Fewer/weaker dispel spamming mobs please.

[Egon the Monkey]

I've been seeing a lot of the Fugue lately, exclusively due to the actions of max range dispel spamming mobs, or as I like to call them, "You Cheesy Bloody Bastards" XD. Dispel's an extremely powerful spell against PCs, and having it on enemies that fire at max range has always struck me as rather unbalancing, especially on lower-level quests where your supplies are lower and you're relying more on precast buffs that you have insufficient spellslots to renew. The shining examples of nastiness are the [Monster] Arcanists that fire off 2 dispels as a first action and tend to lead to you getting eaten by mobs in 2 rounds flat because you're always surrounded and in the open on that quest and there's no time to rebuff and heal. Additionally, on some quests there are are tough, dispel spam mobs like that that only spawn on larger groups, meaning that elitist small groups are a far better way to do the quest, never a good thing.

Dispel spam itself's incredibly destructive for several reasons:

• There's no defence short of taking out, disrupting or Silencing the caster, other than SR, which doesn't really count as it's only there for few PCs, thankfully. That said, Spell Resistance is a pretty horrible vicious anti-caster defence for a L9 Cleric with the change to make Dispels check SR. EDIT for clarity, meant to imply it was horibly effective.
  
• Dispel spam ironically gets better against casters as they get more levels because it can deal more damage (in removed buffs) when one does succeed. It damages pure casters more than potionchuggers because a chugger will lose usually 3 levels of spell duration if dispelled whereas a pure caster loses 6, 7, 9, whatever. Sure you have a lower chance of it working, but with a lot of mobs firing it, some will hit, nuking your extended Blur or your Imp Invis.
• Because of both of the above, it favours high HP classes fighting and classes that rely on spells invising or shooting rather than fighting up close if they don't want to get trashed. Anyone can do that, it's far more fun to play the Chaotic Sorcerer who's always polymorphing, the herald Bard who leads from the front, etc.

I'm not suggesting here that Dispel should be removed from mobs, by the way, just that Dispel spam should be reviewed. Bosses with dispel make them justifiably big and scary. When every fifth monster on a quest has it, you end up running around trying to kill them regardless of any plan, or you get steamrollered, especially if they can cast it at max range before you even notice they're there. On the other hand monsters with counterable spells like straight-up damage can be reacted to if you can't spare the time to kill them the second they appear.

I would like to say is that a certain quest handles dispel spam rather well. It has fairly numerous mobs with about 10 HP and lowish AC, that have dispel as a relatively late action. If you keep alert you can shoot them down before they can cast Dispel, and keep your team safe. If you fail to notice them, then you're in for it. That encourages teamwork and makes the dispels a threat that can be dealt with using thought, not something where you pretty much OOCly need to designate a PC to go kill them to the exclusion of all else. As another note, the odd thing with a +1 weapon is a much more interesting way to make Blur-users worried than Dispel, as you can react to those sort of things by attacking as they close. Finally, quests that are paced by moving through rooms (e.g. Jergals) handle dispels a lot better than "invasion" style quests or large open areas, as you can send stealthers ahead to gank the mage, blast the room etc, rather than hope you get them before they get you. You have tactical options.

TL;DR version
I'm not suggesting nerfing all caster mobs, but that slows, direct damage, statdrain, summons and other threats are more interesting to fight than dispel. They can be reacted to effectively by an aware PC, whereas the only reaction to dispel is "Use consumables even if you're a caster, or OOCly hoard buffs". It levels the playing field between "has magic" and "has potions" on the attacking PCs, which restricts options for caster PCs. Dispels should be the province of lone big scary badasses, or low HP 'nuisance factor' mobs that can be shot before they cast if you're observant.

[Gippy]

This suggestion does nothing without using specific quests as examples, and I can assure you that the quests we have with dispels, seem to get done regularly, and cost effectively, by a wide range of parties.

Dispel spam ironically gets better against casters as they get more levels because it can deal more damage (in removed buffs) when one does succeed. It damages pure casters more than potionchuggers because a chugger will lose usually 3 levels of spell duration if dispelled whereas a pure caster loses 6, 7, 9, whatever. Sure you have a lower chance of it working, but with a lot of mobs firing it, some will hit, nuking your extended Blur or your Imp Invis.

