Imperial City Discussions - Current State, Meta, Solo, Small Man, etc - Elsweyr

admiralautumn

This thread will an on-going discussion.

Hello. My name is @admiralautumn. I am a Templar main, who mostly enjoys PvP in all of its forms. I am a huge fan of the Imperial City DLC for both its PvP & PvE content. I have been playing ESO for close to a year now & while I understand the IC is a former shadow of itself (back when it originally released), I firmly believe that IC offers a lot for any PvPer.

The purpose of this post is to bring together other players that participate in the Imperial City zone for discussion on metas, its current state, & any other topics that come to mind. This discussion will be more focused on the PvP aspects of the zone, however discussion of its PvE side is fine as well, outside of the dungeons that is. I am going to give my thoughts and suggestions on IC as well, although I'm not claiming to be any sort of expert on the zone or PvP in general.

Quick Overview of Imperial City:

The Imperial City is divided between the Imperial Sewers and the six Imperial Districts. Each Alliance has a small base in the sewers which provides quick access to the districts, but getting back to base from the districts requires traversing through the sewers. Tel Var (the currency of IC) are earned and used within the City, but can be lost by dying (you lose half when killed whether it being a PvP or PvE encounter).

You can enter the Imperial City through the Campaigns Tab [Default Keybind: L] and selecting either the CP or Non-CP campaign. Once selected you'll be queued to join the zone.
To leave the Imperial City, you can do so two ways. You can either queue for Cyrodiil and then leave via Wayshrine OR you can leave via one of the doors in your Alliance Home Base within the Imperial Sewers. The latter option will take you back to the last PvE zone you were in.

Among the Imperial City Districts (sometimes called Top, Top-Side, etc) are 6 flags, one for each district. Capturing these flags flips it to your faction. Upon capture, you gain a small amount of EXP & AP whilst also summoning guards from your faction to help defend it. While the district is under a faction's control, any player within the district that is with that faction (DC, AD, or EP) recieves a 33% bonus to Tel Var earned from killing mobs. However, this bonus does not apply when killing enemy players. The bonus is additive depending on the amount of districts captured. (198% bonus TV gained if all 6 are captured). Patrolling around each district is a "Horror" or boss. These bosses drop a significant amount of Tel Var and are often sought after by farmers. These bosses have arguable ranges of difficulty as some have various abilities that deal high damage, CC and/or regen HP. Farming these solo is an option so long as your build is cut out for it, however farming in small groups of 2-3 are more common & efficient.

Within the Imperial City Sewers is your alliance's home base. The base has a myriad of shops, merchants, and crafting benches for players to use. Outside the base is a maze of areas containing high mob density & patrolling Bosses. These bosses are usually ignored as the amount of Tel Var is quite small in comparison to the bosses top-side. The main event found in the Sewers is located in the center, the Barathrum Centrata, where players are able to fight a copy of Molag Bal. This version of him has exclusive drops such as the Soul Shriven skin and is often seen being farmed by groups. Despite this, the sewers is mainly seen being used as a region for leveling new characters as the density & respawn rate of mobs is high.

Tel Var is the currency found within Imperial City. It is used to buy items found only in the IC DLC. You gain these stones from either killing mobs, bosses or players. When carrying these stones you'll see a Tel Var Counter (blue in color) that shows the amount that you're carrying, as well as, the current multiplier that your character has. The multiplier, including any bonus % you get from districts captured, determines the amount of tel var dropped from mobs.

The multiplier values are:
1x 1-100
2x 101-1,000
3x 1,001-10,000
4x 10,000+

Useful Items & Sets you can buy using Tel Var:

Black Rose
Galerion's Revenge
Imperial Physique
Meritorious Service
Phoenix
Powerful Assault
Reactive Armor
Shield Breaker
Thews of the Harbinger
Vicecanon of Venom

Hakeijo (used for Prismatic Glyph)
Waxed Apothecary Parcel (used for acquiring Alchemy Mats)
Storage Chests (housing item with 30 & 60 slot variants)

My thoughts as of Dragonhold

Current Population:

• The current state of the population would be "growing." I spend the majority of my game time in CP IC and from my observations the player count is only improving. It is quite noticeable from a couple of months ago. It would seem that the recent IC event breathed some life into the zone & some had decided to stay. Also with the current state of how ZOS's servers are holding up in Cyrodiil, I'm seeing some Cyrodiil PvPers in IC as well. During primetime hours on weekends, I'll notice that sometimes EP or DC might reach 2 bars, however this is still rare. The population is small, far from ever being pop-locked, but I believe its far from being dead.
• As of now, I usually find no issue finding enemy players to fight or finding friends in zone to PvP with. However, this is mostly topside. When I run in the sewers, I'll usually bump into 1-2 players leveling. With no way to know when someone is farming Molag Bal, and with the vast size & amount of time it takes to traverse the sewers, I usually leave this area alone and PvP up top.
• When it comes to group sizes you'll find all types. Many players solo at the moment, or small man depending on the day, but you'll also find larger groups of 8+ running around during nighttime EST.
• Due to the reasons listed above, I've been beginning to notice entire guild raids participating in the zone during prime time hours. This is on all factions particularly on Wednesday & Saturday nights.

