Improving Sleep

[PoptartsNinja]

I've been mulling over ways to improve sleep.

 

Before we can do that, I think it's important to recognize what sleep is, so that we can identify its strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Sleep is a Fragile Hold, that both completely shuts down an enemy but also breaks immediately on any form of damage. Because it is fragile, sleep tends to have a longer inherent duration than other control types. Sleep also sometimes has a higher base magnitude than other control types, and sleep magnitudes stack. The only thing I’m not personally clear on is whether or not sleep stacks linger for the full duration even if the target wakes up early, or if they’re lost entirely if the target gets woken up. Experience tells me that the latter is probably true, but I could be wrong so I don’t want to make any assertions.

 

General Assumptions about a possible Sleep Buff

- I believe any buff to sleep should be focused on improving its performance in a team environment without making it significantly better or worse for soloists. This means we should be able to buff sleeps without negatively impacting their current magnitudes, but that their durations could need fine-tuning.

- I believe any buff to sleep shouldn’t remove or hinder any of sleep’s current strengths.

- I believe any buffs we give players should also benefit mobs. This helps combat power creep and could make sleeps a more attractive tool for mobs as well.

 

Sleep’s strengths:
- Stops incoming damage while active

- Interrupts player toggles, clears most NPC “toggles”

- Stacks magnitude from all sources

- Long duration

 

Sleep’s weaknesses:

- 100% binary, it’s either working or it isn’t and it stops working the moment a mob takes any damage no matter how small.

- It’s rendered almost completely useless by the caster’s own Interface DoT procs, which I feel is aberrant behavior.

- Situationally useful, but the situations where it’s useful are only slightly less rare than the situations where Phase Shift is useful.

 

So, let’s run through some ideas real quick, starting from the (seemingly) simple and increasing in complexity.

 

 

 

Suggestion 1) Increase the Waking Threshold

This one’s pretty straightforward: damaging hits that do less than a certain amount of damage no longer wake the target. Whether this is percentage max HP based or just flat is up in the air, but I favor percentages because it means you can adjust things to make certain enemies, enemy groups, or even player ATs vulnerable to sleep without putting an actual hole in their status protections.

 

For example: Sentinels could have a very low sleep threshold so even a small hit is likely to wake them up; while Tanks and Avs are beefy and might require a much harder bonk to wake. CoT Demons, Freak Tanks, Nemesis Automatons, Malta’s robots, and Carnie Strongmen don’t really feel pain so they might also take a pretty strong hit to wake up, but pain-adverse Rikti, cowards like Maestro, or the hyper-vigilant Warriors might wake at the slightest pinprick.

 

Either way, against most enemies at level 50, we’re looking for hits that deal less than 20 to 35 damage to not break sleep; which means most player damage auras, caltrops, and immob DoTs won’t do the trick, but a proc bomb sure will.

 

Positives:
- “Chip damage” like weak AoE dots, most immobilize powers, and player damage auras will probably no longer break sleep.

- This fixes the aberrant relationship between damaging sleeps and Interface procs, as that damage will always be well below the wake-up threshold.

- Allows certain ATs, enemies, or enemy groups to be made stronger or weaker against sleep, situationally without relying on direct sleep resistance.

Negatives:

- Doesn’t actually change that much, but allows AoE immobs to deal their damage rather than being “wasted” if cast on sleeping targets.

- Some powers like Rain of Fire/Ice won’t wake enemies when they probably should.

- Will almost certainly necessitate a reduction in sleep duration to avoid weird edge cases where spawns could be soloed in relative safety with a fast recharging long-duration sleep and a damage aura.

 

 

 

Suggestion 2) Wake-Up Hit

This suggestion is straightforward too: the hit that wakes the target crits for some extra damage. This could function either like the Assault Radial Hybrid where the damage received is proportionate to the power breaking sleep, or like Storm Cell where a flat amount of extra damage is dealt.

 

Percentage damage would make sleep more useful as a set-up tool, giving tactical options to stalkers and blasters trying to maximize assassin strike or snipe damage; while flat damage would be more consistent and mean throwing a sleep into a rain of fire wouldn’t just be a waste of end.

 

The wake-up hit would probably need some sort of lockout period, somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds, to keep re-applying sleep patches like Static Field and Sleep Grenade from turning into damage monsters if thrown onto caltrops or whatever else. A wake-up hit triggering once or twice over the course of a sleep patch’s entire duration seems reasonably fair.

 

Positives:
- Flat damage on a wake-up is probably pretty easy to implement.

- Makes breaking sleeps a little more fun for all parties involved, without breaking any molds.

- Very fair to mobs, especially If percentage damage is used. Mobs could deal some surprising burst damage to a slept player if a strong attack breaks a sleep.

Negatives:

- Percentage damage on wake-up could be tricky to code.

- The lockout period could still result in “wasted” endurance if the sleep recharges more quickly than the wake-up proc can trigger.

- Doesn’t make sleeps better for control.

- Doesn’t fix the Interface problem.

 

 

 

Suggestion 3) Sleep into Coma

Instead of doing damage on break, Sleep could instead apply two magnitudes: sleep as it is now, and a coma magnitude that does nothing until it reaches a certain magnitude and then transforms into a hold.

