Nova Prime Builds Guide

Introduction

This guide will help you understand Nova Primes mechanics, abilities and provide you with builds and strategies to maximize her utility.

What you need to know

• Nova Prime is a utility Warframe, whose abilities are used for manipulating the game mechanics, especially enemy mechanics.
• Her stats shows that she is a squishy Warframe, which means she’s not able to be a frontier; however, she can be a good support.
• Despite not having the highest sprint speed, she is indeed the fastest Warframe for speedrunning due to her Wormhole ability ( more details down below ).

Abilities Introduction

Abilities Detail

	ENERGY 25 KEY 1	Null Star Creates anti-matter particles that orbit Nova and seek nearby targets.	Strength:100 / 125 / 150 / 200 Duration:3 / 4 / 5 / 6 (particles) Range:7 / 8 / 10 / 12 m Misc:5% (damage reduction per particle)
	ENERGY 50 KEY 2	Antimatter Drop Launches a contained particle of antimatter that will detonate upon collision.	Strength:100 / 125 / 150 / 200 (base damage) 10 (contact damage) Misc:2x / 4x / 6x / 8x (absorb multiplier) 5 / 8 / 10 / 15 m (explosion range)
	ENERGY 75 KEY 3	Worm Hole Creates a wormhole allowing instantaneous travel.	Duration:10 / 12 / 14 / 16 s Range:50 m Misc: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (wormholes) 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (uses)
	ENERGY 100 KEY 4	Molecular Prime Primes all enemies in a radius with anti-matter.	Strength: 150 / 300 / 500 / 800 (explosion damage) 10% / 20% / 25% / 30% (slow) Duration: 2 / 3 / 4 / 6 s (wave duration) 10 / 15 / 20 / 30 s (prime duration) Range: 6 / 7 / 8 / 10 m (explosion radius) Misc:5 m/s (wave speed) 2x (damage multiplier) 15 / 20 / 25 / 35 m (default wave radius)

Abilities Summary

• Null Star: Reduce taken damage and shoot small Null Star projectiles that deal a small amount of damage.
• Antimatter Drop: Antimatter explodes, dealing Area of Effect ( AoE ) damage with a chance for radiation proc. Shooting the antimatter increases the damage
• Wormhole: Teleport Nova to her desired location.
• Molecular Prime: Manipulate the enemy’s speed, dissolve/reduce the enemies’ physical status.

Overall Strategies

• It is best to dig out and maximize Molecular Prime’s potentials since it is the most influencing ability from Nova Prime’s kit.
• Using Molecular Prime augment, which is Molecular Fission, and activating Null Star is the best strategy to survive long-term scaling missions or high-level ones since Null Star reduces incoming damage and MF regains lost null stars.

Nova Prime Builds

Slow Nova

Summary

This build focuses on slowing down the enemies it also reduces the enemies overall status for you to kill them much easier.

Slow Nova Build

Overall Insights

• Null Star: Reduces damage by 80% with 16x particles.
• Antimatter Drop: Deals a high amount of damage but has a very low explosion range.
• Wormhole: Very short portal.
• Molecular Prime: One wave lasts 18 seconds and debuffs the enemy’s speed by 75%.

Usage

It is adequated to use Molecular Prime to slow down the enemy.

However, there are crucial details needed to be considered:

• Since Power Duration is indeed enough to get a near-maximum damage reduction, it is recommended to activate Null Star and constantly keep 16x particles during the mission to avoid death.
• If the enemy is under level 50, activate Antimatter Drop and shoot it to deal damage. This ability has a chance to one-shot the enemies.

Build Summary

Fast Nova

Summary

This build is the opposite of Novas Slow Build, which means that it will make the enemies faster than usual. Veterans call this build as a Risk Taker build since it is a trade-off risk build that is used for faster mission completion.

Fast Nova Build

Overall Insights

• Null Star: Reduces damage by 85% with 17x particles.
• Antimatter Drop: Deals a low amount of damage but has a high explosion range.
• Wormhole: Very long portal.
• Molecular Prime: One wave lasts 18 seconds and buffs the enemy’s speed by 30%

Usage Details

Activate Molecular Prime to fasten up the enemy.

In spite of the similarity to the Slow Nova build, there are alots of differences are needed to be considered:

• Enemy’s overall status is affected the same as Slow Nova build. Despite this, the enemy will be harder to kill since enemy’s speed is buffed.
• To negate the mentioned problem, do missions that are from low to medium levels. If you have good gear then do missions that are under level 100. Do not go higher than the recommended level since it will be too hard to handle and too risky for a mission to fail.
• Power Duration in this build, however, has a higher damage reduction since Null Star activates 17 particles instead of 16. Activate this ability constantly to avoid death.
• Wormhole range is superior compared to the Nova Slow build, use this as an advantage to escape.
• Antimatter Drop range is higher but deals weaker damage.

Build Summary

Speedrun Nova

Summary

Different from the other builds, the Speedrun Nova build focuses on the speedrun category. Use this build to skip lots of parts in certain objective missions such as Spy, Capture, Quests, etc.

Speedrun Nova Build

Overall Insights

• Null Star: Reduces a very low amount of damage and has a low amount of particles.
• Antimatter Drop: Deals a small amount of damage but has a decent explosion range.
• Wormhole: Decent range, boost Nova’s speed if she goes through it.
• Molecular Prime: Very short wave duration.

Usage

Simply use Wormhole and teleport yourself to your own desired location. It is best to teleport to the mission objectives. Remember to activate Energy pads to keep energy consistency and ability activation.

There are some tricks you can use to boost the speed up and easier to maneuver, saving more time:

• Do a roll/slide animation as a brake.
• Use fast mid-air melee attacks such as Orthos Prime to boost the speed up.

There are some requirements for this build:

• Do not bullet-jump as it won’t let teleportation from Wormhole due to delay from the ability. The counteract is to run only and cast the ability.
• Set a hotkey for energy pads and keep a lookout on how much energy you have left.

Build Summary

Nova Prime Pros and Cons

Warframe Conclusion Rank: S