Freeze tooltip is wrong

(PlayStation 3 Version)

Thread name: Freeze tooltip is wrong
Time: October 19th, 2013
Frequency: Always
World name: Ultros
Character name: Happy Taint
NPC name: N/A
Monster name: Any
Class/level: BLM/47
Party or solo: Solo
Race: Lalafell male
In-game time: 11:30 AM PDT
Area and coordinates: Mor Dhona (anywhere)
Steps:

Freeze is a ground-target area-of-effect spell that deals minimal damage and binds targets for 15 seconds.

My first reaction to Freeze, before even reading the tooltip was: “Hell yeah! I remember this spell from FFXI, this is going to be awesome.” But it’s not awesome… it’s not even remotely related to the spell from Eleven. In FF11, it took forever to cast but it dealt tons of damage and made targets take additional Fire damage.

Let’s take a look at the tooltip. “Covers a designated area in ice, dealing ice damage with a potency of 20 and binding enemies that enter.” My initial thought, based on this, was that I could cast it on the ground and it would cover an area in frost, binding targets that walk through the area. At least, that’s what the tooltip leads you to believe. However, this isn’t the case at all. Freeze only binds targets that are already in the area when the spell goes off.

This spell also takes 3.5 seconds to cast. This means that, even if you’ve found a use for it, the enemies you’re attempting to snare have a huge amount of time to be repositioned. And every other spell in your arsenal that takes this long to cast has a minimum potency of 200. Why even bother having this spell deal damage at all?
Not to mention, due to the fact that Freeze only gives a single stack of Umbral Ice, casting it actually does your overall damage per second more harm than good (cast time on both Blizzard III and Fire III is now 3.5 seconds, which effectively causes a bigger lull in your overall damage). And for what?

The only time I’ve really used this spell is when I’m farming Ornery Karakuls in Coerthas, in conjunction with Swiftcast, to tag them before others. I’ve successfully used it a couple times in dungeons to keep enemies locked in place near the tank when the healer has pulled aggro, even then it’s required that I use Swiftcast, and if the tank is unaware of my plan, he immediately breaks the bind effect with his first attack (flash, on the otherhand, does not break the bind). Other than that, this spell sits idly on my hotbar, begging for me to find a use.

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