Who says you need stun wave and timestrike to start killing? My nova can already kill 3-4 mons first move using assisted aoe, movesets need no change, only the passives need to be tweaked
I have the monster as well and its great in my dark fl, counters the typical bb fl strat
I’ve got a large number of good shadow legendaries and a great link shadow team so I was in a good place to test it out.
My findings:
- Biggest pro is the quick assisted dusk. It tears through enemy teams like a hot knife on butter. I made it +5 and accelerate it so it will 2-3 shot their whole team with a 42s move.
- The ability to stun all enemies by 150s is incredible, especially because you choose the timing. This is the second and only other good thing about it.
- Second wind doesn’t make much sense. You use it when Nova is on low health but ~50s later it’s below half health again and easy for the opponent to kill.
- Assisted dusk + stun wave is actually quite irritating, because if you use stun wave you then want to utilise that stun by picking off certain targets but assisted dusk just takes them all out. Ultimately you want to get 2 kills first with assisted dusk, then stun wave and then sweep with raw bloodthirst. However, that’s hard to do because it makes itself easy to kill as soon as it starts attacking and stun wave is arguably where you get the best value from the monster so you want to make sure you use it before he dies.
- Timestrike feels like a bit of a waste if you ever use it because it only attacks on enemy and will only do one-shot damage if they’re stunned lots. Basically you rarely use it unless you don’t have assisted dusk powered up.
- Raw bloodthirst does pathetic damage without two kills. Only about 1000 damage after one kill. This means you struggle to get to it and will often still want to use assisted dusk.
Overall, I think the Devs were a bit hesitant with the design. I think they wanted to make a monster which could cause constant devastation at high speed but then put in multiple restrictions: must use all shadow, can’t use a protector, left on low health constantly. All of which makes him difficult to use and very easy to deal with. However, in the right team he can be viable. I haven’t tested him enough to truly know how strong he is in the right team but my gut instinct tells me he’s up there as one of the best for a link shadow team. If you can stun your opponent you’re laughing, if not then you’re going to do a reliable large amount of damage to them and force them to take it down quickly.
I don’t know whether it needs any buffs, because it could very easily become overpowered but the most obvious ones for me would be:
- Change shield entrance to hold ground (works better with second wind and the moveset in general because his health is always low).
- Change the secret skill from second wind into a link move like instant link death wish (gets second kill for bloodthirst) or link heal all 50TU.
- Change raw bloodthirst into raw bloodfury, link bloodbite or raw bloodlust (neither bite or lust if changing shield into HG).
(1) Would help improve his ability to survive, which might be the part of his design where the Devs went a bit too far in making it easy for him to be killed.
(2) Right now second wind is a little useless so an obvious point of improvement could be changing it to something more appropriate for his design. Link heal all is here because if they want to keep the healing but make it more worth having then it’s a good one.
(3) I can’t see raw bloodthirst being used that much in practice. Don’t get me wrong, you can charge the skill just about fine and then it’s good for picking individual targets off but when assisted dusk 60TU is so strong it’s not going to be used much. Adding healing to it would mean you could keep Nova’s health up more towards ~50% and potentially making it critical after one kill means Novadrake can be used for controlling the field much better as you won’t be pushed into using assisted dusk over and over which kills everything and brings in new enemy monsters all the time.
I think it’s too early to ask for changes and Novadrake might not even need them, but those are my suggested points of improvement from playing with him so far.
I said it before and i will say it again:
This monster is bad, it needs a buff. BUT! Becarefull when you ask for the buffs as he got the potential to be OP as heck. He got 60 TU moves, its beyond great. The only downside is the HP draining out of him, and thats what keep him in place. Buff him to much and its the best monster in game. Compare him to magma - random hits which made people believe he wont be good, but the low TU hits majes him incredible. Nova can get there in no time.
So:
HG instead of shield is all he needs. His life is draining out slowly but never kills him, so hr get close to 0, and the HG will give him an extra turn.
More then that it will be to good. You can give him bloodlust instead of giving HG if you want, but not both as he got super low TU - impossible to kill in that combination.
Xyxencross just did and I am now too 
Novadrake needs a very specific team to shine but it’s pretty strong once you can make that team. At the very least he’s awesome for farming haha!
Assisted dusk is the thing you really want to think about most. That’s what he has going for him especially, then stun wave too if you catch them weak to stun.
I just don’t see why people would just aoe all the time. No offence but that is not a strategy
And killing 4 mons does no good as usually it can lead to a deadly combo for the aponents
Have you seen delu aoe spam this pvp? Like gos damn… 
Nah didn’t get this hahahaha.
So deo tk tk tt can be called a strat but not assisted aoe bombardment? And also delu with aegis, midas, and uto with delu jst spamming aoe’s to get its dbt going with the 3 holy gt supporting it. You might wanna rethink about your statement
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Ah and also the poison sweep with abyss nereida or terror bane
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So 1 thing we all agree in common is having shield entrance replaced with hg, main thing here is the blood price, should have a positive effect when you get a kill.
Imagine him charged with HG, and get a kill + heal every 40 TU (accalarated + potted). Thats shiva using both his skills after a long charge. Thats op mate and unkillable.
What if when used in a shadow link team, he didn’t lose 30% of his remaining HP? Or some “restriction” that could be fulfilled to make it so that Nova didn’t lose HP for a non-healing move?
That’s a point that I’ve taken hence the other suggested ones if not heal then shield with purify or shield with stealth.
Yup got to agree with segal on this. I don’t think it necessarily needs HG… would prefer stun immune
I think hold ground makes the most sense.
Well it’s hold ground OR some way to heal from attacking. Giving both would be totally overpowered (hello Polaboss).
I don’t think he necessarily needs a buff, we should try him out fully before deciding that.
I think people are focusing too much on the negative of him lowering his health and not enough on how devastating a 60TU assisted dusk can be. There’s a reason why he needs to be easy to kill/disable! That’s also why he doesn’t have stun immune, I’m pretty sure.
Also, it’s definitely a certain kind of “strategy” to use assisted dusk over and over. When it’s such low TU it’s viable and you’ve got to build your team really carefully to make it work too!
Brothers and sisters, let us not forget what happened with the Stratus/Uto Egg. Fast forward to today, devs buffed Uto and Uto is arguably the better of the 2 now. Trust the process, believe in @Dev_VKC. Nova will be a beast someday.
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I’m fine with the hold ground change only but I do feel he should still lose health over time not each move so accelerate and pots benefit him more
Or lose shield entrance and get excessive force should do the trick 
Moji is the counterpoint.