Basic comprehension of how buffs and debuffs operate is paramount to effective raid preparation. It affects multiple facets of the events we undertake nightly, from the buffs we utilize to the cures we use. Despite that, there are still a number of people who are confused as to how the information fits together. As such, I've created a guide intended to work as a walkthrough for what I've listed above. Hopefully, it will increase comprehension and stem some of the play errors and repetitive questions that result.
By necessity, as part of the explanatory process I will have some graphics. I apologize if it makes this post seem exceedingly long, but I feel it's better to be thorough.
1. LUCY
What is Lucy? Open up an extra Internet Window, and go take a look: http://lucy.allakhazam.com/
Lucy is a spell database. It reads information from the spelldat files and deciphers it for us. We will be using it throughout this discussion.
2. THE BUFF BAR
This is a typical snapshot of my buff bar during a raid:
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As you see, I always maintain personal clickies in my top two slots (sometimes more, depending on the encounter). For Ture, who has a 2-slot dispel, I ensure that I have at least 3 buffs that I can replenish at will, without being dependent on anyone else. We'll talk more about dispel in a bit, but keep in mind that constantly being on top of things is never a poor choice.
3. BASIC DEBUFF CURING -- DEBUFFS WITH COUNTERS
If you look at buff #14, you will see it is in red: Wind of Tashanian. We're all familiar with this debuff; it reduces our Magic Resist. A lot of people know you can cure it using Radiant Cure. However, they don't necessarily know the process behind it.
In your Lucy window, input "Wind of Tashanian" under "Spell Search", as we will use it for our initial example. It will bring up the spell's information.
Wind of Tashanian
1: Increase Poison Counter by 1
2: Decrease Magic Resist by 40
This tells us what the debuff does, and what counters, if any, cause the effect. Wind of Tashanian has 1 poison counter. Ergo, in order to cure it, we need to use anything that cures poison counters.
A few months ago, I posted a list of cures, which you can find here: http://www.ecipublic.org/viewtopic.php?t=6332. It's stickied at the top of this forum, as hopefully this will be. There is no excuse for not knowing the strength and effectiveness of your curative spells. At this point in the game, you should know what your class's spells do--despite the fact I write these guides, it's not my responsibility to teach you basic information about your class. Use that as inspiration for self-instruction: Don't let a Shadow Knight know more about healing than a healer.
Using Lucy, you can input the names of cure spells. For example, if you type in Counteract Poison, it has this listed:
Counteract Poison
1: Decrease Poison Counter by 8
Obviously, since it's removing 8 poison counters, and Wind of Tashanian is 1, Counteract Poison will cure you in one cast.
If you look up another common cure, Remove Greater Curse, it has this listed:
Remove Greater Curse
1: Decrease Curse Counter by 9
2: Decrease Curse Counter by 9
3: Decrease Curse Counter by 9
4: Decrease Curse Counter by 9
5: Decrease Curse Counter by 9
These are cumulative; RGC therefore cures 45 curse counters per case.
Thus, in regards to Wind of Tashanian, Counteract Poison works, but Remove Greater Curse (RGC) does not, nor will it ever.
3. BASIC DEBUFF CURING -- DETRIMENTAL
I don't happen to have screenshots of myself with a lot of debuffs on, so I modified some convenient screenshots to take their place, which is why the fonts may look goofy.
Here is another common sight:
Image
If you look up Malo on Lucy, you see this:
Malo
2: Decrease Cold Resist by 45
3: Decrease Magic Resist by 45
4: Decrease Poison Resist by 45
5: Decrease Fire Resist by 45
The absence of a "slot 1:" has to do with the logic the game uses to determine what spells of ours are overwritten. We'll discuss that later. For now, what we are concerned about is that there are no counters listed. When a debuff has no counters, it is classified simply as "Detrimental".
