Guide To Imperial City Banner Bosses

Necrotech_Master

For those who are inexperienced with imperial city i figured it would be good to have a little write up on the sewer banner bosses to be able to help if you should avoid or try to fight one, this guide will give you a basic overview of the different types of banner bosses and what to watch out for when fighting them

commonalities between all banner bosses:

• they all have anti-stealth fields (i think these bosses were some of the first enemies to include this mechanic since it was before thieves guild)
• they make a distinct sound as you get closer to one, as long as you are in stealth and you do not go into the anti stealth field they should never aggro on you
• they will aggro if you attack another NPC enemy that is within their anti stealth field even if it was single target attack
• they usually have around 1.5 million hp

banner boss types:
there are 2 distinct banner bosses, one which is "melee" focus and one which is "range" focused

• the melee focus boss will always have 1 single blue banner coming up from the middle of their back
• the range focus boss will always have 2 red banners coming up from their shoulders

blue (melee) banner notes:

• the melee banner guys are significantly easier to fight than the red banner guys
• melee banners can still hit hard but majority of their skills are melee focus, so kiting is a good way to avoid most of their heavy hitting abilities

the melee banner guys come with 3 primary skill sets:

• duel wield - typical duel wield enemy, however has hard hitting heavy attacks and can enrage self, it generally only spams light attacks while enraged so kiting is an option
• 1h/shield - typical 1h shield enemy, this one has utility type skills to immobilize you with talons, fire breath, most unique effect is that it has reflect shields, blue shield reflects all magic projectiles, green shield reflects all physical projectiles
• 2 hand - typical 2 handed weapon enemy, the unique and most damaging attack this one can do is when it starts spinning its sword around, this attack hits very hard and should be avoided unless you are an amazing tank, it is melee only so can be kited

red (ranged) banner notes:

• these are much more challenging than the blue banners primarily because their attacks are all ranged
• these bosses also have significantly higher aoe dmg than blue banners

the ranged banner guys also have 3 primary variants:

• the ice mage - has similar attacks to standard ice mages, however this one can also create 3 large (6-8 meter) damaging ice patches, these ice patches can overlap and stack dmg so recommending do not stand in them, best chance is to dodge roll out of the area
• the fire mage - has some similar attacks to standard fire mages, however this one has a lot of fire aoe, one of its key skills is that it charges up an explosive fire ring around itself and then it also sends explosive fireballs out in the field with larger radius, these are particularly damaging too because they apply a high dmg variant of burning called "daedric flame", this dot can be purged
• the necromancer - this one is fairly similar to standard necromancer enemies, the first thing it does is summon a flesh atronach summon, this is fairly weak and can be killed with aoe, its unique attack is it will do a channel that will cause lich crystals to spawn on players, these have an aoe dot and also explode after a couple seconds, dodge rolling is recommended to get out of range quickly

banner boss "secondary" skills
each banner boss regardless if it is red or blue has some "secondary" skillset that it uses in addition to their primary ranged or melee skill set, these usually include some kind of healing component

• type 1: a simple vampiric drain, this banner attack is similar to the vampric drain, the attack is similar to the original vampiric drain (stuns you while dealing high dmg and healing the boss some)
• type 2: ground aoe: this attack creates 3 black circles on the ground (roughly 6 meter size) that deal high dot dmg and slightly heal the banner boss
• type 3: healing totems: this attack the banner boss summons 3 pillars in nearby locations, these create an weak aoe but it makes it difficult to use melee skills so range is recommended as they are not strong, after about 10-15 seconds these pillars will "despawn" if they are not killed and provide healing to the boss (more pillars active when it absorbs them provides it more healing)
• type 4: simple shield and heal: the banner boss will start channeling a heal, they also gain a damage shield, this can be interrupted after the dmg shield is destroyed

each banner boss has basically 1 "primary" skillset paired with 1 "secondary"/"healing" skill, and depending on the combination of these it can make the fight easier or harder

for example a ice mage red banner boss can have a type 2 secondary skill, which basically doubles the amount of ground aoe it has including increased stacking dot from the ground since both the ice patches and dark patches can overlap

banner boss tel var rewards:

• base reward: 300 tel var
• 2x reward when fighting solo: 600 tel var
• 3x reward when fighting solo: 900 tel var
• 4x reward when fighting solo: 1200 tel var