Just cap speed waking time, to get rid of outliers e.g. 18 seconds as per Veyr'z log. Isn't that what the issue is: a wiccan can triple sleep +metawake strip someone easily (not including anything related to aeon lock) with a small chance of that sleep lasting far too long.

I never successfully sleeplocked anyone as a Wiccan, and it's one of the reasons I changed classes. Yes, I didn't practice enough, that's true. But it wasn't something I felt like working on. You spam one macro and you either win or did nothing. I ran out of beast mana more often than I killed anyone, because they'd wake up (and metawake on/insomnia/eat kafe/sip quicksilver) before I got equilibrium back.

I'm all for making offenses more attrition based across the board. Burst is incredibly hard to balance and unfun when it's not.

There are bigger fish to fry.

If this absolutely must get sorted, all you need to do is nerf sleepcloud by giving it a delay between casting and activation. Make it random if you insist.

Bam fixed.

If you want icing, delete morphite from spit.

Nobody thinks about the bigger picture apparently. Let's think for a moment?

One, if you add a balance cost to ordering pooka, not only are you nerfing the wiccan sleeplock, but you're also nerfing every single other wiccan who uses it for something other than metawake off.

Two, if you nerf sleepcloud, not only are you nerfing wiccan sleeplock, but you're nerfing my sleeplock, which I assure you is not overpowered in the slightest.

The problem, if there is one at all. Is that it took you way too long to wake up, which has nothing to do with the sleeplock in general, it's just bad luck. As several other people have stated only to be ignored. Wiccan's have worked this way for a very very long time, with the addition of sleepcloud, sure it's easier, but it's not any worse than half a dozen other things that are worth complaining about/nerfing.

Actually nerfing it via my suggestion leaves yours more or less intact.

The problem with only addressing sleepcloud is that beast poison spitting morphite gives you essentially the same functionality, albeit with a resistance check. It is much cleaner and more effective to handle it via addressing pooka and similar balance-less dominate type abilities.

I disagree simply because balanceless forcing really is important for a lot more classes than just wiccans. It gets more messy compared to just nerfing what makes sleeplocks way easier than before.

Full disclosure : I have a horse in this race.

Nerf rock, paper is balanced.
-Sincerely, scissors

Just for the record, complaining about sleeplocks being "nonsense" just because someone got killed by failing to recognise that Sondayga was attempting to sleeplock you, even after the multiple failed attempts is like me complaining about inquisition because I didn't see it happen. I'm pretty, pretty sure you could have disrupted him BEFORE the sleeplock causing him to mess up the combo (vapors + speed stripper hint, hint. I'm going to let you figure it out). I've had that done to me multiple times, but of course, complaining about it on the forums is a far more easier alternative to formulating a valid counter-tactic.

Its got nothing to do about the mechanisms, or the skills involved - you will note that I couldn't get a decent sleeplock off you, the opening scrap at the start of that Lisaera fight saw two wiccans attempting to sleeplock + succumb but failing miserably and allowing Veyzhrul to get away- but why do you conveniently ignore that?. In fact, Sivas died before he could do anything major which is something you can think about - killing the wiccan or at least hindering him considerably before he manages to throw off his combos. You did this easily to Sivas, but you couldn't with Sondayga even in a 2v1 like the one in the Godrealm. This proves that this whole debate isn't really about he skills, the pooka, the metawake or anything related to that, it's merely about the fact that Sondayga knew his stuff and managed to kill people.

It seems that the people in this discussion so vocally against sleeplocks grasp onto an irregular result of the sleeplock and go - "MUST NERF". Like Sylphas said, the failures of this tactic majorly outweighs the success - I've never had a target asleep for 18 seconds. If we are to base any reliable analysis on anything, are we really going to do it on an outlier?

Easily outliers. It's how Lusternia rolls. It's like we're playing different games.

Edit: nevermind. My brilliant solution had a few holes in it.

Hello there. Here's my two cents:

I've sparred Sondayga dozens, probably hundreds of times. When I "perfected" my curing against him here is what it boiled down to. Crone would invariably hit me with a lucky slickness and I'd be aeon locked enough for sondy to sleep me a second time and that would give him the opportunity to finish off the toadcurse. I'd argue that the 1/8 (whatever the chance is) of crone hitting that particular aff while I was preped the right way is just bad luck, and so is the log in here. I think Guardians/Wiccans have this feature in general: you get that lucky scabies tick as a nihi, you get lucky with morrible procing insanity or badluck ticking as an illuminati, etc.

That being said I'd be fine with changing things a little bit. You could cap the sleep timer to something more like 10 seconds. Or give SleepCloud a 1p cost, although I think the beast mana factor hasn't been given enough credit in this thread. I know someone mentioned it but spent at that quantity beast mana regenerates far slower than power does. It's true that you get several attempts before this happens, but then you're out of luck if you're depending on it for a kill. Anything more than that and you're either destroying a core mechanic of wiccans or screwing with other people who use sleepcloud.

I think the most important thing to think about though is Shamarah's comment. This is essentially a dueling kill. In a true group fight you would not be undamaged for 18 seconds like that. And group combat (perhaps unfortunately) is the type of combat that matters in Lusternia.

Edit: I love Rivius.

Edit 2: A friend of mine points out that fixing the outliers of sleep timers should also include when sleep timers last for less than a second in the absence of kafe.

