Notes on Nona

[Rugged Lemmings]

Just wanted to post some notes from having played Nona a few times. Looking through some other topics it seems everyone agrees that she's really strong, but apparently some people are having trouble keeping her consistently strong throughout the entire game. This topic's for them.

From what I've seen, her missile turret build is the most consistent. How consistent is it? Well in (what I believe is) it's optimal form you don't even need a weapon, I banked/sold all of mine and ended the run with a foundry.

To be perfectly fair: I've only played with a focus on the melee mech once and I'm pretty sure I did it wrong. I'll update this topic once I've had another go at it.

The Spirit Blessing you'll be starting with is Fire Coverage, and next you'll be looking for Skill Freak if you can get your hands on it. The dream from there would be to fill your 3rd slot with Pair of Us. Pair of Us and Skill Freak can be swapped in priority, basically it depends on if you want your Q to do more damage (skill freak) or your turret's missile barrage to do more damage (Pair of Us).

The two core ascensions to the missile turret build are Heavy Modification and Shoulder Cannon Upgrade. Heavy Modification essentially lets you use your Q as a primary weapon, and Shoulder Canon Upgrade is how you give your turret it's missile barrage ability. From there...

Force Recovery increases Q's ammo and refills it every time your turret does a missile barrage. Really isn't that difficult at all to achieve infinite ammo on your Q, allowing you and your turret to just hose down enemies with rockets. And since you're going to be spamming your own missiles, the turret's barrage will be firing off often due to Shoulder Cannon Upgrade's cooldown reduction. Missile Storm and Heat Core are just straight up damage buffs.

Here's a few things to keep in mind while playing with the turret.
1: It gets a free Missile Barrage every time you reposition it, so don't forget to reposition it frequently, after all you've got 3 uses of redeployment.
2: Your rockets heal your turret quite substantially.
3: While the turret doesn't have a taunt, it can still make for a very good distraction.
4: While enemies can move through your turret, they can't shoot through it. But you can, allowing you to use the turret as deployable cover if necessary.
5: While it certainly isn't necessary since your Q is a machinegun rocket launcher and can easily function as your primary weapon, if you really want a weapon then Cloud Weaver is THE best weapon for this build. Throw it out and let it do it's thing while you're unloading with your rockets.

Focus your scroll collecting on skill damage as much as possible, and if you can pick up something that doubles your Q capacity all the better.

Extremely consistent and easy to use build. Just spam Q and put your turret in good spots to unleash hell. Basically you're just wanting to dump as many ascension points into the missile tree as you can get away with (the Self Destruct ascension is certainly nice, but not necessary for this build).

Gonna go try another run with the melee mech, now. See if I can't figure out how to get that thing up and running so it doesn't fall off hard in the mid to late game. I'll post a similar breakdown of it if I can get it working.

[Grimacetexas9]

actually, a pair of us give so much damage it's the one you'll want to get first imo.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Pair of Us needs time to scale while Fire Coverage is the stronger choice for the early game. It's still consistently strong through the entire run (+800% damage at max stacks...which you'll be at often thanks to Heavy Modification). That and while i've found it's not difficult to keep your turret topped off with HP since rockets heal it so much, in the late game there's still plenty of things that can take chunks out of it's health. This build is all about maintaining consistency, and Fire Coverage is the more consistent option.

Pair of Us is indeed very strong. By all means feel free to take it first. I'll be grabbing it first on this melee mech run.

[Grimacetexas9]

Originally posted by Rugged Lemmings:

Pair of Us needs time to scale while Fire Coverage is the stronger choice for the early game. It's still consistently strong through the entire run (+800% damage at max stacks...which you'll be at often thanks to Heavy Modification). That and while i've found it's not difficult to keep your turret topped off with HP since rockets heal it so much, in the late game there's still plenty of things that can take chunks out of it's health. This build is all about maintaining consistency, and Fire Coverage is the more consistent option.

