Bane

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back! Now we have the most infamous off-meta "useless like most people said", Bane. Bane is a fighter, bruiser (that's not why we're here), AOE damage dealer, pusher. I have to agree and disagree at the same time about Bane being "useless". Yes, he is useless but also one of the best pusher in game. His teamfight damage is actually decent to high. Overall, he is far from being a "dead" hero. As far as I know, he is still very fun to play, very annoying to dealt with, and also obviously still playable and not completely "useless". I'll show you how to make use of Bane's kit.

Lore

Many years ago, Captain Bane roamed the seas on his ship, the Black Pearl, and the ever-victorious sea dwellers called him the Lord of the Seven Seas. Today he has awakened from the briny depths, bringing his cursed body and a tattered Black Pearl back to these waters. He must announce his return to the sea dwellers and renew his reign here.

"The story is fabricated indeed and not a real historical story."

Abilities

-Scales extremely well with critical damage.

-High AOE burst

-If only the cooldown can be reduced by Cooldown Reduction or buffed to 3-4 second, Bane could actually be INSANE, probably god-tier by now.

-Annoying harass early game, strong crit late game.

-One target slow

-Harass ability

-Armor reduction

-Max this first because…… rum… is……

• Basically useless, max this last.

-But hey….a healing is still a healing….

-It can still helps a little in laning phase..

-Clear minions and push turrets extremely fast and well.

-And also good amount of damage in teamfight, early or late game.

-It's basically free damage while you can do anything else, you don't have to control the battleship as it goes.

Pro & Cons

Pros:

• Great AOE damage
• Passive scales very well with critical damage
• Very fast and reliable pusher
• Very annoying to dealt with

Cons:

• Squishy
• Lack of crowd control
• No mobility ability, most likely no escape when get caught
• Requires item to shine (Not really a con, no pun intended)
• Rum is basically, yeah... useless... if only you could get drunk with it

Items & Battle Spells

I've been thinking about more bruiser or/and tanky type of Bane, but it didn't work out well. The scaling is really, really bad. But you could always go full tank Bane and be annoying as possible while split pushing, but in that case, going full damage critical build is the best choice available. Critical damage +Shark Bite (Passive) stacks and they both scale really darn well. When you crit, it actually deals TONS of damage to EVERYONE in your passive range. You could definitely imagine that.

Be sure to buy 

Flicker is still my main and best choice. Purify, if you are not a fan of flicker. Or you can try something like arrival for more split pushing power, backdooring and stuffs as you can push really well.

Game Plan

Early game, use your Shark Bite (Passive) and Crab Claw Cannon as much as possible to try and deny your enemies' gold score. You can start with magic necklaces for sustain. In the meantime, same ol' farming strategy which is, lane-> jungle > repeat until at least you have your ultimate and/or core items. If you do have your ultimate and your enemy laner decided to go farm in the jungle or gank, use your ultimate to push the enemy turret, every damage counts. The faster you take them down, the faster your team gold increase.

From mid to late game, I assume you would have level 2 ultimate, some or all of the core items. Your plan or strategy here is to:

Split-pushing - Go to an empty lane where your enemy isn't, try to push them out while your team pressures the lane or objectives. Push as quickly as possible, if the enemy does decide to go defend or maybe try to gank you, be ready to run, don't wait till the enemy show in lane, because you will have no escape if the enemy appear in both front and back. If you are really confident, you could even 1v1, 1v2 or even 1v3 while your team pushes the other lane or getting Lords. And of course, use your ultimate when pushing towards enemy turret. Your ultimate can do reasonable damage to the enemy turrets.

Team-fight - Your teamfight style isn't to go near and basic attack everyone as much as possible, you would want to try and stay in a safe area, use your Shark Bite (Passive) ability to deal damage to enemy backline and also Crab Claw Cannon to deal some damage. Unless, you are confident that you won't die (such as isn't clashing in between 10 heroes) then you can start basic-attacking. Don't forget to use your Air Assault (Ultimate) whenever a teamfight starts.