Ok this has always perplexed me and last night it kind of bit us.

How does cancel magic work ?

Reason I ask is last night tried to use it on an event where people would have a DoT land on them which we need to make sure we cancelled magic to avoid the 350/tick mana drain at the very least on the healers.

Problem was that Cancel magic was not taking off the the first buff slot, it was taking out random buff slots.

So I guess my question is how does Cancel Magic work ? Does it work off of the amount of time left on buffs or something like that ? It seems to work on the concept of counters much like Cure Pois, Disease, Curse but just not clear how.

I have seen annul magic take out a virtue buff that should have a lot more time left than other buffs which has made me think cancel magic works on removing a buff based on how long is left in comparison to how long its original duration.

This is probably a very basic question but its some how stumped me for a long time. I really should spend a little time just experimenting now that we can see what duration is left on buffs (probably will now that i think about it) but, if anyone already has an answer, I'd appreciate it.

Id say thats a great question =)

I have never looked into it, but due to its randomness have never used it much either - it usually did more harm then good.

As far as I know both take off a random slot. Pretty sure there isnt any factors in determining it passed some RNG but I could be wrong. Im sure one of the more Unkept Druids here can fill in the blanks =)

Side Note: Ive been using cancel magic again (for once?) pulling the temples in KT. It makes a huge difference on incoming...

Higher level cancel magic spells have a lower "resist" rate than lower level spells, meaning they operate as if you are a much higher level character (up to level+9 for the best ones, IIRC). My educated guess is that the spell goes down the list of buffs, and if it "resists", it tries the next one. This would explain why a low level spell seems random, whereas a high level spell is consistent, whether cast by a player or an NPC. It also explains why a low level cancel magic spell cast by a low level NPC sometimes never removes a buff.

Unfortunately, the higher level spells also remove more buffs -- 4 for enchanters and 2 for everyone else -- so you will have to work in junk buffs accordingly.