Greetings my fellow guardians. And good day. Today I will be discussing a matter that many people here do not know. I'm talking about orbs. Did you know that there are two types of orbs? Big and small. Big orbs take 8 to fully charge a super. Small ones take 16. "But Embracing, what do you mean by big and small orbs?" Glad you asked! You see, each subclass makes a different size of orbs. The following subclasses create large orbs: Sunsinger, Defender, Striker, Voidwalker, and Gunslinger. Here's a quick breakdown on how this works...
Sunsinger- Any kill while in radiance generates orbs. Melees, grenades, and of course regular kills. In addition, the Sunburst perk has the ability to create two more orbs. All are large orbs.
Defender- The Ward of Dawn immediately creates two orbs upon deployment. An additional three can be created through the use of gift of the void. The perk for force barrier, gift of light, creates additional orbs on melee kills, while the ability is active. HOWEVER, the iron harvest perk, which grants orbs through the method of heavy kills, generates smaller orb.
Striker- Probably the simplest of these big orbers. The Fist of Havoc generates large orbs. Nothing more to say.
Voidwalker- Another simple one. Nova bomb creates large orbs. Nothing more to say. (It has been rumored that lance and shatter affect the amount of orbs created. This is being tested by myself and a few friends.)
Gunslinger- Last big orber. The Golden Gun creates large orbs. Simply all there is.
Now we get to the remaining classes. Stormcaller, Nightstalker, Sunbreaker, and Blade Dancer. Let's discuss...
Stormcaller- The Stormtrance super generates a mix of both large and small orbs. Depending on the amount of lightning you out into an enemy. The longer and enemy is exposed, the larger the orbs. This is why larger enemies, such as centurions or captains or minotaurs or Knights, drop larger orbs than shanks, dregs, acolytes, etc.
Nightstalker- Perhaps the most controversial orb maker here. This orb machine, or so it appears, makes small orbs and large orbs. Upon initial super use, two large orbs are generated. Each additional enemy tethered spawns another orb. With the Light of the Pack perk, up to 8 more small orbs can be created when tethered enemies are defeated. (9 with the Crest of Alpha Lupi)
Sunbreaker- This subclass simply makes small orbs. (A test is underway to prove wether or not suncharge affects orb generation.)
Blade Dancer- These guys make nothing but small orbs. Nothing else to say.
Now that we have discussed the subclasses, let's talk about relics and armor. I'll be brief.
All artifacts that spawn orbs, be it by melee, grenade or precision kills, make small orbs.
Armor from the Vault of Glass, Crotas End, and Kings Fall, I.e. Vex striker, Vexbreaker, etc., make small orbs.
This concludes our lesson in orbology! Any questions? Feel free to ask.
(This post is of course subject to change. All negative comments will be removed. These are the results of nearly four weeks of testing so please, rude comments to yourself.)
Edit 1: Thanks for the replies so far! Hope everyone that reads can benefit from this.
Edit 2: Left one way of making orbs out! Boltcaster does spawn small orbs with its perk.
Edit 3: Left out Telesto! It creates small orbs. Shout out to my friend who pointed this out.
Edit 4: Oh my goodness I'm trending. Thank you all for your support!
Edit 5: Another thing to note about orbs is the process we have decided to call orb dilution. It is the process by which orbs created by allies in turn spawn smaller, less super yielding orbs, when the super is cast.
Edit 6: I'd like to thank you all for the support. My team and I are working right now to add videos of our research to YouTube. All vids should be done by the end of the month at the latest. Will post the links here when that happens.
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I just go by the rule that when in need any orb will do as I don't really have time to sort them into piles before using them : )
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what the -blam!- did i just read?
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Explain? https://youtu.be/BbMqAeYo2uE
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Thank you for posting this haha :) been trying to get a good explanation for orb generation and stuff, so thanks.
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Edited by oxmiladyxo: 1/8/2016 8:07:29 PMInteresting I read this now, as I experienced/realized it for the first time last night being the only (reliable) titan on HM&CM Oryx. I knew I was picking up more than 8 orbs but couldn't understand why my super didn't fill. I ended up passing it off as a glitch. Thank you very much for the information!
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Nice work m8!
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That's orbgasmic
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Orrrbologyy
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Thank you for the effort into making this post. Bungie sticky this. I realized a while ago there was a difference in the amount of super energy I got back per orb but never really thought about too hard to figure out the correlation.
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So, what's the symbology there?
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I didn't know about this! Thank you for the information.
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I thought that the more you pick up, the smaller they get, and the size reflected that
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With GG killing a major creates 4 orbs.
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Very nice post! I was wondering about a few of these, so thanks!
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All this time playing this game over the last year+ and I never knew there were different orbs. I did notice something odd about how fast my super charged sometimes but since I play with all 3 classes with multiple builds I didn't pay much attention to it.
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Very interesting, mate! Must've taken a while to test everything out!!! Thanks a bunch for posting! This community badly needs players like you!
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Beta player, and I never realized this. It always perplexed me why some orbs gave me a ton of super energy and others didnt. Good to know!
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What Wait >> orbs can be big and small ? .. ..... OK .ok i need a clan and some firends >> my other two friends pawned they system, so my year one friends gone .. I need new ones so i can learn some of this stuff :-) .. i didnt know this
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Wow. Something that was actually helpful on the forums. Thanks dude
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Edited by King Crimson: 1/8/2016 5:21:52 PMone of my favorite things to do is go in a low level strike like sepiks with No back plans, Relentless, gift of light, iron harvest, and an HMG... painted the entire first room (the unlock door room) with the orbs of my enemies once. Was even better when I had the prison arms that dropped orbs for fallen melee kills. 1 punch, 2 orbs
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Best post I've seen on this site in ages Thanks for the info!
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And of course, yellow bar enemies create more orbs than red bar.
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Nice job
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Interesting read, good work
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how have you people not known this
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I knew about big and small orbs during my first strikes that I played.......