The old “It’s not broken, everything else just sucks” argument. 
I’m sure you’re right bro. I’m sure theres no way an 180 damage AoE combined with a 300 point shield in one talent as early as level 7 isn’t a problem at all.
I think FoA overall is good design. You have to land Q to apply the mark, then land an AA afterwards to consume the mark.
I actually think the “consume mark from X ability for Y bonus effect” is a great concept to base a talent off of.
The main ideas I suggested for him were:
- Making Blaze of Glory either apply its full center damage and slow along the line (meaning it would benefit from Consuming Flame’s bonus damage), having it reduce its own cooldown for every mark it consumes, and/or simply having it trigger but not consume marks.
- Making Holy Fervor reduce its own cooldown for every mark it consumes and increasing its damage bonus to +40%.
- Adding a new talent called Flaring Temper, which causes Molten Armor to flare and deal 100% increased damage to all enemies within its radius on its next hit whenever a Molten Armor mark is consumed while MA is still active (healing for 50% of the total damage done to heroes but not healing for non-heroes hit).
Along with making half of FoA’s bonus damage apply over 3 seconds, those are the changes I would make to Imperius’ level 7 talents.
No hard feelings. We got too caught up arguing semantics.
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Unrealistic Wishes
- Have Blizz actually take feedback and implement it in a realistic way. Not just do their own thing and say “We did it for you!”.
- Revert X change
- Have Blizz understand the players they sell their games to. (They’d probably make more money and the Beancounters will be slightly happier, till next quarter.)
- Remove MVP screen.
- Remove Reporting. (Does more harm than good)
Doable wishes with extreme effort but most likely won’t happen because, reasons
- Have more team members work on advertising the game to bolster player numbers instead of more …,…,… stuff
- Record Win / Loss when the match is ACTUALLY over. (BEFORE all your BS screens.)
- Hire more than one dude to work on AI.
Realistic wishes
- To be a real boy.
Expectation
- Combust into flames out of pure rage, smolder, and die because I’m wooden…
rcw
Sorry rcw, you know me, I had to do it. Don’t be mad at me! I hope I gave you at least a chuckle.
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As opposed to the old “if everything else sucks, then this must just be too good” argument?
That’s sometimes referred to as the “Pie Fallacy.” You’re assuming that if every other talent at that tier sucks, it must be because FoA somehow stole all their power, like it took an extra slice of the pie and left less for the other 2 talents.
But that just makes no sense. One talent being good cannot make another talent bad. It can make it “unviable” simply by being too much better than it, but it cannot make it bad just by being better than it.
Take Cassia’s level 7 talents. Surge of Light is absurdly strong, but that doesn’t mean Grounding Rod itself is bad. Grounding Rod is a very solid talent, just because Surge of Light is even better doesn’t mean Grounding Rod is garbage.
Flash of Anger is a solid talent, but it is balanced. But even if it were actually “OP,” that would not be why Blaze of Glory and Holy Fervor are so weak. Those talents are bad regardless of how strong Flash of Anger is.
Clearly it isn’t.
Imperius needs that talent to be useful. He’s actually pretty weak without it, which is something I seem to remember you commenting on at one point (though I may be confusing you with LyrasVulture). Hence, my quote from another thread about people wanting heroes they struggle with nerfed simply to make things easier for themselves.
If a talent is mandatory for a hero to be relevant, that’s bad design. That does not mean that talent needs a nerf, because then you’d just be making the entire hero bad.
You may have done this when replying to others, but I haven’t seen it as of this point in time, but you have yet to explain why you think Flash of Anger is balanced. To prevent sounding hypocritical, I’ll make my case for why it isn’t balanced.
A talent can provide power in 3 different areas:
- Damage (How much?)
- Utility (Healing? Shielding? CDR Movement speed?)
- Availability (How early can you pick it up?)
Flash of Anger draw a lot of power from all three categories. Not only does it do an impressive 180 damage which is more than an Orphea shadow waltz, Falstad hammerang, or Medivh Arcane Rift, but it also absorbs an impressive 300 damage in a shield. All of this is available at level 7.
