They could also just remove attribute buffs from the GCD and require no mana cost, if they want people to be able to remove it, but just as easily rebuff it.

The problem is that they have to balance the power of a buff as if it wasn't being dispelled. Witness the Blessing of Freedom change. Was entirely too strong in 2c2 and 3v3 if you don't have anything to remove it, so it recieves an increase in cooldown. This becomes a problem when the ability gets dispelled and the buff becomes much less useful than the cooldown has intended it to be. It's even more aggravated with longer cooldowns. As a paladin, my obvious example would be the power of BoP and Divine Shield without something to dispel is reasonable given their debuff and long cooldown. Mages have Iceblock and priests have Power: Word Shield, PoM and Fort (with its mana cost, rather than cooldown).

So do they balance them as if they were being dispelled, or as if they weren't?

Make buffs which you cast in the prep area non-magic (especially caster self armor buffs), most of everything else should be dispellable with a tradeoff (lifebloom, UA). I find it quite funny which the only pure DPS class (no CC/healing) is the only one which actually is capable of buffing the team (Warrior->Commanding shout) for the duration of an arena match.

For example dispelling BOP could give the target -20% damage taken for x seconds, dispelling BOF could decrease the casting/attack speed of everyone around, dispelling PW:S could also cause its debuff to be removed.

The issue I have with a lot of these suggestions is that the classes that are going to be affected don't need this kind of nerf, I've run warrior shaman, and realistically, in most situations if we just leave that freedom up, or BoP up, or even PW:S, we are going to lose, that's how the combo is balanced. If we just change it so they get significant buffs, it's going to be the same thing. It's frustrating that buffs can be dispelled so easily, and I fully agree some buffs need protection (resistance to dispel on Pain Suppression, Earth Shield needs something, etc) a general change like that is just absolutely raping the offensive dispel mechanic, and the classes that have been balanced around having it will need significant buffs to make up for it.

I'd love it if I could run with a paladin and freedom would last more than a second against shaman, sure, but without significant changes to the shaman class, it'd be completely imbalanced (at least that's my opinion)

I think longterm buffs should either be undispellable or have a much higher chance to resist dispelling.

IE things like Fel Armor, PW: Fort, Blessing of Wisdom, etc should either be impossible or very difficult to dispel, since they cost significant amounts of mana and are taken into the equation when considering the sustained power level of a class.

Temporary buffs, however, are just that. Things like a Mystical Skyfire Diamond proc, PW: Shield, Blessing of Freedom, Earth Shield, etc. are all temporary buffs and being quite powerful need to have counters.

I think dispels need to be more of a decision, instead of just "might as well". For example, dispelling should always have a negative side, either through negative effects (UA), high mana costs, or maybe a long cast time. I think hunters having arcane shot already in their shot rotation and removing buffs at the same time is ridiculous. IMO, even a shammy or priest dispelling needs to think before they dispel, not just spam a skill. "I can dispel that BoF, and i need to so my warrior can catch up, so im going to, but as a consequence... <insert something negative>"

Well, priests & shaman are giving up a GCD. The arcane shot dispel is fairly ridiculous since it has absolutely no opportunity cost for the hunter.

Not entirely true. You can dispel a hunter's 'rapid fire' self buff. It happens quite often too.

As for 'The Beast Within' it should be removed with Tranquillizing Shot, really. It would at least stop BM Hunter's popping their 'I win' button at every opportunity.

Avenging Wrath for paladins is dispellable, making it useless for PvP, and it still leaves Forbearance up when dispelled.

Shamanistic Rage needs to be non-dispelable if they want the Enhancement tree to be a viable option in the arena. This alone would not make Enhancement viable, but it is an important piece of that puzzle. Earth Shield needs one of the many proposed changes. Although I have a feeling just plain making it non-dispelable might not be balanced.

The recent near-change to Earth Shield, and the decision to make Shamanistic Rage dispelable are actually two of the most nonsensical changes I can remember. I don't think I can even come up with hypothetical situations in which those two decisions make any sense at all.

I don't really think the mechanic needs to be changed in any major way. I certainly don't think BoP/BoF being dispelable is a problem in 5v5. Those two spells are clearly quite powerful currently.

Personally, I think that BoP / BoF cast on the Paladin itself should probably not be dispel-able, nor should Earth Shield cast on the Shaman itself - essentially, any buff that is usable on others should not be purge-able when cast on the caster itself (and yes, I realize that this gives problems with Priests vs Warriors).

