Imperial City is... Poppin??

OBJnoob

Xbox NA here... We struggle with lag and population just like everyone else, so looking for an entertaining place to play regularly can be hard.

Two days ago, to my surprise, I started playing in CP Imperial City and have found it to be both lively and not too lively at the same time. I've been having a lot of fun. My bowsorc seems well suited to the needs of the environment-- second only to NBs I would imagine.

But so I haven't been here in a loooong time, and I wanted to bounce some questions off the community.

What's the best Imperial City monster mask? Not for fighting IN IC but to get FROM IC for general PvP purposes.

Is Imperial Physique any good in 2023? I understand the downside of it advertising your Tel Var but ignoring that fact, objectively, is it still good?

Are the sewers completely separate from the districts and only your alliance can go there or is there a risk of finding player enemies there too?

Is there any particular technique for knowing which districts' boss is up, or where it is at a given time? For a solo player I mean-- not in a group running the farm.

chessalavakia_ESO

Any faction can be met down in the sewers.

fred4

OBJnoob wrote: »

What's the best Imperial City monster mask? Not for fighting IN IC but to get FROM IC for general PvP purposes.

Zoal, hands down. Pro: Gank and Xv1 protection, if you know how to play. Optimal use: With Slippery CP in CP, as it's basically an automatic AOE counter-stun to the would-be ganker or zerg. Pro: It's a defensive set. Pro: It protects you when you're at your most vulnerable and is extremely annoying to play against. (Incap) gankers will hate you. Zergs chasing you will hate you. Con: It's a defensive set, e.g. not Balorgh (or Marselok) and on DK just wear Bloodspawn. Con: You lose control of when you CC people.

Is Imperial Physique any good in 2023? I understand the downside of it advertising your Tel Var but ignoring that fact, objectively, is it still good?

In it's heyday the people who used it were mainly magsorcs. IP + Necropotence is / was the biggest shield boost you could get. Even so, those people had to be at least somewhat careful. It was no accident the set was mainly popular with sorcs. They would know all the escapes in IC, e.g. where to streak onto a protected door platform. These days I only see people wearing the set in bigger farming groups when they own the city, e.g. when they (justifiably) feel safe.

Are the sewers completely separate from the districts and only your alliance can go there or is there a risk of finding player enemies there too?

Any faction can enter all sewers. Only the bases are safe. The sewers all meet in the middle where there is a facsimile of Molag Bal. The long way to get into your sewers is via the center. Also, any player can enter any sewer from the district hatches, same as yourself. Activity in the sewers is low in general (cause there isn't much reward for going there), but gankers, duellers and (would be) 1vXers or 2vXers are not uncommon. There are also inexperienced players looking for skyshards that may wander into your sewers.

Is there any particular technique for knowing which districts' boss is up, or where it is at a given time? For a solo player I mean-- not in a group running the farm.

Not really. The bosses are on a 15 min respawn timer. On PC there is an addon that tracks the timeout, if you participated in the previous kill of a given boss. Most bosses spawn near the flag and run clockwise. To search for them, it's most efficient to run counter-clockwise. Exceptions: The Temple boss spawns at the rear. The Nobles boss spawns on either side (randomly) at the rear and will stay on one side. The Elven boss roams the center of the map. I recommend playing with sound on and peeking into buildings, if you want to find other players in progress with a boss.

OBJnoob

@fred4 Thanks for the response. I know you spend most of your time in IC so anything you have to say is helpful.

Yes I hear Zoal talked about a lot. I don't think I'd like not having control over when I CC people though, since I'm on a streaking stamsorc. I don't generally struggle to break free either. I've actually been looking at Immolator Charr as something I might want to try. On like a high HP vampire Warden I think.

I know magsorc used to love IP for the max mag... I'm wondering, now that shields can scale with HP too, if I can basically do the same thing on a stamsorc.

I'm making pretty good tel var honestly I'm probably gonna go ahead and buy it anyway just to try out. I admit I am a little scared to run around with 10k all the time... But the more tel var I get in my bank the less I am worried about it lol.

fred4

Zoal isn't about breaking free. Slippery CP will do that for you or, if that's on cooldown, you have to do it yourself anway. Zoal is about stunning everyone around you the second you break free and them being unable to finish you off.

I think when IC sets came out, everyone including myself looked at them and thought Charr might be better. In practice, these sets are not even in the same league. Charr's cooldown is too long and I find health-based proc conditions generally problematic, based on my experience with the Juggenaut set and with companion skills. Juggernaut is notorious for either proccing randomly for "no reason", notably from NPC (guard) attacks, even at full health, or for not proccing at all due to the attacker bursting you right through the health threshold. Zoal, on the other hand, is very consistent and has no effective cooldown, e.g. it's cooldown matches the CC immunity cooldown. That said, I play squishy characters which perhaps amplifies the differences in these sets, e.g. which made Charr a non-starter for me. What can be said about Zoal for sure is that it's palpable. It's very obvious what it does.

If you want a defensive set as a sorc, I think you probably get the most value out of good old Engine Guardian. The decoy aspect is as annoying as Zoal to fight against, while Dark Deal / Conversion uniquely positions sorc to take advantage of Engine Guardian supplying the "wrong" resource.