As I’ve mentioned in previous threads, neither one of these things is out of place by themselves. 180 damage by itself is fine. 300 point shield by itself is fine. The talent being available early game is fine. It’s the fact that it has all three of those things going for it is the problem.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Celestial Charge is a very rare ability where you can adjust the minimum and maximum range of the skillshot’s distance, allowing you to either use it at point blank or for a dive. Not very many heroes enjoy this luxury.
This adjustable skillshot ability limits counter play because if the skillshot was just a regular unchangeable one, you could argue hugging imperius when he’s on you is good counterplay so he can’t spear you (similar to Mephisto’s lightning nova). But that isn’t how it is. Even if you’re practically clipping into Imperius’ hitbox, he can still spear you.
I’m also not buying the whole “Risk vs reward” thing. The aforementioned adjustable skillshot function already eliminates a great deal of risk if you miss at point blank range, which, if the skillshot wasn’t adjustable, would probably having you soaring past your intended target in a direction you don’t want to go.
So, it’s bad design, but we should just do nothing? If a talent is so powerful it singlehandedly defines the character, it needs to get nerfed, removed, or baseline incorporated (See wormhole, lightning bond, crash lightning, devastating charge, etc.). Period.
Wishes:entire hots staff was fired from top to bottom and replaced with component employees.
Expectations:
Minor changes to op heroes
Reworks continue pushed back a few more years
Promoted interns defending the bad match maker
Zero concerns for 5man, smurfs, afk/trolls destroying the game for everyone else
Mei avalanche nerfs
Cassia/tass slight nerfs
Idc about imperius but am not against Nerfs
Small Brightwing, anduin, and thrall buffs
More illadin buffs
Haunted mines return
Because it has been holding steady at a 50-51% winrate for the past half a year, with a 60%+ pickrate to ensure us that that winrate is indicative of the talent’s performance.
And just to head off any of the usual objections to statistical evidence, here’s some experiential analysis (a.k.a. anecdotal evidence, which some people seem to value more than statistical evidence).
Imperius is very weak early game. His baseline damage output, up-front durability, and self-sustain are notably unimpressive. He has little impact on fights other than his Q’s CC, and his lane pressure is fairly low. Most other Bruisers can bully him around in the lanes, and he can’t really bully anyone else (which is why you have to play much more passively as Imperius until level 7). Teamfights before level 7 usually tend to go poorly for Imperius, as he is liable to get bursted down before doing any significant damage as soon as his stun ends, making him incredibly reliant on teammate follow-up.
This is actually why I usually tell my teammates to skip the first seed/tribute on GoT and CH (first tribute usually and seed always pops up before level 7) unless we have some other significant advantage. It’s usually not worth committing to a fight as Imperius pre-7, just finish soaking 7 and be prepared for the next seed.
Once Imperius gets Flash of Anger, then he becomes a serious player on the field. He needs that talent to actually be a threat, as it provides both kill-pressure and self-sustain, both of which he is decidedly mediocre at in addition to completely lacking waveclear. This is why saying you want FoA “gutted” is not much different than saying you want Imperius gutted.
With FoA, he suddenly becomes a main contender in teamfights. You can’t ignore him anymore or expect an easy kill. He actually deals Bruiser levels of damage and has Bruiser levels of sustain. The reason it seems like he deals so much damage is because it’s all burst damage, but Thrall, Ragnaros, Varian, and with the right builds Artanis, Sonya, Leoric, and Chen can all maintain or even outmatch Imperius’ sustained DPS (and they can do it for longer if not pressured away, because Imperius has a lot more mana tension than any of them).
Imperius with Flash of Anger just isn’t as exceptional as some people are making him out to be. He’s strong, yeah, but not in a way that inherently stands out. What makes him stand out is that sudden powerspike where he goes from being a glorified Knight merc to a heavy-hitter with punishing burst potential.
