Is dispel broken?

I've been thinking about it for quite a while and the spirited conversation on the other 2.3.2 thread with the Shamans I think highlighted this issue.

The issue at hand, is dispel to overpowered? Should there be some sort of dispel diminishing returns? Should dispel resistance be improved? Should perhaps the dispel magic spell-school be changed --dispel magic currently being holy, and there is no normal holy resistance-- perhaps to shadow. (On a side note, does nature resistance work on purge? I guess I should of asked that first). Should major talents be undispellable?

More and more defenses are dispellable, and now there is one more class that can dispel. New things? Prayer of Mending, Earth Shield and a couple others I'll detail later. New ways to dispel? well arcane shot (and also both sides having shamans).

The dispellers:
Priest -> Dispel Magic: Removes 2 beneficial magical spell, 14% base mana
Shaman -> Purge: Removes 2 beneifical magical spell, 8% base mana
Hunter -> Arcane Shot: Removes 1 beneficial magical spell, dealing 230 + 15% of RAP in damage, 230 mana, 6 second cooldown. *Note* Dispels first, then deals damage.
Warlock -> Devour Magic: Removes 1 beneficial magical spell, heals for 915 hit points, 330 mana, 8 second cooldown. *Note* Warlock pet, requires felhunter.
Mage -> Spellsteal: Steals 1 beneficial magical spell, 29% of base mana.
Warrior -> Shield Slam: Removes 1 beneficial magical spell, deals 430 damage + shield block value, 6 second cooldown, 20 rage. (Ok, I admit, this is a talent and isn't much of a concern in pvp).

The dispelled (non-talents):
Priest -> Shadow Protection, Power Word: Fortitude, Elune's Grace/Touch of Weakness*, Power Word: Shield, Renew, Prayer of Mending, Inner Fire+*, Fear Ward
Druid -> Mark of the Wild, Thorns, Regrowth, Rejuvenate, Lifebloom**, Innervate
Shaman -> Water Breathing, Water Walking, Heroism/Bloodlust
Warlock -> Detect Invisibility, Underwater Breathing, Demon Armor/Fel Armor+*
Paladin -> Seals***, Blessings, Righteous Fury+*
Mage -> Arcane Intellect, Dampen/Amplify Magic, Mage Armor/Frost Armor/Molten Armor+*, Mana Shield, Evocation
Hunter -> None
Warrior -> None
Rogue -> None

* - Racials and self-cast only
** - Has dispel protection, however (and it stacks)
*** - Self-cast only, can be talented to be undispellable, but requires 30-33 points in the Retribution tree
+* - Self-cast only

Dispellable Talents:
Priest -> Blessed Resillience, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression*, Focused Will, Divine Spirit, Inspiration, Blessed Recovery, Inner Focus
Druid -> Natural Perfection, Nature's Swiftness, Nature's Grasp
Shaman -> Shamanistic Rage, Earth Shield, Nature's Swiftness
Paladin -> Holy Shield, Divine Illumination, Light's Grace, Divine Favor
Warlock -> None
Mage -> Arcane Power, Combustion, Ice Barrier, Presence of Mind, Icy Veins?, Slow**
Hunter -> None
Warrior -> None
Rogue -> None

*- Has some dispel protection
**- I realize this would be a defensive dispel, but I think the point is relevant

Okay, to the nits and grits. I think its okay that base abilities can be dispelled. Although, that seems to hurt priests, paladins and druids the most. Luckily, druids have some protection with lifebloom. Priests and Paladins aren't so lucky, though they respectively have 20% and 30% dispel protection from talents. But is that really enough? Paladins have a plate and shield to protect them, but Priests rely entirely on spell-based defenses and buff-based heals for pvping.

