Dispel..
 

I have looked for this particular answer and it isn't real clear anywhere so I will ask the Forum Guru's for help.

First let me say I have never used Dispel, I have always overridden a spell so I wouldn't have to spend gems twice.

When there is a global up (say Dark Skies) and it cost 50 A gems, if I want to override it I would need to guess how many gems he had put in it extra (say another 50) and cast 101 A gems to take it down from him and give it to me.

I was under the impression Dispel worked the same way but I was told that it works like this (and if it does WHAT A BARGIAN).

I will use the same Global for reference.

Say Dispel costs 30 gems to cast it, and I figure he put another 50 in it so I add 71 gems to dispel it or a total of 101. THAT is the way I understood it.

I was told that you pay the 30 to dispel and then ONLY the extra gems he used to kill the spell. In other words 30 gems to dispel and 51 to override his extra added gems....total 81 gems.

Twenty may not seem like much because I used a low gem Global, but if you had say Arcane Nexus It could mean a HUGE difference.

If anyone (lOL) understands what I am trying to say, an explanation or example would help me immensely. :confused:

Re: Dispel..
 

Global x costs 50 gems to cast. Caster puts 70 extra in.

To dispel, Player needs 30 +71 to dispell. (ignoring bonus gems due to magic paths).

Re: Dispel..
 

You're right about how it works. Definitely makes dispelling the expensive globals easier.

In addition to the bonus gems for extra paths, there is also a random roll thrown in.

Re: Dispel..
 

I could have sworn you had to pay cost + even if you used dispel...

Also, or in conjunction with this, are you give 5gems per level above 3 that you have when casting dispel?

Re: Dispel..
 

I think the above answers are still somehow ambiguous so I will try to give an unambiguous answer.

Let's say your opponent has cast Arcane Nexus, which costs 150 gems if I remember rightly, and he used a total of 180 gems, so 30 extra.

To dispel it, you need 30 for the dispel + 30 extra (plus a few more to be on the safe side), so a little over 60 gems. So yes, in (almost?) all cases dispelling is cheaper than casting.

Re: Dispel..
 

It also depends on the caster level, so you need to add +5 for every level difference bewteen the bonus the global caster got, and the bonus your dispel caster has.

And since I am spending so many gems, I still want to at least cover for the case where I roll < 6 and my opponent rolls 2 6's. So, at least +17 gems extra to cover for bad rolls. More if I'm putting a lot of gems in (eg if I know he cast at 999, since he overwrote the same global of mine, that I had cast at 999).

Re: Dispel..
 

Sadly, despite the low initial cost dispel is pretty much always a loser play.

It takes pearls to cast it, which are (at least long-term) the best gem type, and forces the dispel caster to play a very nasty guessing game trying to figure out how many gems went into the global. Guessing high means you waste gems, guessing low means you waste gems and the global isn't dispelled. Plus, of course, the global in question works for at least one turn before it can be taken down.

So, for well of misery the casting nation spends 80-21 = 59 gems, the dispel caster spends 30, so there's a scant 29 gem margin to work with when you have to figure out where they cast the spell in a potential range of over 900. Poor odds.

IMO dispel should really be changed so that the global is permanently weakened by the dispel margin. Then a failed dispel isn't a complete catastrophe for the caster like it is now. Pretty sure that would have to be a dev change though, not a modded solution. Assuming an S9 caster as a reasonable maximum this would also provide a good parity with the spell base cost, since you end up with 30 "free" points on a 30 gem spell, which wouldn't be able to be abused by getting more dispel points than you're spending. (And if you have the time to empower to S10 or more and then have the mage sitting around chipping away at a global turn after turn your game setup has some problems anyhow.)

Re: Dispel..
 

Am I the only one who thinks dispels should be the very first spells calculated in a turn resolution?

Trying to free up a global slot taken by an enemy and cast Well of Misery there, and WoM goes off first (either failing or potentially overriding one of my own existing globals), and *then* dispel frees up a slot for the next turn, inviting all parties to grab it during next resolution.

Re: Dispel..
 

Micah: Or maybe you have the nexus up and you don't want to bounce it when you cast SOAP.

nordlys: Nah, I like it the way it is. GL, you could cast both on the same turn anyway!

Re: Dispel..
 

@Micah Many dispels are group efforts though. Also its significantly easier to alchemize for a dispel than it is any non-astral global. 30 pearls is a pretty low bar for a semi-one time event that there's a good chance you can get others to kick in a few for. In practice other than AN you seldom see a global bounce back up right after it's dispelled.