Musings on Dispel Magic... (in General)

I have been thinking about Dispel Magic and the recent Introduction of the Rune of Solitude.

Imagine if you will a character with two minions, one being a dedicated Dispel Magic Enchanter, and the second an offensive minion of some sort. Just for the sake of this thread we will say that the DM Enchanter has a 250K effective level Dispel magic.

Now, imagine another character that has three minions, two of them being dedicated Ablative Shield Enchanters and the third being an offensive minion of some sort. Each of the AS Enchanters have a 250K effective level Ablative Shield.

The tanks/mages on each of the teams are irrelevant to my point. The DM Enchanter on the first character can completely wipe out two full minions trained exp with half the trained exp, and there is even a reduction doled out with AS if there is a minion tattoo involved.

So simply from a numbers perspective, a 2 minion character with DM can in essence negate two complete minions from a 3 minion character with half the experience trained. That is where I am getting hung up. It seems to me that 250K DM should only be able to Dispel equal to its own level. In the case above, only one of the AS minions is rendered moot in battle.

Am I way off base here? This is not a nerf request or a harp on DM so much as a I would like to understand the reasoning for making DM the way it is and how others feel about it.

I've always thought DM was a little overpowered just because of that example. The way it works, multiple enchant defenses are useless.

But on the other hand.

All the EO spells do just that, work on all enemies spells/skill/enchantments.

Take AMF for example. Lets say you have 1 enchanter with a 500k AMF and you fight someone with a 500k FF and a 500k FB. Your AMF is effecting 2 spells which is twice the xp you used.

Or EC. It effects all enemies str/dex. So lets say your facing a 4T team. Your one spell is lowering all 4 tanks str and dex.

DM is in the same class of spells so it should, IMO, effect all enemies enchantments.

That is true Ranger. But, Dispel Magic is much more effective at what it does than AMF or EC. I think the effect at which Dispel Magic casts should be lowered.

Actually I dont think DM as it is, is too effective. Take AMF. It both lowers your damage and gives damage back.

Yes DM does remove ED enchantments but then your very vulnerable to the full force of all DD spells including decay. If you set up your character where your vulnerable to DM, then you better have a nice DD spell and/or backup plan to content with those type characters.

Now is 80% of its trained level an appropriate effective level? I don't think anyone, even Jon knows that for sure. But I really don't see many DM teams at the level I fight. In fact a few that used both AMF and DM have went back to just using AMF.

My take on this--

DM *should* be lowered. 80% of the skill level is pretty high, IMO, because-

1) Take AMF as an example, an AMF of 100k vs. a FB of 100k, AMF only casts for .50 against that.

2) EC vs Haste/GS an EC of the same level as a 100k haste would cast for HALF of what the Haste adds to DX,
In relation to intrinsic STR/DX, you get even less bang for your buck, (example from Cb1) 14.1M EXP gets you about
1.2M STR, 14.1M EXP in EC only takes away approximately 400k of that.

SO- I think a possible solution to this could be to have DM act more like AMF, base the effect off of the ED spell it is reducing. (my $0.02)

I've been saying this for awhile, but here goes! I've been feeding off DM groups for a long time now; why? I have little ED, huge AMF (since many DM teams go for FB) and a BL tank ready to clean their faces with a Morgul Hammer. I've done very well feeding off DM FB groups.

Why does this answer your question?
Simply put: Paper, Rock Scissors.
Put another way: Is it fair that I negate half a groups XP by not training heavy ED? ;)

Ok, I feel that this may reinforce my point, but really I just thought this was funny. The top 7 of my favorites list are *all* higher in PR and DM FB groups.

"Good 'ol rock, nothin' beats rock!"
-Bart Simpson

Here's why DM is NOT too powerful. There are three situations of affect:

1) The target has no defensive enchantments or a small one.
Result: You have wasted most or all of your DM points.

2) The target has one defensive enchantment larger than your DM.
Result: You're dispel level is (I think) about 80% of your DM level. You have paid about 20% MORE points to dispel an ability than it cost that char to cast it. You would have been better off spending those points elsewhere unless it was a critical DE (such as a team with AS and 20 hits on all minions :)

3) The target has two or more large DEs.
Result: You win the lottery and your DM works beautifully. Though you only get 80% of your level, it smacks down two or more DEs!

Only in case 3 is the DM effective. Thus the big DM teams look for big DE teams to battle so they can leverage their skills. That's not too bad. Big AMF teams look for big DD teams, big dex tank teams look for small dex tank teams. Big strength, low dex teams look for DD teams. Balance demands that a strategy has a weakness and a strength, so I have no problem with DM having a decent strength, particularly when it is so common that the DM points are wasted on an opponent.