Imperius Guide đź‘Ľ

General Discussion
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So erm… I recently unlocked guidemaking on the forums (because everyone knows only masters can make guides!.. /s) so I decided I make a guide about Imperius.

Disclaimer
    There was(/is?) a troll on the Forums bashing at every guide-post claiming that if you are not a Master ranked player your opinion doesn't matter, you shouldn't make guides, and you are unable to help ppl below or on your level. Which is nonsense but what can be expected from a troll.
The Super Cereal Papers to prove I'm worthy of Guidemaking:
    Master ID:

      My previous seasons in portraits:
    My Imperius stats:
      QM:
      HL:
      TL:
      Overall:

Let’s start!

Role:

Imperius is a Bruiser and not a Tank. Mostly because his survivability comes with later talents (like Angelic Armaments and Sovereign Armor). He can’t be the solid face, The Frontline of your team (even his hitbox is a bit “small” compared to other tanks, making (body)blocking harder). But in certain situations he can act as maintank, tho not ideal.
Those situations are mostly on maps where splits are common (ToD, DS, WHJ) and with a teamcomp which are not that weak against dive, because your peel is not that good, not even with “tank-build” (see later).

Despite not being good at PvE, Imperius is a really strong sololaner because he’s a dualmonster who can bully almsot everyone out of lane.

Abilities:

Trait: Nothing really important to mention, just extra dmg when you marked a Hero with a Basic Ability. Each Basic Ability has its own mark. (You won’t lose your Marks when AAing while you are blinded.)

Q: Your only reliable mobility (can be used to go through walls and terrain). A dash with a strong aoe stun but in exchange it “stuns” you as well (you can still cast E). Usually you should cast it from the Fog of War or after using W.
Really strong for setups, easy to follow up by your allies.

W: Your only “PvE spell”. Against Heroes, its most important part is the slow.

E: Your main source of Marks and your only baseline sustain. Pretty low on its own. Don’t use it between minions if possible.

Angelic Armaments (R1): Big shield with Mirror Ball. The easier Heroic. You pick it if you have trouble staying alive or you think your team will need the “Storm Shield” at lategame. It also helps him at dualing.

Wrath of the Angiris (R2): A lot of ppl think it’s a weak ability, but the more you play Imperius, the more often you’ll pick this Heroic. It can provide a lot more value than AngArm. It can:

  • Save your life: from dot, Last Rite, enemy repositioning you to secure a kill.
  • Counter enemy abilities like: D.va’s Mech Explosion (E), Mephisto’s Shade (E), Medivh’s Portal (E), Kharazim’s Divine Palm (R).
  • Get kills bye: picking up ppl before a teamfight, secure a gank kill or negating an escape.
  • Peel: you can use WotA to peel a diver or a nasty enemy from a crucial member of your team.
  • Help with skillshots: for Heroes like Chromie and Kel’thuzad.

The trick is, that you can’t use it as an engage, like a “Stitch’s Hook”. You need to either cast it:

  • already from melee in the fight
  • as a follow up on your Q or W (easier after Q)

Displacements are really strong and you are invulnerable in the air.
(Care so you don’t accidentally negate an allied ability, especially a Heroic one with it.)

Interesting, Important or Crucial Talents:

Disclaimer
    Imo Burn the Impure is too strong in it's current form (2.5% HP from every mark, you'll get 3 from every basic ability and you'll get an extra 3 from E alone, making it 6*2.5=15% HP dmg plus your base dmg) and it destroys his talent diversity. I think it should be nerfed to 1.5-2% per mark because Imperius is strong even without it. It's just too powerful to give up. (Making him btw one of the best tank busters.) Thanks to this talent alone, this is "The Build" 90% times:

Impaling Light: It’s okay if you can’t finish the last part, the talent provides baseline value and the first quest part is really easy.
If you want to complete the whole quest, pick it against Alexstrasza (her W helps) or with allied combo makers like Zarya, Gaz or Zagara.

Consuming Flame: This talent was the original way-to-go as Imperius. It gives PvE dmg on top of extra Hero dmg and also gives you a stronger Slow.

Blaze of Glory: This talent helps with 3 things:

  • clearing waves (send W against them when they march in a line)
  • gives extra dmg to your WQE combo to burst down squishies
  • helps you poking objectives

(Consume Flame with Blaze of Glory destroys most of the waves’ HP.)
Sure, Holy Frevor is really strong and helps against PvE problems better than Blaze of Glory, but it loses value if the enemies aren’t that clumped together/melee heavy and if Burn the Impure wouldn’t be a must-pick basically.
The only reason why I always pick HF because it gives me more Mark value and helps with taking Bruiser camps alone (not ideal).

