Black Mage 'Sleep' action in Dungeons

Hi all,

Im still fairly new to the game (just over a week). My black mage is nearing 50 and I had a question on putting adds to sleep in Dungeons.

Generally speaking for crowd control purposes I put adds to sleep but of course ignore trying it on bosses as my probability it never works on the big guys. I just had some player in a higher level dungeon send a message stating "stop wasting time casting sleep" of which I responded that it does work on adds and demonstrated it.

Well anyway, they waited right to the boss and then kicked me. I had performed well throughout the game (despite the crappy healer).

Is it uncool to use 'sleep' in Dungeons or not? Is there a best or worst time?

Thanks guys!

Sleep beyond LV50 is worthless since either mobs are immune to it or people are going to want to you to AOE spam in big pulls. The group you were with kicked you because you tried to correct them and no one likes others confronting them.

i used sleep just earlier during a Sohm Al run when the tank died. I slept one and bonded the others and sprinted around until the tank came back... it has it uses.

Sleep might be useful in the case that you've got a full or most of a party of people new to the game, with gear below or about the level of the dungeon you're in. Most of the time these days you're going to be in a party of level-synced 60s capable of steamrolling the dungeon, and without the patience to do anything else, and in that case sleep won't help because everything dies so quick anyway.

They're assholes for kicking you instead of explaining that, though.

On the other hand, sleep is super useful in PvP.

Aside from something going terribly wrong, so like what Seisha described....don't bother using it.
I only ever use it if a tank or healer specifically ask me to, and usually that's in a super newbie dungeon, and then I don't mind so much.

EDIT I also use it all the time by myself, of course, because squishy mage and 4 enemies at once doesn't end well :(

Mobs in leveling dungeons are susceptible to sleep. Some in lvl 50 dungeons as well (the first few anyway). That said, all bosses are immune.

It's generally more efficient to focus on damage rather than crowd control, especially as a job with high AoE damage capability. I don't think it warrants kicking someone from a group, though.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

Mobs in leveling dungeons are susceptible to sleep. Some in lvl 50 dungeons as well (the first few anyway). That said, all bosses are immune.

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Sadly, virtually all dungeon mobs are immune to sleep post level 50. So don't get too comfortable using this spell in battle. It will outlive its usefulness sooner rather than you might think.

Depends on which dungeon

As Lukha mentioned in post, it would be useful in low lvl duns with first time or unsynced parties or when something goes wrong, but again it can be useless as other members would use AOE and wake it up. I'd suggest asking party if they prefer to have Sleep used, this way the party can be more organized especially when target marking are used.

Yeah that was similar to me. The healer was crap and died by not staying back and I had to keep using sleep on adds to try and regen my own health.

The problem was it was the healer who got themself and the one other player killed and I had hardly any health and had to keep using sleep to buy time to regen my health. Not really my fault if they were too stupid to realize it was a problem they created.

Healing is quite easy in this game, so as long as people are dodging and mitigating properly, there isn't much point. That said, at some lower levels, it does help while people are learning still.

Sleep is pretty worthless, unless your tank is dead or super bad, as soon as you hit lvl 18 and learn fire 2. From then on it's almost always better to spam fire 2 if there are at least 2 mobs so you'd always be waking up whatever you sleep.

Yeah I started doing that now at the beginning of the dungeon before we set off.

Also, if you remember their names, you may wish to report them for abuse of the vote kick function.

The problem with sleep aside from what has already been mentioned is it doesn't gel very well with tanking. WAR and DRK both have very good AoE enmity moves which they will spam in lower content, this will just wake the mobs up that are sleeping anyway. It works better with PLD tanks but everyone got so used to not using it that people prefer that way now as it's quicker and easier, even with PLD's.

As a BLM I tend to use if for solo content, works well then if you have to fight 3-4 mobs for a quest or whatever.

Sleep is really a blackmages "Oh shit" skill. I know leveling in Darkhold the monk got knocked off (and eaten alive basically lol) we ended up with a massive hoard and sleep kept em well in check. Got 2 comms too. Plus doing the level 56 (or 58?) skill quest it was almost a must to stop the flood of damage.

Normally the White Mage use the sleep option on low lv dungeons. Your BLM sleep it's useful on individual dutys or on pvp. Always ask the tanker if you can use or no.

I would find it useful only and only if something goes reaaal bad in the dungeon. Otherwise at level 50, due to the big pulls, it makes no difference. AoE everything down and move on. I understand your thought behind it but there is really no need for it. I would get quite annoyed as well if a BLM was spamming sleep on adds instead of using AoE fire to burn them down. It is at that point, a waste.

EDIT: It is however useful if your group is incompetent, i.e. if the healer struggles or the tank can't keep the aggro. Or if they pull too much for their capabilities.

I get the impression the sleep spell isn't really designed for dungeons. It's probably more for single player duties. Same idea with Archer's Shadowbind.

As it has been mentioned, Sleep unfortunately losses a lot of value in dungeons as you level higher.

However, in PvP Black Mages' Sleep is one of the most valuable forms of crowd control. And even in the open world, Sleep might be able to get you out of a nasty situation if you get aggro'd by too many things (there is a some that aren't effected by Sleep, but quite a lot that are!). c:

I've long since stopped using casting Sleep in any dungeon. 99.9% of the time the other dps ends up breaking the Sleep anyway.

Once you get to higher levels where both tanks and DPS have AoE skills, sleep pretty much becomes a waste of MP because any damage will wake them up. It used to be, back before I took about a year's break, that in low level dungeons if the WAR tank noticed you were sleeping mobs, he'd stop overpowering or moving one awake mob away from the group. These days though, no one wants to have fun anymore, they just want to get things over with as fast as possible, and if you don't go as fast as possible, they'll leave, votekick, or trash talk until you feel like leaving the game.

