Hello fellow demigods,
Thought I'd take a brief moment to discuss the orb of defiance. As I've spent a lot of time in high level and mid level games, I figured I'd share in case some of you are not aware. The Orb of defiance is an item that will cost 3,750 gold to purchase. It makes the castor invincible for 5 seconds, but they cannot move, use spells/items etc. It also provides 500 hp and 500 armor (compare to nimoth armor that gives 500 hp and 750 armor (1500 gold). So, its more or less a super expensive nimoth armor that takes up a consumable slot (eg, useful if your kit is full). What is somewhat typical is that high level players using ub (sometimes other dgs, but mostly ub) will pick up the orb after they have finishing getting a low level kit with sigils. The orb is EXCELLENT for a 1 time surprise (hopefully worth a kill or a stall), but loses its value very quickly in experienced games (as experienced players note that X player has orb AND a sigil, perhaps I should focus on someone else). Anyway, experienced players keep this for a bit and then often sell it for narmoth's ring (4k gold) or jtreads (6750)... generally they get jtreads after this.
The main reasoning for picking up the item is to draw agro and mana from other dgs... then cast before the main ability damage is done (eg fireball, etc). This forces everyone in the area to change targets, which increases the strength of whoever cast orb if done right. SOOOOOO.... here's what you might not know.
The orb grants 5 seconds of invulnerability. It does not make you immune to stun. Understanding this can be very huge against inexperienced players and even experienced ones that choose and use orb. While a player is frozen for 5 seconds, you can setup and chain stuns (to keep that player from using sigils and abilities - most importantly, sigils). So, if you see someone that has cast orb. Get as close as you can if you have dgs with stuns AFTER 4 SECONDS and SPAM THE CRAP out of them. They will be completely unable to cast a sigil, which will likely result in a kill. The main thing to keep i mind is that (for instance), if a level 2 boulder roll hits a ub that is on 4 seconds of the orb, the ub will be stunned for 1 second outside of the orb. Then a sedna could silence for another 3 seconds where the ub can do nothing (or a tb would use freeze or an erb could use stun). If you do the math, this can quickly amount to 6-9 seconds where the ub cannot cast a sigil. Now think... with a strong dg, could you wipe someone out if they could not cast a sigil for 6-9 seconds? Probably - almost always if you have a 3 man team there with decent stuns.
Anyway, the bottom line is that orb is still awesome for a the first time change up (as no one generally does what I described the second you see and orb cast for the 1st time), but any good team can make note of who has the orb, and then make use of the stun tactics I've described to get a kill on the 2nd orb cast. Good players GENERALLY avoid getting trapped by this, but even the best fail from time to time.