Heat of Battle: If you play on maps where you’ll be between minions more often than usual (like on Spider Queen) I recommend this talent, because it helps you more with sustain and PvE.

Valorous Pursuit: This talent is my shining star in Imperius’ kit. My usual pick if I go with WotA and I don’t have to pick the Unstoppable.
It helps me with annoyingly slippery foes like Genji, Zera, and really confuses my enemies.
It also gives you Armor, helping with survivability and it’s a teleport so you can use it to dodge certain abilities.
It’s also pretty good for a surprise engage with WotA. You cast W, walk away “no, we don’t engage let’s circle more infront of each other” and then bumm, you teleport and use your Heroic.

The “Tank-build”:

You pick this if you need extra peel potential and you have a healer who can cover your back.
You pick AngArm if you need to help your Healer (and maybe others) to stay alive.
And you pick Impervious if you didn’t pick AngArm.
At lvl 13 you can chose between Pathetic Mortals and Divine Rage.
Pathetic Mortals combined with the lvl 1 Q talent enables you to keep the enemy at 35% decreased dmg for eternity, protecting your allies from a lot of dmg and decreasing the pressure from your Healer. (Better against divers.)
Or you pick Divine Rage so with Sovereign Armor you can have 50 Armor more often. Pick this if they try to focus you down instead of your allies. (Better against Ranged Heroes.)

Weaknesses:

  • Kite/Poke
  • Blind
  • PvE
  • Escape

Counters:

Imperius is weak against Ranged Sustained dmg dealers. The biggest counters are:

  • Zagara
  • Lunara

But Raynor, Zul’jin and Valla can be scary as well.
He’s also annoyed by Blinds because of his high AA dmg and Trait.
Other counters are:

  • Azmodan counters Angelic Armaments easily with Demonic Invasion
  • Gazlowe is strong against him on the sololane and in fights as well.
    On lane, dealing with turrets is pretty hard for Imperius and in tfs Gaz can pick “X-tra Large Bombs” to stun him after his “self-stun”. Not that easy to get away from that as Imperius.

Place in Draft:

Imperius is fairly safe as first pick but I suggest to wait with him if you don’t know what your team wants.
He works the best with a secondary frontline (be it better or worse at tanking than him, doesn’t matter), with Assassins who can follow up his CC.
His best maps are obviously those which are more teamfight and dual heavy (Volskaya is his best map imo).

I’m pretty sure I missed a few things since I could say even more stuff and get into more details, but I hope it’s a good summary and helps at least a bit some ppl.

Feel free to add your opinions in the comments.
Keep in mind, tho I reached Master rank (mostly with him) I’m only a human, I do mistakes, I don’t know everything, I can be wrong.

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:angel: :fire:

Sacrilege

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Good guide OP, very cool.

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Thank you.

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I played once or twice with you and you were using imperius xD. It was a nice match and im glad you’ve reached masters, congrats!

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Didn’t notice :'D
(Tho I rarely check names.)

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Sorry, but I’m master ranked and played mostly Imperius in ranked against other master ranked players. I guess you didn’t check the pictures.

Btw, were we teammates or enemies? Did we (I if we were enemies) win or lose? :smiley:

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BuT hE’s MaSteR!11!!
You said only MASTERs can write guides!111

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Hmmm, “only guides from Master are worth reading” is mostly what you said yes? Then this one is obviously a certain Hero guide from a “Master”.

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no u :sunglasses:

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did you even open the tabs that shown the screen shot ? last time someone made a guide you complained that players under master shouldnt make guides.

someone makes a guide while they meet the rank requirement you complained off and now you still complain about it .

even if he was mostly a QM player, that doesnt take away from his skills.

if that post was full of bad info, how about you elaborate on the wrong points and inform us of the proper facts about him then ?

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Teammates :D.

We won. If i remember correctly there was a chogall on the enemy team and between your Q (double guy stun) and my lamb of the slaughter (double silence) + E build we obliterated them xD.

Also, double entrails! :hocho::hocho:

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A deadly combo :skull_and_crossbones:

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And more important, tasty :drooling_face:

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2 for 1 kill :astonished: :sunglasses:

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i officially announce i have no guide and this is fake , im going to complain to angiris council about copyright :joy:

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ooff i look good,dont i?:yum::joy:

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You look stronk!

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I wish that stick broke in the middle of the lifting.

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