Dispel broke

[Scrubosaur]

Haven't played for a bit, but I have noticed that NPC's are casting Dispel very often and its negating a random buff instead of top slot. This doesn't seem to be in line with classic mechanics.

There was a reason that we had temp buffs in our top slots for dragon raids and certain boss fights. You never wanted your tank to lose their HP buff in the middle of a fight so it was mandatory that tanks had AoN, Jboots, and/or Grim Aura earring. Even in Velious a majority of the fights required temp buffs in top slots minus a few fights that had a random dispel component (was a few rare dragons I think).

Hopefully this bug gets fixed.

[Kender]

agreed. you always had to arrange your junkers at the top

[Technique]

not a bug

Most of basics are this. Not totally, but this is general idea.

Say buff 1 has 3 effects, we assign it 3 counters with a strength of 3.
Buff 2 has 4 effects, 4 counters, strenth 4
Buff 3 has 1 effect, 1 strength.

If u have those 3 buffs in order, and cast cancel magic.

It checks buff 1, do say a rand 100, it has 3 str, so if ran less than 33, kills buff and done

If it fails its check counter -1. If counter at 0, dump buff, done.

If no buff dumped, move to buff 2. If ran 100 < 100/4, dump buff, else counter--

If no buff dumped, go to buff 3. It has 1 counter, so if we passed all the other checks to get her, we kill the buff. It looks like cancel magic takes out buff 3. Wow, looks random. But its not.

Thats basic idea. A buff can have up to 8 counters. So you could take 8 cancel magics to dump.

If you have a dispell(9). It does 9 iterations on each buff. But stops after kills a buff, for that slot of dispell(9).

2 dispell 9 buffs always take top 2 slots, unless its a buff that cant be dispelled. Think rez effects.

You could have a cancel magic cast once lower all counters of all buffs by 1, but if all passed their check, and none hit zero counters, none disappear.

And it can make it look like buffs get removed at random.

Thats the basics.

H

[Ele]

The issue with dispell mechanics isn't with dispell itself, but whether or not clickie buffs specifically should have a fewer counters, so they are guaranteed dispelled in the first check.

[Daldaen]

The issue with dispell mechanics isn't with dispell itself, but whether or not clickie buffs specifically should have a fewer counters, so they are guaranteed dispelled in the first check.

This.

I think that counters were based off the level of the spell. Makes sense right? The higher the level spell the more counters. Or at the very least, base it off the level of the caster.

Clickies however should be considered to be a level 1 caster or spell always. So they should get the minimum number of counters and get removed regardless of the dispel roll.

If that gets implemented, I'd say our Dispell system is pretty perfect.

[Nirgon]

Well 'mask you this

I haven't tested cancel magic but the chance to dispel right now when it isn't a guaranteed removal takes the strength of dispel into account?

Like it should take tons of cancel magics but maybe just 2-3 nullifies to get rid of a strength 9? Right? That might be the only tweak off the top of my head that might be needed if its not already there.

Clickies and procs are a tough one.. good point.. never considered it. You're right just about everything is strength (1) like coldain rings, fiery might bp click, jboots, grim aura ear... but wizard epic should be strength 9... shaman epic dot strength 9... etc

[Ele]

I haven't tested cancel magic but the chance to dispel right now when it isn't a guaranteed removal takes the strength of dispel into account?

Like it should take tons of cancel magics but maybe just 2-3 nullifies to get rid of a strength 9? Right? That might be the only tweak off the top of my head that might be needed if its not already there.

Magician dispell sticks don't work to well during Nexona and Gore now. ;)

[Scrubosaur]

It's sounds like the mechanic is a little too complicated. Velious dragons dispel would always dispel a set number of slots from top down regardless of what was on them. Casters NPC's would dispel your top buff slot every time they cast a higher level dispel. If it was a low level NPC casting dispel it would either be resisted or not strong enough to remove the buff. More than likely dispel mechanic removed buffs from the top buff down (hidden counters) but there was no over lap to the second buff unless it was a very high level dispel then it could remove more. PC vs NPC dispel mechanics might have been different as I remember it taking a lot of casts to remove NPC buffs but the dispel order was the same (removing first spell cast first).

If someone was testing dispel mechanics on live then it does look like there is a mechanic in which buffs after the first one could be dispelled first. The issue with that is if you either click the junk buff while dispel is being cast or less than 6 secs before being cast then EQ doesn't recognize the buff being up and will dispel the first buff that had been on longer than 6 secs.

[Technique]

The notion that the level of a spell's caster factors into its dispel difficulty is highly dubious, mostly because there's no evidence this information was persisted on the target. Nor was the level of the spell itself likely involved because many spells don't even have one.

Clickies however should be considered to be a level 1 caster or spell always. So they should get the minimum number of counters and get removed regardless of the dispel roll..If this were the case, there wouldn't be examples of items with click effects whose magnitudes vary with the level of the user.

The issue with that is if you either click the junk buff while dispel is being cast or less than 6 secs before being cast then EQ doesn't recognize the buff being up and will dispel the first buff that had been on longer than 6 secs.If the game were resolving actions based on state that was up to 6 seconds old, there would likely be other examples of this absurdity, but none exist.

[Scrubosaur]

If the game were resolving actions based on state that was up to 6 seconds old, there would likely be other examples of this absurdity, but none exist.

You are welcome to test this on live. The best place I have seen in Ture in AoA. Ture has a pretty regular 1 slot dispel and if you junk buff while he is casting or less than 6 secs (a tick) before he casts he will remove the second buff and not the top buff.

And there are plenty of things that are based on this "absurdity" of a tick in EQ. A quick google search will give you a list.

[Technique]

And there are plenty of things that are based on this "absurdity" of a tick in EQ. A quick google search will give you a list.It isn't the concept of a 6-second simulation tick that's absurd, it's your suggestion that spell effects are being resolved based on game state that's potentially up to 6 seconds old.

If this were the case, out-of-sequence events would be a regular occurrence: heals landing and saving a target after it dies, ports taking former group members after they disband, nukes killing targets seconds after they receive a complete heal, CoH summoning players after they zone, etc.

These things aren't happening here nor on Live.

[Scrubosaur]

True. Those things listed are not effects by a tick but things that cause a buff (or debuff) are affected by a server tick such as dot's.

[BarackObooma]

BUMP - needs fixed, what Uthgaard said is how I remember it as well.

[Tasslehofp99]

Disease and poison cures worked on a counter system. Dispels didn't and shouldn't. Various dispels do however attempt different numbers of times, from 1 to 4 attempts per cast.
Pillage enchantment will attempt to cancel 4, cancel magic will attempt to cancel 1, etc.
You can find these same effects in the old spdats.

yep this is how it worked from 99-2005 when I played EQ on live.

[Scrubosaur]

Still having to rebuff after EVERY fight because of the randomness of the dispel effect and the fact that every NPC that has the spell in it's book, spams it. Other than the fact that dispel is in a very bugged state, I don't remember any NPC's other than enchanters or shamans using the dispels...

[Kaym]

Fix this please. Why was this changed in the first place?

[Kaym]

Is there any evidence for the current system? If so, please link... because it's awful.