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.

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.

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.