As someone who spammed Imperius in high elo himself before this whole “Imperius is broken” thread-trend (threand) began, and having him at lvl 53 atm with good wr, I dare to say that I know the character pretty well.
And… I can see why he’s considered op in the lower ranks (because we need to keep in mind that at high elo -tho he’s certainly strong and a good pick- he sits at 53% wr and looks just okay, nothing special).
Despite his clear weaknesses (Blinds, PvE in general, I know that hard CC “iS a CoUnTeR tO eVeRyOnE”, but some Heroes are more hindered and annoyed by it, some are more (easily) punished with chain CC and Imp is one of them).
So I have some ideas how to make him somewhat more balanced/fun. Because if he’s not taken care of, he’s actually truly broken at lvl 20(!!!).
My take:
Nerf Burn the Impure to 2% from 2.5%
Personally I always found this talent troublesome.
It’s a lvl 1 talent that gives big burst bonus to Imp and at lvl 20, he can spam the -7.5% hp with an AA speed of 1.5+ (depends on how many ppl you stun, this value is calculated with a 2 ppl stun), and that’s just the Burn the Impure dmg…
Nerf Flash of Anger from 180 to 120 bonus dmg
Kinda the same reason. Imp gets insane burst lategame with a short period of “spam” that’s really hard to be dealt with in lower ranks and it’s not like it’s not effective at the higher ranks.
Combine these two with Brand of Solarion and you kill everyone in a blink of an eye (I’ll do some clips latter and might post them here if some think that’s too vague or an exaggeration).
Plus Flash of Anger should be more about sustain to begin with imo.
You can’t really nerf Brand of Solarion, because even if you nerf its Brand duration, he kills ppl way before it ends, plus that’s a cool talent which should stay imo (might be a little bias, but I watched it going from “why no one else pick it”, to “why everyone always pick it, geez”).
And I wouldn’t nerf Impaling Light because I think the main reason ppl overpick it is because “Q build goes brrrpht!” and if we nerf most of the Q talents, even with the nerfed BtI ppl would pick it most the time.
If after these he falls out and needs some buffs, we can buff him in other directions/aspects. I certainly don’t want to make one of my most played Heroes useless.
I just want him to be slightly less of a dominator.
Honestly, I think Celestial Swiftness at 16 needs the nerf more than the other two talents. The burst damage from the earlier talents is survivable, but when he can start spamming it and can stick like a burr to keep AAing due to the movement speed buff, it just gets incredibly oppressive in late game team fights. I would give him a flat attack speed buff for hitting a hero, and maybe have the duration be based on the number of heroes hit.
I can’t see why they thought he needed move speed on top of his slows, and with his tank helping him keep people locked down.
If you nerf Celestial Charge, ppl will just switch to the Armor Reduction to get the most dmg, which still remains insanely high if we don’t his early talents for single target burst dmg increase.
In which case I would probably nerf just Flash of Anger, as that talent benefits from most of his other talents, so toning that down would have a ripple effect that could be enough on its own.
Yea, if we nerf Flash of Anger, Q build loses a lot of its power.
And then I’d imagine ppl would pick Burn the Impure a lot again, which imo was always a problematic talent.
That’s why I’d nerf these two a bit.
These are more realistic. Imp has always been a headache for me when he appears on enemy team and reminds me of old sonya, chen, and blaze who all got well deserved nerfs.
I personally just dislike hyperbole. Imp is a strong pick but acting like he’s an instawin or loss and getting angry at “op” abilities that did nothing for him when he was sitting at a poor state on release is silly. Not directing at you naturally.
I would argue that Flash of Anger should be the standard for Imperius’ level 7 talents. Both Holy Fervor and Blaze of Glory are notably underperforming, while Flash of Anger is actually balanced. Nerfing Flash of Anger down to BoG’s and HF’s level won’t make those talents good, it will just make FoA equally bad.
If we’re trying to address the issue of Imperius’ Q build being his most popular and successful, then we’d need to make the rest of his kit equally fun and impactful and nerf his baseline stats slightly to compensate.
The main issue that Imperius has right now is that he really only has 1 viable build (with slight variations in level 1 and 7 talent picks) - Q build. He has no W build due to having only 2 W talents that don’t really synergize, and his E build just feels very lackluster (it isn’t bad, but it falls short of Q build in every way except long-term sustain). Both of those things need to change if Imperius is ever going to have viable non-Q-centric builds.
I’ve got some ideas for a small-medium sized rework for Imperius.
Level 4
Battle Hunger - Bonus healing increased from 70% to 80%.
Press Forward - Also increases Regen Globe duration to 8.
Level 7
Blaze of Glory - Line damage now matches Solarion’s Fire’s center damage (meaning BoG now benefits from Consuming Flame’s bonus damage).
Holy Fervor - Holy Fervor attacks reduce Holy Fervor’s cooldown by 2 seconds for every Brand they consume.
New talent: Flaring Temper - Consuming a Molten Armor Brand while Molten Armor is active causes its next attack to deal 200% damage to all enemies within Molten Armor’s radius. This heals for 50% of the total damage dealt to heroes and applies Molten Armor’s Brand to heroes it hits.
Level 10
Wrath of the Angiris - Range increased by 1, and a portion of its damage is changed to %-based damage (~100+15% max hp).
