Orb of Annulment drop rate

During this league I've casually found 12 Divine Orb, 8 Exalted Orb, 22 Divine Vessels and only one Orb of Annulment

Why is it made to be that rare? It brings nothing to the game except 1:6 chance to get rid of a shitty mod on an item. And 5:6 to brick it.

Is it some kind of oversight? This orb should be the same rarity as Vaal or Divine.

Given they're priced around 13-14C on poe.trade, I'd say the drop rate is about right.
Most players who find one will never use it...

i've got three, no exalts and 2 divines, i'd say RNG

ATM im up to around 6 ex drops 4 of which has been the past week.. Went over a month without one. Around 18-20 divines (I quit counting at around 15) and around 12-13 annuls. Its probably worth mentioning nearly half my annuls dropped in groups when i was still doing zanas to hit lvl 8.

It makes no sense that they should be that rare, and here's why.

On their own, annuls have no value as they can only make items worse. Just like Scourings, their value comes from the fact that you can craft other stuff in place of the things they remove, but that crafting already has its own price. You could have a zillion scours/annuls, but without some alchs/chaos/exalts/etc, they won't take you anywhere.

So there's no reason why they couldn't be as common as, say, chaos orbs. There's still a good chance they'll brick your item, and even if they don't, the item only becomes better when you spend the extra currency on new mods.

Scourings are already the cheapest part of any top-end crafting session, and it doesn't make them OP. Annuls wouldn't be OP if they were that common for the same reason.

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suszterpatt wrote:

It makes no sense that they should be that rare, and here's why.

On their own, annuls have no value as they can only make items worse. Just like Scourings, their value comes from the fact that you can craft other stuff in place of the things they remove, but that crafting already has its own price. You could have a zillion scours/annuls, but without some alchs/chaos/exalts/etc, they won't take you anywhere.

So there's no reason why they couldn't be as common as, say, chaos orbs. There's still a good chance they'll brick your item, and even if they don't, the item only becomes better when you spend the extra currency on new mods.

Scourings are already the cheapest part of any top-end crafting session, and it doesn't make them OP. Annuls wouldn't be OP if they were that common for the same reason.

I disagree. While your approach that it has the possibly to make the item worst, doesn't mean it will. For this reason I think its ok that they remain more rare and expensive in the process.

Unlike a scouring orb, which starts you at square one, an annulment orb can remove the clutch mod you need to make the item go from good to amazing. They have far more power the scouring orbs.


I think the current price is a pretty good indication that the orbs are in a good spot, for SSF players, maybe they don't get as many as they would like, but the game isn't designed around SSF, its designed around trading with players. For that reason the drop rate of them is pretty spot on.

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goetzjam wrote:

Unlike a scouring orb, which starts you at square one, an annulment orb can remove the clutch mod you need to make the item go from good to amazing.

But turning an item from good to amazing is already gated behind rare currency. Crafted mods already have costs balanced around their power: anything good costs at least a few chaos. Slamming really powerful T1 mods costs a minimum of 1 ex, if you get them on the first go. And let's not even talk about the kind of crafting that people like Demi do, where they burn upwards of 50ex in currency on a single item to make it absolutely perfect and mirror-worthy.

If you can't afford to craft new mods, there's no point in having annuls. So it makes no sense for annul crafting to be gated behind the annul drop rate.

I'll just post an example why they should be rare...

Say you want to make a 'good' weapon, so you try to roll 'tyrannical' on it. After using 2000 transmutation orbs, you finally get it, but the second mod is not usable. You then have a 50% chance of saving using another 2000 transmutation orbs if you use an annulment.

The is the 'cheap' example. Once you got the right second mod, you then get to the regal stage. There's probably not much to save there as the next stage is far more expensive, but when you get the the EX stage, using an annulment you still have a significant chance to avoid starting from scratch when the wrong mod is added.

The annulment orb makes crafting much cheaper, so price and rarity should be balanced accordingly.

If they where more common I'd mostly use them in low/mid level scenarios.

A typical example would be an item with 3 prefix and 3 suffix that is okish but need a mastercraft to be usable (adding res or life). Dropping a annulment on that item would be fine since it opens up a slot.
If it removes the wrong one? doesn't matter since the item wasn't worth anything as it was anyway.


For high end you def need alot of currency to use them as they should be used... but for low/mid? nope! just the orb itself.


Im sad that drop rate is so low since it becomes yet another of those crafting items that I can't use.

Currency isn't designed to be useable the way you describe it to be @dharall because its not restricted to what level items you can use it on.

Someone suggested a lessor exalted orb and a master exalted orb in the past or something, but ultimately that creates more problems then its worth.

GGG tried to ease the pressure of this a bit with essences, allowing you to put at least one stat on a rare every time.



Crafting, aside from essence spamming or using a specific master mod on an open affix item is outside the realm for most players. Ultimately this is fine because it means your currency can be converted up to those that do craft.


Furthermore, something to consider is ex isn't greatly expensive across all leagues, in fact its quite "cheap" in HC and has remained that way for the past few leagues. Upsetting the balance of the annulment orb drop rate, will cause issues in HC leagues.