There are times when I accumulate more than 10K Tel Var, but typically when I'm up in the middle of the night and my faction dominates IC. I have not bothered making IP gear for those times, mainly because I value my existing gear layout with 1x front bar set, 1x back bar set, mythic and monster set. That said IP does make you strong, difficult to take down 1v1 or for a boss to kill you.

OBJnoob

Yeah 10k is kinda the magic number that you don't want to have I think. The problem, in my limited experience, is that solo killing a boss takes a while and at least half of my PvP encounters in IC have come when I finally had a boss in execute phase. Just this morning I had two enemies jump in on me, and I honestly decided to kite them around and finish killing the dang boss lol. After the kill I had 17k on me and I half rejoiced and half groaned. I decided to book it, and was very happy to escape whether I might've won or not.

I'm using rallying cry, way of fire, engine guardian, and Markyn Ring. A more than decent all-around build, but honestly lacks a little damage for some of the bruiser DKs and Wardens. Bow/Resto staff. If I switched to Destro I suppose I'd fix my damage problems but I prioritize living when I'm farming tel var.

fred4

Since I play a very rounded build, solo farming takes me about 5 mins too, not least because I withhold ultimates for PvP, make sure I'm at full resources when the boss dies, rarely let my health drop, and so on. I have, however, seen pure PvEers nuke bosses in about 90s in the past. I don't know whether these people had viable PvP builds, but doing that and then cloaking / streaking / vamp-sprinting (etc) away might be a way to cut down on your PvP exposure.

If you are purely after gank protection, you might do what I do and wear the Esoteric Greaves, which might work on a Dark Dealing sorc. Those are basically my only passive defense, but I'm a magblade. That said, they are quite situational. Good against other nightblades and certain bursty specs, such as Dizzying Swing builds, but bad against status effect DOT builds for example. I've been experimentally relying on them on my Arcanist with low health of 25K. A player shot me off my horse in 2 seconds. Their combo? 1x Lethal Arrow, 2x Crushing Shock, Winterborn and at least 4 status effects + 2 enchants. Might have been Draugrkin and maybe Asylum destro. Despite none of that hitting hard at all, not least due to the Greaves, it added up to 25K in 2 seconds.

OBJnoob

Lol yea. I'm an old Ravenwatch player so I'm not the best at recognizing all the procs and arena weapons... But IC is the same as everywhere else, I'm getting tethered to Vate Destro users and people are spamming Rending slashes. DoTs eat my stamsorc alive, for obvious reasons, but I don't really look at it as a problem.

I may run from a PvP encounter from time to time but I embrace the chaos. I'm there for the bosses AND the players-- it's all good.

Again... Just the other day, I'm finishing up soloing a boss and some enemies show up. Like 5 or 6. I obviously have aggro so when they attack me I kinda have no choice but to run off. My greed got the best of me though and I returned to try and finish what I'd started with the boss. Ended up dying, but I guess they didn't impress me very much. Because afterwards I went back-- missing half my tel var now I wasn't as afraid-- when I got back they'd spread out and were just farming regular mobs. I managed to kill them all, one or two at a time, and ended up getting my tel var back lol. After that I promptly changed districts and went looking for the next boss.

I've always been a fan of objective mode BGs, though perhaps not many are. This is kinda like that for me. I like having multiple things to keep track of and deal with. And losing isn't a huge deal to me, though I do mourn my tel var like everyone else.

My build is pretty well rounded. I just suffer from what all sorcs suffer from-- I hope. A little squishy.

Anyways I've made about 100k tel var in the two days I've been down there... So it's about time to start buying things. I'm going to try imperial physique-- I've just always wanted to, but didn't have as much interest in IC back in the day. If I used Imperial Physique on both bars, backbarred Clever Alchemist, and used Gaze of Sithis I wonder how much HP I would have? I'd probably have a VERY strong shield, and I don't think the damage would be too bad?

Necrotech_Master

the ones i usually see running imperial physique nowadays are WW (and they are usually running in a group)

if you run in the sewers, trove scamps can now drop random IC gear, though it is not curated it is better than buying the gear

you can directly buy all of the armor for all of the IC sets, but you can only get weapons from the RNG boxes or trove scamps

jewelry you can directly buy gold, but i would wait until after U40 when the costs are re-adjusted due to the jewelry changes, as right now they are incredibly expensive

IC has always been one of my favorite zones, and ive spent many many hours farming there lol

OBJnoob

Yeah I thought about that too. Having an Imperial Physique Oakensoul WW... Prolly be about as good as a WW could be.

Necrotech_Master

if you were wondering about the stats imperial physique gives

without the 4x bonus: its 1034 to all max stats
with the 4x bonus: its 6204 to all max stats (600% bonus = 6x)

so its slightly stronger than tri-stat food by about 50%

if you wanted to also try stacking death dealers fete, and tristat food, you could get some huge values to your stats

tristat food is around ~4000 to all stats, death dealers, death dealers at max stacks is 2640 all stats, and IP 4x bonus is 6204 max stats

thats ~12,844 to all max stats, which could make something like a warden incredibly tanky with their max hp based heal

and since death dealers is a mythic, you would still have room for another 5pc set (probably something like rally cry) and then for filler pc you could get some more max hp using trainee or druids braid