Spells: Dispelling

[Byrjun]

So, dispelling is pretty buggy right now.

It was buggy before the last patch. Sometimes I'd have a dragon AE (like Talendor) in my first slot and cancel magic wouldn't touch it. Most of the times it'd work, but several times due to some bug I just couldn't dispel the raid AE. This is before the last patch that altered the dispel system, so there was already a bug in place.

The above bug seems to have just become worse since the recent patch. A lot more people just can't seem to dispel raid AEs, while others are able to dispel them off with one cast of cancel magic.

If the system was working correctly, shouldn't 1 type of dispel work for everyone for the same debuff/dot? On one raid encounter today I dispelled the AE first try with cancel magic while others had to use Nullify and others just couldn't dispel it at all. It's all over the place.

Seems like something needs to be fixed.

[Daldaen]

What do people not understand about random rolls?

Let's say everyone on your raid casts cancel magic either spell or clicky staff.

Let's have two groups of people.

Group 1 - Roll a maximum roll on Cancel, 4.
Group 2 - Roll a minimum roll on Cancel, 1.

Group 1:

Cleric - Immolating Breath (6)
Warrior - Immolating Breath (4)
Rogue - Immolating Breath (4)
Bard - Immolating Breath (3)
Shaman - Immolating Breath (2)
Druid - Immolating Breath (1)

In this group, since their cancel magics all rolled a 4, everyone would Dispell the DoT except the Cleric who would have 2 counters remaining.

Group 2:

Cleric - Immolating Breath (1)
Bard - Immolating Breath (8)
Monk1 - Immolating Breath (8)
Monk2 - Immolating Breath (8)
Rogue1 - Immolating Breath (8)
Rogue2 - Immolating Breath (8)

In this group because everyone rolled a 1 on their cancel magic, only the cleric would remove the DoT. Everyone else would have 7 counters remaining.

Do you understand why some people have it removing sometimes and some don't?

You could roll 1s every time and take 8 dispells to remove the DoT if you get extremely unlucky.

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This notion that it becomes a matter of level differential is neat... But that's a chanter guide and an EQEmu spell database as info. Would like more info on this. Especially explaining how it decides when something does get removed. Is it a guaranteed chance to remove if the target (after level additions are calculated) is lower than you?

So cancel wouldn't remove any dragon AEs at all unless level 60. Am I reading this correctly Jygia?

Queen's AE in Chardok would require 59-60 and an Annul/Nullify? All VP AEs wouldn't be removable without Recant Magic (don't think there's anything there that you could Dispell other than silence maybe if someone casted on you though).

And basically every AE in Velious wouldn't be removable due to level difference.

[Daldaen]

EQClerics 1999

Yes, cancel magic will negate ghoul root, if you're lucky enough to not take down their bravery, sow, etc. first. I still don't quite understand how cancel magic figures out which effect it will cancel; I used to think it was the one at the top of the list, but now it seems to be somewhat random.

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Portly -- Mithaniel Marr

EQClerics 2001

Regarding Dispel:

I often play 3 or 4 characters at once. The pact several weeks I have been playing Druid/Enc/Cle/War quite alot. When my enchanter was considerably lower than the rest of the group and the mobs we were fighting (I dragged him around for haste and clarity), his buffs would always be the first ones dispelled, regardless of where they were in the buff list. As the enchanter gained levels with respect to the mobs I was fighting, this behavior dimished, and now that he is 53, and higher level than the majority of the mobs I fight, I am back to pretty much having buffs dispelled in the order they appear.

As a side note, last night right after my chanter made level 53, a level 60 shaman gave him some buffs. Later, as I was getting ready to fight, I wanted to dispell all my buffs so that I could stack them in my preferred order (something I am quite anal about ), Pillage Enchantment removed all my self buffs on 1 or 2 casts, but it took 2 or 3 extra casts once everything else was gone to remove the level 60 buffs. We know that the level of the caster is recorded with the buffs (otherwise low levels could overwrite higher levels of the same spell), so it seems logical that these buffs get a saving throw between the level of the dispeller and the level of the original caster.

