Question about Bane

[AreeyaJaidee]

Hey all, I've been playing SMN for quite awhile and I keep having this nagging annoyance about AoE situations.

Now suppose you DF a speedrun and the lineup you get DPS wise is something like: melee + smn

What confuses me is how little power smn has AoE wise:

Blizzard II spam (expensive mp wise)
Bane (dots spread to 3 targets)
Miasma II
Shadow Flare
Pet Enkindle usable only every 300secs
Pet aoe

I don't understand why Bane forces smn to be optimal for only small groups. As it stands:

Whm in cleric can do more aoe DPS than smn
Blm can do more single target and aoe DPS than smn w/ infinite mp.

So I'm just wondering, does this seem good or not?

I'm only i120 ATM since I'm still in process of gearing and will finish my smn zeta tonight, it would be nice if a high geared smn could please give some DMG reports on how much DPS they get out of their aoe alone. So far using all my aoe available blm and whm still kill mob packs faster than I could even dream to.

Side note: Bane seems to spread to targets without any type of filter. I keep seeing bane spread to mobs I already dotted or mobs who are nearly dead instead if mobs with high hp and no dots. Has anyone else experienced this? It seems very inefficient.

[SpookyGhost]

AOE with 5+ mobs only really exists in 4m dungeons. SMN excels at AOE in raid content because there's only a handful of mobs to actually AOE. Unfortunately, at the moment it's lacking in single target output and isn't scaling so well with gear due to fights finishing shorter.

With a lot of mobs, BLM and WHM will outdo you every time, but it doesn't really matter since that only happens in faceroll content.

Also Bane, afaik, will just spread your dots to 3 targets, doesn't prioritize mobs w/o dots or mobs at higher HP.

[pandabearcat]

It prioritizes mobs closer to the bane target, so if you want to spread to an aoe group, you'll want to pick 2 mobs on opposite sides of the pack, and bane those.

Noticeable in WF speedruns and turn4.

[Sagittarian]

The upside to bane is that you can use it even if the adds appear later on and then spread out. Like the eyes that appear with Angry Mainyu, the sacred idols in WP HM, and others. It's definitely not the best ability for speed runs but for normal sized groups it is great. SMN doesn't need the mobs to be stacked .. just to have passed by each other at some point.