Dispel type

Many of the buffs and debuffs in World of Warcraft have a dispel type, which appears in the upper right-hand corner of the tooltip box if you hover your pointer over the buff or debuff icon. The dispel type tells you how the effect can be removed or dispelled. There are 5 main dispel types, 2 that are rarely used, and at least one that is present on tooltips but not targeted by any abilities.

Curse
The ability to curse their enemies is almost exclusively limited to warlocks, although shaman can also curse via Hex. Druids with Remove Corruption, mages with Remove Curse, and shaman with Cleanse Spirit can remove them.

Disease
These are usually conditions like Rabies, Tetanus, and the like and are usually caused by mobs. However, priests can cast Devouring Plague, and certain death knight abilities cause diseases, most notably Blood Plague and Frost Fever. Paladins (Cleanse), priests (Cure Disease), and monks (Detox and Mistweavers' Revival) can remove Disease-type effects from themselves and their allies. The dwarven racial ability Stoneform will also instantly cleanse the caster of all Disease effects.

Magic
The most common effects are Magic. There are Magic-type buffs (beneficial), as well as Magic debuffs (harmful).

Hunters can use Tranquilizing Shot, shaman can use Purge, and Protection warriors can use Shield Slam to remove Magic buffs from their enemies. Warlocks may use their Felhunter's Devour Magic. Mages can use Spellsteal to transfer enemy Magic buffs to themselves.

With the appropriate talents, Holy paladins (Sacred Cleansing), Restoration druids (Nature's Cure (druid talent)), and Restoration shamans (Improved Cleanse Spirit) have the ability to remove Magic debuffs from their allies. All Mistweaver monks can remove Magic debuffs from themselves and their allies using Detox and Revival. The monk talent Diffuse Magic removes Magic debuffs from the caster.

Priests of all kinds can use Mass Dispel to simultaneously remove buffs from enemies and debuffs from allies. Priests can also use Dispel Magic to remove 1 buff from an enemy or up to 2 debuffs from themselves.

Some Magic-type effects are classed as invulnerabilities, and cannot be removed by any of the aforementioned abilities; these include Banish, Ice Block and Divine Shield. Only a priest's glyphed Mass Dispel or a warrior's Shattering Throw can remove these more potent buffs.

Poison
Rogues are highly capable of causing Poison-type debuffs and DoTs, but many mobs do as well. Hunter sting abilities are also considered poison debuffs. Druids (with Remove Corruption), paladins (Cleanse) and monks (Detox and Revival) can remove these. Those with the First Aid secondary skill can also create Anti-Venoms to cure poison, although these are very rarely used at max level. Dwarves can invoke Stoneform to cleanse themselves of all Poison effects for free once every two minutes.

Rare dispel types

 * Stealth: Includes the rogue ability Stealth, the druid ability Prowl, and some NPC abilities. The only dispel effect that removes these is the ability of a Gnomish Alarm-o-Bot.
 * Invisibility: Displayed as a dispel type, but not dispelled by anything in the game. Includes the mage spells Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
 * Special (npc only): A type that includes only one effect, Kael'thas Sunstrider's Mind Control, which is dispelled by Infinity Blade. Morbent's Bane could also have dispelled this effect before Patch 4.0.3, since the effect it was designed to dispel (Morbent Fel's Unholy Shield) also had this dispel type.

Typeless effects
There are also many lasting effects which do not have a dispel type; there are no general spells that remove these. However, there may still be hope: the ones that impose a specific mechanic upon the target may be susceptible to removal by certain items and abilities that can remove this specific mechanic (for example, Luffa and Stoneform can remove bleed effects, while Tranquilizing Shot, Soothe, and Shiv can remove Enrage effects). Some lasting effects, however, must simply run their course and expire with time.

Most typeless effects can also be removed using the paladin's Divine Shield or the mage's Ice Block.

Reading a Wowhead dispel effect
On Wowhead, a spell entry may include the effect "Dispel" followed by a number in brackets. That number indicates the type of buff or debuff the spell will remove:


 * 1) Magic
 * 2) Curse
 * 3) Disease
 * 4) Poison
 * 5) Stealth
 * 6) (unused)
 * 7) Magic, Curse, Disease or Poison
 * 8) Special (npc only)
 * 9) Enrage

On the next line, the number following "Value:" is the maximum number of effects of this type that will be dispelled. Spells that have the attribute "Remove auras on immunity" remove buffs and debuffs based on their mechanic rather than their dispel type.