That’s why I added the slow to it. It would apply half of Solarion’s Fire’s normal slow, which would be 20% baseline and about 28% with Consuming Blaze.
What I was sort of going for with his W build (I gave it a CDR talent in the full rework concept) is an area denial playstyle. He can force you to constantly be changing position to avoid letting him chew through you.
That would set it apart from the burst of damage and sustain that Flash of Anger provides.
I also wanted to give him a E build focused around more sustained damage output and self-healing to offer a more reliable but less hard-hitting alternative to FoA. This is what I proposed for a new talent at level 7.
Flaring Temper
Consuming a Valorous Brand applied by Molten Armor while Molten Armor is still active causes it to flare, dealing 200% damage to all enemies within its radius.
This flare heals Imperius for 25% of the damage dealt to enemies, increased to 50% against Heroes, and applies Molten Armor’s Valorous Brand.
This would allow him to fill a more Tank-oriented role in teamfights, compared to his current, more Assassin-oriented FoA playstyle.
Imperius lacks sticking power against most enemies. Ranged opponents can kite him fairly easily, especially if they have mobility. That means that he usually only gets one shot to deal his damage before he has to back up and wait for his cooldowns, meaning burst damage is crucial to his impact unless he can consistently rely on followup from his allies, which you can’t really do in the solo-lane.
He currently relies too much on it for his impact, which is where a lot of the frustration comes from, and that won’t change until his other level 7 talents are brought up to par.
BTI is only all that good against Tanks, and Impaling Light is only really good (unless you land a 3+ man combo for the full reset) once you get FoA, since the CDR only applies to his Q and you still have to wait for the rest of your combo.
FoA is what makes him consistently relevant in teamfights. It’s what makes him self-sufficient and impactful, and if you don’t have it then you’d better be pretty confident in your teammates’ ability to follow up on your engages.
Again, that isn’t all that useful unless you have FoA because your W and E will still be on cooldown. You’re still missing half your combo.
I’m not saying Impaling Light is weak, but it’s certainly not enough to make up for Imperius’ weakness of his lack of significant damage pre-level 7. It’s only all that good once you get FoA or if your teammates reliably follow up.
It’s powerful because it synergizes with FoA, but FoA is what really makes Imperius come online.
Ironically, FoA’s winrate and pickrate also went up after that piddly nerf.
And Impaling Light is pretty much always picked with Flash of Anger, so you cannot separate its success from Flash of Anger’s. I’ve literally never seen a game where a team got their level 1 talents but not their level 7 talents.
You can’t claim that Impaling Light is doing just fine without FoA when it is never without FoA in the first place.
Except you can, BTI had a perfectly good winrate at 52-51% pre FoA nerf.
You know what happened to BTI? The FoA nerf more negatively affected BTI than it did Impaling Light. BTI went from 52%, dipped to 44%, and is now hovering at 48%.
Couple problems with the conclusions you’re drawing from that.
BTI’s winrate dropping to 44% briefly is part of the usual wild fluctuations on HeroesProfile following every patch. They filter by patch, not dates, so every patch starts with a new tiny sample size that grows over time. As more games were logged for that patch and the sample size grew, the Law of Large Numbers pulled that winrate up to normal.
I’ve seen some talents and heroes drop to sub-20% or climb to above-70% winrates on HP immediately following a patch. It’s part of why I always caution people to wait at least a week after a patch to pull data from the sites on heroes who received changes.
BTI’s winrate over the past couple months has floated between 48% and 52% over time. It having a 48% winrate right now is perfectly normal.
You are assuming that BTI’s winrate drop must be a result of FoA’s winrate dropping, which makes no sense because FoA’s winrate did not drop.
#1. I didn’t say it was a 44% winrate, I said it dipped to 44% winrate, and that was after the first week. So 7 days had already passed, giving substantial concern.
There’s a difference between a hero that starts at say , 60% winrate over the first week and cozies down to 52% winrate, versus dipping to 40% winrate and creeping up to 48% winrate.
While not definitive, that actually does pose something of a concern.
#2. FoA’s popularity increased, and BTI’s popularity drastically decreased, which you ignored.
This means that BTI’s affect on FoA is minimalized, but FoA’s effect on BTI can still be strong.
#3. This actually indicates that FoA and Impaling light are both individually strong talents.
Just because two talents are both strong, does not mean they require each other to be strong. You just happen to be picking the two strongest talents.
Now is there synergy? Sure. But that does not mean they are not individually strong.
#4. Your claim about BTI being 48% winrate is false, it never dropped below 50% winrate for 9 major patches … and guess what, 9 patches ago Imperius had a sub-50% winrate on average.
Yes, and that was my point. As the sample size rose, so did the winrate. That means that its low winrate was not actually indicative of the talent’s performance, and was instead a fluke caused by too small a sample size.
Because it is virtually irrelevant, outside of acting as a sample size.
Again, I’m not saying Impaling Light is weak.
I’m saying it is not strong enough to make up for Imperius’ baseline weaknesses on its own. FoA is, and because FoA is nearly always picked whenever Impaling Light is picked, Impaling Light gets to hitch a ride along.
If people consistently picked Impaling Light without Flash of Anger, I can guarantee you its winrate would be quite a bit lower.
Ah, you’re filtering for D+M. I was looking at overall, where things have basically stayed the same since the patch.
On a bit of a tangent, I’m still laughing that anybody thought that nerf to FoA would actually do anything. That love-tap took off less than 2% of his full combo’s damage output.
I’d recommend waiting more like 2-3+ weeks after a patch for any results from Diamond and/or Masters. BTI only has ~170 games logged so far, and the difference between games won and games lost is less than 10. At that small a sample size, it would only take 2 won or lost games to change the winrate by more than 1%.