Why does Nova draw so much hatred?

[ro9ue]

I'm not the best Nova by any means but I'm decent. She seems like she's the only hero that I play where after the games over, someone from the other team feels compelled to whisper me and trash talk me.

Look I get it. Her whole playstyle is about just popping out of nowhere and 1 shotting you at half health with Snipe. Seems annoying when you're on the receiving end (I've faced plenty of Novas), but really that's her only capability. She has little to no defense. If she misses Snipe, shes a sitting duck other than a well played Decoy, and frankly if you're Nova in a team fight you're often trying to hang out on the edge trying to get a Snipe, and the farther back you are, the harder your shot is.

I also see a lot of people on my team when they are getting killed by Nova often saying "Nova OP bullshit" or something along those lines.

Is she really OP? IMO, I don't think so. But there's no other hero in the game I've seen get people so pissed.

[Stormcall]

People don't like her cause she has burst but nothing else. No sustained damage, no wave clear whatsoever.

[Pandragon]

She gets a lot of hate because the majority of nova players goes "omg op jfjdhfkijs!!11!!" and then feed with her. Because they have no clue about positioning. Or they will sit in stealth and let their team mates die so they can get the kill. I have saved the lives of a lot of people by throwing my clone at the enemy and making them back off knowing im there.

I get a lot of hate messages when I choose Nova, especially in hero league. Then im being praised by the end of the game when im top on hero damage running around globalling people. Positioning. I have killed squishies as the entire enemy team runs by me in a group and get away.

[Henako]

She's frustrating, but Zeratul is just a better pick.

[Deleted]

She can do very little siege damage, she doesn't have lane presence/lane clear, she can just about solo camps with decoy but other people can do it faster and without leaving themselves anywhere near as vulnerable as she is, and realistically she can't stick around for long in team fights because she's made of paper. Her ults aren't anything to write home about, one is pretty easy to dodge and the other can be blocked/locks her in place.

If your after a stealth character that can dick around with the enemy team and get solo ganks, go for Zeratul, because he's actually useful in other areas.

I love fight against Nova's, you must be at quite a low rank of play if your seeing people bitch about playing against them, if I see a Nova pick in Hero League on the enemy team, its generally a good sign. Ofcourse there are the few players who are beasts at Nova who'll make the game hell, but there are those for every Hero.

[Nikkaszal]

The only people who call Nova OP are the ones who have not yet learned to:

(A) sit in minion waves as cover
(B) not overextend
(C) look for the shimmer
(D) take Spell Shield

Incidently, these are also the people who save up gold/money to buy her and think she equals insta-win and then just suuuuuuuuck completely.

[bloodmoth13]

Shes horrible to play against, i have never felt that a nova has deserved a kill against me.

Lets list some reasons she feels horrible:
Insane range - 1 global, 1 near global and a snipe that hits from a screen away
Utterly confusing - her holo decoy doesnt take skill, its just something that muddles the game up. it doesnt help that it does everything nova does, as in it casts every one of her abilities. half the time you catch a nova out of stealth its a fucking decoy, i have no idea why it stealths. This might not seem like much but shes a high priority target that most of the time you have to refuse to target because its a decoy. This is bad enough, sure there are tricks to figure what one it is, but generally its just too late because:
Insane Burst - She has just ridiculous burst! like dropping a tank to half HP levels of stupid burst, Its not hard to land either like some champs and its 0 risk because she has Insane range and whats more, she gets a free shot to use it every single time because she has:
Stealth - Stealth wouldnt be so bad if they couldnt use it while mounted, but whenever you face a nova, you better pray that you have a damn easy to land skillshot. This passive basically means that you always get to react first as the enemy cant attack you untill they land a skillshot on you, which is hard because you are difficult to see and you are on a fucking horse that makes you run super fast! the fact is, if you ever get hit while stealthed and mounted, you are a bad player, because you have EVERYTHING going in your favor to avoid getting hit!
Low Skill Requirement - Because of stealth, range and speed of her skillshot, and the size/range of orbital strike or range and targeted nature of her tripple tap, she is almost always granted 100% damage application unless she is really bad. Her abilities arent hard to land like nazeebos for instance. Basically, her abilities are FAR too strong for how easy they are to use, to dodge them you must anticipate where she is (hard because she has stealth) and have jedi like reflexes.
Map Presence - And because she is stealthed, she can go anywhere on the map she fucking well pleases, even inside your base. There are no safe spots to hide from her because nothing destealths her other than player activity or if she decides. this paired with her ridiculous range leads to getting sniped while you should be safe with out her putting herself at risk.
0 Risk - Nova rarely has to put herself at risk as she has incredibly long range and is nearly impossible to attack while she is mounted and stealthed.