This means if you cast RGC to try and cure Malo, no matter how hard you try, it won't work. It means if you cast Abolish Disease to try and cure Malo, no matter how hard you try, it likewise won't work. The only cures for Detrimental effects are:
A. Cleric 1.5/2.0 clicky
B. Radiant/Resplendent Cure (RC)
C. Pure Spirit (SHM spell)
D. Dispels, such as Cancel/Nullify/Annul Magic. We'll discuss dispels separately.
Let's examine Radiant Cure 3. On Lucy, search for Radiant Cure, and pull it up.
Radiant Cure 3
1: Decrease Curse Counter by 16
2: Decrease Poison Counter by 16
3: Decrease Disease Counter by 16
4: Remove Detrimental(6)
Obviously, the fact that it can cure all debuff types is one reason it is such a valuable tool for healers. If you look at the fourth line, it says Remove Detrimental (6). What does this mean?
The number of times "Remove Detrimental" is listed refers to the number of effects it can remove.
The number in the ()'s refers to the strength of the removal effect. The game makes some sort of unknown comparison (the developers like their secrets) between the strength rating and the debuff. At this point we are unsure if it makes multiple attempts or not; "strength" is accurate enough for our purposes at this point.
Therefore, when someone casts Radiant Cure 3, they have one chance to remove a detrimental effect, at a strength of 6.
Oftentimes, it succeeds; the strength of 6 is sufficient to remove the effect. Sometimes, it fails, and the debuff remains. This sometimes confuses people. Detrimental spells have a chance to "resist". Debuffs with counters, however, always apply the curative portions. They cannot resist.
4. ADVANCED DEBUFF CURING
Sometimes, we engage in fights that have multiple debuffs. Sony likes to play tricks on us so that events aren't overly straightforward. Let's take a common example: Arch Magus Vangl.
He has three AE's. Since you can look them up in Lucy for the exact effects, I will simply put the name and number of counters.
1. Mark of Death -- 14 disease counters
2. Touch of Anguish -- 30 poison counters
3. Gaze of Anguish -- 30 disease counters
These AEs are cast concurrently, so that we may have more than one on us at a time. Let's observe two scenarios.
4a. MARK OF DEATH FIRST
Image
The order in which buffs appear on your buff bar determine the order in they are cured. The game proceeds in a linear, top-down fashion.
In this case, we can see that the order for cure checks will be this:
1. Mark of Death -- 14 disease counters
2. Gaze of Anguish -- 30 disease counters
Let's pretend you are assigned to cure someone, and you use Pure Blood. Once again, by looking on Lucy, we see Pure Blood cures 18 disease counters and 18 poison counters.
Pure Blood
1: Decrease Poison Counter by 9
2: Decrease Poison Counter by 9
3: Decrease Disease Counter by 9
4: Decrease Disease Counter by 9
When Mark of Death is first in order, the effect is that Mark of Death is cured, and Gaze of Anguish has 26 counters remaining.
However, sometimes, you see people questioning the channel; they say it's not curing, or that it's taking them 5 casts even though it took Joe_Raider only one cast. Understanding the process eliminates such questions.
To demonstrate, let's look at example #2:
4b. MARK OF DEATH SECOND
Image
Now, we've established that it checks in top-down order for curing.
This time, the order for cure checks will be this:
1. Gaze of Anguish -- 30 disease counters
2. Mark of Death -- 14 disease counters
So, what happens when you cast that Pure Blood, which cures 18 counters?
It leaves 12 counters remaining on Gaze of Anguish, and 14 on Mark of Death.
So, you cast it AGAIN. Now, you've cured the 12 remaining on Gaze, and 6 on Mark of Death, leaving 8 remaining on Mark of Death. This is the point where people exclaim, "OMG! Cures aren't working!"
So, you cast a third time. Finally, Mark of Death goes away, as the 8 remaining counters are cured.
Sometimes, you'll see healers fire an RC in the middle of cure sessions. This further complicates the math, because it's adding a certain amount of counters cured. Thus, you'll see reports of varying number of attempts necessary. Don't bother--we know how many cures it takes by looking at Lucy, and if it's taking more or less, it's because of these other factors.
