Picked up Imperious (finally) last night and have been messing about with him in QM. Lots of fun, just diving into the back line and spearing the annoying mage/healer and blowing them up after… good times. However, considering he has some mitigation, a good CC, a pretty beefy health pool plus the ability to self heal, I think Imperious is more of a Tank than a Bruiser, though he seems to walk a very fine line between the two. I find that I generally initiate fights and bare the brunt of the enemy teams focus.
I don’t know, Imperious being classed as a Bruiser and not a Tank has always felt off to me.
I think bruisers are about sticking to enemies and dealing damage rather than taking damage or denying enemies from dealing damage. For example Stiches damage is much lower than Imperius but he is generally tougher and has access to abilities that can zone or displace enemies to help the flow of battle in his teams favour. Imperius has more damage and can stick to enemies reasonably well, but will struggle to prevent enemies getting to his team’s back line and also cannot as effectively displace enemies that do.
Stiches is about enabling allies to deal more damage while taking less. Imperius is about duelling enemies and dealing and enabling damage in general.
I actually hate when people bring the CC argument simply because most heroes nowadays have CC, some have even better CC than Tanks, but that doesn’t make them a Tank.
CC is just CC. It’s not the amount of CC or the type of CC that will make the hero a tank.
Bruisers and Tanks are very similar, in fact Bruisers can even be tougher than Tanks.
What separates the two is how self-centered the hero is. Bruisers are very much self-centered heroes. When they stun someone, they do it with the intention of killing the target themselves.
When a Tank stuns someone, they do it with the intention of assisting an ally. Tanks are very much a supporting function.
This is the difference between Bruisers and Tanks.
There are a few heroes that walk the line between Tank and Bruiser and can act as one or the other in a pinch, and I think Imperius can walk this line when necessary.
However, I don’t think he’s classified incorrectly. Tanks have to check a number of boxes in order to be effective in their role, and Imperius doesn’t check some that are fairly important. Some of those are:
Reliability and consistency of CC
Ability to survive being focused by the enemy team
Back in the day we also originally intended for Dehaka to be a main tank, and he had a similar issue in that he could reliably take a lot of damage, but his ability to CC was primarily tied to his Drag ability which wasn’t consistent enough to have him be a main tank due to its range, wind-up, and ability to only CC 1 target. I think Imperius falls into a similar category due to the nature of how Celestial Charge works. It’s not quite reliable enough to deter enemies from diving his team in most situations since it has a bit of a delay and hits a small area. His ability to survive damage is also tied heavily to his ability to use Basic Attacks against enemy targets while they have Valorous Brand, which is not as consistent of a way to survive compared to other tanks in our game.
I don’t think it’s impossible for him to be successful in the role, but I think there are good reasons why you don’t see him acting as a tank in most of his games.
I can definitely see clearly now why Varian / Dehaka are considered Bruisers even though they are tougher than most tanks (lack of reliable, consistent CC.)
That said is the team considering another pass with hero roles? Such as reclassifying some heroes (from your description Cho would definitely fit better in the “Bruiser” category) and perhaps renaming the “Melee Assassin” role to something that fits heroes like Tracer and Genji?
Why is Varian still considered a main tank for matchmaking in Quick Match? I don’t feel like Taunt Varian has enough crowd control to keep up with a dedicated tank.
