Proper Uses for Sleep, Please Help

[EyeLuvBooks]

I play just about every AT and most combinations at one point or another. The one power I find myself skipping regularly is Sleep. I don't solo much and I'm not seeing a big benefit for teams since everyone seems to drop a nice big AoE right after I put the spawn to sleep.

 

Is it worth taking for a mostly-team player and if so, how should I be using it to get the most bang for my buck?

[Redlynne]

38 minutes ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Is it worth taking for a mostly-team player and if so, how should I be using it to get the most bang for my buck?

Sleep the NEXT spawn group beyond the one the team is working on to pin them in place so they don't have a chance to "get wise" and join the fray prematurely.

 

Using Sleep powers were damage is supposed to be happening is usually not wise.

Using Sleep powers to "defer aggro" until later or be able to pull a single mob (usually a Boss) out of a pile is a more tactical use of Sleep powers, where you're using the Sleep as a "suppressor" in order to take on $Targets sequentially rather than in parallel.

[Yoru-hime]

On teams I tend to look at Sleep as a hole card rather than part of the regular rotation. It's useless in the middle of the damage storm, but a well-placed AoE sleep can work as an emergency stop for a badly timed ambush.

 

Even on control-happy characters, I tend to be back and forth as to whether or not it's worth it.

[SeraphimKensai]

Also you can proc it it out to turn it into a little self heal, that works pretty reliably (no where near as broken as it once was, but oh well).

[MTeague]

If you ever played oldschool EverQuest, Sleep is like Mesmerize was in that game. 

You park mobs, and as long as no one touches them, they stay parked for a good while

 

Soloing, it's *very* handy.

In teams, less so, but still a few use cases

• you see an ambush coming that you dont' think your team is ready for yet.  Sleep them BEFORE they join the fray.
• Sleep causes most mobs to completely detoggle.   Dealing with a mobs with really annoying defenses?  Sleep them.  Toggles will drop and usally not come back for several seconds, plenty enough to drop them in the meantime. 
• Sleep, like Immobilize, is a type of control that AV's and EB's have no special protection against.  Purple Triagles don't matter.  You can buy a couple seconds of breathing space, esp if people just went down and you need time to get people rez'd or to resummon henchmen or whatever.  Or even if you're just wiping and want a good headstart to run so you don't die as well.
• To completely bypass a group you don't want to waste time on. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by MTeague

[Greycat]

Even if it's "shut down right away" by an AOE, someone with a sleep is handy as early as Posi 2 - since the big dispersion bubbles cast by ruin mages gets shut down by it. No dispersion bubble = no AOE defense for the circle. Same's true for most bubbles of that sort (not the sky raider generators, though, as I recall.) Sleep will often shut down armors that ignore or deflect other things. And those armors do have recharge times.

 

Also handy in the MLTF/LRTF in keeping the AVs coming one at a time while the others take a nap... >.>

[MTeague]

16 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Even if it's "shut down right away" by an AOE, someone with a sleep is handy as early as Posi 2 - since the big dispersion bubbles cast by ruin mages gets shut down by it. No dispersion bubble = no AOE defense for the circle. Same's true for most bubbles of that sort (not the sky raider generators, though, as I recall.) Sleep will often shut down armors that ignore or deflect other things. And those armors do have recharge times.

 

Also handy in the MLTF/LRTF in keeping the AVs coming one at a time while the others take a nap... >.>

Sleep will not turn off the Sky Raider FF Generators. They will continue to protect their friendlies with it. 

However, if you Confuse the FF Generator, then it stops protecting them and starts protecting you.  

[Doomguide2005]

Earth's Salt Crystals applies the defdebuff like most of Earth's powers.  I believe this is true of several other sleeps.

 

Purple sleep sets are very cheap for purple sets ... especially back on Live.

 

Something vaguely amusing about sleeping a mob just prior to the team's real alpha ... and seeing a mob or two just zZzZz'ing right through the carnage for a brief second or two. 

[Peacemoon]

I play Mind Control as a primary so maybe can add a bit; although the others have pretty much summed it up well!
 

There are quite a few things sleep does well, but particularly Mass Hypnosis

(MH) and Mesmerise (M) from Mind Control.

For MH:

*It causes no aggro so use it to press pause on groups ahead of where you’re fighting so they won’t join in. Especially on lowbie team which could wipe. 
*If you’re leading the group, and I often do as an experienced player with Mind Control, you can “pre-sleep” a group to stagger their alpha strike. This way they might all wake up, but not all at the same time and the damage is more manageable. Especially if you lack anyone who is tough. 
*As above, you’ll find people have more confidence attacking a +4/8 mob spawn when you’re starting with them all sleep. We did a +4 Manticore yesterday and sleeping made it smoother than it could have been.
*Layer it over the top of mesmerise for extra magnitude 

*If you’re solo or in a tiny team fighting big dangerous groups, can be used to stagger the numbers you fight all at once.

*As above great at holding off that ambush until you’re ready, and reverses the direction of opportunity (you’re ambushing the ambush, not being ambushed yourself!) 

*I often duo with my husband who is Grav/ and if mobs are in a difficult spot, sleep helps him work with Wormhole without aggroing (we don’t have any stealth). 

 

For M:

*It has high enough magnitude to sleep bosses, EBs, AVs and Monsters with one hit.

*Use it to detoggle their auras. E.g. dispersion bubble.
*Or sleep the hardest mob and lure all their friends away to kill them stealthily; then return to fight the difficult mob solo. M can last over a minute and east to reapply.

*Snipe sleep the boss of an ambush while it’s on its way, so you deal with him later. 