Sometimes, people attempt to claim that something cures something that it is an impossibility to cure--for example, people often gave erroneous info on Quarm, stating that RGC cured Glacier Breath. This is, of course, an impossibility, as there are no counters on Glacier Breath. Despite this, the misinformation proliferated. The game did not spontaneously change its basic curative structure for this one debuff on this one mob; rather, something else happened in the intervening 30 seconds, usually an RC, epic effect, or dispel. Understanding how the game operates is very important to effective raiding. It is our duty to understand the process so that the entire raid body can act more efficiently. In a raid earlier this evening, I saw individuals casting multiple RGC's when the debuff on us was Detrimental. This wasted time and mana, and resulted in some people losing focus because they couldn't grasp why it wasn't curing. As subsequent raids and events become more attention-intensive, we need to cease that sort of behavior.
Now, with that in mind, I ask, who remembers complaining in Uqua that Wind of Tashanian wouldn't cure, and not knowing why?
Take a peek:
Image
In Lucy:
Aura of Destruction
10: Increase Poison Counter by 99
11: Increase Poison Counter by 99
12: Increase Poison Counter by 99
We established earlier that Wind of Tashanian is 1 poison counter. However, you would have to cure the preceding 297 poison counters on Aura of Destruction in order to cure Tash.
Mystery solved.
5. PROVIDING THE RAID WITH INFORMATION
When information is given to the raid, the majority of the time you will see me speak up until I feel the raid comfortably knows the mob. I tend to focus on buffs and buff strategies, which means I typically describe the AE's/debuffs and whether or not we need to click something off. By the way, right or wrong, we tend to use AE/debuff interchangeably when it comes to raid information, because single target effects are usually factored into healing or general raid info (such as: this mob stuns the MT, so watch aggro.
There are two primary pieces of information that are provided:
One is what the debuff resists against. There are seven types of resists. The ones we are most familiar with are Magic, Poison, Disease, Fire, and Cold. The two that aren't always so clear to raiders are Chromatic, which checks against your LOWEST resist; and Prismatic, which checks against the AVERAGE of your resists.
Let's take a look at a random screenshot of my resists.
Image
A Chromatic resist would therefore resist against Cold for me, or 390.
A Prismatic resist would therefore resist against (415 + 415 + 428 + 396 + 390)/5, or 409.
When we state what the debuff resists against, we follow it with a number. For example, Magic-350. This means it resists against Magic, with a -350 resist modifier. Now, we do not know exactly how that corresponds to our resists. It isn't simply a matter of positive/negative, because you can resist things even when the modifier would make you "negative". Despite that, you can use the resist modifier as a relative gauge of your ability to resist it. With Magic at 415 in the picture above, I'm not overly confident in my ability to resist Magic-350. With bard song, I'm at max resists (for me, 574, because single-group MPG Trials annoy me). At 574, I'm confident that I'll resist Magic-350 the vast majority of the time.
The most common seem to be -150, -350, -450, and -1000. What, you say? 1000? Well, the -1000 indicates that it's essentially unresistable, so treat it as such anytime you see it. We don't know why they code some things with -1000, and some things as actually Unresistable, when they have the same net effect.
Typically, everyone has one low resist, for no apparently reason. Mine is Magic--with the current gear, my unbuffed resists are 430, 458, 426, 425, and... 315 Magic. =/ Don't feel bad; never be afraid to get resist buffs, or swap out a certain piece of gear if your resists are very low. Oftentimes, resisting a 5k AE is much more important than losing 150hp.
The second piece of information provided is how many counters the debuff has, or whether it is Detrimental.
This information isn't given so that we can hear ourselves talk. It enables the raid know which resist buffs are necessary, which songs bards need to sing, our relative chances of resisting it, and what, if anything, cures the effect. It's not enough to simply have someone tell you "RC cures it". Does that mean it has poison? Disease? Curse? Is it detrimental? What happens if RC is down and someone needs a cure?