Veyrzhul's case of 18 seconds of sleeping is bad luck

However, I was killed by sleeplock twice today and when I sent a tell to Sondayga saying sleeplock was 'boring and easy,' He replied with 'I know!'

Now I see arguing that it's not easy by MD's and I have to go 'hmmm'

I will go ahead and say my deaths were 2v1 (Sondayga/Lleuke vs me) which makes it easier. My second death, I wasn't actually asleep, I just got re-aeoned the second I cured it by Lleuke.

Note, I'm not arguing it's not easy, really, I'm saying that it's all or nothing. If you get someone asleep for 18 seconds, it's honestly not even a lock, it's just bad luck. I wouldn't call it a lock until you're set up so that even if you do wake up, you're sleeping again before you can do anything (aeon/anorexia/etc). If you get someone who immediately wakes up despite not having kafe or metawake? Sucks to be you, try again. That's not a playstyle that appeals to me, and I think it's hard to balance.

For the people who want nerfs, what's your plan for Moondancers to kill people? Without sleepcloud you can still time a pixie, so that just makes it more of a pain in the ass for the same result. If you make sleeplocks impossible, I'd be curious how they'd manage a kill outside of a group against good curing. (Maybe they have tons of other ways, I was never that great, but I haven't seen it done.)

Daereth: How does the random factor in waking up have nothing to do with SLEEPlocks in general? It has everything to do with them. If such random outliers are nothing to worry about, how would you like it if mage illusions had a 1% chance to knock spectators unconcious for 20 seconds?

Shuyin: If there are bigger fish to fry than randomly being locked up like this, please let the other envoys know, because the upcoming reports (Your own: Paradigmatics Figment - What great imbalance does this fix?) surely don't mirror it. Sleep locks may not matter much in groups, but that hardly makes them a non-issue.

Sivas: Did you even read the log, considering the things you bring up? It's really getting tiring to repeat it, but there is nothing to disrupt in what happened short of killing the pooka. Sure, I made the general necessary routine to secure the lock easier by not having up metawake up and whatnot, but really, it simply didn't matter in this case. Sondayga 'knew his stuff' - yes, he ran and ran, trying to isolate us, which finally worked because Placeus had to go afk for a few minutes. And Sivas, very few classes, if any, can kill a wiccan that constantly runs between the lock attempts.

Binjo: As has been said already, sleepcloud can easily be replaced by beast spit with morphite. Shrug rate for non poisonists is what, 25%? I'd also argue that 1/8th chance for the lock to work is pretty high, considering the wiccan is pretty untouchable by most people 1 on 1 (if he runs around while preparing).

Veyrzhul:
considering the wiccan is pretty untouchable by most people 1 on 1 (if he runs around while preparing).

This is the issue with burst offenses, I think. You can't kill someone who won't stand and fight, that goes for pretty much anyone. I'm a terrible fighter, but I can wriggle out of damn near anything 1v1 if my goal is just to gtfo. If all you need is to pop in and blow your load, things break down a bit.

Oh please, if I wasted a report on everything anyone ever had a problem with, I'd be way busier than I already am. Plus my current report addresses a problem. You may not think it's important but importance is quite relative as you've noticed.

PS not that it matters but my report drafts contain the kind of reports that you seemingly prefer.

I love this thread for all the wrong reasons.

Not saying your report isn't important, but you made it sound as if envoys are currently toiling to fix tremendously broken things.

Veyrzhul:

Binjo: As has been said already, sleepcloud can easily be replaced by beast spit with morphite. Shrug rate for non poisonists is what, 25%? I'd also argue that 1/8th chance for the lock to work is pretty high, considering the wiccan is pretty untouchable by most people 1 on 1 (if he runs around while preparing).

You're conflating different types of probabilities. I'm not concerned that a wiccan can sleep someone instantly, most of the time you are awake in < 3 seconds and they have to wait for their offense to reset. Yes it's annoying that they can run during this period but with the previous incarnation of my system I could kill Sondayga around half of the time (maybe more in my prime, and now he's gotten beefier so who knows). Basically I don't see where you're getting untouchability from. This is not just on Wobou either, so it's not a matter of lolmonksop. My earlier point is that in order for his aeon/sleep lock to last long enough to double sleep me he'd have to a.) get lucky enough that the first sleep would eat into the crone timer significantly and b.) have crone deliver the right affliction. So in reality the probability that he could do that to me is far less than 1/8.

@Sidd: Most types of combat in this game are boring when broken down sufficiently. For example when you and Talan arti'd up as bards back when it was possible to make yourselves unmovable, was that super exciting use of game mechanics? Or were you going for the most efficient synergy with your archetype? People use what works, I've tried to make the game better by toning some of these things down (like the Shofangi green lock) but I'm doubting that TK will ever work in a significantly different manner than it does now and that's about as boring as it gets (when used in standard ways).

Basically I think the skill in Lusternian combat is 30% figuring out your abilities and coming up with combinations and 70% combat awareness/movement/shrine management/etc. Which is unfortunate because I'm much better at that first skill than the second. For example, spamming burst/trip/throatlock as an alias on a TK will kill like 50% of people. I could give this alias to every little mage newbie but they still won't turn into someone like Nydekion/Aky because the trick is to actually remain unhindered (aka alive) and on top of the same target so that they cannot outheal your offense.