- High level wizard/cleric/bard buffs are difficult to dispel. Chances are you'll be able to survive a few random dispels in the course of a quest. But! If you're going to get overwhelmed in a round for not having blur / II up after being dispelled then you're already screwed.

There's no defence short of taking out, disrupting or Silencing the caster, other than SR, which doesn't really count as it's only there for few PCs, thankfully. That said, Spell Resistance is a pretty horrible anti-caster defence for a L9 Cleric with the change to make Dispels check SR.

- In PvP, people facing targets with spell resistance up have whined considerably. It is nothing short of an amazing defense. I am sure the poor orcs that you trample feel the same way.

Because of both of the above, it favours high HP classes fighting and classes that rely on spells invising or shooting rather than fighting up close if they don't want to get trashed. Anyone can do that, it's far more fun to play the Chaotic Sorcerer who's always polymorphing, the herald Bard who leads from the front, etc.

-It does indeed. Polymorphed wizards and bards have a great many advantages over fighters. Fighters I guess have the advantage of being a good -- fighter. Oh no! My extended blur that I cast upon myself rather than drinking expensive potions has a chance of being dispelled?!

[kanrath]

An example of quest where dispell is used well is trolls. The dispel enemies have low hp and if you pay attention can be stopped, I've more issue with the acid pods they release.. sometimes they release them one at a time slowly, and then sometimes a troll will start spamming them and fire off 5-6 of the pods in 30 seconds. A good example of a quest with bad use of dispel where a decent sized group is concerned is Harpies, where every npc and its mother has dispel and will often string you bare of everything in one or two casts. Small groups on the other hand won't get the dispel mobs nearly as much. Doing harpies yesterday, 3 out of every 4 mobs was able to cast dispel. I will say though harpies isn't that hard as it is, but its a good example of dispel machine gunning a party down by spamming the spell.

[Egon the Monkey]

@Gippy: I wasn't very clear there, huh? I meant that Spell resistance is horrible to face, not to use. The SR change to Dispel removes one of the few spells that get past it, as well as breaking Bard Lesser Dispel by making Blur grant immunity to it.

I've always thought fighters were meant to be good unbuffed, bards/clerics/heftily melee built arcanists to be good when buffed. If you are running through enough dispels to continually strip your buffs by playing the odds, you begin to wonder why you didn't just make an invis summoner. A few, you might be able to deal with. three at once, much less so.

Didn't want to give examples in case of spoilers, but sure.

• About getting trashed in one round. Specifically it's the Screeching Cabal Arcanists who will hit you at range and can easily take off a L3-6s self buffs, plus blur or whatever AC buffs like bark they had up, leading to them getting torn apart by the extremely numerous rats and dying to AoO if they try and invis. That went for every PC on that run from a paladin to a wizard with a spear. I've done that quest plenty of times with a small team, then did it with a larger group and got mauled because it caused dispellers to spawn and you have to stay in everything's line of sight to protect the NPC. You get machinegunned with dispels from decent HP werecreatures that hide at the back, you can't shoot down due to DR and if you try to run towards the caster, you take about 20 AoOs and then they run away.
• Sewer Goblins suffers more from some horrible bugginess where Shamans will hear you in invis and then unerringly fire dispels onto you, which wiped me out 3 times in a row while trying to recover my pack.
• Trolls is usually fine but occasionally spawns Troll casters that are very resilient and spam dispels, sendng the difficuty way up as it's lready a fairly long quest where you're stretched for spells.

Harpies is one of the least worst ones in many areas, because the pacing's pretty good and you can sneak up on the dispellers or kill them before they fire a good deal of the time, because dispel is fairly late on them. It's a large annoyance, but can be dealt with.

Lastly, yeah, they are commonly done, but Dispel really can suddenly destroy a team, with little way to block it. It'll either demolish someone's buffs by luck and make a sudden weakness, or when you're not steamrollering the quest, everything will get round to dispel casting and then you'll be in a world of trouble. Of course, even if you see this coming, there's not much you can do about it. Changing dispel would be a bad thing for PVP/dealing with uber NPCs, but cutting back on having so many dispel mobs would be good.