Imperius' level 7 tier

General Discussion
1

Imperius’ level 7 needs some changes.

Flash of Anger is a common source of frustration among people who play against Imperius, despite being a balanced talent, due to its burst damage. This talent is also largely responsible for Brand of Solarion’s rather excessive performance at level 20.

Blaze of Glory is, to be frank, garbage. Picking this talent is often like not picking a talent at all. It provides way too little value for how unreliable it is, and the fact that it consumes Valorous Brands is widely considered rather annoying.

Holy Fervor looks good on paper and can be quite strong in the right situations, but I believe its poor overall performance is due to the fact that it’s not up often enough to provide consistent value.

I think that Imperius needs a bit of a mini-rework in general, but especially focused around this tier, so I wanted to suggest some changes to these 3 talents that I think would help address these issues.

Flash of Anger

  • Damage changed from 165 instantly to 120 instantly and an additional 60 over 3 seconds.
Notes

This is a minor nerf early- and mid-game via granting the target more time to react to a portion of the effect’s damage. That should help reduce some of the frustration surrounding its burst without hurting its performance too much.
This is also a more significant indirect nerf to Brand of Solarion at level 20, as the 60 DoT would not stack and Imperius would effectively lose out on ~60 damage (~130 factoring scaling at level 20), 1/3rd of the effect’s damage, every time he triggers a Q Brand.

Blaze of Glory

  • Damage changed from 135 flat to 50% of Solarion’s Fire’s center line damage, and it also now applies 50% of Solarion’s Fire’s center line slow.
  • No longer consumes Brands when it explodes.
  • Now lasts 2.5 seconds before exploding, but can be triggered early (and multiple times) by consuming Brands applied to an enemy standing over the line.
  • If Imperius is standing over the line when it explodes he heals for 25% of the damage it deals, increased to 50% against Heroes.
Notes

This ability has basically been overhauled because almost everything about it was just disappointing.
It’s damage, a single instance of 135, is both fairly low and incredibly easy to avoid. You have 2 seconds to walk 2 inches to the side to avoid it. Most people seem to dodge it accidentally without even noticing it, and the ones who don’t dodge it barely notice it anyway.
Additionally, the fact that it consumes Brands is a bit annoying.

Basing its damage off of Solarion’s Fire’s damage is a nerf to the talent itself but allows it to synergize with Consuming Blaze at level 1 (which it could not do before). The added slow is a straight buff and also synergizes with Consuming Blaze.
The baseline damage nerf is also mitigated by the fact that it can be triggered multiple times. Instead of the explosion triggering the Brand, the Brand triggers the explosion.
Furthermore, the talent now offers some extra self-sustain to help it compete with Flash of Anger’s hefty shield.

Holy Fervor

  • Each Brand consumed while Holy Fervor is active reduces Holy Fervor’s cooldown by 2 seconds.
Notes

I considered increasing its bonus AA damage by 10%, from 30% to 40%, but I think this should be a good enough start for now. More uptime in teamfights may be sufficient on its own, but considering this talent’s latent potential, I don’t want to overbuff it.

I’d also like to see a new talent for Molten Armor, but I didn’t want to pack too much information into this thread up-front.
If you’re interested in more details and ideas, I’ve made a mini-rework concept for him on HeroesFire here:
https://www.heroesfire.com/hots/concept/imperius-11500

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2

Just scrap the two useless talents and make two new ones.
Worst case scenario it will be like the useless crap zeratul got at 20 and we still won’t use them.

3

Remember when this talent used to the undeniable meta pick?

Pepperidge farm remembers.

And I like the idea of turning some of Flash of Anger’s damage into a DoT, assuming it can’t stack, so it isn’t as crazy once you get the level 20.

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4

I’ve seen most of Zeratuls level 20s being played some in quick match, some in ranked. “Shadow Mending” and “Twilight falls” are a no brainer but i’ve even seen people take “Shadow Stride” but the “Unwavering Pressure” talent is never taken and is basically useless.

5

People get too fantastical with their changes, no offense.

I’m waiting until Tuesday, I’m making a post of what should be done.

Though I mused the idea of Brands reducing Holy Fervor’s cooldowns as well.

6

Nah, I think they can work, especially Holy Fervor. They just need to be updated.

7

Holy fervor lowering Imperius’ AA by ~30% or so and giving him cleave permanently would be interresting choice.

Like a talent that would make his attack like Leo or Malthael have.

8

Twilight falls is only any good if you go Q build, usually with Wormhole. But I never see anyone use Wormhole these days, it’s objectively worse than the other 2 options unless you somehow find yourself in a game against 5 squishies which I guess can happen… tho even then I’d still go Warp Skirmisher.
I pretty much exclusively go Shadow Stride at lvl 20 now.

Unwavering Pressure… I think they shud add % dmg to it or something so it’s stronger vs DW and Cho’Gall but it’s still pretty good in an aa build with Seeker.

Shadow mending is a complete waste. I mean if you can deal enough spell damage to heal any significant amount then you prbly already murdered 3 dudes lol.
Plus you can blink and you most likely also have a healer… I really don’t see the purpose of this talent at all.

