Drops of Ether is a popular engraving among supports but the way it works makes it difficult for players to use it effectively in a party as most of the time the damage and crit rate orbs are picked up by the supports themselves unintentionally.
If you could pick up orbs using the G key, the issue would be resolved and would allow for a lot of player freedom in how to approach the orbs and the timing of their use in a fight.
The solution doesn’t affect the engraving’s original design of random drops and doesn’t mess up the way the ethers mechanic works from the rest of the game, like mob drops, requiring no additional headaches rebalancing the engraving.
I’ve heard suggestions like “you can’t pick up orbs you generate, only party members” but it does not solve the issue of the engraving, it creates another in where party members can still pick up orbs they didn’t mean to from other members and now the engraving doesn’t works for solo play, which makes the early game, where players get this engraving for free, have a useless engraving for leveling players to use.
There was also thought given to sharing buffs to party when picked up, however that would require serious rebalancing of the engraving, which as mentioned above, the G key to pick up works around any need to worry about breaking the engraving’s power level.
The Artist class already uses this G to interact feature in her kit, for healing orbs for example, so the implementation wouldn’t be too difficult for the engraving.
Agree. All of the goodies like strength and flash orb spawns on top of me, I try to dodge out but it flies into my character and I’m sad cause I see my teammates run for the orb but it’s too late and this happens literally 98% of the time.
Bad players don’t pick them, meanwhile on high end content you will often see people constantly looking for them. I prefer balancing the game around players that are good and are interested in teamplay.
A complaint isn’t a solution, if it is a function that can be done to improve the engraving’s consistency its better than just letting it be terrible because some people dislike being mildly inconvenienced by a button prompt.
Or just change it to applying the buff to your entire party upon proccing with half of the effectiveness and duration. No need to pick up anything and beneficial for your entire group. 5% Attack Power for 4 Party Members (not counting the support) far outweighs 1 Party Member with 10% Attack Power, even if you could have that 1 Party Member with 2 overlapping buffs.
While it was possible to stack multiple orbs with T3 Drops, the orb drops are counter productive for how most mechanics work. Making party members actively seek out orbs when dodging attacks, constantly moving, positioning, and identifying if the orb is even beneficial for you while keeping track of everything else is needlessly cumbersome. If walking over an orb was already an added level of complication, having to interact with it only adds more to that.
The point of any mechanic changes should be to improve QoL without breaking the balance or pace of the gameplay. While inadverntent orb pick ups due to position can be problematic, this just adds complexity.
Thats a more complicated attempt to solve the issue, because it creates the necessity to balance the engraving, while at the same time weakening it.
I prefer to not underestimate people’s ability to use teamplay and strategy to time their use of the orbs for dps windows or to properly rotate buffs between members, and by allowing players to pick the orbs when they want adds gameplay that engages teamwork.
There are also orbs people would prefer to avoid picking up, like the mana orb for nightmare classes, which would not benefit from a shared party effect. The simpler press g solution more elegantly resolves every issue at the cost of a simple button prompt, and it doesn’t even need to have a channel/cast animation.
i dont think G to pick up is a great idea, because when i see for example vykass g3 orbs where you can open it with G even when you are with your mouse on it and you character tries everytime to open it because your so close to it (Not on it, just close -.-) its annoying af. when its only with G to pick up and its not with mouse, would be nice. In general i think its rly annoying in some fight, like my expample before, that your mouse doesnt can interact with those things. ._.
i feel like it would be good enough to make the support itself have G as a pick up while everyone else doesnt, you dont really care nearly as much if one of your other dps picks it up by mistake just because its the “wrong char” compared to picking it up yourself
Or just make it to where you cannot pick up your own Ethers from Drops of Ether and any Ethers picked up by others either gives you the same buffs, or a set buff. The most helpful of which would be MP recovery and CD reduction that could stack. Would be great to have another Engraving that actually benefits Supports themselves.
We went over this already, it breaks the engraving for solo play, also makes the clarity of what the engraving does very obtuse. Just press G, simple and straight foward.
Like solo play really matters or is a thing? Any solo content is trivial at best. Plenty of Engravings and Tripods are not meant for solo. Drops of Ether is specifically taken to increase your party effectiveness. Having to press G to pick up Ethers breaks up the pace of gameplay even more than what positioning to grab Ethers already does. If you are building for DPS with Relic sets, you are not going to be using Drops of Ether.
Lucky you,
Normally they don’t even pick the ether, imagine
make the ‘saru-dps’ who don’t even evade boss attacks
pick with G the same ether he didn’t care about in the first place…
Unless the people you are playing with know
or you make the call yourself, nobody care to pick that shit.
So ultimately I have to pick em myself.
Now, imagine the level of frustration when artist is released?
You forgot how doe is the very first engraving the game gives players? How its also a common rng drop from mobs during leveling? Your suggestion breaks a big chunk of the functionality of this engraving during early leveling. Even if you think its not relevant its still a part of the game that has to be completely reworked.
In my opinion the easiest option would be to let the players choose which orbs they want to autopick, and let this setting be individual for every mass preset. Just a simple checkbox, where you can set which orbs you want to be picked up or not. This would allow supports to leave flash/strength orbs for dps. Doesn’t need any rebalancing and is simple and quick to introduce.
Fine, have it so the player who drops the Ether does not consume it but gets its benefit also. No need to add another mechanic. The Support gets the effect and so does another player. Everything else stays as is. Most of the effects have very little impact on Support but at least provide themselves some utility. No rebalancing or changes required. If another player takes the Ether before the Support, it goes away for other players but is still there for the Support.
Support always gets benefit of their own Ethers and players can choose which RNG Ether they take in order of priority. This is more applicable to good PUGs and Statics. Bad PUGs will still blindly walk into or avoid it.
Idk all of the people in my groups were running after the orb and it’s so funny to see which one of them makes it first. Even in pugs many of them run to the flash/strength orb
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and this happens literally 98% of the time.