Crowd Control: Sleep

Crowd Control: Sleep and Repose

So, as we all know, FFXIV is slowly gearing itself toward more skillful play. I feel like an important aspect to aid in making fights more fun, is crowd control and kiting. In the future, I can imagine we’ll see much more heavy usage of crowd control by various classes/jobs.

So! I'm gonna talk about Sleep and Repose. I haven’t really seen anyone make mention of this very much. If there are tests being done on this and I’ve missed these posts, point me in the right direction. I love seeing discussions about this kinda stuff.

Both Conjurer and Thaumaturge have the ability to sleep enemies. This is a very powerful crowd control (cc) ability for both classes. I’ve been doing a little bit of of testing in groups, and solo, with the functions of sleep.

Some notes about sleep and repose:

Sleep does not seem to affect undead. However, I believe Repose does! More testing is required for this, but I’m pretty sure I had it stick on a skeleton in Darkhold. Can someone confirm this before I go testing more?

Both spells seem to be affected by magic accuracy. This means as a conjurer, having some magic accuracy is important. This of course depends on the situation.

With the updates to these spells, and the desire for CC to become a big deal in the upcoming patches, I can really see big changes to the spells. Currently, they have some interesting qualities to them.

My initial testing was done during leves, as a conjurer. I would start by casting sleep before I engaged in combat, and when I did I noticed…the enemies didn’t attack. Well, that’s curious. Let me keep playing with this.

Here were some results, with two enemies in a ‘leve party’. Both enemies were non-aggressive.

Scenario: 2 enemies. Cast sleep, Sleep lands.

Both enemies became claimed, and indicated that they were targeting me/aggroing me. (I do not believe I gained any real enmity). One enemy was asleep, and the other was very obviously targeting me, as its head followed my character. Despite this, it never attacked me. I waited until until the sleeping enemy woke up. When it did, it did not attack me, and continued to wander around. Both enemies went unclaimed, but the one I had not attacked or slept continued to keep me targeted.

Conclusion: Sleep does not generate enmity, or cause links, if it lands. I am unsure if this works if you are in combat, but have not gained enmity on a specific enemy. Also the act of casting sleep on an enemy, despite the lack of aggressiveness, claims the enemy.

Scenario: 2 enemies. Cast sleep. Sleep lands, attack non-slept enemy. Other enemy wakes up during the fight.

Slept mob continued to sleep. Other enemy was non-aggressive until I began attacking. As I was fighting the non-slept enemy, the other one woke up. It immediately came to the other mobs aid, and began attacking me as usual.

Scenario: 2 enemies. Cast sleep. Sleep lands, attack non-slept enemy. Kill enemy before the other one wakes up.

In this case, I attacked the non-slept enemy, and killed it before sleep wore off of the other. I then waited. When the enemy woke up, it did not attack, and went unclaimed.

Conclusion: If the slept enemy stays asleep, he will not come to his friends aid if his buddy dies before he wakes up.

Scenario: 2 enemies. Cast sleep. Sleep does NOT stick.

Both enemies attacked me as normal.

Conclusion: If sleep doesn’t stick, enemies react and link normally.

Scenario: 2 enemies. Cast sleep. Sleep sticks, but you attack the slept enemy.

Both enemies attack me as normal as soon as I hit the slept mob.

Conclusion: If sleep is broken via an attack, mobs will still react and link normally.

Repeated sleeps to a single target during this do not seem to affect aggro on the other enemies. (Needs clarification.)

I did more tests with this in stronghold parties.

If you sleep a specific enemy, it will not cause any mobs nearby to link. However, other enemies will obviously link and aggro normally if sleep does not stick, or you walk in front of a non-sleeping enemy.

A sleeping enemy will NOT aggro to sight while slept. Need to test sound. Pretty sure this is the same case.

You can resleep an enemy repeatedly, even while they are still asleep. It will override itself.

DoT's wake enemies up, of course.

If this is all working as intended, I'm really interested to see what happens with this in the future.

This is awesome find! I don't think I've touched a mage since 1.20, but I'm all for crowd.control. The most I've done so far is Shadowbind one enemy out of a 4-link (3 exhausted at our levels). And if bind effect failed, oh boy.

the problem is most things you wanna sleep can resist it. its good in sh if people don't aoe.

when we3 use to sleep mobs in dh, we would all use sleep potions to back the mages up if they failed:)