Pair of Us is indeed very strong. By all means feel free to take it first. I'll be grabbing it first on this melee mech run.

also a pair of us allow you to not necerally lose the early game and need to reset if the game does not want to give you missiles upgrades which happened in lots of my runs, while a pair of us allow ur robot to be able to carry the entirety of stage 1 even without any missile upgrades.
if you are talking about consistency a pair of us is literally more consistent since grabbing it GUARANTEES that you will kill everything no matter what upgrades you get since it only scales with the numbers of goblets and not with what you get from them.
i just wish it was worded better in a "+1% damage TO IRON WING for each 1hp he has", currently it's just +1% damage and you'd think it would also apply to you

[Rugged Lemmings]

Originally posted by Grimacetexas9:

i just wish it was worded better in a "+1% damage TO IRON WING for each 1hp he has", currently it's just +1% damage and you'd think it would also apply to you

There-in lies the difference. Fire Barrage buffs both you and the turret while Pair of Us is only for the mech. Turret's damage is based on your missile damage, so with Fire Barrage buffing your missile damage it's also buffing the turret's damage.

[nul]

I had an interesting handgun build with her one run.

But that's because I got both pyrodominance and furious flame, from ascension fusion, both lv 3. And used Scorching Rounds, element gemini with aura of venom.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Originally posted by nul:

I had an interesting handgun build with her one run.

But that's because I got both pyrodominance and furious flame, from ascension fusion, both lv 3. And used Scorching Rounds, element gemini with aura of venom.

REEEEEEEALLY wanting to try out Li and get Pyrodominance as a Fusion....I just wanna see how stupid the numbers get.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Finished a run with the melee mech build, but the cups weren't exactly going in my favor (even with Lone Wolf Ultimate Gambler). It certainly has devastating potential, but it requires more to come online and avoid falling off in the late game.

Pair of Us is the Spiritual Blessing you use for this one, and the problem with ascensions is that there's no real "core" ascension. Like when you get the Shoulder Cannon Upgrade and Heavy Modification, the missile build is pretty much good to go. Everything after that is building on that foundation to maintain it's consistency throughout.

With the melee mech build...you just need as many ascensions in the melee mech tree as you can get as fast as you can get them. Mastery, Wood Armor, Kinetic Enhancement, and Crushing Charge are all equally important to max out asap. Maxing out Suicide Device definitely helps as well.

Gun to my head to pick a top priority: Wood Armor. Ideally you're going to want to end up spamming Mecha Drop for big AoE damage, and Wood Armor gives him great survivability. while also increasing his max HP to further scale off of Pair of Us. On that note I will be trying another run of the missile turret with Pair while picking up Wood Armor to see if it's worthy deviating from pumping everything into your missiles.

You're also going to actually need to find yourself a good weapon with the melee mech build since you won't just be unloading a never-ending barrage of rockets between you and your turret. She specializes in pistols, but that's not really required. Just go with your favorite weapon combo/one that works for the run.

Now I just wait for Eudicots to come in here and tell me how wrong I am. :3

[Macifayo]

How do I change the mech into turret mode? The primary skill only seems to reposition it and continue focusing on melee.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Press whatever you press to cancel charging a charged weapon. If you're playing on PC, the default is your middle mouse button.

[Macifayo]

Originally posted by Rugged Lemmings:

Press whatever you press to cancel charging a charged weapon. If you're playing on PC, the default is your middle mouse button.

I got it now thanks.

[Intra]

Problem with Shoulder Cannon build is you spam E so much that you basically throw your weapon in the trash and yet it's not ideal in 4 player R8

Melee mech build is less DPS by itself but you can still bring a weapon to the table. IMO that makes melee a bit better.

Shoulder Cannon dominates early game but falls off late, Striker Mode is the opposite with primary cooldown reduction.

That said you'll probably still part time disable Striker versus Gryphon.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Originally posted by Intra:

Shoulder Cannon dominates early game but falls off late, Striker Mode is the opposite with primary cooldown reduction.

Actually I've found it to be the opposite with Striker falling off in the late game. Missile Turret build still falls off a bit, but in my experience it's the far more consistent of the two. I don't know what everyone else is doing, but being able to hose down enemies with an infinite barrage of rockets from both you and your chicken has been working wonders for me when I play Nona.

Seems like I'm the only one around here championing the missile build. But hey: if I'm the only one who can get it to work then that's fine.