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.
-
This is really useful. Thanks!
-
Bruh I just got out of one of my classes to comeback to another one [spoiler]gg though I learned something there[/spoiler]
-
Informative thanks!
-
Thank you for this work. I have been wondering why my super doesn't always charge when I grab a ton of orbs sometimes. I had some crazy hypothetical ideas about orbs not counting correctly in piles and such.
-
Been playing since beta...had no idea. Thanks homie!
-
Good post is good
-
Awesome post! I imagine not many people, including myself, didn't know which supers generate small vs. large orbs. I always thought it was based off of intellect.
-
Great post. Thank you
-
Oh and Bladedancer makes like one orb each time :/
-
You guys didn't know You also missed that supers gained through friendly orbs make orbs that produce less super energy
-
-
The hell? Someone on the destiny forums wa useful... Thanks man! We need more people like you To fix this community
-
thanx for the info
-
Thanks for the helpful info!
-
Edited by LlamaNational: 1/8/2016 4:52:27 AMSome things are fixed on size of orbs like iron harvest, gift of light, telesto and armour perks, but the super generates orb sizes depending on if the super was made from orbs or kills
-
I had thought that it was how you got your super that determined the size of the orbs. If you got your super from kills, they would be larger, and if you got your super from picking up other orbs they'd be smaller
-
Edited by Selenophobia: 1/8/2016 4:50:54 AMI always was suspicious about the amount of light from orbs. Thanks for clarification. I'll have fun confusing my RaF with this
-
Bump.
-
Wow I'm actually really impressed with this post! Nice find OP! I don't think I've really noticed the size difference in orbs.
-
I think telesto makes smaller orbs than supers. So tiny orbs?
-
Huh, good to know. So why do Bladedancers generate small orbs? Their super is already laughably weak in PvE to begin with. Oh well, Bungie logic, I guess.
-
Never even noticed there were different sized orbs since I started playing day 1. This is good info though.
-
Edited by khanspiracy: 1/8/2016 4:00:55 AMHey hey hey these are the Destiny forums. We only want hateful troll posts with complaints and nerf requests. Well made and thoughtful posts are Reddit material only. How dare you make an educational post that's very useful!!!
-
Darth Vader is Luke's dad
-
Wha-? D-did I just gain useful insight from the forums?
-
Very detailed. Terrific work, kudos to you and your team.