Dispels: remove what kills before it kills

Every effect an enemy puts on you has a type, and every dispel only removes certain types. Knowing which one you are looking at tells you who can deal with it.

Magic, curse, poison and disease are the four main types. A bleed can almost never be removed (the evoker's Cauterizing Flame is the exception): it gets healed through. An enrage sits on an enemy, not on you: it gets soothed.

Each dungeon page of the season gives the type of every effect: that is the list to read before the key, to know who will be busy.

The healer is not the only one who dispels. Many DPS and tanks remove curses, poisons or diseases from an ally: depending on the group, they even carry most of the work.

Most ally dispels come back in 8 s, and only when they actually removed something. Those of DPS and tanks are often talents: a player who did not pick it cannot remove anything.

Not all debuffs are equal, and an 8 s cooldown cannot clear everything in a big pull. Choosing matters more than speed.

The order that works most of the time: first what stops a player from acting (fear, sleep, polymorph), then what hurts the most (a heavy dot on a player already low), then what gets in the way (slows, reduced healing). Crowd control on the healer comes before everything else.

A DPS who can remove a type should do it without waiting: a poison removed by the monk or the paladin is a cooldown saved for the magic only the healer can clear. Splitting types before the key keeps two players from going for the same target.

Some effects punish whoever removes them: they explode on the group, jump to another player or leave a puddle on the ground. Others must stay for a moment, until the player has moved away.

The spell tooltip says so. When in doubt, look at what happened last time: the replay shows who removed it and what landed right after.

Some enemies give themselves a shield, a haste buff or a magic empowerment. A few classes can take it away:

An enraged enemy hits harder or faster, usually on the tank. Against a pack that enrages every pull, having Soothe or Tranquilizing Shot in the group takes pressure off the tank and the healer.

• Leaving it all to the healer: the druid, monk, mage or paladin often have something to remove a type. A poison left "because it's the healer's job" is health the healer will have to give back.
• Removing the first debuff in sight: clearing a slow means 8 s without being able to clear the fear that lands right after.
• Removing an effect that explodes in the middle of the group, instead of waiting for the player to step away.
• Ignoring the dungeon's types: without knowing a dungeon is full of curses or poisons, nobody thinks of taking the talent that removes them.

When a player dies under a debuff that had been up for more than 2 s, and that debuff has already been dispelled in one of your logs, the death gets the cause "Debuff to dispel". For every player who has already removed it with the same spell, the detail says whether they were ready, on cooldown or dead. It is a clear fault when the debuff cost at least 10% of max HP and a dispel was ready.

The log does not say which effect can be removed, nor by what. Wipe to Win deduces it: a debuff is dispellable if it has been dispelled at least once in your logs, and only a player who has already done it with that spell is assumed able to do it again.