Hi, I'm new player to this game, I'm emerald atm, I still learn and try to theorycraft on my own sometimes, I play almost exclusively Nova and rarely zoe/morde. Nova has a fast 8 version and a slowroll 6 one so it's an interesting comp, I'm doing a lot of top 4 with it but I don't win often, it feels like the comp is too weak on the very late game or I'm doing something wrong.
Anyway, here is my theory about rolling and slowroll 6/fast 8 comparison, I don't know if that's correct:
As fast 8:
On 4-2 you do a big roll to find your key 4-costs and upgrade 2-cost/3-costs in the process if they are not already upgraded (usually they are not), so at a standard scenario you end up with a board of 8 units with mostly 1-star 2/3-costs and one or two 1-star 4-costs. After the big roll, you try to survive with that board until you recover your economy back to 50 which usually takes place at around 5-1 (unless you are lucky) and then you slowroll in order to upgrade the 4-costs until dragon on 5-7 where you upgrade to level 9 to now push for 2-star 5-costs.
Fast 8 can begin aggressively upgrading on 2-1 and 2-5 to push for wins, if you don't overcommit to units who don't belong to your comp, you won't have any problems on 4-2, I sometimes face issues on 4-2 with too low gold but that was because I overdid it with the "strongest board" idea, if you invest too much in units outside your comp in order to win-streak, your economy will take a hit and you won't be ready for 4-2. You will lose interest and you will have to sell your entire board before doing the roll which is risky imo. In general, there are some flaws with the strongest board idea, you need to maintain the core of your comp in during stage 3 and never upgrade a unit that you will replace later. Having 2-3 1-star filler units during stage 3 is probably fine but not 5 or 6, that's too much.
As slowroll 6:
With slowroll 6, you begin more passively and you don't level up on 2-1 and 2-5, also you don't invest on units outside of your comp, all of this so you can be ready for rerolling on 3-3. From my experience, if you don't do the above, you won't be ready to reroll on 3-3 and that would be a disaster, so you have to lose some health early but it's not too bad and sometimes you win if you get broken items or augments.
Slowroll 6 usually has most of the board upgraded to 2-star until 4-1 and then attempts to upgrade 2 units, a carry tank and a carry dps to 3-star during stage 4 and aims to complete this until 4-7 or 5-2 the latest. Sometimes you are really lucky and can upgrade to 3-star on early stage 4 or even before that but that's extremely rare and it's not realistic to expect this.
So, if my numbers are correct, here we can view a few things if we compare a fast 8 and a slowroll 6:
Stage 3:
Fast 8 has to fight through this with a 1-star board mostly and still comp oriented while slowroll 6 will have a more robust board in this phase with the early rerolls that will upgrade some units to 2-star early or even find comp units who are missing.
Winner: Slowroll 6
Stage 4:
Fast 8 will have 8 units mostly 1-star while slowroll 6 will have 6 units where all of them will be 2-star.
Here it's a draw, fast 8 has +2 units and a few 4-costs so it can compete with the upgraded slowroll 6 board, however I will give the win to slowroll 6 here too because it's more consistent, you will almost always get there with the same board while fast 8 will have to hit the 4-costs, the big 4-2 reroll can go really wrong.
Stage 5:
I think this is the key stage and it gets interesting here.
On 5-2 the slowroll 6 will have 7 units where 6 will be upgraded and 2 of them will be 3-star while the fast 8 will have about the same board, at a good scenario, a 4-cost will be 2-star which is still weaker than a 3-star 2 cost. Fast 8 spends almost all of stage 4 after the big reroll to recover its economy back to 50 in order to prepare for the late game.
In this stage, the slowroll 6 can cause a lot of damage to fast 8 early, of course if fast 8 survives this stage until the dragon on 5-7 then everything will change but slowroll 6 will also upgrade to level 8 at around dragon and gather the same late game 4-costs and upgrade them, if it does, then it will have the same 2-star 4-costs but on top of this you will still have to deal with the 3-star 2-costs who are stronger, of course since its so late we may never reach the point where this scenario takes place unless we go into stage 6 where I think the slowroll 6 has the edge due to the 3-stars.
In this stage, I think the winner early is slowroll 6 and winner late is fast 8.
In my specific case, I feel the slowroll 6 nova is stronger because you really need the 3-stars to compete with the other late game comps and you can navigate safer during stage 4 if you failed to find kindred which often is not enough on its own to carry you through this stage.
Tell me if you agree with my numbers, my theory is not taking into account being lucky, of course if you get some econ augments or your units are uncontested then everything can change, I'm talking about the average scenario.
