I dislike the casting animation of this skill. I would prefer it instantly cast like ring of shields or abyssal echoes. It should make gameplay way smoothier, especially when most of the build I came across have it auto cast.
The same would go for anomaly but at least there are some “aiming” aspect of that so it’s okayish.
What do you think?
the devs have said before they don’t really like the idea of people auto-casting skills… it’s not something they’re opposed to, but iirc they said that if they’ve designed a skill that’s best used in that way, they would prefer to rework it so that auto-cast is not the optimal way to play it.
if they removed the cast time and animation from devouring orb, it would further incentivize players to auto-cast it, and at that point it might as well be a passive skill. they’d probably have to balance it by dramatically increasing the mana cost or the cooldown, both of which are harder stats to deal with as a player than cast speed.
i would expect to see some changes to any skills that are commonly used on auto-cast before we see any sort of changes that make auto-cast easier or more optimal.
maybe they’ve changed their minds, but as far as i’m aware that is the stance they’ve taken and stuck with on the subject.
this topic might have two separate directions… instant cast vs visual animation
ignoring the issues around auto-casting (which I do not use) etc, from a visual perspective I find the devouring orbs animation a bit odd. Most of the time I can hardly tell if I have cast it or if the number of orbs have maxed out. the visual queues are simply too subtle especially when there is a lot going on.
I was thinking that it would be nicer to have a status icon pop-up that indicated you have maxed out the stacking etc (in a similar way for minion counts in the top right of the screen). That would make it easier to “see” the status of your casts without having to try and make it out from the animation itself or just spamming the cast just in case. It could also be as simple as having a little number on the icon indicating how many orbs are in play etc.
from another animation perspective, devouring orbs seem to have a performance issue - maxed out stacks with graphic settings on high seem to make a very noticable fps hit…
i don’t have the game open to double check but as i recall from the builds i’ve used it in, devouring orbs don’t have a stack limit… the limit comes from how much duration they have vs how much cooldown reduction you and the skill have.
i agree that having an indicator of how many you have out at a given time would be useful though, and would make it feel less necessary to auto-cast it. if you know how many you can have out at max, you can just check the number and cast again if necessary. it wouldn’t stop people auto-casting it, but it would help those of us who don’t.
i’ve also noticed a performance hit when using the skill but i can’t tell if it’s because of the orbs themselves or because of the void rifts and projectiles they spawn. when specced a certain way the skill definitely creates a lot of action on the screen.
there’s also the hit calculations to take into consideration, since each orb creates projectiles and void rifts (if you take those nodes, and why wouldn’t you?) that all hit separately and constantly, several times a second. it may not be a problem with the skill itself but just an area that needs some optimization.
Yes, but that’s a practical stack limit, and a Void Knight would get an average of ~40% more Devouring Orbs due to the Echo mechanic (assuming they take all the echo passives).
That’s likely to be caused by the increased number of calculations you get from the void rifts & Abyssal Orb’s AoE. Since the graphic/animation for DO is pretty simple.
Hmmm.
Idk what separate skills from each others. Some has animation some doesn’t.
Offensive vs Defensive skill? No because abyssal echo doesn’t have animation. Anomaly has.
Anyway, i’m sure not against having animation, imagine Rive doesn’t have one =)
It just kind of unresponsive if it has animation. While I holding down my main att skill, normally right mouse button, animation-ful skills have a delay casting, most of the time half to a second later, while animation-less one insta cast.
It makes a huge different in gameplay smoothness. And survivability. Sometime in the mist of all chaos on screen, I cast a skill, thinking it’s up, then keep focusing on what happen action-wise. Then later realize I didn’t fight with my full potential for the last couple second because the skill I pressed never trigger.
Hopefully EHG can look into that and have a good solution.
Started a Primalist ALT and noticed that the Maelstrom Skill has exactly the status icon showing counts of active maelstroms that I figure Devouring Orbs would benefit from. It shows me exactly how many concurrent maelstroms are active and its very simple to keep the max up without having to blindly spam the skill. MUCH prefer this than trying to count spinning orbs circling the char. Going to add it as a feature suggestion thread separate from this animation discussion
I was going to make a post about devouring orb and quality of life last week, but life got in the way and I forgot.
Devouring orb with dark moon fails this condition, even in spite of its cast animation. If you’re not simply using the skill as a buff, you always want to have the maximum number of orbs up because they follow you, so you should always cast it when it’s off cooldown pretty much no matter what. With cooldown reduction from anomaly and from a hat, the cooldown is under 3 seconds, so I found it a pretty big dps boost to set the skill to autocast, even though doing so felt like it gave my character the hiccups.
Dark moon should either have an option to remove the casting animation, or preferably should dramatically increase damage and abyssal orb fire rate at the cost of a much higher cooldown.
On a similar subject, the sound effect from abyssal orb really needs to be toned down. When you’re firing something like 9-10 per second, the sound effect really gets painful. Also, sometimes dark moon plus abyssal orbs leads to constant unending screen shake, which is also directly harmful to the player’s mental health.
I love devouring orb mechanically. It really allows for versatile, flexible hybrid fighter/caster builds that have multiple ways to approach fights. Void Knight in general is almost definitely the most creative and interesting class I’ve ever played in an arpg. But devouring orb really needs some quality of life improvements.
With 5 points in Orb Master you can get the cooldown to 1.6s, with some cooldown from Anomaly added in as well, you can get it down to ~1.4s.
That’s true, but I feel like that’s less of an issue, because orb master means shorter duration orbs and shorter cooldowns, which means you’re more likely to be playing as a full caster and using it as a primary damage source. The issue is that the skill can be used for versatility and supplemental damage on top of other skills, and is really cool in that role, but also painful to use.
Yes, but you’ve also gone through Hollow Orb to get there, so you end up with a net +10% duration compared to the base.
But, given that there are other nodes you could take and dark moon has a substantial mana cost, will that work out to more damage from the skill if you’re not leaning heavily into the “explode on time out” (I can never remember the names of nodes) aspect of it? I haven’t done the math, but my feeling is orb master is probably not the first pick if you’re looking to focus on the maximum possible number of orbs following you around and passively dealing damage while you’re doing other things.
I tried without Dark Moon & it was significantly easier to keep DO up on cooldown (300% easier, funnily enough), and while you do loose out on some hits against trash (because you’re moving through the monolith fast), you won’t against bosses which is when you’ll need the higher dps. Plus the range on the Abyssal Orbs is pretty long so if you’re putting Orbs down every screen or so, you’ll have Abyssal Orbs coming in from off screen.
IMO, the Cataclysm node is only a means to an end to get to Orb Master, plus a bit more dps from the additional hits against large bosses.
I did some maths back in the day with Dark Moon to get the most number of Abyssal Orbs per second for the minimum average mana cost (with some points in Sightless Star) & assuming 2 points in Abyssal Juggernaut, it was something like 3 points in Dark Torrent & Orb Master & 2 in Sightless Star (for an average mana cost per second of 9.5). But that was before they added the various ways to get back mana on Vengeance/Rive/Smite.
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