Level 13
Pathetic Mortals - Now requires a full channel to apply damage and movement speed reduction.
Divine Rage - Removed.
Heat of Battle - Now also refreshes the duration of Molten Armor by 0.5 seconds whenever Imperius consumes a Molten Armor Brand.
New Talent: Resurging Blaze - Solarion’s Fire’s cooldown is reduced by 1 second when it hits an Hero, increased to 2 seconds for center hits. Consuming a Solarion’s Fire Brand reduces Solarion’s Fire’s cooldown by 2 seconds.
Level 16
Celestial Swiftness - Maximum attack speed bonus reduced from 400% to 200%, and the bonus attack speed no longer stacks with successive Celestial Charges, but instead only refreshes the duration of the higher attack speed bonus.
Valorous Pursuit - Branded enemies are now also revealed.
New Talent: Rising Fury - Consuming a Molten Armor Brand increases Imperius’ attack speed by 25%, up to 100%, for 3 seconds.
Level 20
Unrelenting Descent - Removed
New Talent: Thunderous Descent - Wrath of the Angiris now deals its damage in a radius of 5 around the landing location. Enemies within a radius of 2.5 of the landing location are stunned for 1 second.
Accompanied by some base-stat nerfs, mainly to Imperius’ health, I think these would go a long way towards improving his build diversity.
As a side note, they really need to fix Celestial Charge’s wonky hitbox. I’ve seen so many Qs that had no right to land hit anyway and just as many that definitely should have landed completely wiff. It basically happens at least once a game.
Agree with those changes i would also nerf pathetic mortals to 40% damage and no speed debuff.
Now what i would also change :
W speed increased , you want people to graduate from being Q bots after all.
Q is a straight line CC , no more deadzone and slows people for 15% for 1.5 sec baseline.
It is annoying to have a cluncky ability that does not guarantee an AA after it when the whole basis of the hero is to AA after landing an ability.
the W talent at 7 procs but does not consume brands
holy fervor (lv7) cd halved
press forward (lv4) doubles the duration of globes when picked up and bumped to 15 armor
trait talent at 4 healing increased
teleport talent at 16 reveals the people bearing the solarion brands for its duration: it is awkward to have this talent useless if you lose sight of the people you want to teleport to.
wrath of angiris , 0.5 sec cast time, ignores every terrain, distance of grab increased.
unrelenting descend : increases the damage , increases the stun by 0.5 sec , reset to 5 sec cd if someone dies within 3 seconds
Now you’d have a hero with less trash basic abilities and less trash talent so that you can graduate from the only good abilities (Q and 6 swords ans E if talented) he has.
I’m not outright dismissing the possibility for wonky/buggy Q interactions.
But usually ppl fail to keep up with the hitboxes 100% of the time and minilags can happen.
So if you have proof, pps share some clips with the wonky Qs.
I would also look into making trigger mechanism of Q more consistent.
It’s very frustrating to play against Imperius, thinking you are well out of his Q range, and get sucked in. It feels like the tip of his spear has an additional hit box that pulls his targets in.
On the other hand, it’s also very frustrating to play as Imperius, using Q on a target that is right in front of you and I just slide right past him.
I think changing its mechanism something similar to ETC’s Q with collision would make it consistent.
You dash towards the target area, but as soon as you hit a first hero and channel your stun.
Honestly imo just reduce the hitbox size of his Q, ik thats not all he’s good at but still.
It actually makes a lot of sense as a mechanic when he was new, It would be super hard to hit and he would have felt very weak on launch day, but people are good at imperious now, they should not need the crazy hitbox. If they removed it it would make him much more fun to play against imo.
true, maybe some other nerfs are in order, but all i particularly WANT is that hitbox to be reduced. Beyond getting teleported valla’s vault’s distance into imperious’s Q, I enjoy fighting with and against him. Though he is definitely overtuned right now, so im down for nerfs.
Would rather have him deal some extra damage to minions by default (Raynor Exterminator style) than let Holy Fervor to synergy further with Celestial swiftness through reduced cooldown.
As for Press Forward, it basically a highly situational talent which offers infinite mana regen boost which also freezes your health loss against heroes like DVa and other low burst enemies. Basically an inferior version of Kerrigan’s lvl 1 but the talent has little use simply because of how he suffers weak wave clear so it’s not even worth spamming spells on anything which isn’t a hero target. You simply let someone else handle this activity.
It’s generally a problem with how he lacks overall versatility and is pigeon holed into taking PVP talents for optimal performance. Having a talent to increase his overall preparedness which has little use in combat is not strictly speaking bad design, but more a problem with how maps and objectives are structured, which will hopefully change soon.
There also seems to be a common misconception how he suffers from what was called deadzone in reference to wow hunter class, which comes up regularly as a topic in how it’s easy to avoid his spear attack. You can’t really see the cursor but pulling it closer to the feet of the caster allows you to get around this. You are not safe by staying close and just risk taking even more damage from Burn the Impure.
His burst definitely needs some adjustments, but for his solo laning, I would combine aspects of Hanzo one shotting and Leoric’s AA combo, where every X consecutive attacks would empower him to instantly kill a single minion on next swing, slightly empowering his wave clear. Optimal use would require some micro management but who cares if you get it for free? At lvl 1 it takes 8 auto attacks to kill a footman and at lvl 20 it takes him 5 attacks. You get my point.