When I levelled my BLM to 50 back in the day, I was sleeping mobs through Dzemael Darkhold, and it was acceptable. These days, it's ZOMG NUB UZ DMG ONLY!!!1!!ELEVEN. While levelling DRK, I actually had a sprout blm in Stone Vigil sleeping mobs. Told them to just wait until Unleash goes off before sleeping, told the dps to maul my target only. Dungeon went fast, smooth, and people actually had a lot of fun.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

Aside from something going terribly wrong, so like what Seisha described....don't bother using it.
I only ever use it if a tank or healer specifically ask me to, and usually that's in a super newbie dungeon, and then I don't mind so much.

EDIT I also use it all the time by myself, of course, because squishy mage and 4 enemies at once doesn't end well :(

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This includes low level dungeons, soon as you have fire 2 you should be using that.

The trouble with Sleep is that all of the enemies just wake up when you hit them with Fire II. If you're against 3+ targets and you're not using Fire II instead of Fire III and IV, you're not playing Black Mage very well - which is unfortunately the case for a lot of Black Mages.
There are some situations where it's great, though. Fresh Paladins in lower level dungeons like Brayflox often have trouble holding AoE hate (it's a problem with the class, really) and if the healer isn't keeping up you can help stop the damage - but remember to stop using Fire II if you do that!

And, of course, it's completely overpowered in PvP.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Sleep beyond LV50 is worthless since either mobs are immune to it or people are going to want to you to AOE spam in big pulls.

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FTFY. Sleep was only (sort of) useful in Brayflox normal's 2nd boss, for sleeping the boss when the add spawns. That said, most groups did not need it.

In all other situations you are doing more harm than good. That time spent casting sleep could have been spent casting a damage spell. As a BLM you have Fire II at level 18. In this case, it would be acceptable to use sleep in Sastasha, but not afterwards.

Sleep can be very helpful in low lvl duties, especially if your party doesn't have much aoe (ie Sastasha with Pld, Ast, Mnk and Blm), sleep whatever tank isn't hitting, and everyone focus on one mob at a time. This does require some communication between everyone though, and is useless if you have dps that refuse to attack the same target.

However at higher lvls, most jobs have at least decent aoe skills and it's easier/faster to just kill everything at once.

Also, second boss of Brayflox is susceptible to sleep, nice little trick to sleep him once the add shows up.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Sleep can be very helpful in low lvl duties, especially if your party doesn't have much aoe (ie Sastasha with Pld, Ast, Mnk and Drg), sleep whatever tank isn't hitting.

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Who are you expecting to cast sleep?

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Who are you expecting to cast sleep?

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Bleh, need morning coffee, edited to correct class, but still get the gist of what I was trying to say.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Bleh, need morning coffee, edited to correct class, but still get the gist of what I was trying to say.

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The thing is, only THM/BLM and CNJ/WHM can cast sleep. A THM in everything post level 18 should cast Fire II over sleep. A CNJ after level 4 should multi-dot over casting sleep.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

The thing is, only THM/BLM and CNJ/WHM can cast sleep. A THM in everything post level 18 should cast Fire II over sleep. A CNJ after level 4 should multi-dot over casting sleep.

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Ideally, yes, but also ran into situations where using Fire II wasn't as fast, namely tanks that refuse to hold hate on anything other than their target.

Had a Gld in haukke once that refused to use Flash since it didn't do any dmg, healer was pulling aggro with first heal on anything Gld wasn't attacking, I'd pull hate if I tried to use Fire II, and after we all realized tank wasn't going to change his playstyle, I just switched to sleeping everything, was also before vote kick was added, so guess nowadays you'd just kick a tank that bad.

Also, sleep doesn't break from dots, if you cast sleep after dots are already applied.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Also, sleep doesn't break from dots, if you cast sleep after dots are already applied.

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but it will break to Overpower and whatever the DRK AOE move is. most people are not going to learn how to play with sleep when it's only viable with a PLD tank and a BLM DPS. in most DF situations you won't get that.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Ideally, yes, but also ran into situations where using Fire II wasn't as fast, namely tanks that refuse to hold hate on anything other than their target. Had a Gld in haukke once that refused to use Flash since it didn't do any dmg, healer was pulling aggro with first heal on anything Gld wasn't attacking, I'd pull hate if I tried to use Fire II, and after we all realized tank wasn't going to change his playstyle, I just switched to sleeping everything, was also before vote kick was added, so guess nowadays you'd just kick a tank that bad.

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Fair enough. For me in this scenario, I'd just tank it. Haukke is weak enough that a healer can easily keep a BLM alive as they are Fire II'ing mobs, and it would be a learning opportunity for the tank to start using flash. The healer should be able to keep themselves alive too, if they pull and you opt for solo kills. It would be best, imo, to kill the pack as fast as possible.

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Also, sleep doesn't break from dots, if you cast sleep after dots are already applied.

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Oh, I am fully aware, but you will need to re-apply dots and that will wake up mobs. If you have a trash pack of 4+ mobs, if you dot all 4 then sleep, you'll need to restart dot applications - that sleep GCD should have gone to healing the tank. If on less than 4 mobs, then sleep is really unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

but it will break to Overpower and whatever the DRK AOE move is. most people are not going to learn how to play with sleep when it's only viable with a PLD tank and a BLM DPS. in most DF situations you won't get that.

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It is most definitely not viable with a BLM DPS :|

It does have it's uses if you are with new players and such but really not needed
Sleep in PVP on the other hand... :)

Sleep in Endgame is mostly just a PvP skill or a get away option from stuff in the overworld. We would need an upgrade in lieu of a spell like Break to get our crowd control options back. I highly dislike these one off skills they put into a job's kit to never use ever again.