What does dropping your banner do?

When I press G on the keyboard, my character summons down my banner on the spot. It hangs around for a few seconds, then disappears.

What is the purpose of this?

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5 Answers

"Dropping your banner" with G is an emote that serves no immediate function.¹

At best, it's a customizable emote that shows off your swag—your in-game achievements convert to banner adornments. You can also change the banner's color, sigil, and shape to reflect your taste.

Dropping the banner will create a marker on the map for party members (orange arrow, turns to pulsing circle when close)

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It's just a mechanism to show off your Achievements. Various achievements unlock certain things for your banner, and by pressing G you can throw it down and show everyone that you've got all classes to Level 13 in the beta (for example).

Source: under "Achievements"

ACHIEVEMENTS

You'll be able to show off your achievements with a battle standard, a banner visible to all players on Battle.net that will be a visual representation of your accomplishments in Diablo III. And you should expect even more ‘endgame' additions to come - ones that'll let you pursue unique goals and achieve more glory in the world of Sanctuary than ever before.

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It also marks the point on the map while the banner is dropped, useful to point out a location to other players - eg elite enemy, resplendid chest etc

It will be used to flag yourself for PvP, additionally as a way to show off your flag.

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Banners are a standin for the location the other players can teleport to during the game.

Whenever you join a game with other players, their banners will show up around the waypoint marker in town (presumably in other towns too). You can use these banners to teleport directly to where the player is anywhere in the world.

On the other side, you can place your banner (with G) for a few seconds to be a standin for where other players will be able to teleport to. The thinking goes that you'll place it before you get into a big fight so anyone who might teleport to you won't be tossed right into the fray.

Turns out that this isn't working in the current beta. I recall using this form of teleport so I expect that it will retain this functionality for retail. Otherwise, dropping your banner is purely an exercise in aesthetics.

I created a Bug Report in an attempt to find out what the functionality should be.

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