All you have to do is look at the data to see why Imperius isn’t performing as well, and that’s because the maps he’s good on are a little above average, and the maps he does poorly on he’s significantly under performing.
I don’t really think that hero difficulty has much to do with it at all. Take for example Hanamura, Hanamura is a very open map with few ambush points.
If it was player performance, Hanamura’s winrate should be the lowest, but it’s in fact one of his top 3 winrates currently in Diamond + Masters.
I don’t see how Hanamura is not suitable for Imperius.
No one said Hanamura is not suitable for Imperius, what was said is that the difficulty of landing Imperius’s abilities is more difficult on Hanamura. This directly counters your thesis that Imperius players just find the hero too difficult, which in turn is a saying most people don’t know how to play Imperius.
But if that was the case, then Imperius should not be doing well on a map where it’s difficult to land his abilities. But in fact Imperius is exceeding on a map that is difficult to land his abilities beause the map is designed towards Imperius’s strengths regardless of how difficult it is to play the hero.
I didn’t say he’s hard because it’s hard to land his abilities.
He’s hard because ppl don’t know where he belongs.
Hanamura is a two-laned map, so he’s probably in themen, doing fine, or if he’s on the sololane, someone gets him the Samurai camp.
Imperius will be good on every map, which is PvP heavy instead of PvE, and Hanamura suits that.
We’re agreeing that he does well on Hanamura because of the lack of focus on PvE.
But “he’s hard because people don’t know where he belongs” is far too vague. That’s not useful information.
Imperius has a 45% winrate right now. He’s not doing too well, which is probably why people aren’t picking him.
Hanamura is second only to BhB in weight of PvE. It’s map all about camps with worst objective in the game 
Uh… there are 2 camps on that map that are merc centeric the other is a turet for team fighting mostly.
The Vision camps are critical, too.
And those can very easily be gotten even by peeople with jsut average PVE, I’m talking I can get them in under 15 seconds as an unfed butch or a 20 stack zul’jin
There is only one camp there which increasing the lane pressure. The vision camp is easily taken even by him alone.
He can get the turret camp with a little help as well.
Since there are only two lanes, he don’t need to be picked for the sololane, helping al ot with the 4men.
And the obj is on an open field where are nothing but Heroes to hit.
It’s a PvP map.
I will think more about it, but it’d be hard for me to accept that Imperius is not strong. Since both of us have such great success with him.
Hanamura is definitely not PvE centric. There’s a lot of factors that go into what makes a map more PvE or more PvP.
In order of most relevant to least:
#1. Number of Lanes.
Biggest factor imho. The more lanes you have the more PvE centric the game becomes. If we had a 4 lane map it would most definitely be the strongest PvE wise.
#2. Is the objective PvE or PvP?
Imperius for example does poorly on Infernal Shrines, but great on Dragonshire.
#3. Does the objective provide strong siege?
How much does the objective make up for lack of siege damage?
Best example is Dragonshire. The objective is PvP, but the reward is PvE damage. Imperius makes up for his lack of siege damage with a PvE objective reward.
This is also why Imperius excels at Towers of Doom.
#4. Mercenaries
Mercenaries are the least important on this list but don’t let it fool you they are more than strong enough to make an impact.
Additionally, the effectiveness of mercs can vary based on Quality vs. Quantity.
It’s charisma is only a bit higher than the zero-charismatic Little princess’ (the gothic one and the wakanda one)…
Even with the nerfs the samurai is a pushing machine and taking the camps give precious xp and items, it is still mercs and thus pve centric.
Also i disagree with imperius being better at tod than shrines.
Don’t take my word for it, look at it here on HeroesProfile:
Storm League, Infernal Shrines, Master + Diamond = 51.47% (47.47% rule of thumb applied).
Storm League, Towers of Doom, Master + Diamond = 58.89% (54.89% rule of thumb applied).