There should never be a case where a healer hears "25 poison counters" and can't figure out what actual spell cures it. RC isn't always going to be available, and sitting there gritting your teeth waiting for it to refresh while your group members are dying isn't a viable strategy.
Let's take some examples. If it's easier to follow, look up the name of the debuff in Lucy in another window, and walk with me through these three AE's.
RAID AE #1 : Keldovan
Packmaster's Curse
Chromatic-350
NPC Hatelist
Recast Time 30
1: Decrease Spell Damage by 20%
2: Decrease HP when cast by 800
3: Set Healing Effectiveness to -80%
4: Decrease AC by 180
5: Increase Curse Counter by 16
6: Decrease Hitpoints by 100 per tick
7: Limit: Combat Skills Not Allowed
When describing this to the raid, you might see this:
Hrendra tells the raid, 'Packmaster's Curse, Chromatic-350, 16 curse counters. Need curers for MT/RT.'
The information the raid needs is all right there. Chromatic is lowest resist; thus, get all resists so that your lowest is as high as it can be. Since it has 16 curse counters, we know it can be cured generally with Crusader's Purity (16 counters) or Remove Greater Curse (45 counters), depending on who the dedicated curer is. If we need a specific class, it will be said. In pally channel, we communicate whether Crusader's Purity suffices, or whether RGC is necessary. If we need something like Abolish Disease instead of Pure Blood, that is also stated.
Additionally, we know it's Hatelist-based, which means if Keldovan has aggro on you, the AE can reach you. It does not matter how far away you are; Hatelist doesn't have a range. I remember when we were first doing the KtH event and were attempting to pull him. The AE hit me halfway to zone-in, while he was still in his chamber.
The recast time allows us to time some AE's. On certain mobs, we have designated callers who will say "AE in 5 seconds." Sometimes, this is intended to tell people when to duck behind walls. We don't need that as frequently on raid mobs nowadays, particularly as Sony moved to having more Hatelist-based effects in order to circumvent us using geometry to block AE's.
Some mobs bypass their Recast Time altogether, in that they can chain-cast, double up casting, or have varying intervals. As such, a lot of times the raid leaders will examine logs to time the recast and see whether or not we can reliably time it--and whether there's any advantage to doing so.
RAID AE #2 : MPG-Specialization
Curse of Misfortune
Magic-1000
PBAE Range 500'
Recast Time 30
1: Increase Spell Resist Rate by 100%
2: Limit: Resist(Magic allowed)
4: Decrease 1H Slashing Damage Modifier by 50%
5: Increase 1H Slashing Minimum Damage Modifier by 50%
6: Decrease 2H Slashing Damage Modifier by 50%
7: Decrease Movement by 1%
8: Decrease 7 Cap by 200
9: Increase Curse Counter by 10
10: Increase 1H Blunt Minimum Damage Modifier by 50%
Wow, that's a lot of information. Let's break it down step by step. We know that the debuff checks against Magic-1000, which as I said previously is unresistable.
We see that it's a PBAE (Point Blank Area Effect), meaning it radiates out from the mob, at a range of 500'. I haven't measured, but I'll lay you odds that the entire chamber of the MPG Trials is less than 500'--which means we aren't going to be able to avoid it or run out of range.
The first two lines make it so that the mob resists all of our Magic-based spells.
Next, you see it affects slashing damage, which limits the amount of damage we do. Where it says "Decrease 7 Cap", it used to say "Decrease STA Cap". This is why we cannot use Talisman of Fortitude in that raid--it will overwrite Fortitude's cap-raising effect. I'll let you look up Fortitude yourself. =) I'm not sure why the data entry was changed, but it may be to prevent people like me from snooping through Lucy.
We can cure this AE using RGC, due to the 10 curse counters. We can also use Resplendent Cure, or Word of Vivification.
Specialization's gimmick is that the Master of Specialization casts different debuffs that we, as a raid, are forced to react to. Thus, Curse of Misfortune is merely one of the possible debuffs we will see. That is why we have hotkeys that announce critical information for each.
