It is so bad, more so when you last pick it vs 3 divers with hard cc at diamond 1.
It’s easy and effective.
That’s literally it. It’s not something you’ll be making huge plays with like Calamity build usually is, but it does well enough and the skill floor is low enough that just about anybody can pick it up and get good effect with it.
I personally prefer Calamity build when I play Li Ming, but that actually takes a good bit of skill and awareness to pull off without suiciding.
9 Likes
For a second I was thinking Regen globes, or Azmodan’s Globe of Annihilation and I was confused.
I dunno I like Q build with Cannoneer as Li-Ming.
It can work even against divers as their paths are usually predictable, and when they’re close they can’t dodge missiles easily, and it can just like one-shot them.
1 Like
Only i beat her by 10k hero damage as murry… she did nothing in fights. Orbs dont do crap when you have 3 heros i your face. I solo killed her 3 times. Orb build is not effective. She also drafted ming after seeing a dove comp with 3 divers with hard cc.
You don’t pick it against 3 divers or 3 heavy tanks like your Ming did.
It’s a good poking tool on Towers of Doom or Cursed Hollow to allow the objective to be stalled almost indefinitely.
There are occassional reasons to take Orb builds or at least a few Orb talents. Not always, but occassionally. Just as it would be very ill-advised to take Glass Cannon in every match (and especially not vs. Pyroblast), orb build is not optimal in every game. I would say Orb build is good ~20% of the time.
Edit - There is a very odd forum misconception you must not ever adapt as Ming to map, enemy comp etc. and only go Calamity+ full E. Reminds me of people who don’t even take Spell Shields vs high burst abilities and blindly follow Hotslogs builds every single match.
7 Likes
No you pretty much never pick it as only bad players get hit with an orb unless they are hard cc or blocking it.
It is mostly about players’ mentality and the fact that this game has huge amount of bad players.
Orb build is super easy. Just spam Orbs for no mana on super short CD. It is good source of high dmg.
The last two words are the most important. Bad players like to look at stats and they thing higher numbers directly mean they are better! It makes them feel they are much better than they really are! Bad players don’t know and they often don’t care about things like macro, utility or teamwork. They only care about stats they can see and there is no macro, utility or teamwork stat in stats screen now! They focus on dmg, they want to have higher dmg and Orb build is super easy source of high dmg. It is more effective the worse your enemies are.
I also have Mings who went Org against multiple divers, but you have to realize that being good diver is much harder than just pressing W button. It also means good divers are rare in lower ranks.
Yes, those Orb build Mings lose pretty hard against competent team and divers. However, if you looked at it from Bronze 5 player perspective he probably wouldn’t care. He has the highest dmg in most of his game and now he lost one game pretty hard. He would most likely thing it was bad game, his teammates were bad. Why should he change his play style when it worked in 9 of his 10 games?
2 Likes
He was diamond 1… thats a long way from bronze
I think you mean safe.
The big problem with orb build is that it’s statistically rewarding even when played poorly. Even if you only land half your orbs the damage will be high. Orb build is only strong if played around the team. Big damage isn’t good unless there’s follow up or it’s the finisher.
I see a lot of orb Ming’s sitting back and throwing orb on CD when the team isn’t ready to fight. The build can be great when the whole team is fighting a lot. Just look at how strong Ming is in ARAM. The problem is in the base mode the build is iffy and needs team coordination to really be successful.
4 Likes
Nobody can dodge 100% of orbs especially in packed teamfights, it has a fairly large hitbox and splash radius too (it was in fact so large it had to be reduced by 33% in a nerf).
Are you saying Orb mings all deal no damage? I have seen plenty of Orb Mings with 100k+. Even Master ranked Ming can occassionally have Orb talents (not necessarily full Orb build).
I think the more important question is whether these numbers lead to kills or the enemy retreating from objective so you can capture it.
4 Likes
Thats just it they dont lead to kills. Its jusy damage.
I had a game years ago where i 1v1 chen as uther on dk for almost 8 mins. Niether of us could really hurt the other, but i ended the game with 103k hero damage.
Maybe you just met bad Mings, they are at every rank from bronze to master like any other hero (rank does not equal skill on a single hero).
Orb Mings can lead to plenty of kills just as missile build, cannoneer build or tele build.
Tele build alone doesn’t lead to kills either unless enemies are already on very low HP. It’s a team effort. You’re not getting any trait resets from going into enemies who are at 60% HP.
1 Like
Its effective if you face people who never side step i guess.
Orb build isn’t bad. People are bad.
You don’t just launch orbs at random. Any competent player accounts for and predicts the movement of the enemy targets.
3 Likes
You’re telling me I shouldn’t just flick my twister spinner and aim orbs in that direction!?! 
Same reason ppl pick Azmodan.
They imagine that they’ll stay at a safe distance, throw some orbs, deal damage and get an easy win.
Of course reality is nothing like that.
1 Like
The problem why is Orb build so common now is that devs buffed it in completely wrong way, they made it even easier to use, it rewards bad play even more, but they didn’t touch its main weaknesses and they didn’t make it more interesting for good players.
Ming always had lower winrate, but actually she should have. She is supposed to be Medivh of mages, the hardest mage to master. You can’t imagine Medivh with 50% winrate, right?
Orb build was always easy to use, it always did good dmg especially against worse players who don’t know how to dodge spells. On the other hand it was bad in higher ranks, because competent players were dodging orbs, it could be easily countered.
Now devs recently buffed Orb build (Glass Cannon and Triumvirate), but they just opened the scissors even more. They made it even easier to use (by mana refund from Triumvirate) and more rewarding poor play, but is still bad in higher ranks.
2 Likes
High numbers of damage in the statistics, so then when you lose, it won’t be Li Ming’s fault you lost, even when she was one of reasons or even main one.
1 Like
Yeah, that is normal Bronze 5 dps main thinking. 
In master league…
1 Like