Is Bane bugged?

I know that the description, "spreads to all nearby targets", and the result "spreads to the nearest 3" conflict, but has SE ever said whether it was the text or the ability that was bugged.

Did the text and the function sync at any point in beta? (Either direction)

I googled "ffxiv" "bane bugged" before I posted this, and got no related result.

SE directly said that it will only spread to the nearest 3 targets. The help text does not go into detail about this limit but it was indeed confirmed by SE. That being said, you could probably chain bane through an aether stack, if you have enough mobs to make it worthwhile.

I have never bothered chaining Banes yet cause I don't really do AoE parties on my SMN but I do on my SCH and I use my stacks for other stuffs. That being said, if you chain Bane does it spread to mobs without debuffs from you already or can you hit the same mob over and over again? Thus, wasting your stacks.

There is a dev post somewhere that states that the bane tooltip is incorrect and that the intention of bane is to spread to the nearest 3 or 4 targets. It's probably buried somewhere on the dps forums.

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Originally Posted by Maku

I have never bothered chaining Banes yet cause I don't really do AoE parties on my SMN but I do on my SCH and I use my stacks for other stuffs. That being said, if you chain Bane does it spread to mobs without debuffs from you already or can you hit the same mob over and over again? Thus, wasting your stacks.

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As it does not specify, I can only assume it goes to the nearest 3 other targets, so unless you pull one away you will always hit the one you baned from first.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Delvish

As it does not specify, I can only assume it goes to the nearest 3 other targets, so unless you pull one away you will always hit the one you baned from first.

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Plus there's a 10 second cooldown on Bane, so your duration on your DoTs will mostly be up anyway unless they were extended by contagion or refreshed on one of the secondary targets by the Bane proc.

You're probably better off just waiting until it's time to refresh your DoTs anyway.

Bane spreads to the nearest 3 targets. Since this is in the "Healer" forums, I can only assume a Scholar is using it, which means that using Contagion is out of the question. In general, if I'm on my scholar and need to use Bane on more than 3 targets, it's always a matter of dotting up a target, baning, dotting up a target that bane missed, and praying that it spreads the dots to the remaining targets. It's extremely unfortunate, but that's the limitation we (and Summoners) get on our dot spreads to prevent us from being the strongest damage dealers in the game across the board.

Fortunately enough, there aren't many scenarios in the game where we need to spread dots to more than three targets. The tiny radius of spread, however, is a huge problem.

As a healer, you will likely never encounter a situation where this limitation is a true issue -- although it would be nice if SE updated the tooltip to be correct and not misleading. As a summoner... the limitations of bane are a different story, but I won't get into that as someone mentioned this is a healer forum.

The DEVs only post these responses, when they are are asked in the JP forums.

The reason it was placed in an awkward thread, is because no english speaking player has noticed/asked, when the DEV posted the response.

Normally the DEV does a search, and finds any thread remotely similar, but in this case, there was nothing similar, which is why its nearly impossible to find via search.

Here's the DEV post for those who are curious.

Yes, it's capped at 3 targets. It's to prevent DoTs from being ridiculously OP on huge pulls.

As it stands, the total potency from a full 3-chain Bane is huge. Hardest hitting single shot in the game when you account for full efficiency and maximum spread.