Game Mechanics: Cazic Thule 2.0 lost his pbaoe knockback dispel

[oodat_p99]

I will have to dig my old hard drive and try to find some evidence for this, but I have had an Abashi on my beastlord Wintu on live for probably somewhere around 22-23 years, and it has only (for as long as I have ever had it) ever dispelled beneficial buffs.

That was the entire reason I got it.

[CrazyPro]

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

Fixed, pending update

-Abolish Enchantment and Silver Breath now correctly use cancel magic effects rather than dispelling only beneficial buffs.

Hold your horses, this is probably actually wrong

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/...00526170990994

Dispell ...
Nov 08 2001 at 6:21 PM
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28 posts
Not sure what you guys saying - but as far as I know, the effect on this staff is an unlimited right clickable and targetable dispell. And even better, it's my understanding it only dispells "positive" buffs, so you can use it on mobs after other buffs have already been cast, like Malo and Occlusion.

-- Zwoop

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/...00525811488947

heheh

Nov 08 2001 at 5:21 PM
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Scholar
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312 posts
The proc on this weapon dispells 4 of the weilder's buffs each time it procs. Yah, It's uber, but only if you don't need buffs.

[nilbog]

In the trilogy client spdat, both of the spells had the Cancel Magic effect .

Whether or not there was additional handling for the Abashi's item and/or Abolish Enchantment spell needs further research.

[CrazyPro]

I've looked around a bit and can't find any testimony suggesting Klandi's AE dispelled only beneficial spells, but whatever it was that dictated whether or not the dispel component on a spell was beneficial-only or not is obviously not included in spells_en.txt spell data until over a decade later so there's really no way to tell, but I'd assume they wouldn't randomly change this decades later and were simply adding a new component specifically for beneficial-only dispels so they could include parameters that weren't there before like dispel chance for whatever new dispels they were adding on live at the time.

[oodat_p99]

Anecdotally of course, but I think that you should consider this, if it worked in a manner consistent with Cancel Magic... What use would it have ever been to a necromancer?

I will pull the hard drive in my old computer and look at it, but I spent a lot of time not only using this weapon but also dueling a friend who was a necromancer with one and his gig was to snare me, shadow step and then use it to strip my buffs while he dotted me.

[CrazyPro]

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

I've looked around a bit and can't find any testimony suggesting Klandi's AE dispelled only beneficial spells, but whatever it was that dictated whether or not the dispel component on a spell was beneficial-only or not is obviously not included in spells_en.txt spell data until over a decade later so there's really no way to tell, but I'd assume they wouldn't randomly change this decades later and were simply adding a new component specifically for beneficial-only dispels so they could include parameters that weren't there before like dispel chance for whatever new dispels they were adding on live at the time.

If it's not clear, I'm saying I think this drafted change is actually not classic and needs to be reverted, there's more than enough in-era testimony saying it only dispelled buffs, so I think it's very likely that it's simply something that was outside the scope of the spell data (at least that which is in the client) that was determining whether or not a dispel was beneficial-only at the time. Also my guild is extremely mad at me and will burn me alive and then probably quit the game if these changes go through, please save me Nilbog.

[CrazyPro]

I went ahead and asked Torven what the deal with this confusing spells implementation is, since he'd be the one who'd have any clue what on earth EQ devs were cooking up with this clicky in 2001, and he said "Sony liked to hardcode things. if it did beneficial only spells only then it was probably hardcoded at first before they added a proper spell field or SPA for it" for what it's worth.



also I feel like this would just be good to know for future reference that the spell data in old clients can't be 100% trusted since they might not show the full picture

Also it just kind of makes sense

Klandi's AE dispel was hardcoded to only dispel beneficial spells because otherwise he would dispel his own fear which is literally all he has going for him aside from the AE dispel+nuke.

The Abashi's Rod of Disempowerment clicky was hardcoded to only dispel beneficial spells because otherwise it wouldn't exactly be a rod of Disempowerment, now would it?

[CrazyPro]

Okay so I've got it all figured out I think. I talked with some more long-time EQEmu geniuses to get to the bottom of this since it really confused me and found out some things.

Many spells in classic had hardcoded elements, over time the hardcoding in these spells was removed and made into actual spell data which you could see, (one example of this that they mentioned I won't mention because my guild's top raid leader will literally kill me if I bug report it since it would be a huge sweeping nerf to literally every single spell of his class, sorry Nilbog but you can't catch 'em all, they're already mad enough about the potential abashi nerf) so in actuality the "change" of Silver Breath and Abolish Enchantment from a normal Cancel Magic component to a Cancel Magic - Beneficial Only component was actually just the devs cleaning the spell up and thus making the spell data seen in the spell file reflect the actual truth as it always had been since the spell's inception.

[Baugi]

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

Also it just kind of makes sense

Klandi's AE dispel was hardcoded to only dispel beneficial spells because otherwise he would dispel his own fear which is literally all he has going for him aside from the AE dispel+nuke.

Seems worth mentioning that several other dragons do both fear and dispel without a similar carve out. Also, Klandicar didn't cast Silver Breath until one of his buffs mid-Velious so it was originally designed for other mobs. I think mainly LtK since Dozekar was also buffed? PoG is a mystery to me.

However, Silver Breath does have the same weird history as Abolish Enchantment (presumably indicative of resolving the hard-coding?), e.g.

Originally Posted by https://lucy.allakhazam.com/spellhistory.html?id=1480&source=Live

2004-12-15 10:29 Changed Slot 2 from "Cancel Magic(9)" to "Fading Memories"

which you don't see on other effects with "Cancel Magic(9)", for example Lava Breath -
https://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.ht...61&source=Live

[CrazyPro]

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

Seems worth mentioning that several other dragons do both fear and dispel without a similar carve out.

Sontalak's dispel is a very small radius centered on the tank and was also used for evil eyes since launch I think, so it's not big enough of an AE to actually dispel many fears, hence why he wasn't just given a clone of Beholder Dispel with hardcoding to only dispel beneficial buffs.

Also, since you mention it, I found a video of pre-buff Klandicar which is pretty neat, he literally only fears.