Focused Feedback: Sleep Revamp - Deep Sleep

[The Curator]

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Sleep Revamp

Stacking

• Sleep is no longer canceled by damage or any canceling event unless the target is already asleep. This allows for sleep to be stacked even if the sleep-casting power does damage, and sleep stacks that don't render the target asleep won't vanish if the target is hurt but awake.

 
Deep Sleep

• This is a new variant of sleep. Deep Sleep is stickier than regular sleep. Enemies under its effect don't instantly wake up if damaged, instead the duration of their sleep is shortened. How much the sleep is shortened depends on the enemy rank, with minions taking more attacks to wake up and AVs being woken up by a single hit.

 

The following powers have been flagged as Deep Sleep:

•  Arsenal Control > Tranquilizer
•  Earth Control > Salt Crystals
•  Ice Control > Flash Freeze
•  Mind Control > Mesmerize
•  Mind Control > Mass Hypnosis
•  Plant Control > Spore Burst
•  Pyrotechnic Control > Hypnotizing Lights
•  Symphony Control > Enfeebling Lullaby
•  Epic > Arsenal Mastery > Sleep Grenade
•  Epic > Earth Mastery > Salt Crystals
•  Epic > Ice Mastery > Flash Freeze
•  Epic > Psionic Mastery > Mass Hypnosis
•  Epic > Psionic Mastery > Mesmerize

 

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[StarkWhite]

So happy this is finally happening.

[Shin Magmus]

     Is there a reason that Deep Sleep uses a "number of hits" system instead of a "twin effect" system?  You can't control how many of your teammates use Caltrops or Rain of Fire for example, but if Deep Sleep simply applied 2 Sleeps concurrently then it could still be useful in these scenarios.  What if the powers simply applied the current regular breakable Sleep and an unbreakable Deep Sleep for ~3 seconds.  This unbreakable portion would disappear on its own rather quickly, but it would allow a Mind Controller casting Mass Hypnosis to have any effect at all on a team.  You could make the hit counter be 100 hits and it still would barely do anything to a team with multiple "rains."

[Steampunkette]

Deep sleep has a damage lockout, @Shin Magmus.

 

I think it's 0.25 or .35 seconds. But if the Deep Sleep takes damage from 20 sources within the .25 seconds it only counts as one 'Instance of Damage' for the purpose of reducing the duration of sleep.

 

Minions stay asleep in Rain of Fire/Sleet Storm/Category 5 for a good 2-3 seconds off a Mass Hypnosis. Follow it with another deep sleep AoE and you can keep them there 'til they die.

[ScarySai]

I would have liked something closer to D&D, where you got a dam bonus on sleeping targets, rather than turn sleep into terrify.

 

But this is cool, I'll be testing it a lot to see if it really moves the needle on sleep powers much.

[PoptartsNinja]

25 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

I would have liked something closer to D&D, where you got a dam bonus on sleeping targets, rather than turn sleep into terrify.

 

This doesn't turn sleep into Terrify. They don't get hit, wake up, attack, and go back to sleep.

It turns sleep into a hold with a duration that drops as the slept target takes instances of damage, making it a more reliable control. It's really good, you should try mind control out.

[Uun]

So far I've only tried it in Tranquilizer. Foes stay mezzed after taking damage. Seems like an improvement. 

 

In addition to Earth Control and Earth Mastery, I'd like to see it expanded to Earth Manipulation version of Salt Crystals.

[TygerDarkstorm]

So far testing on a level 20 plant/marine controller, I still feel as if spore burst is skippable. I'm sure the sleep is stickier compared to before, but I still feel as if the mobs are waking up pretty quickly and I'm relying far more on Tide Pool and Vines to help with mob mitigation.

[ScarySai]

6 hours ago, PoptartsNinja said:

 

This doesn't turn sleep into Terrify. They don't get hit, wake up, attack, and go back to sleep.

It turns sleep into a hold with a duration that drops as the slept target takes instances of damage, making it a more reliable control. It's really good, you should try mind control out.

 

I have, and I'm quite fond of my mind/dark.

 

I still have them flicker out of it weirdly enough, so it might be a bug. Regardless, I would have preferred something more unique over "existing mez, but worse."

 

Certainly can't say sleep is useless anymore, so that's fun.

[Heatstroke]

Just a question. why wasnt Chilling Ray in the Sentinel Ice Blast set added to this deep sleep list.. is this restricted to Controllers and Doms ? 

