Were people using negative strength Nova for anything but trolling?

[tyleulen007]

The nova rework is introducing a hold to cast version of Molecular Prime that speeds up enemies instead of slowing them down, so you "Don't need negative strength anymore". But was anyone doing this for a reason beyond it being funny? Did I miss some sort of Nova speed up meta?

[Firefrye]

Yes! A speed nova has been a part of the farming and defense meta for a long time (She's one of the oldest builds in the meta in fact). But you don't see her quite as often now days because people have either forgotten her or choose to run other things.

In survivals, a speedva is useful for making the enemies that spawn a tile or two over get TO YOU faster so you can kill them more efficiently. This is especially important if you're setting up a dedicated "kill box" with loot doubler frames like Khora, Hydroid, and/or Nekros that want enemies to die nearby.

In Defense missions, a speedva is useful for making the enemies get into your kill-zone faster (again) so that you can trigger the end of each wave faster and more efficiently. A good speedva can speed up defense missions by a few minutes per rotation even without a dedicated Nuke. On top of this, some high range nukes will slow down as enemy levels scale up, at which point the team will end up falling back to weapons or higher dps short range abilities and the Speedva will become more valuable

Beyond this, there are builds that use Molecular Prime + some other weapon synergies to act as an all-in-one speedup and nuke (I've been running an armor strip, melee influence, rakta dark dagger for shield leech build I yoinked off youtube for running Netracells for the last few months)

[tyleulen007]

Huh, I never knew. That does sound really useful though, so I'm glad the rework will be making it more common.

[romy]

wait, they broke speedva ? is it real ?

[Donitsi]

Originally posted by romy:

wait, they broke speedva ? is it real ?

Broke how?

[Kittenpox]

If you've ever done Hydron,Sedna for affinity grind and had a Vauban / Nova / whatever slowing enemies to a crawl (or pinning them in place) - or had Zephyr / Hydroid CCing enemies while you're at the defense point waiting for the walking loot-bags to show up...
...and the enemies just. don't. arrive. which means the map takes way longer than necessary?

Then yeah, negative-strength Nova is the opposite of that. :-)
It's pretty great, tbh.

[Douchebag Extraordinaire]

Aside from speeding up enemies, the strength doesn't affect the 2x damage multiplier, so in endless modes, it's still good to use for teamwide damage buff.

Back then, double barreling an Antimatter drop for maximum charge (the x8 damage isn't affected by negative strength either) on top of the extra range from Overextended made a great way to skip to the later rotations into the 40-60 min marks.

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by Donitsi:

Originally posted by romy:

wait, they broke speedva ? is it real ?

Broke how?

broke as in the rework makes it cease to exist as a build, because it's just a part of her kit instead of needing negative ability strength to get it, with the classic hold/press to pick which mode of the effect is used.

[Bowbie]

speedva is the only way to play nova in my opinion, besides EDA and maybe Circuit. You play her to actively get more foes to kill. If you want a boost in survivability, there're better alternative to her slow.

[DeAlph]

Originally posted by SmallGespenst:

Originally posted by Donitsi:

Broke how?

broke as in the rework makes it cease to exist as a build, because it's just a part of her kit instead of needing negative ability strength to get it, with the classic hold/press to pick which mode of the effect is used.

That doesn't mean they broke, it means they make it better.

[TheTool]

Slow is capped at 75%.
Speed was only capped by mod availability.
I assume speed will now be capped too at 50-75%.

[pirate135246]

if anything any nova slowing enemies down was trolling, as all it does is slow down the mission for everyone. This effect is only beneficial in fixed mission lengths like mobile defense or void flow, etc

[Firefrye]

Originally posted by pirate135246:

if anything any nova slowing enemies down was trolling, as all it does is slow down the mission for everyone. This effect is only beneficial in fixed mission lengths like mobile defense or void flow, etc

Slowva was good for interceptions too. There were other better options, but Slowva is a good one.

[BoxxyB]

I was using it in solo gameplay but also because speeding up enemies and resonator with conductor completely breaks the AI in half. which I'm sure will either get patched or removed entirely. not that it mattered since I moved on to whiplash because I don't like cheese strats. shame that a very viable warframe like nova is seeing tweaks before a garbage frame like equinox, nyx or trinity are.

[rhoenix]

So, a few nuances here that I think the Nova rework will actually make better.

For Nova, how far the Prime wave travels is based on Duration, while the explosion radius is based on Range. In the past, this meant that making her effective with the booms while still being negative power strength was pretty effective.

To be honest, this really feels like Pablo was going through the warframe list, and thought "you know, while I'm at it..." when it came to one of his favorite frames.

Did Nova need it? lol, no.

Is it good? Sure - it makes her more versatile, and that's definitely not bad.

My takeaway though is that he's also using it for practice with nuances for abilities when it comes to other frames. We'll likely see tap vs. hold variations of ability reworks in future.

[romy]

Originally posted by SmallGespenst:

Originally posted by Donitsi:

Broke how?

broke as in the rework makes it cease to exist as a build, because it's just a part of her kit instead of needing negative ability strength to get it, with the classic hold/press to pick which mode of the effect is used.

So it's real. I'm a little sad ngl but I guess it's all for the best.