My hotkeys are something like this:
Hrendra tells the raid, 'MISFORTUNE -- RGC -- NO SLASH'
For the most part, because we have a variety of weapons, we don't worry about curing these. However, I thought it was an excellent example to show how the information conduit progresses from Lucy to raid strategies to the raiders. If it was important for us to cure it, we would reinforce that to the raid, designate curers, and instruct healers to set up RC rotations in their groups to help with curing.
RAID AE #3 : Bloodeye
Bloodeye's Curse
Disease-550
NPC Hatelist
Recast Time 45
1: Decrease Stats by 100
2: Increase Curse Counter by 45
3: Improved Spell Effect(Bloodeye's Curse Trigger)
Bloodeye is an example of a mob that bypasses his recast time. For example, the intervals between his casts of that particular spell were, in seconds, 2, 46, 15, 31, 41, 7, and 35.
Disease-550 is the resist. This is resistable, therefore, but it is very difficult, and likely won't happen unless you're lucky. The fact that it resists against Disease means we call it a Disease-based AE, but it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what cures it. People often confuse this, hence the emphasis.
What cures the 45 curse counters? One cast of RGC, or three casts of Crusader's Purity, or four casts of Aria of Innocence with bard 2.0. By now, however, you know your spells, or have my List of Cures in front of you, right? =) Therefore, you know this.
You'll notice that the Curse has a Trigger. Those Triggers are likewise searchable on Lucy.
Bloodeye's Curse Trigger
Disease-1000
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 32000
Ow.
One of my best friends on raids is Spell Awareness. When we're trying a new event, I always want a group leader who has it, because it enables us to see what the mob is doing. Sony realizes this, and has made some mobs "immune" to Spell Awareness, in that it won't tell you what they're casting. When this happens, we rely on extraneous clues, such as the emote when someone is hit by an AE, or messages like [/I]You resist the Spell of Doom![/I] Many times, I will look up information about AE's on the fly during a new raid.
Hopefully, you can now decipher basic Lucy information, and have a solid idea of how curing works. Before we move into dispels, I wanted to briefly touch upon another topic which is related to buffs.
6a. BUFF STACKING - Beneficial
Buffs stack according to Slot. Damage shields are one of the easiest to decipher. There's a lot of damage shield effects, but each of them is assigned to a certain slot. Look up Storm Guard, and you will see:
Storm Guard
4: Increase Damage Shield by 27
My other DS clicky is Shield of the Eighth, which is an easy insta-click to obtain.
Shield of the Eighth
2: Increase Damage Shield by 8
As you see, the two of them do not have competing slots. As a result, they stack.
However, the ranger spell, Guard of the Earth, reads as follows:
Guard of the Earth
2: Increase Damage Shield by 13
3: Increase AC by 49
In this case, the slot 2 from Guard of the Earth and Shield of the Eighth conflict; they will not stack, because they are both trying to fit in the same hole. Guard of the Earth, being a greater effect, will overwrite Shield of the Eighth because there is nothing in Shield of the Eighth preventing it from being overwritten.
Sometimes, spells get very complex, such as the SK self-buff, Cloak of Discord.
Cloak of Discord
1: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 3 is effect 'AC' and < 1080
2: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 6 is effect 'Damage Shield' and < 1012
3: Increase AC by 49
4: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 10 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 1350
6: Increase Damage Shield by 13
10: Increase Max Hitpoints by 350
Good lord. So, I can't have any slot 6 damage shields or slot 3 AC effects--such as Guard of the Earth. However, note that it will block other spells from overwriting it. Instead of being overwritten as Shield of the Eighth was, Cloak of Discord will simply bounce Guard of the Earth.
Another easy example is the cleric and druid HP buff conflict. When clerics are alone, they run around with Conviction and Armor of the Pious. Steeloak hates both of them.