Current State of Meta:

• As of the Dragonhold patch, a lot of people are build much more tanky. This is now common not only in IC, but also in Cyrodiil & BGs.
• Due to this, I've seen less Nightblades than ever and more "brawling" style classes & builds out on topside.
• Most common classes I'll see are: Dragonknights, Sorcerers, & Nightblades
• I'm also finding more fights involving bosses than before, as the added aggro helps with taking down more tanky players.

Why I Enjoy IC:

• Currently, IC is my favorite zone to PvP in. It reminds me a lot of my favorite region to PvP in when I played my last MMORPG, Faction Warfare space in EVE Online. In this space, players would ally themselves with factions to fight over systems/districts for control of them. Rewards in this zone came in the form of a currency called LP (Loyalty Points) that could be used to purchase some of the best modules/items in the game for your ship/character. Due to the mix of PvP & PvE, you'd find a wide variety of players throughout the area. From the skilled PvPer to the lowly farmer, there was always someone to fight, on top of a light objective to work towards. While not a mirror match of FW, IC feels very similar in format & flow of combat. Its quite easy to jump in & out of both, with a high flexibility for playing how you want, whether it be solo, small man or large group.
• Even during peak hours in IC, and/or when its mainly large groups running around, you're still able to solo/small man comfortably due to the terrain in IC. LOS & "Tower" gameplay is significantly easier to do in IC thanks to the amount of buildings available to run in. This adds another level to PvP as it takes finesse to be able to split up large groups to bite sized groups to fight. With the wider and more open terrain in Cyrodiil (even in keeps), this style is harder to come by.
• I've experienced little to no lag while in Imperial City, even during prime time.
• The community size is nice, as with how it was in FW in EVE, everyone knows everyone.
• Thanks to how Tel Var works (whether you care or not), it adds another level of "feeling" when PvPing.
  
  These are just my thoughts and opinions on Imperial City. I hope to see more of you out there
  Please feel free to post your own thoughts & comments on IC below.

Mr_Walker

What platform you playing on, because Xbox is like a ghost town most of the time.

admiralautumn

PC-NA Sorry to hear that the console IC is dead. Wish that weren't the case across all platforms.

Marcus684

I believe the tank meta and the addition of cast times to ults has made ganking more difficult, which may be giving players more confidence to step back in to IC without dreading the frustration of losing their hard-earned TV in an instant.

MipMip

While organized group play in Cyrodiil is my favorite PvP style I also like IC. Recently I have been playing in IC mostly on EU PC and the situation is similar to what you (the OP) describe for PC NA: low but recently somewhat increased population, good place for small groups / solo players, the action is in the Districts not the Sewers, and generally a nice community.

Jazira

Hey Admiral, I've enjoyed playing IC with you and Chaos Riders. I was listening to the advice you were giving our group near the end of my play session during our first guild VS. Guild event, and you had some great advice for our team. Just for the record I was spamming rapid regen, sorry if you didn't get that. Also, I totally saw when they baited out our ultimates, we definitely need to watch for that. Anyway...

I was thinking maybe we should tell more guilds/people about our guild VS. guild event? Maybe we could open it up to include more guilds, or face different guilds on different days. That way get more interest for people being down there, and keep the solo people happy that we are not just going around ganging up on them with our larger groups. I mean people will go where the action is, right? Why not just tell them when we'll be there and see if they'll show up? Or have organized nights where we plan something out? That is one way to get more interest, in my opinion.

I am surprised more people are not down there. I think it is fun, too. I bet we could change that.

Raudgrani

It took away a lot of the "immersion" when you could not enter from outside Cyrodiil anymore. Wish you still could, but it could still be its own instance/campaign or whatever.

Haven't been playing for months now, but when I was there like late september or early october, IC was very dead. None at the base, none in the city. I got this sad "Chernobyl theme park" feeling and left. It used to be my favorite place in Cyrodiil, especially during the IC events. I've seriously never had that much in a game before or after that. Now it seems lost, entirely.

admiralautumn

Good turnout for this week's community IC event Would love to see more EP & AD guilds participate in the future!

Kel

I can tell you on PS4 NA, it is not a ghost town. And if you want solo/small group play, you get that early in the morning. At around 3 p.m. it becomes a zergfest. You'll see groups of 15 to 25 just running in a circle from flag to flag, fighting bosses along the way. These group do not let a solo player alone either, and will relentlessly chase down anyone they see, even if that player is doing nothing but farming mobs. But that's just PvP.

It's not just "zerglings" in these groups, either. I see "known" solo players in these groups. Most of them who'll talk all kinds of trash about group play and who'll be quick to call you a zergling for being in a group of 5 in Cyrodiil...yet you see them zerging you down in IC with 20 other people. 🤷‍♂️