 

[Ridiculous Girl]

15 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

Just a question. why wasnt Chilling Ray in the Sentinel Ice Blast set added to this deep sleep list.. is this restricted to Controllers and Doms ? 

 

mostly because this is for control sets, but also controllery sleeps in certain epic pools. psionic mastery for sentinels is affected by deep sleep, for example. 🙂

[MTeague]

Do these changes only apply to Player use of the powers, or NPC's as well?

I'm wondering if Lost bosses like Emerites, or even minions like Yellow Ink Men, can Deep Sleep players.

[StarkWhite]

Deep Sleep is player-only.

 

[tricon]

WOW that is a great change but just to be clear, you want the deep sleep really inside the epic power pools?

 

Not that I complain if this is the case as shown in the patch notes but I tested a few Blasters with it and I must say my survivability solo at double spawn increased quite a  bit likein the final Dream Doctor incarnate mission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[csr]

On 5/27/2025 at 8:49 PM, TygerDarkstorm said:

So far testing on a level 20 plant/marine controller, I still feel as if spore burst is skippable. I'm sure the sleep is stickier compared to before, but I still feel as if the mobs are waking up pretty quickly and I'm relying far more on Tide Pool and Vines to help with mob mitigation.

 

I had that same experience when Deep Sleep was first tested.  It needs two things to shine.  Accuracy, since Deep Sleep is not autohit like Sleep.  And Duration, since that makes it take more hits to wake foes.  With even average slotting it gets to be pretty good.

[TygerDarkstorm]

10 minutes ago, csr said:

 

I had that same experience when Deep Sleep was first tested.  It needs two things to shine.  Accuracy, since Deep Sleep is not autohit like Sleep.  And Duration, since that makes it take more hits to wake foes.  With even average slotting it gets to be pretty good.

That's good to know! So many people seem to like it, I assume that either I am not using/understanding it correctly, or perhaps I was missing something with it.

[Uun]

13 hours ago, csr said:

I had that same experience when Deep Sleep was first tested.  It needs two things to shine.  Accuracy, since Deep Sleep is not autohit like Sleep.  And Duration, since that makes it take more hits to wake foes.  With even average slotting it gets to be pretty good.

Not sure why this should be the case. I don't think Deep Sleep should have a separate tohit check. 

[StarkWhite]

Separate from what? Normal sleep doesn't have a hit check (powers that do sleep *and* something else have hit checks, but not for the sleep part).

Deep Sleep is a significantly more debilitating effect, so it makes sense to require a hit check for it.

[Uun]

7 minutes ago, StarkWhite said:

Deep Sleep is a significantly more debilitating effect, so it makes sense to require a hit check for it.

The question is whether powers that have been flagged as "Deep Sleep" now have two different status effects. The patch notes imply that any power flagged as "Deep Sleep" applies the Deep Sleep status effect 100% of the time. There is nothing in the patch notes or the detailed power info in game to suggest that these powers now have 2 tiers of sleep.

[StarkWhite]

The powers that were changed to Deep Sleep were *changed* to Deep Sleep, it wasn't an addition, they don't do both. I'm not seeing where anyone claimed they do both?

[Uun]

Just to clear this up, Deep Sleep IS autohit and DOES NOT have a separate tohit check from regular sleep in powers flagged as Deep Sleep. See below with Mass Hypnosis and Spore Burst. 

 

 

[StarkWhite]

From the design notes:

"Note that auto-hit sleep powers will only apply a weaker old-style sleep if they fail their hit-roll."

[Uun]

1 hour ago, StarkWhite said:

From the design notes:

"Note that auto-hit sleep powers will only apply a weaker old-style sleep if they fail their hit-roll."

Doesn't appear to be the case per the combat logs above.

Edited Sunday at 08:21 PM by Uun
Found link in patch notes

[Vanden]

46 minutes ago, Uun said:

Doesn't appear to be the case per the combat logs above.

 

All sleep powers are autohit; the tohit rolls they have to do for anything that isn't regular sleep don't show up in the combat log.

 

 

[Uun]

29 minutes ago, Vanden said:

All sleep powers are autohit; the tohit rolls they have to do for anything that isn't regular sleep don't show up in the combat log.

That's not a great design. So the fact that my combat log shows Deep Sleep applied to all of my targets just means that none of the tohit rolls missed while yours indicates a 30% miss rate? Did you have any acc slotted?

 

I'm not happy that this "improvement" to sleep requires additional slots to address the fact that it's not auto-hit. Guess there's now a use for all those acc/mez HOs.