Sleep is the most worthless spell

Taking your 75% estimate, it's still 8 * .75 * .45 = 2.7 targets unconscious leaving 5.3 slowed until the end of their next turn. I never said it was a bad power -- just fixing the math according to my understanding of it.
Even if you miss, it's still Slowed (Save Ends).
 

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So, back to the example, let's assume 10 enemies (for simplicity's sake).

You hit 7 (rounding down), but all 10 are slowed (save ends).

At the end of their turns, half of the enemies save. Of the 7 that were hit, 4 drop unconscious and 3 shake off the effect. Of the 3 that were missed, 1 is still slowed.

On their next end of turn (where 5 of the original 10 acted normally, 4 never acted and 1 was slowed), 2 are still unconscious (the other 2 wake up prone, but have no actions to stand up), and the last slowed one is free.

On their third round, the 2 that woke up must spend an action to stand up, 1 wakes up prone and 1 is still unconscious.

On the fourth round of combat, the last sleeping enemy wakes up at the end of the round.

On the fifth round of combat, the last enemy stands up from prone and acts.

And this is just going by averages, with only the most basic optimization (i.e., decent Int score).
 

This is pure control at its finest. This is what wizards were supposed to be good at; it's what they were designed to do. Or, rather one of the things.

If only they were as able to be good (via class feature / build choice) at their secondary role - striker.
 

I think your contradicting your self here. On the one hand you are fine that certain powers are powerful with a one build and not another. On the other, you complain that sleep is too weak if you are not an orb wizard.

I'm not making myself clear, which I think is more the problem.

You mentioned the bonuses based on build for certain encounter powers. I'm fine with those because they add to the base power. The base powers are roughly inline with other powers at the same level that don't have any "build riders." The riders are additive - they add something to the power.

Sleep, on the other hand, is not additive. It's limiting - if you don't have a way of lowering saves (ie, Orb of Imposition), the power is (IMO) significantly weaker than the other dailies, for reasons I've already described.
 

Also consider the Level 15 Daily Slumber of the Winter Court -- the paragon version meant to replace Sleep.

It has the same range, area and attack as Sleep, but...


Hit: The target is dazed and slowed (save ends both).
First Failed Saving Throw: The target instead falls unconscious. The unconsciousness ends if the target takes damage, or after 1d4 hours.​

...and on a miss, it does what Sleep does on a hit.
 


This is pure control at its finest. This is what wizards were supposed to be good at; it's what they were designed to do. Or, rather one of the things.

If only they were as able to be good (via class feature / build choice) at their secondary role - striker.

I don't really see any evidence that wizards were ever intended to be a secondary striker. In fact generally building a wizard oriented towards damage output doesn't work out all that well. If you are well-versed in optimization and OK with playing a Genasi you can do a good job of it, but you can also make a passable defender out of a Barbarian or Ranger, but I wouldn't say they are secondarily defenders or should have defenderish features. It just means the system is flexible enough to let you bend things a decent amount.

In general AoE classes are inherently not that well suited to being strikers anyway. Spreading a bunch of damage around amongst a lot of targets is almost always marginally inferior to just whaling on one guy at a time, unless you get such huge damage output that you're basically whaling on a whole lot of guys at once, at which point it is broken.

The sorcerer pretty well illustrates THAT issue. Most sorcs (since the nerfs that got rid of their infinite action cheese etc) are not terrible strikers, but they tend not to be able to force a decisive move. Get into an encounter with a single solo and they just can't compete with a ranger or rogue. A 'striker wizard' pretty much suffers the same problem, except also lacks a bonus damage mechanic. You can go Blood Mage and get close at paragon but the strikers are still better at it. Now, look at the Ancient Soul based sorcerer and you see the flip side. With some DB optimization they are just preposterously powerful, and it is basically "I'm doing single target damage to lots of targets every round."
 

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