Anyways, it’s not like any major changes were made to it or its build recently either, so there’s nothing new to set off this wave of complaints. It’s just the Flavor of the Weak, where a bunch of whiners jump on the bandwagon to complain about a given hero and demand nerfs for a week or three.
Alarak had his phase about a year ago, Li Ming had her turn in the spotlight for about a week a month or two ago, KT will probably get his umpteenth turn sometime soon, etc, etc. The show goes on.
You can’t argue that an ability with a given talent is OP because it’s better than X, Y, and Z other abilities without any talents of their own.
If you’re going to compare Celestial Charge with talents to other abilities, you have to account for those other abilities’ talents as well.
Shadow Waltz grants baseline CDR from hitting heroes as it is. Orphea can get En Pointe, which nearly doubles Shadow Waltz’s damage at the tip, and Allegrismo, which further reduces its cooldown all the way down to 0.75 seconds when hitting heroes at the tip.
Arcane Rift has baseline CDR for hitting heroes, and both this CDR and its damage can be increased via his baseline quest. At level 7, Medivh can pick up Mystic Assault, which causes his next AA after hitting a hero with Arcane Rift to deal extra damage and heal him for ~50 health.
Also, Medivh is a support, not an Assassin or Bruiser, so this is an unfair comparison anyway.
Falstad’s Hammerang can (and usually does) hit heroes twice at baseline. He can get Gathering Storm for infinitely scaling bonus damage, and at level 7 he can get BOOMerang, which allows him to detonate it for an additional 165 damage.
You are also ignoring how the rest of the heroes’ kits play into this.
A lot of Imperius’ power is frontloaded into his Q baseline, and that only becomes more true when you factor in his Q talents. By level 7, easily half of Imperius’ powerbudget lies in his Q and its build. Molten Armor and Solarion’s Fire just don’t bring that much to the table, even if you talent for them fully.
Orphea, Medivh, and Flastad don’t have this problem to anywhere near the same degree Imperius has.
Falstad can build for self-sustain through his AA and Lightning Rod builds while still maintaining comparable damage output. Orphea can build around her Trait AAs for sustained damage and self-healing, Chomp for massive burst damage, or Dread for long-ranged poke and zoning. Medivh can build for various different support roles, with Arcane Rift for poke, Portal for whole-team mobility, and Force of Will for damage negation.
As Hoku very aptly put it, it’s not a straight-line skillshot, it is an AoE-skillshot. It shares more in common with Nazeebo’s Corpse Spiders or Maiev’s Fan of Knives than Nova’s Snipe or Tassadar’s Shock Ray.
If they made it have a fixed range like Snipe, they’d have to make it impale and drag along all heroes in Imperius’ path to compensate.
Your target will not always be at point-blank range, and as I’ve already mentioned, most of Imperius’ powerbudget is taken up by his Q. Casting that ability and missing it does not just mean you’ve likely displaced yourself towards the enemy team, it also means you no longer have access to your only source of hard CC and mobility and your main source of damage and sustain for the next 10 seconds.
That is not what I said.
Design issues require design changes. Balance issues require balance changes.
Imperius being overly reliant on his Q build is bad design, not bad balance. Therefore, his kit/talents need some design changes.
I will say this yet again. I’ve already recommended changes to address this design flaw. We need to rework Blaze of Glory, buff Holy Fervor, and give Imperius a new Molten Armor talent to give him multiple viable ways of fulfilling his general role.
Nowhere have I said “do nothing.” I’ve said, “no nerfs,” because straight nerfs are not only unnecessary but actually counterproductive to keeping Imperius in a good balance state.
If Imperius’ other level 7 talents were any good, Flash of Anger would no longer singlehandedly define the character and Imperius would not get dumpstered in the process.
There’s no reason to nerf a balanced talent when you should buff its underperforming competitors up anyway. Nerfing FoA won’t make BoG or HF any stronger, it will just make Imperius worse.
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wow I rarely have this much agreement with patch ideas.
