Originally Posted by Palemoon
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Ok a bit of googleing uncovered some info that matches with my short testing session on Al'Kabor:
7. DISPELLING
Most people are fully aware that both buffs and debuffs stick on you in a top-down order; they find the first empty slot and stuff themselves in it.
What people often do not grasp is how dispels work.
Note: Absor, EQ Developer, has confirmed that there are multiple types of dispels available. The majority of them operate in the manner below; some mobs have special dispels that will remove random buffs. For our purposes, however, we'll examine the case of the majority, to help people understand the basic operation of dispelling.
There are numerous spells that we can use to dispel buffs/debuffs, but the best ones available to each class are as follows:
--Recant Magic (ENC)
--Annul Magic (CLR, RNG, DRU, SHM, NEC, WIZ, MAG, BST)
--Nullify Magic: (PAL/SHD)
--Crystallized Pumice: Available to all classes, sold by Mirao Frostpouch in the building NE of the PoK Soulbinder, as well as any place that sells invis potions. It has 5 charges of Nullify Magic with a 3 second casting time. It is clickable from inventory, but you must target yourself.
I will call this line of spells "dispels" throughout the rest of our discussion.
Let's take my second image from above.
Image
That Malo annoys me. RC didn't cure it. Grrr! I want to dispel it.
If you look at Annul Magic on Lucy, it states this:
Annul Magic
1: Cancel Magic(9)
2: Cancel Magic(9)
Remember how Detrimental worked above? This is similar.
In this case, it tells us that Annul Magic will dispel 2 buff slots, at a strength of 9. Remember, dispels don't care whether something is good or bad; it'll dispel it regardless, even if it's something you like. A quick examination of Lucy shows that Recant Magic can dispel 4 buff slots at a strength of 9, and Nullify Magic 2 buff slots at a strength of 4.
Dispels always land, even if they don't seem to work. Each buff gets a check versus the strength of the dispel. If the buff fails the check, it gets stripped. If that buff passes the check, the dispel moves on to the next buff, and so on. In the case of every buff passing the check, no buffs will be stripped.
This is, of course, the problem with dispels; they're unreliable, and are intended to be that way. Since some dispels strip multiple buffs, the first X buffs that fail their check get dispelled. Thus, to some people dispels seem random; they'll cast it, and say "Wait, I lost buff slots 2 and 5! What gives?" As you see, buff slots 1, 3, and 4 passed their check to remain on you.
We are not sure what the check consists of. Sometimes, spells cast by lower level individuals seem "weaker" against dispel, but that may simply be arbitrary perception. Developers have not confirmed anything that I have seen about the process.
Dispels act differently depending on what you are dispelling. For example, if you dispel a mob, you will not dispel something with counters. When they made the change to put disease counters on slow awhile back, part of the rationale was to prevent griefing by rival guilds dispelling it. I believe it works on the same principle in PvP.
In simple terms of dispelling yourself, however, you can dispel anything that's on you. Therefore, using the graphic above, if I cast Nullify Magic on myself to get rid of Malo, it'll probably chew through my Storm Guard and Form of Defense III first. Thus, presuming I had some dire need to get rid of Malo, I would click those off, and take my chances with it taking Voice of Clairvoyance and hopefully Malo. Clicking off Voice of Clairvoyance wouldn't really net me anything except that I'd lose Steeloak, too.
Thankfully, Malo is largely inconsequential. Application to other detrimental effects, however, can easily be drawn. Also of some interest is that dispels are classified as a Beneficial spell for purposes of spell haste.
So this is why Taper Enchantment seemed to do nothing when I used it on my high level toon with high level buffs, but when I broke out my lowbie with a lower level buff, it finally dispelled it after a few trys.
And remember in my previous post where I said at one point a dispell skipped one of my buffs and dispelled another buff down my list? Matches with the info above, I guess one of my first buffs "resisted" the dispell and the dispell moved into the other buffs to try to kill them.
Very interesting, and it confirms that the number in parenthesis represents the strength of the actual dispel. Very interesting stuff, and its what I suspected.
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