Another way to do it would be to give each buff a few seconds when cast in which they couldn't be dispelled (or have a 0% chance to be dispelled at time zero to X and then rapidly increasing to baseline protection).
This would still allow for some limited use of buffs on others without turning Warriors (for one class) into the Unstoppable Juggernaut of Doom.


In an unrelated human interest story, the Pope just declared the lack of diminishing returns on snares - both magical and physical - as blasphemy and generally despicable, but lauded the recent (in biblical terms) improvement of Deadly Throw as a step forward.
Speculations about what class the Pope plays continue while the Vatical vehemently denies that the Pope plays a Warlock, stating that they were for "unskilled n00bs".

I really like this idea. A certain amount of time while a buff is undispellable certainly would be good. It should apply to all talents, I think.

I realize dispel is a powerful counter to things, but I still think dispel horribly destroy's some talent/specs. Again, I think the most hurt is the Arcane Mage. Dispel their 21, 31 and 41 point talents (actually, if I can remember correctly, can also dispel clearcasting procs too). I also think there is a decent counter to "Arcane Power" in the arena. It is possible to LoS a mage for the duration of it (of course, can't really LoS slow or presence of mind).

I've been thinking about this as a priest who both can dispell offensively and defensively, as well as seeming to be the most vulnerable to being dispelled, that the most worring that I face are those without opotunity costs, which is mostly the felhunter (being with a mage its impossible to kill), and secondary the hunter, though cannot say that actually harms me as much. There are 2 idea's I've had reguarding a chance to dispelling.

The first was a "cannon fodder" self restoring buff. Was thinking it would be an untalented arcane tree spell for mages, named something like spell lock, which would be a stack of 5 buffs which have to be dispelled before anything else, or would give ~85-90% or some very high value to be targeted first. This would also have an undispellable (maybe mass dispellable) buff which acted as the self restoring component which freely casts 1 spell lock every 10 seconds or so. This sort of covering buff would protect from the most annoying passive dispelling from felhunters and hunters, while adding at most 2-3 casts to a focused dispell leaving it primerally intact.

Another idea was that some major buffs could again be applied in stacks which means you can dispelll them, but it takes a few casts to do so fully, for example if fort was a 3 stack of ~30 stam a go, maybe letting the imp fort even count as an extra stack as well as the % improvment. The problem with this is that it soon leads dispelling to be meaningless when you could well have ~30 buffs in total with just a couple buffing classes, again a consideration would be that some of the more temporary buffs like PW:S and various HoTs only would be done in such a way may actually be more balancable.

This may be crazy talk, but what if dispel abilities didn't have a predetermined mana cost, but had their cost based on what effects are dispelled? Suddenly dispelling things left and right doesn't seem so appealing. Is wiping out that PW:F really worth 700 mana?

Dispelling abilities with no mana cost could perhaps still use the current cost.

Edit to clarify:

In response to the post below mine, I didn't particularly have arcane shot in mind with my above suggestion, and seeing as there is already a brief cooldown on the ability I have no suggestions to change its mana cost. What my suggestion hoped to accomplish was to add a choice to dispelling, forcing the player to consider whether it is worth the potential mana cost to start blasting the other team with purge/dispel.

There is a problem with putting large penalties on offensive dispelling, maybe beyond silence, in that it will hit hunters that were recently buffed with a passive dispell, which given at no opertunity cost seems to have helped hunter (ok not saying this was a good idea as a buff, but it did help a little,), but also is impossible to go without, in that the net results of putting substasial penalties on dispells and the dispell on arcane shot would likely cripple hunters.

Firstly this doesn't really seem well thought out, because you can't choose which buffs you remove. Of course wiping out the BoF is worth the mana, but what happens when you hit the PW:F, AI, and MotW first instead? What happens if the buffers decide to use Prayer of Fortitude, Gift of the Wild, and Arcane Brilliance instead? You've just lost 5000+ mana in two purges trying to get rid of BoF.

Secondly, have you considered the ramifications of this for defensive dispels? It would significantly increase the amount of pressure warlocks and even shadow priests are able to put on healers' mana pools.

How do you seperate the "long term" from the "temporary" ? Blessing of Wisdom which is apparently "long term" only lasts 15 minutes for example, while the "temporary" earth shield lasts 10...