1 Like
9

Does it really work like that? I thought it had a hard limit that means it can only proc once every Celestial Charge use and only affect each hero once for each charge use.

This is technically a nerf as it does pretty close to 90% of the damage at the moment. It also has the unintended interaction with level 1 talent in that it would now make the talent mandatory if Blaze of Glory is taken, something that the developers likely wanted to avoid and hence why they gave it a flat damage amount.

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10

Flash of Anger triggers whenever you trigger a Q Brand. Since that normally consumes the Brand, you can only do that once per cast of Celestial Charge on a given hero.

However, Brand of Solarion at level 20 causes Brands to no longer be consumed and removed when they are triggered, meaning that you can trigger FoA multiple times on the same target.

You are right, and it deals exactly 90% of W’s center damage.

However, between the fact that it now applies a slow of its own, the fact that its damage and slow can both be increased by Consuming Blaze, and the fact that it can be triggered multiple times, this ends up being a net buff.

11

The way the ability is worded is unclear, with it even sounding like the talent would not work at all if the level 20 is taken.

If anything I would say this is possibly unintended interaction and so should be limited to occurring only once per cast per hero hit. If it really works like you describe the combo is out right ludicrous as it gives Imperius near constant shield, healing and bonus splash damage from a level 7 talent.

12

Brand of Solarion
Reduce the duration of Valorous Brand to 5 seconds, but it is no longer consumed when triggered.

It seems pretty clear to me. Once you get Brand of Solarion at level 20, Brands aren’t removed when they’re triggered. That means that you get their benefit but they stick around. It’s definitely intended, otherwise there’d be no point in this talent.

It works the same when combined with FoA as it does for all the talents that give value when you trigger a specific Brand, like Divine Rage (E CDR) and Melting Touch (armor reduction).

That requires the level 20 talent too. If you don’t have that talent, Brands are removed once triggered, so you only get the value once per ability application.

13

Except the wording for Flash of Anger says…

Consuming a mark from Celestial Charge deals 165 damage around the target and grants Imperius 275 point Shield for 4 seconds.

From tooltip alone, how can it trigger if marks are “no longer consumed” as it triggers when “consuming a mark”? Hence to me why it is slightly unclear and could easily have a once per enemy affected per cast limit.

Yes however once he hits level 20 that is a ludicrous power spike and could pretty much make all talents of the tier worthless in comparison purely due to his choice of level 7. Imperius is not even a weak hero early game.

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14

Yeah either the lvl 20 talent is bugged or the wording is very…odd.

15

Take it in the context of his Trait too.

Each Basic Ability marks enemy Heroes hit for 10 seconds. Basic Attacks consume the target’s marks, dealing 20% bonus damage per mark and healing for 75 per mark.

Obviously, there’d be no point in picking the level 20 talent if you couldn’t get any value out of the marks, so clearly what they mean by “consumed” is “triggered and removed.”

Correct, and that is the reason Brand of Solarion is pushing the upper limits of what’s acceptable for even level 20 talents, where the average talent winrate is usually around 60%.

That’s part of why I suggested reducing the up-front damage of Flash of Anger. It won’t hurt Flash of Anger itself too much, but it will nerf Brand of Solarion by wasting about a third of Flash of Anger’s damage on repeated triggers.

He’s fairly weak until he gets Flash of Anger, after which point he becomes relevant.

16

I like the changes you suggested for Blaze of Glory. I think his W build in general could use some attention.
Or maybe make his W move faster, that’d be a good start. It actually has a pretty decent range, longer than Thrall’s Chain Lightning, but it’s so slow that you can hardly use it to reliably poke.

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17

lol irl.

18

I was going to say turn Fervor into a passive tick like Ragnaros’ Searing Assault or whichever it is, and so every X seconds he’ll bank up a sweep attack.

Its problem is definitely being an additional cooldown, lowering it could be really all it needs too.

19

I think this is actualy a good way to get rid of some of the level 20 retriggering issue. As each retrigger could just reset the DoT instead of adding on top of that. But i think it should then be more like 100 damage over time and just 60 base damage. As that way more of the DoT damage is negated.

I think blaze of glory should get some CC value instead of just being damage again. That way it is competing at a diffirent aspect compared to Flash of Anger.

CC can be powerful and a main reason to decide to take this talent in case the team clearly lacks it. It doesnt have to be strong CC though, but i think it could work well as a mobility counter if the line causes a 0.25s root and works similar to malfurions root. (all larger dashes get interupted)

It also adds combo potential as when someone is interupted, you could make your Q hit on him aswel. Causing the potential explosion to hit, and maybe even get your team to follow up.

I think your holy fervor idea is a nice one. Its diffirent to other talents, and can be rewarding. And as imperius has high enough basic AA, its damage potential might compete with flash. But its sadly still a pure damage oriented talent.

For damage oriented talents, its often just the strongest one that is taken, unless the alternative is mandatory in a specific buiild. And i dont see enough pure AA based talents for imperius to compensate on that.

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20

Imperius is not weak at what he does early game, he’s just weak at early-game activities.

Namely minion clearing and mercs, which are both very important to early game.

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