Its not just one of these things alone its the fact that they are all together. it creates a gameplay environment where you cant take risks because an invisible nova might be anywhere. This leads to an unfun gameplay environment where instead of taking risks you always have to play like a paranoid schizophrenic, assuming the enemy is everywhere at once. Its not a matter of balance, shes balanced by being shit at doing anything meaningful in the game like waveclear or taking camps or objectives or arguably team fights, so she gets a free pass to be as toxic as possible.

She just isnt fun to play against, even after she exposes herself, because of her range she will be distant enough to not worry about a counter attack, throw up 50 path blocking skillshot soaking identical decoys and slow you if you get close enough anyway, and you only have 6 seconds to retaliate which could be a mistake because if she hit her spells you are half HP and risk getting one shot with her next salvo, giving you a very small and risky time frame to kill her, while she can choose to chase and kill you if you try to escape.
It doesnt matter that after she kills you she cant take camps or push lanes or contribute to winning, because all you see is the death screen. watching the death screen isnt fun, and thats what nova does, she makes the game not fun!

I guess, consider the amount of gameplay her victims get before nova kills them. none. you just get shat on instantly from nowhere and cant do a single thing about it because you are dead. Personally i play HotS because i like the gameplay, nova spoils that for me.

- - - Updated - - -

The only people who call Nova OP are the ones who have not yet learned to:

(A) sit in minion waves as cover
(B) not overextend
(C) look for the shimmer
(D) take Spell Shield

Incidently, these are also the people who save up gold/money to buy her and think she equals insta-win and then just suuuuuuuuck completely.

A: GL laning against a jaina or kael thas and doing that
B: This is basically condoning boring and passive gameplay, neither option is fun, if im sitting back under tower doing nothing im not having fun AND IM NOT PLAYING THE GAME.
C: its not as easy to see as people make out, especially if you have poor vision to begin with (i have irlens syndrome which makes my vision shimmer by default). its just shitty clarity, and even if you see the shimmer, what then? you need easy to land skillshots to dismount her or you just run away with your tail between your legs and camp your safe zone. Basically she is immune to auto attack and being dismounted. Not fun
D: Which you get at level 16, and may have core talents that compete for it. Not fun.

Its not even a matter of her being OP, its just that she isnt fun to play against. i can win 100% of my games against her and still hate playing her. i can destealth her every single time she rides past and i would still hate playing her. fact is, her counters arent fun and lack true mechanical gameplay counters, her counters are strictly non-gameplay related, which is why she gets the well deserved hate.

[xero5141]

I'm not the best Nova by any means but I'm decent. She seems like she's the only hero that I play where after the games over, someone from the other team feels compelled to whisper me and trash talk me.

Look I get it. Her whole playstyle is about just popping out of nowhere and 1 shotting you at half health with Snipe. Seems annoying when you're on the receiving end (I've faced plenty of Novas), but really that's her only capability. She has little to no defense. If she misses Snipe, shes a sitting duck other than a well played Decoy, and frankly if you're Nova in a team fight you're often trying to hang out on the edge trying to get a Snipe, and the farther back you are, the harder your shot is.