That's EXACTLY what this change entails. If you want to remove that BOF, you have to consider what else you might take out instead and how much it's going to cost you, instead of "WOOOO TAKE IT ALL OFF AJSNAASHUIWEH".

Having said that, losing 5000 mana from purging off GotW and PW: F in a single go might seem a little excessive in the sober light of day. However, it need not be the full mana cost - simply making Purge/offensive Dispel costs as some proportion of the buff cost would probably suffice.

The main problem with offensive dispelling is one that partly caused me to quit playing for a few months. Blizzard is determined to use the same ruleset in both PvE and PvP. They have to cost all dispel and spellsteal effects so that they are "balanced" in both environments at the same time. And in the case of priest Dispel Magic, as both an offensive and defensive ability.

Currently Rogues can use Improved Sprint and Vanish to remove *any* movement impairing effect; gnomes can do likewise with Escape Artist. Might there be a way to label Magic effects in more detail, and change the dispel function based on the type of buff? This could also create a way for dispellers to be able to penetrate the stupid dispel cushions like Righteous Fury, Water Breathing, etc. It would allow you to make Fort, Mark, Spirit, the above two, and those like it undispellable. Arcane Power, as a "necessary" talent buff, would be given some dispel protection by the system, while BoP could be removed just as it can be now. I'm thinking that Hunters and Mages would be unable to touch stuff like AP, Earth Shield, PWS, while Shaman and priests would have to have a 1.5-2s cast time spell costing twice as much mana to remove such an effect. There would be quite a few ways you could split up buffs, but most folks seem to be annoyed with the system of having all Magic Buffs being dispellable for the most part, and every buff being removed in the same exact way. By somewhat protecting key buffs by making them harder to cast the spell and making others untouchable (save for Mass Dispel perhaps), hopefully this issue can be somewhat alleviated.

The other idea I saw in the thread that intrigued me was making buffs start out hard to dispel and getting easier as their duration nears completion. My problem with that is the general problem I have with dispel resistance. Other than the fact that hit rating is cheap, players like hit rating because they need their spells to do something the vast majority of the time they are cast. Perhaps that's why people *like* the resistance, but given how low most of the resistances are they seem like a waste and merely exist to annoy people, not actually let their buffs stay undispelled.

If you're going to propose some changes to make dispelling buffs and make it more punishing, please do include fixes to totems that make it as easy to kill totems as writing a pet macro or shooting your wand. Any wholesale changes to the buffing systems need to take that into account.

Edit: To clarify what I mean is if someone is trying to invent a new system to make dispelling weaker, it should also look into the mechanics of totems and how trivial they are to destroy.

The main problem with dispels is the huge differentials between the haves and have nots. Some skills are way too strong when they can't be dispelled, but then those same skills are 100% useless when dispelled. Why not do something like they did with disarms in 2.3? (Why not? Probably impossible, but...)

The idea would be to add a flag on buffs that let them be dispelled based on a timer instead of just a binary yes/no. Add some basic buff priorities too, so waterbreathing and such don't act as a dispel shield. And then make dispels eat away 50% of the time off the flagged buffs. For example: if someone dispels your shamanistic rage, the 12 seconds remaining now turns to 6. It's still useful for the user, it still got weakened by the dispeller, but the difference between the have and have nots is now significantly smaller. In addition, it's not just a mindless dispel fest, there's a definitive cost to the dispel. I realize there's a GCD involved, but this is hardly expensive given how powerful it is. This would probably be best served as a PVP only implementation due to how a lot of stuff is balanced in PVE.

Totems probably are too easy to destroy, but any change to make it harder to stomp them... well i'm not sure I really want to see those 5 shaman teams get even stronger.

To me, the problem seems to be that theres very little middle ground between dispelling something, and not dispelling it.
Take Arcane Power for example, as part of a Mage/other DPS vs say, Warrior + Priest in a 2v2 arena. The mage pops arcane power, and both dps's open up on the warrior. The priest sees this, and tries to dispel the Arcane Power.

One of two things can happen. Either the the dispel succeeds, the mage loses a significant portion of his damage, the burst potential of the combo is greatly diminished, the warrior lives through the onslaught, and the Mage team is at a severe disadvantage.

Or the dispel fails. Possibly twice. Arcane power is still up, and the priest has wasted 1-2 global cooldowns that could have been used healing. Chances are the warrior is already dead, and its a win for the Mage team.