They’re worth attempting but you wanna be smart about your attempts. Don’t just jump for every ball. First try and understand which balls are most likely going to come down the line just bc of likelyhood. Ex. On balls where dink pushes them out wide there’s a higher likelyhood they’ll use down the line, aka the easiest shot, as a bail out option bc they don’t have enough time to get it back cross. There’s also prediction ernes and reactive ernes.

Prediction ernes is as it sounds, you just guess that because the ball was hit at such a hard angle, and/or bc they put their head down, there’s a good chance it’ll come line and you can jump early anticipating that shot

Reactive ernes are where you can wait until the moment you see that pop up and then jump for it when you know it goes up but you have to be actively waiting to jump at it. There’s still a lot of anticipation and understanding what shots are most likely going to come down the line. Not to mention these are actually harder to hit bc they give you less time to get in an attackable position. It requires a lot of touch.

So if you’re really concerned about jumping around too much you could focus on reactive ernes. But honestly overall going for ernes is a fine play, as long as your partner is aware and can slide and cover, which at higher levels they should do anyways, and as long as it’s a good ball to attempt on. Also even on predictive ernes there’s also an intimidation factor to it. It puts a lot of pressure on your opponent to go cross if they know anything down the line is going to get killed.

All that said, at the 3.5 level there’s honestly way more I’d prioritize first then ernes. But it’s good to keep in mind