Conviction:
1: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 3 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 2787
2: Increase Max Hitpoints by 1787
3: Increase HP when cast by 1787
4: Increase AC by 94
5: Stacking: Overwrite existing spell if slot 3 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 2787
Armor of the Pious
1: Increase Max Hitpoints by 563
2: Increase AC by 46
3: Increase HP when cast by 563
4: Increase Mana by 9 per tick
5: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 1563
Blessing of Steeloak:
1: Increase AC by 43
2: Increase Max Hitpoints by 772
3: Increase HP when cast by 772
4: Increase Mana by 9 per tick
5: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'AC' and < 1146
6: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 2 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 2773
As you see, it becomes fairly complex. Steeloak conflicts with Conviction's Max Hitpoints increase in slot 2, and Conviction's greater effect means Steeloak cannot overwrite it.
Conversely, Steeloak has a specific entry so that Conviction's greater effect *won't* overwrite it and piss off druids everywhere. Likewise, Armor of the Pious and Steeloak bounce because they share the same Mana Regen in slot 4. This is the way Sony makes everyone happy, because there's nothing people hate worse than casting a buff, and having someone overwrite it. It also irritates people, such as when someone slips something like Strength of the Hunter on me and blocks me from receiving Brell's Brawny Bulwark. However, the system won't ever be perfect.
--and as you can see, Steeloak blocks Conviction.
You can tell that two of the popular clicky effects don't stack:
Maelin's Methodical Mind
8: Increase Mana by 8 per tick
10: Increase Hitpoints by 5 per tick
Aura of Taelosia
8: Increase Mana by 7 per tick
10: Increase Hitpoints by 7 per tick
Even though both stack with the similar effect of the beastlord mana regen line.
Spiritual Dominion
5: Increase Mana by 9 per tick
8: Increase Hitpoints by 9 per tick
Epic 1.0 wizards were annoyed to find that their epic effect, Barrier of Force, did not stack with the beastlords, however.
Barrier of Force
1: Increase Absorb Damage by 16 (L1) to 796 (L53)
2: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 5 is effect 'Mana' and < 20
5: Increase Mana by 3 per tick
Poor guys.
6b. BUFF STACKING - Detrimental
Most times, it is easy to understand beneficial buff stacking. Likewise, when detrimental buff overwrite ours, they largely follow the same rules. For example, if you look up Malo on Lucy, you see this:
Malo
2: Decrease Cold Resist by 45
3: Decrease Magic Resist by 45
4: Decrease Poison Resist by 45
5: Decrease Fire Resist by 45
For beneficial buffs, it's largely dependent on an exact slot correlation. Detrimental operates that way for some buffs; for example, Protection of Seasons says this:
Protection of Seasons
1: Increase Fire Resist by 72
2: Increase Cold Resist by 72
If you look, you'll see that slot 2 for both spells have contrary agendas. Therefore, Malo overwrites Protection of Seasons.
Another easy example is Phantasmal Torment and Koadic's Endless Intellect, from Terris Thule in Time.
7. DISPELLING
Most people are fully aware that both buffs and debuffs stick on you in a top-down order; they find the first empty slot and stuff themselves in it.
What people often do not grasp is how dispels work.
Note: Absor, EQ Developer, has confirmed that there are multiple types of dispels available. The majority of them operate in the manner below; some mobs have special dispels that will remove random buffs. For our purposes, however, we'll examine the case of the majority, to help people understand the basic operation of dispelling.
There are numerous spells that we can use to dispel buffs/debuffs, but the best ones available to each class are as follows:
--Recant Magic (ENC)
--Annul Magic (CLR, RNG, DRU, SHM, NEC, WIZ, MAG, BST)
--Nullify Magic: (PAL/SHD)
--Crystallized Pumice: Available to all classes, sold by Mirao Frostpouch in the building NE of the PoK Soulbinder, as well as any place that sells invis potions. It has 5 charges of Nullify Magic with a 3 second casting time. It is clickable from inventory, but you must target yourself.
I will call this line of spells "dispels" throughout the rest of our discussion.
Let's take my second image from above.
Image
That Malo annoys me. RC didn't cure it. Grrr! I want to dispel it.
