Black Mage 'Sleep' action in Dungeons

[SaitoHikari]

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.

[Selli]

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:

[Noshpan]

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.

[LordLucavi]

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.

[Alistaire]

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

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

[Kietsu]

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.

[Kaurie]

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.

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.

[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 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.

[Kaurie]

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.

Who are you expecting to cast sleep?

[Gralna]

Who are you expecting to cast sleep?

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