I miss the old Sleep powers already

[Scarlet Shocker]

I'm not being entirely sarcastic here.

 

Sleep powers used to be so wank they were inherently skippable and I played a lot of controllers. That enabled me to focus on powers that actually worked.

 

Now I'm not so sure. The description seems to indicate they may have some actual utility which means I might have to use them at least to try. Please tell me I don't need to.

 

I get why our Devs decided to go this route... they were wankshite, so nobody took them so it's clear they were wasted powers but hey, sometimes that's a good thing.

[Spaghetti Betty]

Speak for yourself, my Mind Controller is loving it!

[Snarky]

Topic is…yawn…

[Scarlet Shocker]

29 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Speak for yourself, my Mind Controller is loving it!

 

Had a Mind/Storm on live but I feel the urge to recreate him here

 

[DougGraves]

It is definitely a thing that some sets had (maybe some still have) one or two crazy overpowered powers that you had to take and you could skip almost everything else.

 

You could take plant control for the single target hold and Seeds of Confusion and not miss everything else.

[MTeague]

Lol.  Deep Sleep is Amazing. Five Thumbs up, even if I have dragoon others into it. 

 

For you, the good(?) news, is not every Sleep power got Deep Sleep. The Focused Feedback post itemizes them. Everything else has old sleep.  Now, these are not going to be AV killers. They'll still park an AV in one application, just like an Immob. But any damage will awaken that AV immediately. Still. Mind Control is firmly boosted, a LOT. 

 

Mesmerize is essentially a second single target hold for most enemies, and Mass Hypnosis esp slotted for sleep, will lock down a spawn long enough for a team to burn them down.  Spore Burst in plant is now clutch, as well.  I am extremely happy with these changes.

[Seed22]

42 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Speak for yourself, my Mind Controller is loving it!

Same. Even had me potentially interested in one day revamping my mind/dark dom to include the other revamps to mind, like the new TK clump

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Lol.  Deep Sleep is Amazing. Five Thumbs up, even if I have dragoon others into it.

 

Moite, if yow've got foive thombs, yow ay from Paragun, yowm from fookin Gornal!

[WumpusRat]

I'm a huge fan of it, personally.

I hated the fact that sleep before was basically either skipable, or its only use was to turn it into a proc-bomb on the sets where the sleep did some minimal damage, like Symphony.

Now sleep is an entirely viable form of CC. It's like a second aoe hold for a lot of sets. 

My symphony bard is a true CC monster now. Aoe sleep, aoe stun, aoe hold, aoe fear, aoe immob, and a confuse on top of it. 

"Stand still and allow me to play your requiem..."

[Sakura Tenshi]

I kind of despise the logic some players have that "it's good for a powerset to have shitty picks because it makes it easier to skip!" like, that is the dumbest argument to avoid buffing something ever.

[MTeague]

40 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

I kind of despise the logic some players have that "it's good for a powerset to have shitty picks because it makes it easier to skip!" like, that is the dumbest argument to avoid buffing something ever.

I mostly agree.  But if you take everything from your primary and secondary that leaves you a whopping 6 powers from other pools, including epic/patron pool. I do think all powers should be at least semi-viable, but, players will always find a few that are only "meh" to skip  and squeeze in more pool powers that they want.  Be that medicine, leadership toggles, fighting, sorcery, what-have-you.

[Arnabas]

Deep Sleep is too powerful, in my opinion.

I have a Mind/ Energy Dominator, and now I only need 2 powers: Mass Hypnosis and an attack.

I put everyone to sleep, then take them out one by one.

There's no risk and no challenge.

Edited Sunday at 04:39 AM by Arnabas

[Seed22]

7 minutes ago, Arnabas said:

Deep Sleep is too powerful, in my opinion.

I have a Mind/ Energy Dominator, and now I only need 2 powers: Mass Hypnosis and an attack.

I put everyone to sleep, then take them out one by one.

There's no risk and no challenge.

There was never any challenge to begin with, even before deep sleep with a well played Mind.

 

Or any toon for that matter. 

[Wavicle]

Every power should be worth taking. It doesn't mean every power is required. Take it if you want, skip it if you don't feel you need it.

[arcane]

“Fans of having skippable powers” were nerfed pretty hard this page; I can’t really disagree with that.

 

In most cases I’m just having to make cuts to pools. But the way I’m thinking about it I’m pretty sure my Ice tanker is gonna have to drop an attack 😞

Edited Sunday at 01:57 PM by arcane

[Greycat]

23 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Sleep powers used to be so wank they were inherently skippable and I played a lot of controllers. That enabled me to focus on powers that actually worked.

 

*comes back from years of shutting down defensive bubbles, keeping AVs asleep so the team can focus on the other AVs, etc.* Skippable since when? They've ALWAYS been worth taking.  People were just too hung up on "but they wake on damage." Yeah, and? 

[bAss_ackwards]

This new mecheanic is nothing to sleep on.

[Scarlet Shocker]

52 minutes ago, bAss_ackwards said:

This new mecheanic is nothing to sleep on.