I also see a lot of people on my team when they are getting killed by Nova often saying "Nova OP bullshit" or something along those lines.

Is she really OP? IMO, I don't think so. But there's no other hero in the game I've seen get people so pissed.

It's just frustrating for them I think, she certainly isn't OP. The amount of Novas I play against that just feed all day long is ridiculous, people make Nova sound easy but in reality I think she has quite a high skill cap. I don't agree that her only capability is one snipe and run away, with the anti-armor round talent (or whatever it's called) her chase/stutter-step is ridiculous.

Just like if you pick Nova in HL you instantly get flak, but personally, Nova is one of the only heroes I'm almost guaranteed to do 20k+ more hero dmg than the next person and take place in 90%+ of the kills.

Also, with envenom and a properly placed triple tap, I've 1v2'd plenty of people, which is more than I can say about most other heroes.

[NoiseTank13]

Because she's a QM pubstomp hero with little value in high end play.

[Deleted]

B: This is basically condoning boring and passive gameplay, neither option is fun, if im sitting back under tower doing nothing im not having fun AND IM NOT PLAYING THE GAME.

Spoken like every Illidan ever.

There's a difference between sitting under your towers and overextending by sitting in there half of the lane.

Nova is not the only hero you shouldn't overextend against, by a longshot, and if you haven't learned how to not overextend, then your not going to get far. Whether that's "fun" or not means fuck all when it comes down to it. Winning is fun, losing because some tard wants to lane against a team with Nova, Zera, Butcher, Diablo and Kerrigan isn't fun.

[cashballer]

She's a lot of fun and is capable of carrying pretty hard, but a very needy hero (she doesn't work well with/against many team comps). I always assume that's why my teammates moan when I consider picking her. Recently I almost never see her picked unless I'm the one playing her -- maybe I'm just a noob though.

[Deleted]

She's a lot of fun and is capable of carrying pretty hard, but a very needy hero (she doesn't work well with/against many team comps). I always assume that's why my teammates moan when I consider picking her. Recently I almost never see her picked unless I'm the one playing her -- maybe I'm just a noob though.

She really isn't.

[Nikkaszal]

-snip-

You would be the person I am describing, yes. Once you move into medium-level play - or hell, even play her yourself - you will see how easy it is to shut out a Nova. All that "zero skill, zero risk" business you're talking about is 100% crap

What you're describing is a refusal to adapt. Just like it's super common knowledge to not bunch up when vs'ing Jaina/Kael, it's HotS 101 to not blindly go solo and overextend when you don't see Nova/Zera pop up elsewhere on your map

[RH92]

Because she is one trick pony and is attracting a ton of bad players fed up with being ganked by her.

[Gsara]

I love it when the other team picks Nova, I dont think Ive lost a game to a team with Nova in a pretty long time now. She is usually dead soon as she breaks stealth or needs to run away with no hp. She also has zero map presence but she is really good for pub stomping QM though.

[Demetrion]

Little pub-stomping annoyance. Nothing else. Zeratul on the other hand...

[Lillyth]

Because people are too lazy to counterplay and blame the game rather than improving their gameplay.

[ophion1990]

She's the rogue of HotS. Just look at how much shit rogues get, even when they're "only okay" there's BabyRage everywhere. People won't be happy until she loses stealth, gets a significant damage reduction and snipe has a chance to ricochet and kill Nova instead of damaging an opponent.

[Tenjen]

Snipers and steathies are universally despised more than any other class or category in mp's across all genres

[Banchou]

Nova is the "Newbie Check Hero", while in good hands she can be a real threat (very rare), most people use her to curbstomp newbies on quick match - this happens because till you see the shimmer from her stealth by yourself she is really invisible for you + her burst damage. When you finally see her shimmer, she (and Zerathul) start to be really easy to spot aside heavy team fights situations.

In other words, she make the newbies really mad to a point to flood the foruns with "NERF NOVA!!!1!shiftone1!"...