 

The exact magnitude would need to be balanced, but as a rough example: After achieving coma magnitude 12, the next sleep would clear the coma magnitude and instead apply a mag 4 hold. The exact amount of coma magnitude could then be balanced by powerset, but ideally a solo mind controller would be able to score comas on the regular. This would make stacking sleeps—or parties with multiple sources of sleep—more helpful as part of a control rotation.

 

This would also open up a fun debuff which could be added to existing buff/debuff sets, or even as a lingering effect that happens if a sleep is broken by damage:

 

Lethargic: A lethargic mob gains coma magnitude more quickly.

 

Positives

- Makes sleep better as a form of control.

- Breaking sleeps early giving the target the lethargy debuff would make stacking coma magnitude easier, making breaking a sleep beneficial for control in a team setting.

- More status options is always fun, especially if they’re niche.

- If the code to convert one CC type into another works, then theoretically any CC could be converted into a hold for Hami-fighting purposes which could open some fun doors for controllers and dominators.

Negatives

- Probably tricky to program.

- Stacking magnitude is difficult for enemies to take advantage of, so this is unfair to mobs. Mob sleeps would probably need higher coma magnitudes to compensate.

- Doesn’t fix the Interface problem.

- Might necessitate the addition of coma resistance but since coma does nothing on its own, normal hold resistance is probably plenty.

 

 

 

Suggestion 4) “Loud” and “Quiet” powers

This is similar to suggestion #1. Powers would essentially be split into 3 categories: “Loud” powers would always break sleep. These are your nukes, your snipes, your ‘extreme’ damage bops, or most anything with a knockback/knockdown component. Normal powers would instead have a percentage chance to break sleep, with the percentage to-be-determined (75%?). “Quiet” powers would either never break sleep, or have a very low chance (10%?) to break sleep. These would be the more subtle powers like other damaging sleep powers, mind probe and subdue/subdual, beanbag (and the other blaster primary controls), dissonant whispers, and etc.

This would turn sleep into a tactical tool that a skilled party could play around; and would open the door for extra status effects that could be added to buff/debuff power sets, such as:

 

Numb (Soothed?): A target with the numb (or soothed) debuff has a reduced sense of pain, and would either treat attacks from normal powers as attacks from a quiet power for the purposes of breaking sleep, or would have the sleep break % reduced significantly for normal and quiet powers. This would be a great addition to empathy, healing aura (or even absorb pain) could apply the soothed debuff to enemies without breaking the power curve.

 

 Agony: An agonized target has a heightened sense of pain, and treats all attacks as ‘loud’ hits for the purposes of breaking sleep—so sleep would function as it does now. Agony could be potentially used as both a buff and a debuff, and would be a fun addition to Pain Domination to protect the party from sleep or (if wake-up hits are a thing) as a debuff for enemies to guarantee wake-up damage or potentially even increase its frequency.

 

Positives

- Makes sleep better as a form of control.

- More status options is always fun, especially if they’re niche.

- Giving the devs control over whether certain powers do or don’t break sleep is another interesting balance tool. Higher-damage sets could be given more ‘loud’ powers, while lower damage or more subtle sets (like psi blast) could be given more quiet attacks to compensate.

- DoTs and interface procs could all be flagged as quiet, allowing them to work without breaking sleep functionality.

- Certain procs (like knockdowns or purple damage procs) could be made loud to force wake-ups

- Fair to mobs as they could have loud or quiet powers too.

Negatives

- Adding tags to existing powers would be time consuming.

- Runs the risk of a powers with obnoxious sound effects (like the entirety of sonic blast) breaking kayfabe if they’re not made loud by default.

 

 

 

I think any one of these suggestions would be pretty reasonable, but I could also see a combination of them working well. Wake-up hits are exciting and allow for team combo play; and combining them with something that fixes the aberrant relationship between damaging interfaces and mesmerize (and other damaging sleeps) would be great.

 

What are your thoughts on sleep? How would you improve it, if you had carte blanche to change it in a way that benefitted both player characters and enemy mobs?

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I like suggestion #2

It seems like the easiest to implement and test compared to the others

[AlwaysAPrice]

Honestly I don't think it needs improving, it's a situational effect that is really powerful as-is for soloists and small teams, it's just less important for a large team with enough layers of taunt, harder control, or support to withstand adds - but even then, it can still be an extra layer of security if you're sleeping a side of a sizable swarm most of the team's target-capped AoEs aren't extending to. That said, I wouldn't mind if it was improved, because while it is useful as it is, it sure is lackluster compared to any other control.

If it were up to me, I might add multiple tapering effects of lower magnitude and longer duration to every sleep power, like the wear-off of Destiny powers, call it a Drowsy effect or somesuch, that instantly applies a Sleep as normal at the combined magnitude. Then a couple seconds after a Sleep is broken, if any Drowsy effects are still going on that target, give it a chance scaling with enemy rank (less likely to resleep bosses, moreso minions) to either reapply a new Sleep at the current remaining magnitude or dismiss all Drowsy from that target. So a chance to function a little more like Fear, for a longer potential time on weaker enemies, but still essentially fragile.