If you look at Annul Magic on Lucy, it states this:
Annul Magic
1: Cancel Magic(9)
2: Cancel Magic(9)
Remember how Detrimental worked above? This is similar.
In this case, it tells us that Annul Magic will dispel 2 buff slots, at a strength of 9. Remember, dispels don't care whether something is good or bad; it'll dispel it regardless, even if it's something you like. A quick examination of Lucy shows that Recant Magic can dispel 4 buff slots at a strength of 9, and Nullify Magic 2 buff slots at a strength of 4.
Dispels always land, even if they don't seem to work. Each buff gets a check versus the strength of the dispel. If the buff fails the check, it gets stripped. If that buff passes the check, the dispel moves on to the next buff, and so on. In the case of every buff passing the check, no buffs will be stripped.
This is, of course, the problem with dispels; they're unreliable, and are intended to be that way. Since some dispels strip multiple buffs, the first X buffs that fail their check get dispelled. Thus, to some people dispels seem random; they'll cast it, and say "Wait, I lost buff slots 2 and 5! What gives?" As you see, buff slots 1, 3, and 4 passed their check to remain on you.
We are not sure what the check consists of. Sometimes, spells cast by lower level individuals seem "weaker" against dispel, but that may simply be arbitrary perception. Developers have not confirmed anything that I have seen about the process.
Dispels act differently depending on what you are dispelling. For example, if you dispel a mob, you will not dispel something with counters. When they made the change to put disease counters on slow awhile back, part of the rationale was to prevent griefing by rival guilds dispelling it. I believe it works on the same principle in PvP.
In simple terms of dispelling yourself, however, you can dispel anything that's on you. Therefore, using the graphic above, if I cast Nullify Magic on myself to get rid of Malo, it'll probably chew through my Storm Guard and Form of Defense III first. Thus, presuming I had some dire need to get rid of Malo, I would click those off, and take my chances with it taking Voice of Clairvoyance and hopefully Malo. Clicking off Voice of Clairvoyance wouldn't really net me anything except that I'd lose Steeloak, too.
Thankfully, Malo is largely inconsequential. Application to other detrimental effects, however, can easily be drawn. Also of some interest is that dispels are classified as a Beneficial spell for purposes of spell haste.
INTELLIGENT BUFF PLACEMENT
For most mobs that we fight, it doesn't really matter where your buffs are. As frequent MA, I try to keep clickies in my first two or three slots, depending on what we are doing. That way, when I tank dispelling mobs, it's relatively easy for me to combat their attempts to strip me of buffs. It works, because I don't need to bug buffers for rebuffs. People who make our buffers go to extreme trouble for no reason, just to suit their obsessive need to have buffs in a specific order, need to stop being pests and be told to deal with it.
Sometimes, with a little foresight, you can make your job a lot easier. Take Uqua for example. If you fill your initial few slots with junk buffs, when you zone in and Aura of Destruction fires, it's sure to be in one of your bottom buff slots. At that point, you can click off the junk buffs, so that any further debuffs--such as Tash--are ensured of being before Aura of Destruction on your buff bar. This allows you to be able to cure it, rather than stare at it blankly wondering why it won't go away.
CONCLUSION
Knowledge of your spells makes you an asset. When you do not know your spells, or basic functions related to the class, the raid is hindered. As we move onto tougher mobs, it is important that we establish a basic level of knowledge and competency that will enable us to shine. Remember, all of the information that I have presented here, I have simply researched. It requires no great skill or intellect on my part to collate this information--any one of you can utilize Google, read message boards, or simply study and collect links during your spare time. I mean it. All of this that I have typed, you could also have found. My goal, as always, is not to replace your ability to research, but to encourage you to learn and take further steps on your own. There won't always be someone around to tell you what to do; the more you depend upon others to do your learning for you, the more you dishonor yourself. I hope that many of you will take pride in knowledge for its own sake, and use my guides as a springboard to further education. Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped illuminate some of the common misconceptions about buffs and debuffs.