 

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[MoonSheep]

i’ve always found AoE sleep powers useful on my mind/fire dom. it’s great at low levels on posi TFs when you want to avoid attracting aggro from other mobs

[UltraAlt]

On 6/28/2025 at 3:18 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

I'm not being entirely sarcastic here.

 

Sleep powers used to be so wank they were inherently skippable and I played a lot of controllers. That enabled me to focus on powers that actually worked.

 

Now I'm not so sure. The description seems to indicate they may have some actual utility which means I might have to use them at least to try. Please tell me I don't need to.

 

I get why our Devs decided to go this route... they were wankshite, so nobody took them so it's clear they were wasted powers but hey, sometimes that's a good thing.

 

Honestly, the sleep powers aren't a waste if you know how to use them, but, that being said,  you have to be on a team willing to work to not destroy what sleep power could do.

 

I was trying to get my non-PUG teammates that I team with a couple times a week to run an all-sleep team to see how it would work.

I ended up making a sleep-powered character and was able to make it work most of the time because the controller on the team was plant and using single target other than Seeds of Confusion.

 

You have to really want to make it work ... and "Hulk smash!" and steamrolling are just going to destroy the usefulness of sleep powers.

And, honestly, "Hulk smash!" and steamrolling ruins the usefulness of way more powers than just sleep. 

 

I haven't even gone back to playing any characters with sleep powers since the change, but that is more because I have so many characters that I haven't played in a good while that I am trying to get more of them out into the game in rotation.

[Scarlet Shocker]

Sleep was great when I took it on the few occasions I ran solo but as @UltraAlt points out it was about as much use as a rubber duck in the Sahara on teams.

 

I sometimes posit that we have too many powers in the game... so skippable powers I've generally considered a net benefit. If you want to make a good build, you can automagically exclude those powers giving you a much refined set from which to choose.

 

Of course if these new powers are good, then some powers will still have to be skipped. It's now a question of which get junked in favour of the new sleep.

 

One of the things I loved (and was frustrated by) in The Secret World (the original version) was the amazing power wheel where you could choose a whole range of powers and grow them in different ways. Sadly the descriptions were deliberately vague so you would have to play them and make mistakes to discover which worked and respecs as we know them here weren't easy to come by. Conceptually it was genius but the execution was flawed.

[baster]

On 6/28/2025 at 1:48 PM, Snarky said:

Topic is…yawn…

+1 for funny video meme

[Yomo Kimyata]

I have given up trying to figure out why the devs do what they do (except for buffing tanks, that's because they like them!), but if I were to guess this was a way of trying to make a "sleeper" mez more relevant.  I can applaud that, and I'd like to see fear be worked on as well.  The problem is, of course, is that holds are still the gold standard in mez, just like defense is the gold standard in protection.  What else can be done?  I would personally like to see new sleep and fear sets with interesting effects be introduced.  Maybe make some enemies immune to certain types of mez, but then you run the risk of people gatekeeping their teams (MUST HAVE SLEEP, pst)l

 

9 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Sleep was great when I took it on the few occasions I ran solo but as @UltraAlt points out it was about as much use as a rubber duck in the Sahara on teams.

 

Sleep is killer for solo players.  One thing I always do is slot a Call of the Sandman proc into AoE Sleep powers.  A 15% heal that goes off nearly every time in saturated environments?  Yes please.  This is one of the reasons why I like Ice Melee so much...

[Seldom]

I  exemplared my 'finished' Mind/psy dom on an 8 person pick up group hollows missions team. For whatever reason, there was not a single support power to be found, it was all tankers/scrappers/sentinels/blasters/doms. As soon as Mass hypnosis unlocked, the entire chemistry changed. Fast recharge, good lockdown, hits entire spawns.

 

Before? Before, this was my 'time out' power when a second or third group would jump any team. And hope no team member threw out some marginal AoE that wouldn't kill but wake them.
Now?
I could sleep the first group, hit them all with mass domination as the group swarmed them, sleep the second group of outcasts above that noticed us, single control enemies that were especially dangerous, then sleep the third group a stray auto-target hit as 8 dps with no support fighting +3- +5 enemies with only a few team members going down in the roughest spots.

Disclaimer: this is with all the +recharge set bonuses available and purple IO's, perma-dom at level 15. But it was still super fun. It was actually the first time in recent memory anyone actually complemented the use of sleeps of all things.

Edited Monday at 06:22 PM by Seldom

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Sleep is killer for solo players.  One thing I always do is slot a Call of the Sandman proc into AoE Sleep powers.  A 15% heal that goes off nearly every time in saturated environments?  Yes please.  This is one of the reasons why I like Ice Melee so much...

 

That's a thing I'd never considered and I like it a lot.

 

I shall have to examine that in greater detail.

 

I remember when GR went live and we got the whole new Enhancements from the P2W vendors (as they were) and somebody ranted about how useless the KD was at such low levels. I suggested they try it in Caltrops and that seemed to change the game for him.

 

Lateral thinking sometimes comes up gold!