And talents? This is probably the biggest gripe and also the one I can't figure out. Why are somethings like Soul Link and Nether Protection undispellable, yet others, even simple ones like Blessed Recovery, are dispellable? Why the bias? Why isn't it uniform? I'd say the one that stands out the most might be Shamanistic Rage. A defensive talent, that's really what it is. 41 point talent to lower damage, yet it becomes meaningless once dispelled. Pain Suppression is decent, 65-85% dispel protection and I think that is a good balance, but what about Arcane Power and such.

I can cede that it takes some skill to re-actively dispel these powerful buffs (such as Power Infusion and Arcane Power), but that also cripples the ability of the other side. That's a 3 minute cooldown and 31 point talent for a mage. And the arcane 41 point talent is also dispellable, albeit defensively. No protection at all there, yet the Warlock 41 point talent Unstable Affliction does provide dispel protection. Here's a thing, what exactly is the Arcane tree suppose to do? Arcane Power can definately be compared to The Beast Within, that however isn't dispellable and on-top of that, it provides Fear immunity. The irony? Aren't mages (especially deep Arcane) much squishier than hunters?

Why are Arcane Power and Power Infusion dispellable when Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry and the Beast Within aren't?

How are defensive talents suppose to be defensive if they don't even get a chance to do anything? Maybe the right balance isn't full dispel immunity, but I think something needs to be done... chances to save or maybe more thought-provoking abilities like Unstable Affliction and Lifebloom.

Maybe dispel isn't broken, but talents are.

P.S. Arcane Shot is most annoying dispelling Prayer of Mending/Power Word:Shield/Earth Shield and then doing damage. Or hell, even dispelling Lifebloom first, then doing damage.


Edit: Can't believe I forgot to list spellsteal! That and slight error with Heroism. Purge rank 2, updated >.>

Heroism is dispellable, actually.

It's a powerful mechanic, but I'm not sure that I'd argue that it's necessarily overpowered. As a Priest, I feel the pain of being dispelled, but at the same time, Priests wield the most powerful dispelling abilities in the game -- so in any situation where I'm being Dispelled, I have the opportunity to do the same to my opponents.

In recent game balance trends, nearly every powerful mechanic has had an equally powerful counter-mechanic put into the game. UA, MD being able to dispel Bubble and Ice Block, and Pain Surpression are all examples of this, and I think it's added quite a bit of depth to the game. I would even argue that ProM is a counter mechanic to tab-dotting, though it's often not categorized this way.

In a way, Dispel functions as a counter-mechanic itself in many situations -- BoP, Arcane Power, Innervate, etc. are all extremely powerful abilities that have only offensive Dispel as a counter, just like Sheep, Fear, Curse of Tongues, etc. are all also powerful abilities that have only defensive Dispel as a counter. However, where UA is a counter to prevent defensive dispels, no comparable mechanic exists to prevent offensive dispels aside from "Trash Buffs" like Underwater Breathing.

I think there's room for a mechanic like this in the game, and if I were to decide how to implement it, I'd add it to the functionality of Earth Shield, which is currently under review anyway. Resto Shamans could use a bit of a buff in PvP to begin with, and it would create some great Shaman-Priest synergy that could possibly compete with Priest/Paladin synergy in 3dps 5's teams. Simply adding an effect that increased the player's dispel resistance by 65%, similar to Pain Surpression, would work, otherwise a UA like effect could work as well. For the UA effect, perhaps whoever dispelled the earth shield would receive a DoT that would tick as many times as Earth Shield had charges when it was dispelled, for the same amount of damage that the Earth Shield would have healed for.

Even if we don't see an anti-offensive-dispel mechanic soon, I think it's something we'll likely see in WotLK.

Starfire, just an addendum to your post, the max rank of purge strips 2 buffs off the target.

Some thoughts on this:

I think this is a really poor implementation of what's a great opportunity for interesting tactical choices. Flat out dispel resistance reminds me too much of the level of randomness on things like mace stuns and fear that people complain about. Whether it's balanced in terms of actual class power or not, I'm not sure that it's really fun that a shaman can get lucky and purge off Pain Supression or BoP instantly in one game and completely fail to do it for the entire duration of the spell the next.