I loooooved Whitemane before the rework and I do feel like she lost so much with it. But I don’t want it to be completely repealed either. I think it has some cool ideas like the armor reduction to use Fanatical Power. Tho being forced to have Clemency is lame, I would love that off my cat lady plz ;D
The popularity of the Ana grenade build is very strange to me. I think you should only go grenade build if you’re actually planning to anti heal an Alexstrazsa 24/7 or something like that. I mostly go Vampiric rounds because it’s really really cool.
I can’t comment on the rest. I don’t even know which Tyrande rework you mean. It must have been many years ago. I only really know her the way she is now.
I feel like you’ve generally made some good points up until this one. This seems to undermine your argument when, by your own admission, you agreed that Flash of Anger patches all of Imperius’ greatest weaknesses. Imperius already has great CC so what does he struggle in? Damage, and Survivability. Flash of Anger patches both of those weaknesses in one single talent on a short CD which would be fine if it was a level 13 or 16 talent, but it’s available as early as level 7 for crying out loud.
I’m sorry man, but you’re doing a poor job of convincing me Flash of Anger isn’t the problem. You go on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph about how Imperius needs Flash of Anger, about how he’s so useless without it that you might as well give objective, and then you turn right around and say that it’s not a problem and simply buffing two other talents will fix everything.
Molten Armor already gives a ton of utility to bolster Imperius’ role in team fights so I’m not sure what you’re on about in that tangent. Molten armor heals Imperius for 76 health a second and gives him unlimited 1-mark spam for 3 seconds (which gives even more healing). It can also be talented to give 25 armor, heal for a lot more, and debuff opponents, all of which greatly bolster his team fight presence.
It sounds to me like you want to have it both ways. Imperius “needs” Flash of Anger and is useless without it, but it’s simultaneously balanced and not in need of a nerf. It’s either one or the other.
I feel like you tend to get confused by the difference between a broken talent and a talent that is only strong because the other options suck (I.E. Kerrigan Boundless Fury). It’s possible for a talent to be broken and the other two talents suck but your way of thinking leads you to believe that just because two talents suck and one works, that the one functional talent is balanced by default. It doesn’t always work that way. In general I feel like there are two ways of looking at it:
- One talent is overtuned and the other two are decent options
- One talent is alright and the other two are trash in comparison
You lean more towards option 2. Your view of how powerful Flash of Anger is, is warped by your opinions of the other two talents available. You simply can’t judge a talent by the nature of it’s competitors, you have to judge the talent on it’s own merit.
For a moment, pretend like Holy Fervor and Blaze of Glory didn’t exist and Flash of Anger was the only available talent on 7. Just look at the ability itself and tell me it isn’t too powerful.
You’ve said this:
So you’re saying he has poor damage, poor survivability, poor utility, weak teamfight pressence, no kill potential, no pressure, little to no impact, weak, and isn’t a threat, and Flash of Anger patches all of these weaknesses (to an extent) but Flash of Anger isn’t a problem?
I’m sorry man, I’m just not buying it. You can’t harp on and on about how much value the talent brings to the table and then in the same breath, talk about how balanced it is.
Now, I understand your concern; you’re worried that if the talent is “gutted” like I said I wanted, that Imperius is going to suck, which is a legit concern. That is also why I said I wanted the talent gutted, not the hero. You might claim this is one in the same because of how reliant he is on the talent, but there is more they can do to make him more well rounded outside of a single talent.
They can improve him in other areas if needed, but Flash of Anger as it stands has to go. No question about it.
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As today should actually the day … let´s do it again 
I want more buffs for Zarya even though she is perfectly balanced.
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I want more TLV buffs even if they are strong anyway.
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More nerfs to cassia.
Nerf to Brand of Solarion and Celestial Swiftness. Combine those talents with % dmg from lvl 1 and he melts people before they can even react to it.
Nerfs to Mei.
Nerfs to Tassadar.
Minor nerfs to xul.
Buffs to Anub.
Zeratul Level 1 Stealth talent buff, aka give first Auto attack while stealthed and 3 seconds after being unstealthed a 30-50% bonus damage.