The other day I heard a Shaman claim that the presence of Shamans in 5v5 is not based primarily on Heroism, for this reason: A well placed Mass Dispel will get rid of it entirely. I countered that you would have to be incredibly lucky for this to be the case, since Mass Dispel will remove a magic buff at random just like Dispel magic will, but he insisted that Mass Dispel will choose Heroism before other buffs, siting the fact that it specifically dispels Pally Bubble, Ice Block, and other shield effects first.

My question, then, is this: Does Mass Dispel target Heroism the same way it targets a Paladin Bubble or Ice Block? That doesn't make any sense to me; the reason Mass Dispel effects those spells first is that the player is otherwise immune to everything, and only Mass Dispel will remove this protection (thus being forced to target the only thing possible: the protection itself). If nobody knows for certain, is anybody willing to investigate this? I don't know any Shamans interested in helping me test, the Shaman arguing with me is mostly just an asshole about it.

To test, all you would need is a group of people (with a Shaman) with several magical buffs up, and a priest outside of that group. Everybody goes to stand in one of the arenas, thus making all non-party members enemy. The Shaman casts heroism, then the priest casts Mass Dispel, and observe the results.

Thanks in advance for any information.

No it doesn't, it's a random roll.

So basically, aside from Iceblock and Divine Shield having top priority, Bloodlust is will be a random roll versus the other buffs.

BOP is also prioritized, based on my experience (I haven't conducted controlled testing, but I've probably cast MD on bop'd players 30+ times since I first noticed this and removed it first every time, even when I knew they had plenty of other magical buffs). Everything I've seen indicates that immunity effects are the only thing prioritized, heroism/lust are not and fall into a random roll versus other magical buffs. Maybe he plays on a 2 warrior team with a shaman and paladin? This setup has very few buffs and is vulnerable to getting everyone's lust purged by a MD.

Edit: Just double checked by dueling all the paladins outside IF and 3 tries with 8 buffs on each removed BOP first on every MD.

I can also say it does not "target" Bloodlust, tested with a priest friend.

It's completely random.

A mass dispel will remove five total buffs off enemy players/debuffs off friendly players within the spell effect area, and in addition will dispel any immunity effects such as ice block, cloak of shadows, paladin bubble (immunity effects do not count toward the five regular dispels).

There's no specific time or place to cast a mass dispel to remove an entire heroism/bloodlust off a team, you're just lucky/unlucky if it removes multiples.

However if the enemy takes a while getting ready or waits around in the ruins starting area you can strip them all of buffs, so that when they engage and hit bloodlust they lose it to one mass dispel.

Yea, mass dispel will get rid of CloS. It's totally not worth the mana though, with the tiny duration vs mana cost of mass. Since last patch when they made the immunity effect dispel resistable, it's almost impossible to dispel it now though.

Just tested it to make sure it hadn't been changed since the last time I wasted the mana on it. Took me a few times, but one finally went off.

It also removes Banish from friendly targets. This can be handy in arenas and certain PvE encounters.

Are you sure about that? I know it does not remove cyclone, and cyclone is considered a banish effect. I always understood banish to remove the target from the game, making them untargettable by anything.

Banish - magical debuff.
Cyclone - debuff (like Forebereance, Weakend Soul etc).

Banished target has always been targettable, only invulnerable.

As to pain suppression, I don't know, but I can definately validate the Bop/Iceblock/Bubble priority system.

Any buff that will make you "Immune to X effect" seems to be targetted by this priority system. Because the buff itself factors as a "shield" for your other buffs. Therefore, the Mass Dispell must hit the immunity causing buff (bubble/Iceblock) first.

I wouldn't suggest using mass dispel against Pain suppression. Mass dispel may or may not prioritize pain suppression, but one thing it does not do is ignore resist checks. Pain suppression with its 60% or higher resist rate will more than likely require multiple mass dispels to get off, so it's better to use regular dispel since it costs less mana and dispels twice as fast.

Are you sure mass dispell prioritises BoP, from my experience as a pally in arenas when my partner gets mass dispelled the BoP normally stays on. I was under the impression that the best way to get rid of a BoP would be for the priest to cast dispel magic and BoP doesn't come under the immunity effects because it's only partial immunity. But then again I might be completely wrong about this :P

I am 100% sure it prioritizes BOP. If its staying on, it's likely because of stoicism (and to a lesser extent, the tendency for many priests to not hit-cap themselves).

Okay, to be scientific about it, here is what *is* known about Mass Dispel logic:

1. if Hostile, Attempt Dispel Mechanic (29), else
2. if Hostile, Attempt Dispel (1), else
3. if Friendly, Attempt Dispel (1)

Basically what it does it tries to resolve Dispel Mechanic (29) first, if it can, which eliminates a special category of buffs if the target is an enemy player. If nothing is found, it tries a Dispel (1), which removes a random buff from an enemy. If there is nothing to remove, it fizzles; if the player is friendly, it initiates the second Dispel (1), which removes a harmful effect from a friendly player.

From the patch notes, it is known that Mass Dispel has multiple effects, as described:
This means it is *not* just limited to solely the Dispel (1) random effect we are familiar with, so the removal is not completely random. The problem arises from what is covered by the other component, Dispel Mechanic (29). As far as I know, the only word from Blizzard comes from the 2.2.0 patch notes:
This further proves the existence of another Dispel Mechanic existing other than the totally random Dispel (1), because that component has not had a problem appearing in the combat log. From what you can see, the patch note states that the component that was patched, the aforementioned Dispel Mechanic (29), prioritizes "Blessing of Protection, Ice Block, etc." The downside to this is that we do not know for sure to what extent what buffs are covered entirely by Dispel Mechanic (29).

In conclusion, yes, it has a priority list, which we can say for sure snipes BoP and IB before anything else. Yes, it has different components with different effects. No, we do not know if it covers bloodlust/heroism, without further testing, because we don't know the meat of what is in the Dispel Mechanic (29) checklist beyond Blessing of Protection and Ice Block.

Anecdotal, but I don't think so. I remember pvping in my hit-capped pve gear for a long time, and the resist rates on shield seem about the same now that I only have like 45 hit in my pvp gear.

To confirm, Does the paladin talent stoicism "work" against mass dispell while under divine shield? From my perspective, I've not seen myself resist a MD but I have not tested it much outside of arena conditions. Has hard math been done to determine if it is a 30% increase in the absolute dispell resist or does it increase the current rate. So verse a caster with 150 spell hit, it would be increasing such a small number that it would just result in a 1% chance to resist.

Stoicism is 30%, not 30% of the current rate. Stoicism does work on mass dispel vs. divine shield, resists are VERY common (I love blowing > 2k mana on 3 md's and his heal landing anyway since they all resisted). As far as hit counteracting stoicism, no pvp gear setup I would ever seriously consider would have more than 3-4% hit max, which is too low to test anecdotally. You'd need to get a high hit% suit of gear and go run some formal tests with numbers to back it up.