Rather than get dragged into the whole discussion of randomness being fun or frustrating though, I'll just make an observation: the implementation of lifebloom and UA is, in my opinion, a lot better than flat-out dispel protection. Not that every important buff in the game should get a "Wow, you would have to be crazy to dispel this" effect attached to it, but I like the idea that if you don't dispel it X happens, and if you do, Y happens. Both players know the consequences of casting it, and it opens the opportunity for more play decisions, rather than mindlessly spamming dispel and maybe having it resisted or not. Imagine if there were a divine retribution talent, where dispelling a blessing made X bad thing happen (or perhaps healed the person it's on for X amount of HP). You'd still want to dispel it in some cases, but there would be times when you wouldn't - which to me is a lot more interesting than "spam purge and hope for the best" vs. "spec stoicism and load everybody up with crap buffs, and hope for the best", with random dice rolls deciding the victor.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about the idea of crap buffs to reduce the chance of good buffs being dispelled - but they seem to have integrated it into the game at this point with the PvP totems/librams, talents like Blessed Recovery which really serve no other purpose, and so forth. I'm okay with keeping it, though it does strike me as a bit silly from a design perspective, and after seeing them remove Detect Magic from the game, I wonder about their plans in this direction.

I suspect this one is simply a decision to keep class diversity high and maintain the balance of dispelling in general. Dispel is an ability that counters many caster abilities pretty well - I'm not sure that it really needs to be even more powerful and a good counter to *every* classes' buffs or debuffs...or that it needs to be reduced to the point where you cast it a few times at the beginning of a fight to remove everything they cast in their 1-min prep period, and then put it away for the remainder, because most things they could conceivably use in combat are protected.

Dispels have really made it a pain to be a paladin in 2v2 or 3v3 arenas, since literally everything you can do can be dispelled or interrupted. With the popular priest/mage/rogue combo, for example, you can easily steal freedom, dispel sacrifice, dispel Divine Shield, and then chain-interrupt or sheep a paladin who would probably be stunned the whole time anyway. This sort of redundant ability to dominate paladins in 3v3 is I believe one of the main reasons for the popularity/success of RMP, and dispels are a large part of it. It's gotten worse as hunter combos are now able to mimic this behavior with dispelling freedom / sacrifice / light's grace, and druids "dispel" Concentration Aura with cyclone (this should be listed above by the way, it may not cost mana but it costs a GCD).

By the way, I think this belongs in the PvP forum.

Just an addendum, Nether Protection can be Purged/Dispelled.

Dispelling Fel Armor (or worse a mage spell stealing it) nerfs a warlock in pvp damage by 10% (give or take talent builds) and reduces the effectiveness of heals. That is pretty painful.

Cleanse is very much not what it used to be.

Addendum: For Warlocks, dispel erases Backlash, Nether Protection, and Night Fall procs (all talents). Dispel also removes Fel Domination and Amplify Curse (also talents). While Fel Armor isn't talented, many builds use three talent points to improve it and warlocks in PvP are arguably balanced around the assumption Fel Armor is up. Additionally, defensive dispels remove not only DOTs (aside form CoA), but also our channeled spells (Drain Life/Mana/Soul).

Edit: Under non-talented "dispelled" abilities for Warlocks, add Fire Shield (from the Imp) and Sacrifice (from Voidwalker).

In the same vein, a mage without ice/molten armor in PvP is much less resilient against rogues/warriors.

I really think self buffs such as these should behave the same way a hunter's aspects do, I.E. not able to be dispelled.

I don't think the dispel mechanics were well thought out initially. Ideally dispels would be relaible but have an opportunity cost, like a cast time. Similarly buffs could have different strengths which could be weakened.

Having all of my hots be stripped off of me in 2 seconds is frustrating, as is failing to dispel blessing of freedom three times in a row.

The whole thing needs to be redesigned and I don't know how much they'll really be able to do, even with an expansion