PoS + Dispel works sometimes?

[mdogornone]

Greetings,

So i was leveling the other day and i had a rogue with much more experience than i (45 necro main) tell me i should be using Pact of Shadow with dispel to heal my teammates and pet whenever i can. I started using this and realized it gets rid of the debuff almost instantly, so it costs (in total) 40 mana and about 41 hp to heal 324 hp. I'm ASSUMING this works the way it is supposed to, and isn't a cheat (since he told me about it).

So now my question: Sometimes when i cast dispel it doesn't get rid of the recourse, and instead gets rid of a random buff (not the first buff, which i make sure is where my recourse is). Why does it work 19/20 times, but 1/20 dispels a random spell. Any help here would be appreciated. At present i figure maybe I'm doing something wrong?

[mdogornone]

Yes, i'm making sure the debuff is in my first effects slot.

[Raev]

Haynar changed cancel magic to be a bit random a while ago (you can search the bug threads). You can a) make sure you have a clicky underneath in case it fails or b) use annul magic at L54 which should work 100% of the time.

[Daldaen]

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

Haynar changed cancel magic to be a bit random a while ago (you can search the bug threads). You can a) make sure you have a clicky underneath in case it fails or b) use annul magic at L54 which should work 100% of the time.

First part of this advice is solid. Second part (annul magic) is very bad.

Annul magic is not guaranteed to remove a debuff and it has the opportunity to remove 2 of your good buffs instead.

Dispels are random. They have a dice roll of 0-4 or 0-8. Whatever the roll is, the spell dispel will work top down removing that number of "counters" from your buffs. 1 being minimum and 8 being maximum. The dispel will do this for each buff 1-15 UNTIL it removes enough counters to strip the buff entirely. So for example if it skips your top slot and instead removes your 2nd slot buff, it actually removed some hidden counters from your #1 buff.

The best way to counter this is:

1. Make sure the debuff is in top slot (which it sounds like you're already doing)
2. Get in the habit of making sure your buffs 2-4 are junk buffs, so that if they do happen to get removed you can replace them.

On a Necro... Shrunken Goblin Skull Earring works well. The Lich line of spells works well here. They're fast cast and only 5 mana. Bracer of the Hidden and Ring 8/9 are also fantastic but those are more expensive/tedious clickies.

Generally when I'm shadow bond healing I'll have my buffs like this:

1. Empty
2. Goblin Earring
3. Lich
4. DMF
5. Shielding
6. Manaskin

Then if I lose 2 or 3 it's not a big deal about losing them, just cast cancel magic again.

[mdogornone]

So 99% of the time it works perfectly fine, and some random times it'll screw up my next two buffs? That's literally retarded.

[Daldaen]

Just like 99% of the time a level 1 will miss a bash on a level 60, and 1% of the time it will stick the bash and interrupt you and be really annoying.

EQ is all about Random Number Generation. Not that crazy to accept player dispels work this way.

Raid AE dispels always roll a 9, which guarantees they strip the first buff they come in contact with and stop, which functions as you would assume. But player spells have a random component based on their power.