-Me and my husband just duod Numina’s TF at 35 today, him a Grav controller me a Mind Dom. How did we deal with Jurassik? Turns out he likes a little nap. So he slept right through the rest of his crew getting annihilated.
Well, all except the Lesser Devoured boss, who I turned into my pet and convinced it to help us defeat the Monster. This would have been much harder without those devious skills of sleep and confuse. But with sleep it let us put Jurassik on PAUSE, while we created an environment that favoured us.

 

So I hope these are some useful ideas for how to use sleep. It is one of those tools that quietly can make life easier for a group, sometimes isn’t always needed, and sometimes allows for some very clever plays. As a strategist, I love Mind’s no aggro sleeps and confuses, and I never force a group to slow down to use them.
I think that’s the key way to use sleeps, use them with the natural flow of the team. Don’t expect people to not wake up mobs. Indeed, sometimes a sleep only needs to function for a few seconds just to stagger the alpha damage. I find it a very useful tool in my kit!

 

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Peacemoon

[Heraclea]

I still take Salt Crystals on most of my willpower heavies.  Now that aggro auras have been equalized, tradition is the main reason for keeping it.  It does several things for me.  It has a huge area and affects large numbers of mobs, making it attractive for aggro purposes.  It does a minor defense debuff that can't hurt.  It procs a chance to heal self from an inexpensive and easily acquired sleep set.  The fact that immobilizes many mobs and sleeps them is the least interesting aspect of the power, but happily irrelevant, since the effect will be broken very soon anyways. 

[SwitchFade]

The proper use of sleep is... Wait for it...

 

To feel better when you wake up.

 

So you can eat more pie.

[Coyote]

31 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

The proper use of sleep is... Wait for it...

 

To feel better when you wake up.

 

So you can eat more pie.

 

I'm disappointed that it took this long into the thread for the proper use of sleep to be pointed out. 😉

[ZekeStenzland]

Mass Hypnosis, if you have it available, is great in DFB For the Cadaver Counter badge. 
 

Also, in DiB, if your team doesn’t have what it takes to drop both end bosses at the same time, Sleep will put the boss on hold. 
 

And most single target sleeps start with long base durations, so it’s not like you have to keep spamming the sleep to keep it up. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Sleep is an incredible tool for aggro management, but because it is so easily broken, it loses a lot of its efficacy when you are on a team, since most people will just zerg zerg zerg.  As mentioned, if you can communicate to your team members that you are going to take out a specific boss/EB/AV, then you and your team can deal with things on your own terms.

 

Also, even on zerg teams a mass hypnosis kind of power is a decent "oh shit" button when things go pear-shaped.  One of your teammates might drop a AoE a second later, but that's a second to start running.

[Jawbreaker]

Dominator's Elec control has Static field, which is an AoE patch that will keep re-sleeping enemies if awoken. It's an easy perma-power and definitely more useful than other sleep powers

[The_Cheeseman]

Mass Hypnosis, in particular, is great for stealthing, as you can put a spawn to sleep, click and glowy, and generally, by the time they wake up, they've dropped aggro. I use this all the time in the warehouse phase of Lambda or in TPN to handle trash spawns on the way to the main room. Do be advised that sleeping foes do still aggro when you get close, they just can't take any actions, so be careful with this tactic if your sleep has a short duration.

 

As mentioned above, sleep is amazing for splitting groups of AVs into more manageable units, and is often key to MoLRSF or MoMLTF runs.

 

Finally, if your sleep is non-aggro (such as, again, Mass Hypnosis) the Fortunata Hypnosis Placate proc can be super handy to reset an encounter that didn't go your way. Just spam it until you've placated everything, and then you can regroup and try again.

 

Overall, I find Mass Hypnosis to be a power I rarely use, but absolutely essential in those rare situations where I need it.

[roleki]

If I have a controller that has access to an AoE sleep, I'll usually take that before the AoE Hold.  and sometimes in lieu of it entirely.  Reason being, if I am soloing, I want a mez I can reapply to stack magnitude/duration during cooldown, and if I am on a team, AoE Holds typically collect dust right next to an AoE Sleep anyway, so, very little difference between the two in that scenario.  Of course, if you can fit both in your build, that works too.

[Redlynne]

1 hour ago, The_Cheeseman said:

by the time they wake up, they've dropped aggro.

Does anyone have an even approximate duration for how long it takes for the aggro drop to happen?

Basically a "you must sleep this long in order to pay no attention to the ninjas beyond the hedge" ...?

1 hour ago, The_Cheeseman said:

Finally, if your sleep is non-aggro (such as, again, Mass Hypnosis) the Fortunata Hypnosis Placate proc can be super handy to reset an encounter that didn't go your way. Just spam it until you've placated everything, and then you can regroup and try again.

Well, that's certainly one option.

I have however been wondering if putting the Placate proc into a power like Mesermize in Mind Control would be at all beneficial ...

[The_Cheeseman]

I think how long it takes depends on how much aggro you’ve generated. I assume that it fades over time, so the more you did to annoy it, the longer it will take. Sight aggro doesn’t last too terribly long (as we all know from trying to pull MOBs long distances) so I doubt it would take longer than a couple applications.

 

I’ve never tested it in Mezmerize, as my Mind character is a Dom, so it’s functionally useless for me. But I suppose it would depend on whether it triggers on activation, or when the delayed sleep effect is applied. The latter would mean that it works as intended. In the former case, all I can think of is to try and clear your accumulated aggro on the target to allow the tank to take it back. Neither application really warrants its use, in my opinion.

[AkuTenshiiZero]

Use it when solo or in a small team.  I find it incredibly powerful when running with my friend, and entirely useless when on an 8-man team.

 

Not everything is useful in every scenario.