scaled years ago so I use Xata's Whisper for now.

[Packetdancer]

There are more optimal options, but I still take joy in putting Smite over Antimatter Drop on a Slowva build, just to play explosive dominoes. Sometimes "optimal" is lower priority than "fun."

[FiveN9ne]

I don't dump range, but i also don't go all out in duration. I do not want an 80+ meter molecular prime. 40-50m is good enough. I also do not care about the DR from orbs since it works on health only and i don't see nova as a health face tank frame. 

My favorite way to play her is with silence. Things that are caught in her molecular prime and then silenced is basically like a better gloom. Plus you can reset it going back and forth with portal. Reave is also nice in tighter spaces, with some viral priming you one shot anything that is affected by molecular prime.

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14 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I also prefer to use Neutron Star over the M Prime augment. You don't have to level the augment if you're short on capacity but more importantly it gives you full control over your count which you keep more often because they only have a 4m range.

I enjoy that there are two augments that aim to tackle the same challenge in different ways!  Personally, I love to get up close and melee, so even with my low range I regularly lose orbs.  With this play style, Neutron Star would mean I'd have to recast every few seconds to maintain 90% DR (going from 18 to 16 orbs results in taking twice as much damage), while Molecular Fission keeps me topped off (especially since it triggers off of teammates kills as well as my own).  So that works better for my needs, though I in no way want to suggest that either is objectively better than the other; they both have their pros and cons!

Since I discovered that Molt Efficiency can lock-in my orb cap, I've been toying around with a 21 orb build (which also uses 4 Tau-forged Duration shards), and while the extra 3 orbs don't provide additional DR, they do act as a buffer so that I can lose 3 orbs before having a DR drop, which is pretty comfy.  Not sure if I'll stick with it long-term, but it's a different vibe.

[Voltage]

I've found over several years of playing Nova that it's more reliable to manage shield gating and evasion through Escape Velocity/Wormhole and Rolling Guard than relying on Orbs for DR. I also got quite disappointed that Molecular Fission is an augment for Molecular Prime and not a core mechanic or a Null Star augment. Nova feels robbed of a proper 4th ability augment if I'm being honest.

I'm always using Nova with atleast 145% range just for Wormhole. The reward for well-aimed portals is always satisfying, especially when I'm passing a Titania player in a Fissure or something.

Edited January 12 by Voltage

[Xzorn]

Both Nova and Rhino got robbed when it came to simply re-casting an ability. Yet I dare not wish a rework upon them.

I still use DR when possible. When Rolling Guard came out I quickly found ways of abusing it but I'm too used to dodging damage and CC. Plenty of games use dodge in this way with iframes and such so I can't stop myself. My dodge is always the same key in every game. The muscle memory is so deep I have clips of me preventing self-damage death by dodging and spamming dodge to mitigation Bleed ticks. My very first Warframe video was about how Sprint Speed and Dodge interact with each other.

So yea, my Nova stays Vitality + QT. Heh, QT stagger being yet another thing you could avoid by dodging.

Now that I think about it. They've really sucked out some skill plays from the game over time.

Edited January 12 by Xzorn