How to deal with opponent's Arcane Dampener?

[Kanasuke]

This ability is a real threat to my party since it prevents buffs yes but also stops all your heal-over-time effects. and with suppress affliction bugged atm there's no obvious counter-play!

 

Only thing I've found is a priest tier 7 spell that reduces hostile effects by 1 round. also monks. but only if you are a monk

[dunehunter]

There's not many way to prevent Arcane Dampener AFAIK, maybe stacking Will defense to make enemy miss u, or try to interrupt enemy mages before they cast.

[Enurale]

 You can only use "targeted defense" stat but its personal, every member personally needs it to deflect.

[MaxQuest]

I suppose if you solo: high will defense and potions of major recovery.

And if you are in party: it's likely easier to deal with it preventively:

- i.e. either interrupt or disable the casting wizard

- or spread your party before engaging. Arcane Dampener is AoE, and there is a chance that enemy AI has a check in it's behavior to cast AD only if it can hit several enemies at a time. At least my experience was that Pestilent Rotghasts were not casting Putrid Blast AoE against a single target.

[Taudis]

I find most enemy mages open with it. Just waiting a tic before buffing up can often minimize any damage it does.

 

You can also recast your buffs. WRT HoTs, Ancient Memories and Exalted Endurance will just get reapplied and ignore it.

[thelee]

Only thing I've found is a priest tier 7 spell that reduces hostile effects by 1 round. also monks. but only if you are a monk

untargetability affects will also prevent Arcane Dampener from landing. It both redirects targeting, but even if you're still in the arcane dampener aoe, it literally doesn't affect you.

 

rogues have smoke veil, shadowing beyond, vanishing strike

single-class rangers have that AL9 untargetability effect

there are potions of invisibility

ciphers and priests also have stasis effects - but this is only really useful if you have some critical effect you can't lose because pulling a party member out of combat for no good reason could be worse for you than them losing their buffs.

There are others, mostly in the form of items.

 

the major downside is that in fights with arcane dampener, on potd frequently there are multiple mages capable of doing it, and they tend to reserve both their AL3 casts for using it, so you have to be really on the ball for using any of these untargetability effects to dodge them. historically when I have a really good rogue or rogues, I use untargetability to dodge the first one, and then focus down the mages before they can use it again (their AI has it on a timer so even if they could cast it again immediately, they still wait a while)

 

it's ironic that there are a few places where enemies can use the AL9 cleansing effect (the -1000 duration on buffs) and those are actually less punishing because at least you can immediately rebuff, whereas arcane dampener doesn't let you rebuff until it wears off.

Edited April 19, 2019 by thelee

[Taudis]

oh! It totally lets you rebuff in TB. Gotta remember to mention that I mostly play TB when posting info.

[heldred]

I find most enemy mages open with it. Just waiting a tic before buffing up can often minimize any damage it does.

 

You can also recast your buffs. WRT HoTs, Ancient Memories and Exalted Endurance will just get reapplied and ignore it.

 

This is exactly why, for everything outside of mega-bosses, I simply nuke first and skip buffing.  

[thelee]

oh! It totally lets you rebuff in TB. Gotta remember to mention that I mostly play TB when posting info.

 

that sounds like a bug they might fix... or it's intended. at this point, who knows? 

[Kanasuke]

welp. u can just rebuff. so we have a bug to counter another bug that originally was the counter. yay \o/

 

thx for help all

[masterty66]

If you're playing turn based you should usually be able to interrupt the enemy before they hit you with it. 

 

Another tactic you can do that works tb or rtwp is spread out party members so that if they do get off an arcane dampener it only hits one or two of your party rather than everyone. 

[brasilgringo]

I beleive you can reliably resist it with around 190 will which you can get to from gear and buffs. That still won't let you resist Arcane Cleanse, sadly (its largely unresistable).  However interrupts work on mobs trying to cast Damper, and frankly Slicken is the bees knees for this (incluing all the mobs at Concelhaut, Fampyrs too).  Or you can try to watch individual mobs for the cast icon and interrupt it with Thrust of Tattered Veils or other single target interrupts.