The Feast (4v4 Solo) Season 3 Patch 3.45 Tier List

[Februs]

If the JP servers were so good with BLM CC coordination, I'm surprised the counter effect of using purifies on each other and bard warden song didn't come into play to counter it.

Purify is a 90s recast and can only be used once per player. Sleep can be cast 3x consecutively before resistance, and the resistance timer is 60s. Even with everyone on your team using all their purifies to save one another from sleep, the Blm could outpace it, although with very diminished results. This is especially the case if they had a Pld on their team. The common practice was to bait a purify use with either a stun or sleep, then follow it up with the other after the purifies are wasted. You're guaranteed to keep at leas one target locked out of combat for roughly 10s or more, depending on how many purifies they had at the time yous started your CC.

The AoE aspect of sleep is also supremely useful in Feast for when you bottle neck or bait the enemy team. In most cases, it's utility is for a single target lock; however, hitting multiple targets allowed for BLM's to be excellent chasers or blockers. Any time you were pursuing an enemy onto their bridge or vice versa, the BLM could effectively end the chase with a quick cast of sleep. Boxes and low Hp party members were also prime time sleep magnets, as they tend to cause players to rush in and clutter up. It was also a tool for forcing the enemy to waste additional purifies. Dps are not always the brightest pennies in the game. They hate being locked in place and often jump the gun. More often then not, if a Sleep hits multiple targets at once, the dps target won't even think to check the healer status bar before wasting a purify on themselves.

You also have to keep in mind that Sleep was not the only thing that was nerfed on BLM. Lethargy (6s heavy), Freeze (12s bind), and Swiftcast (now halves dmg of any Swifted damage dealing spells) were all nerfed as well. Individually, it all sounds quite small, however Heavy and Bind both outpace Fetter ward and could be used to completely remove War's from combat (not even exaggerating here). The nerf to swiftcast also essentially made it useless for any damage dealing spells, so sniping kills became a thing of the past.

Normally I'd agree that careful party play and tactical uses of purify are the best ways to counter this. I always advocate for smart play over nerfs, but, unfortunately, there is no doubt that BLM was a little overpowered in the CC department before they got nerfed down. The problem is that SE went WAY too far with the nerfs, rendering them almost useless in the arena.