I like 2 best of your initial proposals but that may just be because I play a Spines/Bio stalker who runs Control Core for sleep aura lulz and adding extra damage to that would be hilarious. With 1, maybe a way around the problem of fine-tuning the damage required to break the sleep would be to make an alternative condition numbers of hits of any magnitude taken in close succession, so occasional light splash damage from weak AoEs may not break it but anything ticking rapidly does. 3 I'm not a fan of, to me it just sort of turns Sleep into an engine for more Hold, instead of expanding on Sleep as its own concept. As to 4, like with 1 I like the essential idea of making Sleep less binary but the fiddly and far-reaching extra work involved in classifying every power, let alone developing extra buffs/debuffs that only interact with one kind of control, sounds like a non-starter.

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 hours ago, PoptartsNinja said:

I've been mulling over ways to improve sleep.

 

I'm not sure I read the part where you describe *why* sleep needs to be improved?

[PoptartsNinja]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

I'm not sure I read the part where you describe *why* sleep needs to be improved?

 

Because aside from the two sets with re-applying sleep patches or hyper-niche endgame use cases, sleep is only useful in team play as an interrupt.

The goal isn't to make sleep better across the board, it's to make sleep powers more attractive to use in team play without removing its current use-cases.

[Mystoc]

Sleep is bad because this games content is so easy you would never need to selectively pick off enemies while not damaging the rest whiled teamed. sleep is a longer hold if you have the team coordination or the desire to only fight a few enemies at a time, but like I said that desire is just never warranted because most content in this game is simple. if game content was hard sleep would be of one the best mezzes in the game.

 

I like suggestion 2 the best you could also add the condition the longer they are kept asleep the more damage the wake up hit does, because most time people would just spam sleep and a damage power afterwards, waking up a target right after being slept should do next to no extra damage because you aren't changing playstyle to suit the power just spamming abilities (this way you could avoid giving the wake up damage a cooldown for each mob)

 

 

Edited March 13 by Mystoc

[biostem]

I'd prefer some sort of "grogginess" debuff that affects slept targets that get awoken - a mild tohit, movement speed, and recharge debuff.  Another cool idea might be some sort of narcolepsy effect, which causes targets to randomly fall asleep if they've been hit with X sleep effects in Y time.  I also like the OP's "sleep -> coma" effect should you stack enough such effects on the same target.

[UltraAlt]

On 3/12/2024 at 11:59 AM, PoptartsNinja said:

Before we can do that, I think it's important to recognize what sleep is, so that we can identify its strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Sleep is a Fragile Hold, that both completely shuts down an enemy but also breaks immediately on any form of damage. Because it is fragile, sleep tends to have a longer inherent duration than other control types. Sleep also sometimes has a higher base magnitude than other control types, and sleep magnitudes stack. The only thing I’m not personally clear on is whether or not sleep stacks linger for the full duration even if the target wakes up early, or if they’re lost entirely if the target gets woken up. Experience tells me that the latter is probably true, but I could be wrong so I don’t want to make any assertions.

 

I'm pretty sure it works like fear.

Hitting someone under the effect of the power allows them to make one retaliatory attack before coming under its influence.

It is important to note that Sleep is an auto hit on most non-PVP targets at this point.

 

The real power of sleeps - of course - is to get on a team where they know you are sleeping and understand not to attack the targets that are sleeping - aka use single target attacks on non-sleeping opponents first.

Sleep the minions while the team focuses on the Bosses and LT's but, of course, today there are so many people that only know how to play "Hulk smash!" and don't want to play any other way.

[Luminara]

They should make Sleep persistent like all of the other controls, and suppress it for X seconds when Sleep-break conditions apply.  The code's sitting right there, waiting to be recycled from the other controls and suppression system.  It's what they were trying to do with Static Field and the revamp to Poison Gas Arrow, but I don't think it occurred to them to do it the easy way.

[ThatGuyCDude]

I like the first suggestion... somewhat.  There are problems with effects like Sleep, Placate, and Pacify where they break almost immediately from passive or archetype effects (rendering them useless).  If there was some sort of damage buffer before the power breaks, then incidental effects (like DoTs or in the case of Pacify a taunt proc) wouldn't immediately render the power useless.  I don't think it should be a damage floor that is otherwise ignored, though... rather it should be an amount of damage relative to the target's total HP that when exceeded breaks the status.

Say 5%.  The status lasts until its duration expires or this threshold is reached.  If it makes it easier to program, make it an absorb: that way it can be enhanced to make the sleep more damage-proof.

Edited April 7 by ThatGuyCDude

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I was thinking about this the other day.

How about Sleep operates as normal but if the slept foe takes damage

they wake up and are groggy (disorient mag 2) 50% chance

or are affected by nightmares (fear mag 2) 50% chance

 

the debuff length is half of whatever time was left for foe to sleep.

so a 16 second sleep would result in 8 second disorient/fear

If slept foe was left to sleep but was awakened with 8 seconds of sleep left

the disorient/fear would only last 4 seconds