Imperius is one of the most reliable and powerful bruisers available to the game.
However, does Imperius do too much for a bruiser? I think Imperius has talents that are way too powerful that makes him too effective of a bruiser.
While his weaknesses are clear by being a dive-oriented and inefficient wave clear, it can be remedied easily.
Tier 1 (Level 1)
Impaling Light
Celestial Charge’s final damage is increased by 125% and cooldown is reduced by 1.25 seconds for each Valorous Brand on the target when the Stun completes.
Consuming Flame
Increase the center damage of Solarion’s Fire by additional 125% and its Slow amount by 15%. The first enemy Hero hit by Solarion’s Fire refunds 30 Mana.
Burn The Impure
Consuming a Valorous Brand mark deals bonus damage equal to 2.5% of the Hero’s maximum Health.
Tier 3 (Level 7)
Flash of Anger
Consuming a mark from Celestial Charge deals 180 damage around the target and grants Imperius 300 point Shield for 4 seconds.
Blaze of Glory
Solarion’s Fire leaves a line of scorched earth along its center, exploding after 2 seconds and dealing 135 damage. This explosion benefits from and consumes Valorous Brand marks.
Holy Fervor
Cooldown: 25 seconds Active: Activate to cause the next 4 Basic Attacks within 10 seconds to cleave for 30% additional damage.
With access to a very good early talents such as Burn the Impure and Impaling Light.
Two of which are very powerful talents for a level 1, what are your thoughts if they could be tuned down a bit?
Considering Imperius can deal a lot of burst damage with Burn the Impure or chain a stun with Impaling Light.
2.5% maximum health damage per stack can easily burn down the health of beefy targets while Impaling Light can make him chain his CC pretty efficiently.
Rather than tune them down, just swap his level 1 and level 7 talents. He gets more wave clear early, if he is played in the solo lane, or a bit of burst damage if you are using him as a main tank. Level 7 is generally when most heroes hit their first power spike and objectives are coming up, so putting his powerful team fight talents there makes a bit more sense.
Q has an awkward deadzone , does not guarantee to land that precious AA after it , W is as slow as blackhole , he is melee which is a direct malus in this game.
If he is reliable imagine the rest of the melee pool.
The hero is good , totally oppressive and surely too dominant , as long as you land Q.
So is orphea they are designed like that right now.
You want people to graduate from imperius? Make the other bruisers that are not yrel , malth and chen and melee assassins not suck.
Right now imperius is the only real hard engage all in hero you can play.
While i love hurting myself i sure would love to be able to play illidan or kerrigan with at least one hand in my trousers since playing raynor or valla can be done with my feet and both hands in it.
THAT what is called too reliable and that should be nerfed too.
last time i played i saw Imperius kill Jaina in 2 second. so i agree on the 2.5% per stack early game is overtuned bruiser shouldn’t have the ability to delete targets that fast early game. i mean in general you shouldn’t have the ability to delete targets as a Bruiser specifically and honestly i’m surprised they never touched that talent so far
Then in general a bruiser should be able to /dance in front of raynor , valla or jaina for 2 minutes without using a defensive , before having to go to a fountain.
Call me when it happens.
Honest question here, what are bruisers supposed to do according to people here?
I’ve been wanting to make this thread for a while, but didn’t know how to say it. The bruiser role is confusing to me. Some are closer to assassins and some closer to tanks, but Imperius seems to do it all. I’ve seen him tank easily while getting top damage many times. I think the lack of direction for the bruiser role is a big issue in matchmaking.
you people are absolutely deluded if you think imperius isn’t OP. I get it, you had some games where you kicked butt spearing people. so epic. but that is because you are using an overtuned hero. you’re not some super 1337 player. enough is enough.
this is the problem. he can do it all. he deals ridiculous damage AND can function as a tank. people saying he’s useless if he misses his Q are just lying. simple as.
Firstly, garbage waveclear.
Secondly, incredibly predictable and has little counters to stun blowup beyond never using a spear.
Granted, you don’t “exactly” counter many imperiuses in a teamfight beyond blinds and knockback, but mostly it comes from countering his engage.
He can solid pop one or even two targets if he’s hitting multiple abilities, but all of them require a lot cooldown so you can play accordingly. You can even draft a medivh and simply bubble whoever he spears, ez.
But to call him overpowered is stretching it, he’s very powerful but imo not overpowered.
Burn the impure is too strong for a level 1 talent; this thing is on par with talents like Titan killer on artanis. It lets him both have a ton of burst and have a nice bit of damage against fellow bruisers and tanks due to its % based.
you are wrong about that lv 1 with 2.5% damage, no matter HOW many brands the person has when they are consumed, they will take 2.5%, there is a reason why the talent doesn’t say PER brand, only when a brand is consumed
Not really. Imperius has little use outside of his spear. He basically only does single target damage and this damage is almost completly tied to AA’ing marked targets. If you are blinded, or your target simply outruns you than all your damage is gone and due Imperius lack of mobility you will quickly find yourself on the reveiving end.
What makes him so powerful is his Q in combination with the damage. The Spear can easily be followed up by all the assassins and Imperius himself. To bring him more in line with other bruisers I would suggest nerfing his Q talents and maybe even the stun duration itself to make him less of a tank and more of a bruiser.
His damage and survivability itself do not need a nerf, because those are currently the only things that makes him somewhat worth a pick on the offlane. If you nerf that than you might aswell put him into the tank category.
All of his real damage and CC output and the vast majority of his self-sustain relies on landing his Q, which is very easy to over or undershoot with when casting, even ignoring your opponents actively trying to dodge it.
You want a “reliable” Bruiser, you pick Yrel, Thrall, Sonya, or Xul.
I doubt Yrel and Sonya are ‘reliable’ Bruisers, considering Sonya has fallen a bit off the favor due to other Bruisers doing a better job, Yrel still has a clear weakness of being dependent on channeled abilities to make use of in team fights.
And yes, Sonya and Yrel are more reliable than Imperius. They don’t pack as much punch all at once, but they can do it a lot more often. Their power budget isn’t quite as frontloaded as Imperius’ is.
His weakness “weak waveclear” can be covered by a ally with waveclear. I would prefer if they slightly buff his W talents and nerf the Q and AA talent on 1
True, which is why he is so good in a coordinated environment and as a main tank.
Honestly I would prefer if they gave him the cleave talent as an activatable baseline. It covers nicely for Imperius weakness without beeing to opressive. In return his stun and perhaps his damage could receive a nerf.