^. This tends to give credence to the fact that the buffs have counters and they are determined by level not by a random dice roll. This is something I could get behind.

Clickies are considered level 1s casting the spell. Then every 7-8 levels you increase a counter on yor buffs. IE levels 1-8 buffs are 1, 9-16 buffs are 2, etc.

[Daldaen]

The concensus on the Mac server regarding that focus, was that it was always broken from implementation.

I had the Aegis on my druid and the Scepter on my... Enchanter maybe? Maybe it was the Necro, I forget.

Never noticed any changed with it at all.

As for your case I suggest looking at logs of the encounter and you'll figure out why the Debuff was in slot 3.

Also why the hell did you have slots 1+2 filled with junk buffs on that fight? If you were intending to Dispell the AE you want those slots empty so it goes in the top?!?!?!?

[Droog007]

Originally Posted by Erati [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

its not that hard to fathom. Your top two junk buffs had higher buff counter rolls than the buffs at #3 and 4.

If you are MAX buffed (ie 15 buffs no room for more ), the dot will overwrite a buff and I guess the manner in which it overwrites is affected by the number of buff counters and goes from top to bottom line dispell ( speculating)

thats why Immo breath jumped to #3, and when you tried to dispell it, the dispell got rid of buff #4 because of the aforementioned high buff counter rolls for your first 2 junk slots

just speculating

As stated, I was not bufflocked.

Originally Posted by Daldaen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also why the hell did you have slots 1+2 filled with junk buffs on that fight? If you were intending to Dispell the AE you want those slots empty so it goes in the top?!?!?!?

You guys are assuming I knew what I was doing... never do that. I am sure about what I observed, however. I didn't try to dispel Talendor's AE until after the fight and I clicked off my clicky buffs (grim aura and jboots). The cleric in my group then dispelled it with a single cast of something (unimportant).

However incorrectly, I was thinking I'd get buffs knocked off the top and then refresh the clickies. What appears to have happened is that Talendor's AE stripped my #3 buff and then took its place. A subsequent AE stripped #4 buff and refreshed itself in slot #3 - all while Slots 1 & 2 were occupied by clicky buffs, which always did a great job of being sacrificial lambs in the past (even as far back as classic).

Anyway - this is tangential to the OP and should probably get its own thread if it can be observed again. Please don't discount my observations because my Talendor strat was bad - keep your eyes open next time you kill him.

Thanks!

[Haynar]

Level has so effect on dispell. It never did.

The issue is dispell was never fully understood. I took the info the soe devs provided and put together a few theories. Then I got on eqlive and started going through different buffs and dispelling them. Using spells with single and multiple spell effects. Counting how many dispells it takes each time. Doing different buffs 100-200 times each. For hours and hours.

Then I took the data I had to come up with how it really worked. I adjusted my hypothesis several times as I took data untill I was able to figure out the actual mechanics at play. It sucked. I spent many many hours figuring it out.

I provided a lot of my conclusions, to share my findings. Just so I could get the info out there. And so others might come up with other things to check. Like clickies, and how the could be different.

You can argue all you want. You can reference ancient posts where people guess how it works. I took a shit load of data to make one of the best efforts to date in reproducing this classic mechanic. Many thanks to all those that dug up info, that helped me get this working right.

For those that want to continue arguing that I got it wrong. STFU, delete all your chars, and go play somewhere else. Clearly I did not do this for the ungrateful bastards who have an over inflated sense of self entitlement.

Haynar'd

[Erati]

I think our dispell system is more classic than ever and I enjoy the fact that I use annul magic now instead of silly cancel magic

really appreciate the hours of testing / theory crafting that went into this change

I think if we could figure out the puzzle piece of what makes the randomness of the buff counter roll a larger amount of counters for high lvl buffs vs clickies then I think the dispell system will function perfectly classic as we can get

[Nirgon]

gr8 changes move to resolved

[Raev]

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=861

Lava Breath is Cancel Magic(9). So shouldn't that always strip the top buff?

[Daldaen]

Yes, dragon AEs are a max counter of 9 every time so they should strip top buff and stop regardless of whether it has max (8) counters or min (1).

But none of the Kunark Dragons have a Dispell except Faydedar.